Neve Maslakovic's Blog, page 10

BEA pics

I'm back from BookExpo with lots of impressions and having met and talked to some lovely people from Amazon Publishing, including my editor Alex Carr and fellow authors Karen McQuestion, Sarah Collins Honenberger, Richard Hine, Eric Kraft, Elisa Lorello, Sarah Girrell, and others! I finished off the week by visiting my sister Anna and her family for a couple of whirlwind days in downtown Manhattan before heading back to (at least ten degrees cooler) Minnesota and Memorial Day weekend, which we celebrated by finally buying a charcoal BBQ grill.  

Here is a brief recap of the BEA part of the trip in photos:   


The Press Lounge, rooftop of the Ink48 hotel (previously a printing house), just before the Amazon Publishing cocktail party on Monday night. Fog and a view in the general direction of Times Square. 








Same rooftop, a couple of hours later. The party is in full swing behind the picture-taker. Five AmazonEncore authors, left to right: Raymond Bean, Maria Murnane, Karen McQuestion, Sarah Collins Honenberger, and yours truly. (Photo courtesy of Karen McQuestion; mine turned out too dark.)







Entrance to Javits Center as seen from the upper floor on Tuesday morning.







Karen McQuestion and I in front of the Amazon Publishing booth. Karen turned out to be as nice in person as she is in her emails and was quite willing to show a BEA newbie around.








The suitcases, lower level of Javits Center. Booksellers and librarians stash advance reader copies and other giveaways in the suitcases before heading back to the exhibition booths for more.











BEA, one of the exhibition floors.








And finally... the cookie. In addition to arranging for a few other things (like transportation to NY, lodging, the cocktail party, and admission to the BEA exhibition floor), the Amazon team had goodie bags for each of us when we checked into the Ink48 -- bottled water, snacks, and a cookie decorated with our book's name! The titles got abridged a bit for compactness purposes, but pretty nifty.

Murder at the ABA

I've been invited to BookExpo America 2011 and will be traveling to New York next week. So naturally, instead of spending my time deciding what to wear for the publisher's party on the first evening of the BEA and otherwise preparing for the trip, I am reading Isaac Asimov's Murder at the ABA . I suspected, and this turns out to be the case, that the ABA (American Booksellers Association) convention was the precursor to BEA. According to the ABA website, "ABA sold the trade show in 1994 to Reed Exhibitions, which manages and operates BEA." Today BEA is advertised as being the largest annual book trade fair in North America. 

I picked up a used hardcover copy of the book, first published in 1976, at Uncle Hugo's. The entertaining and quite funny mystery novel follows the adventures of a midlist writer named Darius Just. While attending the 1975 ABA convention, Just discovers a dead body and things take off from there. (The height-challenged Just is modeled, rumor has it, on Asimov's friend and fellow writer Harlan Ellison; the dedication in the front of the book seems to confirm this, as it reads: To Harlan Ellison, whose brightness of personality is exceeded only by his height* of talent). 

What has surprised me as I've been reading the book, which I'm enjoying very much, is not how much things have changed since the seventies--though they have, of course, with respect to the "filth of cigarette smoke (that) hung in the air" at the convention and also some other stuff, like the role of the women in the book. 

No, what really surprised me is how much things haven't changed in the world of publishing between then and now--writers, editors, publishers, booksellers all vying for their piece of the pie and stepping on each other's toes, as described by Asimov with a light hand through the voice of his narrator Darius Just. Asimov himself is a character in the book, an acquaintance of Just; some of the descriptions of Asimov as given by Just are hilarious. 

According to the book, the attendance that year (May 1975) was around twelve thousand, with six hundred exhibitor booths. If 2010 is any indication, this year there will be twenty thousand-some attendees; look for me somewhere in the vicinity of AmazonEncore's booth (#3129). It will be my first time at BEA and I plan to wander around and take lots of pictures and try not to be too intimidated by the sight of all those authors with long autographing lines. I am particularly looking forward to meeting in person and putting faces to some of the names that have made this past year, my first in the publishing business, so memorable: Alex, Jill, Sarah (two of them), Jacque, Karen, Richard, and others! 

*The emphasis is mine.

Number One Novels Giveaway

Number One Novels, which posts weekly interviews with debut novelists, kindly let me take a crack at their interview questions today. They are also running a Regarding Ducks and Universes giveaway for the week - you can enter it by leaving a comment after the interview, tweeting about it, following the Number One Novels blog, liking the interview on Facebook, or purchasing something from their store.

My thanks to Rebecca Chastain for the interview opportunity and for running the giveaway! Her Number One Novels author interviews run all the way back to 2009 and are fun to browse. You can find her author blog here. She writes about "writing, getting published, reading, story creation, and the occasional insight into my life." 

The Regarding Ducks and Universes giveaway ends Sunday, May 8th.

***For Goodreads members: The Regarding Ducks and Universes giveaway running here on Goodreads ends next Monday. You can enter it here:

http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sho...

Kindle Highlights

The Kindle has this nice feature where readers can highlight passages in a book as they are reading it; Amazon then keeps track of the most popular ones and displays them on the book's product page. Regarding Ducks and Universes has been out for just over a month and I thought it'd be interesting to document the most popular highlights so far.

If you haven't read the book, these probably won't make much sense, but I'm finding it quite fascinating to see what people are marking. The third quote from the bottom is particularly interesting as I took it out in the editing process at one point (since it wasn't strictly necessary for the scene) but ended up putting it back in simply because, well, I liked it.

Here they are, the most popular highlights so far:

"I was stuck somewhere in between, with neither the blind confidence of youth that everything would turn out as imagined nor the experience that builds up as years pass that it wouldn't matter if it didn't."
Highlighted by 9 Kindle users

"My husband used to say, 'Danger makes life worth living.'"
"Did he?"
"Of course that was before the hang-glider malfunction, the poor dear."
Highlighted by 7 Kindle users

"...it makes little sense to pack a bunch of heavy books and lug them along when you travel."
Highlighted by 5 Kindle users

"...we all know that we have the power to change our lives. But in the back of our mind is a tally of all the times that things didn't turn out as expected because of random chance, other people's behavior, false assumptions we'd made, or the disconnect between how we see ourselves and who we really are. We therefore know that most likely things will not turn out as we expect them to, so we try to take that into account but end up going in circles and doing nothing."
Highlighted by 4 Kindle users

"I spent a few minutes fully engrossed in the textbook, having forgotten where I was and why I was there, the highest compliment one can pay a book, I suppose."
Highlighted by 4 Kindle users

"After all, when Socrates faced the brand-new technology of the written word, he DID NOT LIKE IT at all. It takes time to get used to things."
Highlighted by 3 Kindle users

"Everything felt slightly off, like being served chocolate mousse on a paper plate or wine in a mug."
Highlighted by 3 Kindle users

Of course I'm assuming these are all passages actually liked by readers and not marked for other reasons, such as "this sentence is lousy and should have been reworded", or "this sentence has a typo in it," or something of that sort.

Incidentally, I'm quite sure a few typos did manage to sneak in even after all the edits and proofreads Regarding Ducks and Universes went through. It's just the nature of the beast. All things considered, though, I think I'd rather you send the publisher (or me) an email if you do happen to come across a typo, not use the highlights feature!

On a Pale Star

Jessica from On a Pale Star, a book blog for speculative fiction, has written a very kind review of "Regarding Ducks and Universes". Not only that, but I had the honor of being the very first author to be interviewed on her blog, which was fitting as it was my first interview for a book blog as well. Jessica asked some interesting questions and a few that made me stop and think (like What is your favorite Agatha Christie novel? So hard to choose among the 80-some written by the Grand Dame of Mystery!) Find out the answer and read the whole interview here.

An Ode to the Loft

The Twin Cities. Yes, the winters are long and the summers hot and stormy. Minnesota, because of its location in the middle of the country, misses out on the moderating effects of the oceans. We sit on the 45th parallel north, halfway between the North Pole and the equator (the 45th parallel incidentally also passes through Belgrade, Serbia, where I was born.)

But I digress. Yes, the weather in the Twin Cities can be wild at times. But we have the Loft.

It's a good place to take a writing class, listen to a reading, or just grab a cup of coffee and sit down with a book.

In their own words:

The mission of the Loft is to foster a writing community, the artistic development of individual writers, and an audience for literature.

Incorporated in 1975 in a space above a Minneapolis bookstore, the Loft Literary Center has grown to become the nation's largest and most comprehensive literary center. From novels to children's literature, from playwriting to poetry, from spoken word to memoir, there's something for everyone at the Loft. Programs include readings by acclaimed local and national authors, classes, weekend genre conferences, competitions and grants, open groups, writers' studios, and much more. The Loft is located in the award-winning Open Book literary arts building in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

As I was writing my first book, I took workshops at the Loft over the course of a few years and attended a novel-writing conference. Yesterday was the first time I had been "on the other side of the podium", for my first book reading. This is what greeted me when we arrived:


I couldn't believe it! They'd taken an unknown newbie writer and put my name on the outside of their building. (With a slight snafu with my first name, which was interesting because it's usually my last name which gets mangled. The subject of a future post: the trials and tribulations of being an author with a hard-to-spell name.)

The reading itself was a cozy and intimate experience (we didn't have a ton of people show up, it being St. Patrick's Day -- note to self, don't schedule talks on holidays) but I enjoyed it very much. I talked a bit about how the book came to be published, read a bit, and then answered some good questions -- people were curious about the process of switching from science to novel-writing and also where I got the idea for the story about a culinary writer who goes to an alternate universe.

Anyway, if you live in the area and haven't checked the Loft out yet, I highly recommend it. It's a great place for readers, aspiring writers, and authors.

An Ode to the Loft

The Twin Cities. Yes, the winters are long and the summers hot and stormy. Minnesota, because of its location in the middle of the country, misses out on the moderating effects of the oceans. We sit on the 45th parallel north, halfway between the North Pole and the equator (the 45th parallel incidentally also passes through Belgrade, Serbia, where I was born.)

But I digress. Yes, the weather in the Twin Cities can be wild at times. But we have the Loft.

It's a good place to take a writing class, listen to a reading, or just grab a cup of coffee and sit down with a book.

In their own words:

The mission of the Loft is to foster a writing community, the artistic development of individual writers, and an audience for literature.

Incorporated in 1975 in a space above a Minneapolis bookstore, the Loft Literary Center has grown to become the nation's largest and most comprehensive literary center. From novels to children's literature, from playwriting to poetry, from spoken word to memoir, there's something for everyone at the Loft. Programs include readings by acclaimed local and national authors, classes, weekend genre conferences, competitions and grants, open groups, writers' studios, and much more. The Loft is located in the award-winning Open Book literary arts building in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

As I was writing my first book, I took workshops at the Loft over the course of a few years and attended a novel-writing conference. Yesterday was the first time I had been "on the other side of the podium", for my first book reading. This is what greeted me when we arrived:


I couldn't believe it! They'd taken an unknown newbie writer and put my name on the outside of their building. (With a slight snafu with my first name, which was interesting because it's usually my last name which gets mangled. The subject of a future post: the trials and tribulations of being an author with a hard-to-spell name.)

The reading itself was a cozy and intimate experience (we didn't have a ton of people show up, it being St. Patrick's Day -- note to self, don't schedule talks on holidays) but I enjoyed it very much. I talked a bit about how the book came to be published, read a bit, and then answered some good questions -- people were curious about the process of switching from science to novel-writing and also where I got the idea for the story about a culinary writer who goes to an alternate universe.

Anyway, if you live in the area and haven't checked the Loft out yet, I highly recommend it. It's a great place for readers, aspiring writers, and authors.

Launch Day!

Regarding Ducks and Universes is being released today both in print and on Kindle. I'm so excited, I can hardly sit still! I've learned a lot about the publishing business in the last ten months, and one of the most important things that I've learned is that publishing a book takes a team of people. So, without further ado, here is the Acknowledgment page (slightly amended) from the book:

Thanks go out to Alex Carr, my editor at AmazonEncore, for being intrigued by the title and pulling out a manuscript languishing on last year's contest shelf and liking it;

to Jill Marsal, for graciously agreeing to represent me;

to Sarah Burningham, Sarah Tomashek, and everyone at author-team for helping get the word out;

to the art and editing team at CreateSpace for turning a manuscript into a book;

to Mary Alterman and Jo Cravens for many writers' group meetings, even when the snow was knee-deep;

to the teachers at Woodpark Montessori for imparting many bits of preschool wisdom to my son Dennis as I wrote and edited and wrote and edited;

to my friends and family for all their encouragement, even when they didn't quite understand why it was taking so long;

to the light of my life, Dennis, for keeping me grounded and for introducing me to many imagined worlds of his own;

and, most of all, to my husband, John, for coming along for the ride and for being steadfastly certain it would all work out in the end.

Thank you, everyone, for helping launch a book into the world!

Book Signing at Uncle Hugo's!

Just found out that I'll be sharing a signing period at Uncle Hugo's with Lyda Morehouse of the Archangel Protocol and the AngeLINK series fame!

This is great news on two counts:

(a) I get to meet Lyda Morehouse in person.

and

(b) It takes care of my number one fear, that no one will show up and I'd just be sitting at a table all alone with a stack of books. I'll be able to talk to Lyda, watch her sign copies of the her newest book Resurrection Code for her fans, and get her to sign a copy for me.

The famous Uncle Hugo's is one half of Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore and Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore on 2864 Chicago Ave. S. in Minneapolis. The signing will be on March 26th, from 1-2pm. Come on by, it's shaping up to be a lot of fun.

Press Release Q&A

Less than a week to go till launch day!

First, my thanks to all the readers who posted reviews of the Regarding Ducks and Universes ARCs on Amazon, Goodreads, LibraryThing and other places. Every review helps spread the word and is much appreciated!

Second, this week we have the signed copies of Regarding Ducks and Universes going out to the Goodreads giveaway winners. One to Canada, two to Great Britain, and seven to various corners of the U.S. Winners, be on the lookout for the book in about 7 to 10 days, depending on where you are.

Finally, below is the Q&A going out with the press release, with the "Q" part courtesy of the great Sarah Burningham of Little Bird Publicity.

Q: Most science fiction writers don't have a background in real science, but you graduated with your Ph.D. from Stanford's renowned STAR Lab. How did your scientific work influence your fictional writing? Did working in science inspire you to write?

Neve Maslakovic: When I first tried my hand at writing fiction, I found that the process is a close cousin of scientific research—you come up with an idea, sit down at your desk (or in your lab), work at it, spend time thinking, backtrack, try a different approach…neither one happens neatly and both are very creative endeavors. Science is guided by observation and deduction, of course, while in writing REGARDING DUCKS AND UNIVERSES my aim was to make the novel a fun read and a bit thought-provoking at the same time. Ultimately, though, you're just tinkering with ideas until you hit upon something that works and feels right. I don't feel I've moved wholly away from science; on the contrary—scientists and academic settings inhabit my stories.

Q: You were born in communist Yugoslavia and have lived all over the world. How did your travels impact the creation of Universe A and Universe B in REGARDING DUCKS AND UNIVERSES?

NM: I love to travel, both in person and virtually, by reading about real places or by writing about imagined ones. Sometimes a place that's only a little different than what we're used to can be more disconcerting than a place that's hugely different. To that end, I wanted Universe A and Universe B to be 'next-door' kind of universes to ours and to each other; the laws of physics are the same and people don't have five arms, but in Universe B ordinary things like paper books and Ferris wheels seem out of place to A-dweller Felix Sayers, who's come from a more technologically and environmentally oriented society. So he's a little baffled by San Francisco B, especially as it seems that someone is trying to kill him.

Q: What made you decide to set REGARDING DUCKS AND UNIVERSES in San Francisco?

NM: I think writers, even ones of speculative fiction, always end up writing about their lives and the places they've been, even if only in some extended sense. I was in California for twelve years, and, like all the places I've lived, it's become a part of me. And San Francisco, in particular, is such a unique and interesting city, a city of innovation, a literary city. A perfect setting for basement-lab experiments with universes and for an encounter with a paper book for the first time.

Q: What can we expect to see next from you? More science fiction? Or maybe something travel-related?

NM: As a matter of fact, the novel I'm currently working on is going to be both science fiction and travel-related. I don't want to say too much at this early stage, but let's just say that this time there are no ducks, but there is an Australian didgeridoo. And Fibonacci numbers. And cheese, lots of cheese. And time travel.