Dear Reader, it is so good to be in touch. Although the truth...

Dear Reader, it is so good to be in touch. Although the truth is, I didn’t always feel that it would be. You see, I am contractually obligated to become active in social media as a way of publicizing my forthcoming novel (due out in February 2015) and as anyone who knows me will not be surprised to learn, I did at first balk. I’ve written a 300+ page book, I balked, spent countless hours at my desk writing and rewriting; researching and searching for the next sentence; nursing fictitious relationships, reactions, reasonings. I fashioned a world for my characters, and they most generously worked on the shaping with me. (Yes, this does happen. Characters do indeed help write the story.) The project took me five years, give or take, to mold, imagine, put into words, structure; it took me to libraries, phone conversations with long-lost relatives, and a small village in Poland. I’m talking, remote. Mostly, it took me to my desk chair, and countless screens that dared me to fill them. Mornings, afternoons, days and years of doing this. So at long blessed last, when I had something to show, and an agent said yes, and then a publisher said sign here, and the product of my work looked actually to be headed toward a date when people could actually read it, word came down: “You want people to read your writing? Start writing!” And here we are.

My novel is called A Tale of Two Citizens, and it will be available for you to read in February of 2015. I know I gave you the pub date already, but I think a basic tenet of publicity is repetition. Anyway, here is how I am going to think of this writing venture, which, for lack of a better word, let us agree to call a blog: this writing that I’m doing here and which I hope you will enjoy and even comment on, I will think of as A Tale of Two Citizens, The Prequel: You and I. Thank you, Reader, for being here, for without you, the title makes no sense. With you, we two citizens, writer and reader, may proceed.

STRUCTURING THE BLOG

As suggested by the invitation I posted last month, “Just A Twinkle in my Eye,” I am going to think of this nine-month period of time during which the manuscript becomes a book to be delivered as akin to the time leading up to birth, and I will post one entry per month.

CONTENT OF THE BLOG

I am told that the most successful blogs contain information and advice, so I will do my best to provide the former, and promise not to even attempt to offer one scintilla of the latter. But I suspect that together we will find that this pre-publication period does indeed reflect the stages of pregnancy – when we hold something that means a great deal to us as close as possible, and do everything in our power to insure that it will be prepared to thrive, until the day comes when, with excitement and more than a bit of the jitters, we release it to become part of the world. It should be interesting to see how my pre-pub/pre-natal theory holds up. Here’s how it worked out for Month 1.

The First Month of Pregnancy begins with the ZYGOTE, the initial cell formed when two gamete cells are joined via sexual intercourse. The zygote is the earliest developmental stage of the embryo and it makes its longest trip before birth itself as it makes its way via the fallopian tube to the uterus. By this point, the new life form is called a blastocyst – and that’s it for the science portion of this blog. I just wanted to get my metaphor going, but I’ve had enough. Deep breath. OK, let’s get back to book talk. In other words, the blastocyst aka novel aka manuscript is implanted and ready to be nurtured to a robust delivery.

NINE MONTHS TO DELIVERY: WANTED AND UNWANTED SHOUT-OUTS

When we first find out that we are pregnant, two dueling instincts hit us at once: to shout it from the rooftops and to not tell a soul. Premature announcements could bring bad luck, so most of us keep the most exhilarating news we’ve ever received close. Well, lots of luck keeping an upcoming publication a secret, not that I wanted to, but something else I didn’t want was a flurry of emails and phone calls coming at me from an independent vanity press and its “publishing consultant,” who were “excited to hear” that A Tale of Two Citizens was completed. Huh? Some people I’d never heard of were excited about the completion of my book? Inviting me to send them a copy so that they might “consider” it for publication? Who were these people, and how in heavens name did they know the title of my book – not to mention my email address and phone number?!

Turns out, when you apply for copyright with the Library of Congress, your information becomes part of the public record. I know I promised not to give advice here, so just consider this a piece of information. A government application can be tantamount to talking to strangers.

Talk about the opposite of keeping the upcoming publication of a book close to the vest, it is during this period, about nine months prior to delivery, that an author is instructed to do everything in her power to make herself conspicuous (unlike that first month of pregnancy, when you really don’t want to “show”). So yes, I’m now tweeting, facebooking, blogging, turning nouns into verbs, and also, shamelessly, asking people to write nice things about my book - in the form of a blurb. Fortunately, I have yet to hear the word “blurbing,” – although it does sound like something a baby would do, doesn’t it? – but asking for blurbs has been an ongoing activity lately. You know, those brief descriptive, complimentary remarks you find on the back of a book that assure you that this will be a wise purchase? Well, someone, usually the author, has asked those people to read their work and, if they find it worthy, to write something that will encourage others to read it. I have been fortunate, indeed, to have garnered some wonderful blurbs, but I also started to wonder about that word. Here’s the scoop:

The word “blurb” was coined by American humorist Gelett Burgess in 1907, and actually named after a fictitious young woman he had decided to name Miss Belinda Blurb. There she was on the dust jacket of his book, (see illustration above), promoting its excellence. And, as it were, being described as “in the act of blurbing.”

Oh, well. Is no noun safe?

My Uncle Norman once told me quite sternly and in no uncertain terms that I ask too many questions. I’ll tell you about it next month.

By which time, the baby’s heart will be beating.

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