Tomorrow marks the first day of the publicity kick off for Echoes of War. While this is super exciting, that pony isn’t quite ready to blast out of the gates yet toward the September finish line. I hit an editing snag, so that pony is coming out at a mozy…or possibly she is just looking at the open gates and waiting a bit.

The publicist and I were hoping to have the ARCs (advance reader copies) in March in time for things to rock and roll in April. Except I have zero ARCs. The editing took a bit longer than I wanted because I kept finding typos. Word was doing fun things with the manuscript, changing fonts for me at seemingly random times until I found the pattern. OCD me went back to my older files to compare, and Word was definitely jacking up my manuscript as it was sent back and forth through email or opened in different versions of Word or the program just being possessed in general. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter the cause, but I was glad I figured out what was going on. So the file ended up with some extra transmissions back and forth that wouldn’t have normally happened.

That was done, then the proof read started by SparkPress’s proofer. The file came back to me, complete with gorgeous formatting for a final review…and I found a few more typos. These weren’t Word doing wonky stuff. These were just ones that were missed by tired human eyes. I finished the review and sent the file back last night. I’m not sure if it comes back to me again after the corrections are made or not. I’m guessing it does. All I can say is I’m going a bit blind with all the re-reads and picking apart each line for typos. But that process has to be complete before the final page count can be done which impacts the size of the cover art file. THEN things might be able to go to print for ARCs. Ah, the waiting game.

Images by sxc.hu

Site Updates and Cover Art

If you have spent any time poking around on the website, you’ll have noticed some changes happening. Tabs have had some content updated such as the new cover art for the Burnt Mountain series. Only one more of those left to do, and that is currently in progress. Other cool photos from Adobe have been added, and the coolest of all, not from Adobe, is shown above.

This is the cover art for the Sept 10 release, Echoes of War, book one in the Echoes trilogy. I’m super excited by the cover art and can’t wait to hold this book in my hands once I start getting ARCs (Advance Reader Copies) printed sometime in the spring.

With the new year starting next week (and me trying not to crap myself over how quickly 2018 flew by) and thus the start of the 2019 rodeo that begins as well, I’m doing my best to remain calm (hint: at times I’m quite successful, other times I can be found in the fetal position).

Next up for Echoes

Editing the full manuscript with the SparkPress editor, manuscript approval, full book cover art approval, print proof approval, ARC prints, and lots of publicity work mixed in and probably stuff I’m missing. If I can get the ARCs in time, I’ll start doing promotional events. One event on the list for April, pending ARCs, is the Bangor Comic and Toy Con – going as a vendor, not a spectator!

This is all to be done while wrapping up my final six months of working in Baltimore before I leave the country for my sabbatical in July. The next several months will be an absolute blur. Heck, the last several months have been a blur. Or perhaps I just need to have my eyes checked–lots of things blurring lately.

I hope everyone survived the holidays with only minor injuries and/or ailments. The same wish holds true for making it past New Year’s Day (unless you celebrate the Chinese New Year then you’ll have to wait a bit longer). I have spent this week in Maine and will spend next week in Mass. The nomadic life adventure continues, and it’s a hoot!

I know I promised this a while ago, but I have been working on it. The new website is mostly up and running, well, it’s up. The running part is in progress of being developed. So you don’t just jump right over there and stop reading now, I’ll give you the link LAST.

I’m using a new WordPress theme called Lavander that I think is really slick. It has a bit more convolution to it than the one I’ve been using on the burntmountainbooks.com site, so it’s taking me time to get used to it. I have all the links set up across the top of the page and a few other things. I eventually figured out how to link my Instagram account to the new site, so photos post at the bottom there when I post them to Instagram … oh, yeah, and the Instagram thing is new too.

Even I had to duck the lightning bolts on this one … I have a twitter account now too. I SWORE I would never do one, but my publicist said I gotta, so I did. Yikes. I don’t plan to be twittering away my time on it though and I sure as hell won’t be using it to follow the current mass of celebrity and political ass hats using it for whatever idiotic purposes they use it for. It’ll be an information tool for me regarding publishing and book contacts that I don’t have and can’t get through fb or instagram.

Since I’m so fantastically clueless on book publishing, book marketing, and the myriad of tools available, I’m relying on the publicist to continue to be patient, enlighten me, and help me through the mazes. It’s kinda like being lost in the woods. If you’ve been there, you know what this feels like.

I have been legit lost in the woods. No phone. No compass. No water. I had my camera though, but ultimately lost as hell in the sticks of Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge in Mississippi around 1998 or so after wandering off the trail and opting for a “short cut” that turned into a freakin’ mess.

Thankfully Sarah from Smith Publicity is my compass in this book forest.

So bear with me as I beat up this new website and sort out the crap therein and figure out how things work. The site is currently bare bones as you’ll see once you start clicking.

New website:  http://www.cherylscreativesoup.com

To get signed up for the blog that will move off the Burnt Mountain site and to the new one in the coming weeks, go to the sign up thingy on the right side of the screen at  http://www.cherylscreativesoup.com/blog/

Instagram: CherylsCreativeSoup

Author facebook page (this will be replacing the existing Burnt Mountain fb page in coming weeks):  http://www.facebook.com/cherylscreativesoup

They’re all a work in progress so relax if you see something you don’t like. Odds are it will change tomorrow anyway. 🙂

I’ll do a post on why I went with Cheryl’s Creative Soup, but if you know me well enough, you’ve likely already figured it out. Until next time!

There will be some changes coming to this website later. Ultimately I will be migrating this site to merge in with what will become my main/primary website. More on that later. I won’t bother giving you the new link now because you’ll just click on it, and it won’t work. No one, especially me, likes a tech glitch. So the link will come once I have the new site set up and construction complete. Don’t hold your breath on this. It’s going to take a few weeks.

My first task is to survive the rest of this week at work and next week, then run flying out the door like I’m on fire to kick start vacation. To be honest I’m already moving at a steady pace, at least mentally, into vacation mode.  Next Thursday I’ll fly back to Boston (where the truck and all my crap is), swap out travel gear to get the backpack then head back to Logan Airport on Saturday to put my rumpus on a plane to Germany.

In book news I have been doing something that feels very weird, cool, but weird. I have been interviewing publicists. It’s weird because I’ve never interviewed anyone before. I mean, I get it, I have to do this if I want to find the right fit with the publicist I’ll use for Forgotten Echoes, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s WEIRD. I’m always the one getting interviewed, not the other way around. I never really interviewed my dog sitters. They came highly recommended to me so they were basically already hired by the time I met them. So, yeah, me interviewing someone else is seriously wonky. I’m managing though. I have done three calls thus far and the fourth is next week, the afternoon before vacation officially starts.

I have a whole lotta nothing planned for my vacation. I’m visiting with friends once I arrive, then I head to Munich, then to Garmisch, back to Munich, then to London. Seventeen day trip with only lodging, flights, and rail pass booked. Stuff to see and do, I’ll wing it. I plan to do a lot of walking around, getting lost, hilariously misusing what little I have of the German language, writing, reading, and just generally chilling out. I will not be doing any kind of frantic anything. I’m not on a mission to see and do as much as I can cram in during that time. I come back to the states with almost a whole week remaining of vacation where I’ll be in parts of Maine, not sure which parts yet, but parts. I will be traveling according to the groove, the Force, the wind, the whatever, and it’s going to be amazing!

I’ll post again on the flip side at which point I can tell you what all I did on my travels and what happened with the publicist interviews. By that time I may also have more information on the publishing adventure and new website. Stay tuned.

In May’s post, I wrote:

“In book news, next week I’ll finish up the Forgotten Echoes manuscript tweaks to ready it for going out to publishers. Since I haven’t published via that route before, I don’t have a bleeding clue what I’m doing which means it’s guaranteed to be interesting!”

Then in June, I wrote:

“I have been sniffing around various publishers to see if I really want to go that route for Forgotten Echoes. I submitted it to my top pick last week, so now it’s sitting tight and waiting. I could do multiple submissions, but I have enough going on without having to figure out who I submitted to and when and such.”

As time does, it has ripped right by and it’s now coming into late July. Holy crap. How did that happen?

On July 9th I was wrapping up the work day, had finished teaching an IT class to other analysts, had packed up the laptop, and was waiting on a friend to finish packing up for us to go out for dinner. I saw the email from the publisher on my phone and even did one of those “What is this?” things (I can be bright like that sometimes). I opened the email and started reading.

“Dear Cheryl,

Thank you so much for your interest in publishing with SWP. I’m attaching your assessment for Forgotten Echoes here.

I’m excited to be writing to let you know that you have qualified as a Track 1 submission. As far as we’re concerned, your manuscript is ready to go. This only happens in about 7-8% of submissions, so congratulations and THANK YOU! …”

That is as far as I got. Breathing became a bit difficult while smiling and starting to cry. I tried to re-read the email (which was now looking blurry) and still only made it to the same place in the note. I handed the phone to my friend (who was now quite concerned by the wild range of emotions all over my face) while I found a chair. She read the email out loud to me, because, well, I needed to breathe.

She Writes Press is a business that is run by women and only signs female authors. They were my first pick for several reasons, and some are contained within this post called Why We Need Women-Only Spaces by Brooke Warner, the SWP publisher and person who contacted me directly. Whether you are male or female, I recommend reading it.

This is my favorite part and it is 100% true:

” … Women, by and large, feminists included, are not angry at men. We’re angry at internalized gender bias that holds us back and keeps us in second-tier situations. We’re angry at a culture that’s so disdaining of women’s empowerment that it undermines women’s efforts and advances. We’re angry at specific men who spew hateful comments about women’s appearances and menstrual cycles, as if these are the things that define us … ”

Everything I heard about SWP encouraged me, and I WANTED to be part of their community. I cannot tell you how honored I was and still am to have gotten that email. I have since been in touch with Brooke, and we’re discussing the publishing contract. I have lots of questions for her mostly because I’m quite numb when it comes to the terminology. This IS my first rodeo after all, right?

SWP has a sister company called SparkPress. SWP handles memoir and literary fiction primarily. SP handles more genre fiction. Scifi falls squarely in the SP realm. SparkPress has the same staff and business model, except SP does publish male authors too. SP’s business core is the same as SWP because it’s the same people, and that core is what drew me to SWP, so I’m perfectly fine going to SP for genre fiction publishing.

So, there will be more to come on this as the details get worked out. Check out SWP and you can link to SP from there too from tabs at the top. Good stuff.

https://shewritespress.com/

Image from sxc.hu