Book on its way to printers

We did the final proofread this weekend for Lessons In Stalking.  We're both pretty sick of reading it.  Blair took it upstairs yesterday afternoon to read and I heard a big yawn from him float down the stairs.

"I know you're not yawning while reading my work," I called out.

There was no answer.

Anyway, I'm taking it to the Post Office today to mail to the printer.  I'm not sure I understand the exact process from there, but what I've gathered is a customer service rep will receive and review my materials, make sure everything is in order, then run a sample book and send me the bluelines to proof (yea! We get to read the book again). After I approve them it should be 20 days to print the 2,000 copies.  Then the real fun begins.

I still have so much to do.  I need to get galley copies out to reviewers (I'm like, 4 months late on that) and my website still needs tweaking.  We're having trouble with the autographed portion.  I may just take it off or place a blurb  that says if you want an autographed copy, e-mail me. But then I have to match the e-mails with the Paypal orders and I'm not sure what that would entail.

That all assumes people are ordering! Which they won't be if I don't get some PR work done - sent my site out to websites, book stores, gift shops, etc.  But that will simply have to wait until this book project is through.

I've discovered, to my surprise, that I enjoy focusing on one project at a time.  It's nice to get up and know exactly what it is I'll be working on and then focusing all my energies on that.  I thought it might be boring but there's enough variety in the project itself (research vs. writing vs. organizing) to keep it interesting.

So far I've "written" two chapters with the material I have.  I'm trying to rough out the chapters so I can figure out my outline.  5 more to go.  I may not finish them by the time the outline's due, but I'm hoping to have enough done that I can figure out the remainder of my outline.  Plus, I'd like to turn in what I've completed for early review to make sure I'm on the right track.  It would be a major bummer to turn everything in and find out, "Eh, that's not what we were going for."  AAAAUUUGH!!!!

Okay. Time for coffee and today's exciting chapter of "Cats Around the World."

Writer's Yearbook EXTRA from Writer's Digest

Writer's Digestis a well-known magazine for aspiring writers and I had an article published in there last year about creating a successful 30-second pitch (also known as an "elevator pitch.") The article got picked up and included in their Special 2005 Yearbook Extra issue.  My special copy was just delivered to my door by UPS and I nearly broke a wrist trying to tear off the apparently untearable plastic casing.

The fun part is my article is listed on the cover: "GET NOTICED in 30 seconds"  -- That's me.  We writers live for these sorts of things.  Doesn't matter that my names not on it and chances are few people reading the issue will even bother glancing at my by-line.  My story made the cover listing.  Ya-hoo, I say.  Ya-hoo.

I do hope someone reads the byline though as it mentions my Lessons In Stalking book site.  Aaargh....I wish the book was ready!  I haven't heard back from my book designer on the last batch of edits.  I e-mailed him a follow-up earlier this week and have heard nothing.  I'm trying to balance that fine line between follow-up and stalking.  I think I'll risk the stalking.  I want to get the book to the printer ASAP, especially now that Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul is coming out in September and I have bylines coming out advertising the book.

The book is--I think--available on Amazon. com, or will be.  If you search for the title or my name, the book will appear.  However, what was supposed to happen was I joined this Advantage program of theirs so they would host my book.  I was supposed to receive an e-mail confirming I (and the book) were accepted in the program.

I heard nothing so I e-mailed Amazon and asked: 1) Have I been accepted?  2) Your guidelines state a password will be mailed to me.  I have not received it.  Can you forward.

I got back a nice long reply from Amazon about ordering my book with not one mention if I was accepted ( I guess so) and nothing about a password.  Okey-dokey, we'll just try that again using smaller words and more white space.

If you pick up an issue of the Writer's Yearbook Extra, check out page 14.  Me!

Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul

You may think with all the painting excitement I've forgotten about my writing duties, but not true!  I've been working on a 1300-word piece for The Toastmaster on "Promoting Yourself As a Public Speaker," and am busy setting up interviews for future Art Jewelry marketing articles.

I received 4 e-mails yesterday from Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul. These were the 4 rejections for my stories that didn't make it.  No surprise there as I knew only 2 of my pieces had made it in.  And far from being depressed by the rejections, I was elated. 

Out of thousands and thousands of entries, only 150 stories make it to the final cut.  Six of my humor stories made it in, which means 4% of the final entries were my work.  That's awesome.  Then out of those 150, 101 stories are selected for inclusion in the book.  Two of my pieces made it in, so almost 2% of the book is by me.  (Okay, this is one of the pitfalls of being a writer - How long do you think I spent playing with a calculator and admiring these figures?  Yeah, pretty long).

I actually think they would have taken more but they have to strike a balance among topics and works and authors.  I got a kick out of the assistant editor who, when she accepted my 5th and 6th stories e-mailed me, "Welcome to the Dena Harris show."  I e-mailed her back and asked if she thought they would mind changing the title of the book to that, because it sure would help me out.

So promotions go on.  I checked out the web stats for this blog for the month of June and had 230 unique visitors.  Not bad, considering I haven't really tried to promote this blog as I'm waiting until the book is closer to coming out.  For my main website,www.denaharris.comI logged 653 unique visitors for the month of July or an average of 22/day.  I think that may be for my denaharris and Lessons In Stalking websites combined.  And some of those hits are robots, but that's still pretty cool. 

I just went in and looked at the stats and it's showing 33 unique visitors in the past 2 days.  Stats are fun.  For example, so far this year I've had 7 visitors from United Arab Emirates, 6 from Australia, 4 from Hong Kong, 5 from South Korea and 9 in China.

Family Promotions - Take Two

Okay, I apologize.  My sister is on the ball.  We spoke last night and she said not only has she sent my correct website address out, that people looked at the book site and liked it.  One woman said she didn't even like cats but thought the book looked interesting. I'll have to attribute that to my website designer, Melody Watsonfor making the site look so appealing. Another woman said she was linking the site on her favorites page.  That really makes me feel good - what an honor.

My sister also said she'd also look into seeing if my book could be sold through the college bookstore at the campus she works at.  This is how this book is going to have to take off - small venues and word-of-mouth.

My editor at Cats & Kittensaccepted 4 more humor stories from me which will almost set me up as the humor columnist again for the coming year.  The grand part is all the stories are book excerpts so I'm hoping that will generate more sales as well.

Just have to get the book to the printer!  The final version, hard copy, is on it's way to me in the mail.  I'll do a final proof and then send on to the printer.  My bookmark design is almost ready, so we're close! I can't wait to have the book in hand.  Although I need to get busy sending out galleys for review.  Never a moment to spare.