bookpublishing

The most important thing you can do today is vote. Do it early and get it out of the way. Don’t be deterred by long lines or by all the things you have to get done today. Because you’re not going to remember the errands you didn’t run or the assignment you didn’t finish–You will remember the president you helped to elect (or didn’t).

I voted this morning and only spent 20-25 minutes at the polls. Obviously, that’s not going to be the case for everyone.

You may think your vote doesn’t “matter” because you live in a state that is reliably blue or reliably red. But that’s not the point of this election–you’re not voting to tip the scales: you’re voting to make your voice heard and to have a say in the future of the country. Don’t take it for granted!

Best of luck to everyone sticking it out in ugly weather and long lines. Bring a book, make friends, and share in the general excitement of a truly historical election.

I’d like to take a small break from the book publishing biz–and what better day to do it than on Halloween, when clearly nobody in my office is getting much work done in anticipation of the annual Halloween parade of costumed children?

So here’s a little background to my story. I live in a building that contains three units–a deli/market on the first floor (which my landlord manages), a lawyer’s office on the second floor, and my studio apartment on the top floor. It’s a very old building; I’ve even been told it was once the home of the Guilford Silversmith. The entrance to my apartment is through a side door that has no access to the deli/market, but does lead up to the lawyer’s office. I had gone out after work and was returning home at about 8pm. The place was dark, as it usually is when I come home at that hour. I unlocked the door on the ground level to enter the stairwell up to my apartment when I heard a woman’s voice. It seemed to be coming from the floor above me, and it was loud enough that I thought someone was in the stairwell. This didn’t frighten me but was a little surprising. The lawyers who work on that floor are a married couple and I had heard the female lawyer in the office that morning and seen her car in the parking lot when I went to work. But what was she doing working there so late? I tried to make enough noise to alert the woman that I was coming in when I realized the stairwell light was not on. What was the woman doing on the stairs in the dark? As soon as I switched the light on, the voice stopped. I wasn’t able to make out what the voice had said, but it was casual and conversational, and it sounded like she was either on the phone or speaking to someone else nearby (perhaps someone in the office). As I climbed the stairs, I expected to meet someone on the second floor landing but when I turned the corner, there was no one there. Again, I wasn’t frightened by this–just confused. I stopped when I was next to the lawyer’s office door but I didn’t hear any noise coming from inside. I climbed up to my apartment and flicked off the light. I waited… still no noise. I entered the apartment and thought about what just happened.

If the lawyer was there, where was her car? There were no cars in the lot except for mine.

Then I remembered something that had happened the night I first moved in. My mom had come to help me move and stayed with me overnight. When I awoke in the morning, the first thing she asked me was if I had heard the voices downstairs. I had not heard anything that night and was very surprised that she would bring it up. I had grown up thinking my mother was a real skeptic and didn’t believe in ghosts. When I mentioned my surprise, she insisted she had always believed in ghosts (and UFOs, claiming she had seen one before!). This was such a shock to me, but after weeks passed and I heard no evidence of the voices and had debunked all the other odd sounds I heard at night (including a clucking chicken, which ended up being my refrigerator), I wrote it off as a vivid dream my mother must have had or noises from the road where I lived, which happens to be a busy area with a gas station across the street that is open fairly late.

But the voice I heard last night made me think twice about her experience. At the time, we had considered the possibility that one of the lawyers was having an affair. It would explain why she heard two voices–a man’s and a woman’s–and why she heard them so late at night (around 1am). It would also explain, in my recent case, why there was no car; it makes some sense that they would choose to park across the street at the gas station or at Walgreens next door. I’m certainly not ruling that out. There is a chance that the voice I heard was coming from the street; but because the door is so close to the street, you’d think I would have seen someone approaching before I entered. Futhermore, none of the windows in the stairwell were open, so there wasn’t a good chance that a noise from the street would sound like it was coming from above me and was actually coming from a window.

So I’m not about to say that my apartment is haunted. I’m not even sure I believe that ghosts exist, although this is the closest I’ve come to considering it. Because only 3, maybe 4, people have a key to that stairwell (which was locked when I entered), that narrows down the suspects: either of the two lawyers or my landlord (whose truck was not in the parking lot so I feel safe ruling him out, also because he doesn’t have a feminine voice). It does seem strange though, and I hope to hear these elusive voices again to obtain more clues!

I came across this photo when I was Stumbling through Flickr yesterday:

How cool is that? It’s a library parking garage in Kansas City. I wish I could read all the titles. Has anyone seen this in person before? Does anyone know what all the titles are? I hope there’s at least a Jane Austen book. Have I mentioned that I’m a big Jane Austen fan?

Sorry for the short post today (but at least I included a pretty picture!). I’m off to Boston for the day with Meredith. We’re going to a sports bar by Fenway Park (probably Game On) to watch the first Patriots game of the season — Go Patriots!!! (Sorry Meredith… she doesn’t like the Pats.) Then we’re going to a Ryan Adams concert at Bank of America Pavilion. We’re crashing at my aunt and uncle’s place in Saugus and then coming home in the morning. I took Monday off so I can pack and shop (IKEA time!) since I’m moving to Guilford, CT, on Saturday. If for any reason I miss a post or two this week, that’s the reason!

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned it here before, but like many of you who read this blog (I imagine), I am working on my own major writing project. In my case, it’s a novel–fiction, romantic comedy. I’ve been writing it for over three years now, mainly because I enjoy it so much and will be sad to have it end, but also because I work on it only when I can spare the time and sometimes it’s sporadic.

I’ve definitely picked up the pace recently. This past Christmas I bought myself a laptop under the condition that I would write a piece of my book every weekend, and it actually has worked out really well. Now that my book is really taking shape I find myself running into some interested problems. I’ve never written fiction before. For a long time thought I was terrible at it… but when I actually tried playing around with a short story, it won 3rd place in a short fiction contest and I realized if I worked harder, I could get even better. Apparently, I must have known what I was doing.

Without giving away too much of the plot, here’s the problem I’m currently having. I have two major love interests for the protagonist, Amie. The first one, Brody, is meant to be a total gentleman, gorgeous, and nearly perfect (in fact, too perfect for Amie). But because I know the two of them are not meant to last the whole book, I have a hard time writing about him. It’s really difficult to make him interesting and enjoyable to read because, as I later realized, he doesn’t have enough quirks. Eric, on the hand–he’s the main love interest who the reader isn’t supposed to like at first–is so interesting and well-developed from the start that even though he’s a jerk, you like him a lot anyway. Isn’t it interesting how sometimes it’s impossible to control how the characters grow and develop and how the reader will respond?

What sorts of issues do you have in your own writing? I don’t care if it’s fiction/nonfiction, just for fun or professional writing. Share all your gripes here.

I had been working at my present company for a few months before I realized that, to my surprise, my favorite genre of books to work on was sports. I do like sports–especially football and I’m getting into baseball now too–but I’ve never in my life picked up a sports book thinking it would be an enjoyable read.

Sports books, on the other hand, are really exciting to edit because the sports world is always changing. Nearly all the sports books I’ve worked on involve big name authors and reviewers including ESPN sportscasters, current and/or former players and coaches, and other well-known fans (like the late Buffalo Bills fan and NBC News anchor Tim Russert). We could be ready to print a book when all of a sudden news will break that affects what we can publish. For instance, when we were about to pub a book about Roger Clemens, word got out that he could have used steroids. Do we mention it in the book? Do we leave it alone? In the end, we didn’t address the scandal, mostly because Roger Clemens had reviewed the book and probably wouldn’t appreciate that addition. But it certainly warranted a discussion. I was even able to meet one of our authors who is an ESPN sportscaster and had an amazing experience simply socializing and learning more about the person’s life.

People get personally and emotionally involved in books. People get personally and emotionally involved in sports. When done well, it’s a powerful combination no matter what team you’re rooting for. It also gets people to talk, and the more we can tap into that network, the more exposure these books (and thus our company) will get. It’s definitely an exciting place to be.