Edits are here!

We got the edits last night for our book. I have only read through the prologue so far, but it rocked! Our goal is that in three weeks we will have more or less the book finished just as we want it. It is all so exciting! I have 3,542,873 things to do today, but we should be blogging about the editing process soon!

Friday Blog!

Okay, so it takes a village to raise a child, and obviously it takes a village to publish a book! I wonder how people can self-publish, it must be like being a single parent. I can't imagine doing this on my own! So, an early shout out to some of the people who have been very important to me in working through this. First, to Karen and Elizabeth, for editing the book and taking on the project! Awesome!!! Then to Jason Jarbo, Jaeden Peterson and Lisa Petersen, for already reading an early edition and giving valuable feedback! Of course there are my cousins Austin and Aaron Nabaum who are putting together logos for us. Thanks to Clayton Chambers for a fantastic cover to the book. We have Kris Heims, helping with accounting, and Mandy Schermer for helping with legal. Holla! My aunt Anne, the fabulous librarian, and my sister Cara for marketing advice. There is Jessie Riley, Jaren's wife, who is one of the greatest photographers on the planet. My office mate at work Philm Brown who has helped with ideas and perhaps some videotaping in the future, and Jeanette Pilak for UNESCO for filming an episode with us of On the Fly for the Iowa City of Literature campaign. The wonderful people at Prairie Lights and the Haunted Bookstore for volunteering their space for us to have readings. Sweet as, folks! I feel like I'm at the academy awards and am forgetting people! I'll do another shout out again to catch everyone I missed, but my goodness, we couldn't do this without all of the help we are getting. Peace! Love ya all!

What a week

Ok, so writing a book is a lot easier when it is just for fun and there is no pressure to have it be good or done at a specific time. We are working on book two right now (spoiler -it is connected to thefirstbook) and it is not easy. The first book is going to rock and we want the next one to be even better. So I've spent the week doing research on places in Africa and North America and reading ancient texts and thinking deep thoughts and not doing much writing and feeling guilty about it :) I wouldn't quite call it writers block, but the story is so complex and there is so much going on that it is easy to get sidetracked or distracted from just writing chapter 5, which is what I need to be writing. And then we have marketing stuff going on, which takes time, and then there is the rest of life. I am actually sitting outside a subway on my way to soccer games in muscatine. I should be home writing, but how can I miss my kids soccer games? So i am going to stop this post and try to get some writing done on the drive. Say what you will, it is an adventure!

Found this quote from Michael Foucault today and thought it summed me up nicely. I'm waiting for my aura, but I can feel it starting to form!

"[Raymond Roussel] said that after his first book he expected that the next morning there would be a kind of aura around his person and that everyone in the street would be able to see that he had written a book. This is the obscure desire harboured by everyone who writes. It is true that the first text one writes is neither written for others, nor because one is what one is: one writes to become other than what one is. One tries to modify one's way of being through the act of writing."

Missed Friday

So much for my promise to update the blog every Friday. Mike put some good stuff up, though, so that is awesome! I can't speak for the other guys, but right now I'm freaking out a bit about the book. You don't get that many chances in life to do something really amazing, and I feel that this book has the ability to be truly amazing, so I just want to make sure that a) it rocks, and that b) people read it. At this point I'm about 97.324 percent sure that the book is going to totally rock. I am actually rereading it now, and I keep thinking that the author of the book is really creative and that it is really a fantastic book, and then I remember that I am one of the authors! It is somewhat surreal, to be honest. I think it slows down in about three spots (and yes, two of those are chapters I was primarily responsible for, so no offense!!!), but I think we can get those tightened up pretty easily. We have the first 200 pages of edits back, and they look pretty good. We were a bit worried that the publisher and editor would say something like, "get rid of that Hade guy," or "why didn't you set the book at an elementary school," (LOL!) but it has been completely different. It is so so so self-esteem boosting to have people tell you that something you did was really good, and we are getting a lot of that already, so I'm not worried about the book being good at all, really.
So what do I worry about? I just want to make sure that people read it. I don't want the money or fame that would go with a bookseller (okay, that was a lie, but that isn't the primary reason for doing all of this.) I want to share something with the world. I want to give something to the world that people will enjoy, that will make them think deep thoughts, that might change their world just a little bit. So I really want our marketing to be successful enough to get the book into people's hands, and for people then to share it with their friends, and for those people to share it with their movie star friends who try to get the book made into a movie for us. Or something like that! So in the next few months be looking for more posts from me along the lines of this - extremely proud yet extremely nervous at the same time. I think once the book comes out I will be fine, until then...
out!

Comic Con

Spent the weekend at Chicago Comic Con and had a blast. Learned a lot, met a lot of awesome people, too. Made some contacts with a couple other new authors, as well as got hooked up with a number of different artists...we're thinking Graphic Novel here.

There were TONS of people at the Con...at times, it was shoulder-to-shoulder throughout the entire convention center.

There were also a lot of storm troopers there, including many of the 501st (Star Wars fan organization). I especially liked the dancing shock trooper.

We are definitely going to have to have a table at next year's Comic Con. The very nature of our book lends itself greatly to the atmosphere there. Zombies and the apocalypse are all the rage.

Waiting

Up to this point in the book publishing process, the only thing I've found that I'm not such a fan of is the waiting. Or, as my 5 year old Liam would say, "I HATE IT!!!" We have a fantastic publisher, who really, really believes in us, and a wonderful editor who really got into the book and has a lot of great suggestions, and it is great that they are taking their time with the edits but man, I just really, really, really want to get my teeth into what they have done and get to work on it. We are doing marketing right now and working on book two, but book one is really our baby and I'm SO excited that it is soon to be out there for the world to read. I feel like it is Christmas Eve right now - I'm not sure if I'm getting socks and underwear or a trip to Disneyland and the suspense is just killing me! So, I'm going to set out my cookies and milk (and don't forget the carrots for the reindeer - I almost did last year and my 4 year old twins just about killed me) and wait. I hate waiting.

Great weekend

Weekends when I'm on call always bring the heat! This weekend lived up to expectations, with plenty of Denver's children needing emergency surgery, my family getting ready to go back to school, and heavy R&D (research and development) for book 2. After the recent meetings with Jed and Mike, I returned to Colorado fired up and ready to write! But wait, I'm not ready to write! I have to re-read HG (Hade's Gambit) for the third time (picture Mike and Jed with disappointed faces buried in hands). And there is a ton of literature to sift through and summarize which will keep the three of us on the same page for a major thematic development in book 2. This will be the revelation of a HUGELY ambitious storyline hinted at in HG but brought to the forefront in book 2! It will rock your soul! The R&D summary is almost ready, it sounds like mike was successful at Chicago comicon, and I'll be writing this week between patients. Yup, it was a great weekend.

Book One in Wordle Form

Mike in Chicago

Mike is in Chicago at Comicon. We are leaving NO stones unturned as Hade assaults the world. Can't wait to hear how it goes!