a moment in the life of my book: edit

My mug of morning tea is too hot to drink as I sit at my computer in my writing room, reading aloud through the piece I'm going to be reading next Friday night at BOLD Coffee and Books for the third event for Who Killed One the Gun?. I'm reading out loud to practice, to get the words of this excerpt comfortable in my mouth, because my mouth is a twelve-year-old ice skater who needs years of practice before she could ever possibly stick that double lutz. But I'm also doing a tiny bit of editing as I go. There are a couple passages in here that the audience won't understand if they haven't been reading the pages that come before.

I pause at a joke that's the last in a running gag that runs through several scenes. Nope, no one will get it. It's got to go. Fingers on the keys, I make the change and continue with my reading. 

If I admit it, it feels kind of delicious to read this out loud again. Like I did throughout the writing and editing process of this book. Even making that tiny change takes me back to the way it felt when I got to tinker and play with these words. These words come clumsy out of my mouth as I read, but in my head the skater glides and twirls. 

Steam curls from my mug of tea. I recite.

The preacher sweeps his eyes round his quarters like he’s making sure One the Gun is properly taking it all in. The lids are low on the preacher’s eyes, somber, his neck bobbing below the surface of the cross of his shoulders. Gun scans the bookcase, the small chest at the foot of the cot, the religious-looking clay figures decorating the short mantel above the fireplace.

Ooh! This might be funny. What if, later in the book, when One the Gun goes to search the preacher's home looking for the gun, he opens a bureau and he finds—

Wait. 

Wait, the book's out in the world, remember? You can't edit the book any more.

Oh yeah. 

OK. 

Back to reading.

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(By the way, the event is at BOLD Coffee and Books, Friday, January 23, 7 PM. I'll be joined by Erin Hall, author of Dear Sylvia, Love Jane. More info is here and here.)

a moment in the life of my book: radio

I come down the stairs, teacup in hand, step into the kitchen. It’s a work day and I have a meeting in five minutes, zoom style. Time to top off my cold tea and warm it up.

I can hear my own voice coming from around the corner where Stephen’s sitting in his little office. It’s me on the radio. KBOO’s program Jonesy, which I recorded last Friday, a really fun conversation with host Ken Jones about my book and other books and film noir and old-time radio, a lot of talk about old-time radio, a conversation about radio coming over the radio, or at least streaming live out of Stephen’s computer.

I put my teacup in the microwave. Start it humming.

“Hey!” Stephen’s voice. “What are you doing down here?” And not off somewhere listening to myself, he means.

“I’m warming my tea before a meeting,” I call.

There's a pause and then he calls back, “I’m not listening to you because I’m listening to you.”

Fair enough. I pull my tea from the microwave and start back upstairs.

a moment in the life of my book: dream launch

In my dream, it's book launch night and I've just finished up with my event at Powell's. I am so happy. Everything went well. I read well. I answered questions well. I was surrounded by friends and loved ones.

Oh, but wait! We forgot all about the part where I sign books! 

I look around, and oh no, the crowd is leaving. The room already mostly empty. But we need to sign books! Powell's brought in all these books and they need to sell them!

Quick, I sit down behind a little table. Someone brings over the book cart and sets it up to the front and to the right of the table. The people who remain are trickling around the table, past the cart, not grabbing books, heading for the stairs to leave.

I lean forward over the table. Look at the front of the book cart. It's full of stuffed animals.

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(Book launch is tonight! I'll try to remember to sign books. Powell's downtown, October 7, 7 PM. More information is here.)

a moment in the life of my book: advice

We've been pre-celebrating a little. Thai food and an old film noir. But mostly, tonight, my brain has been wound up tight with where am I going to stumble over my words while reading Tuesday night and what question is someone going to ask that I won't know the answer to and what very good friend am I going to blank on a name for as they hand me their book to sign.

We walk into the kitchen carrying our empty plates. 

"Tell me again," I say, "what you said before?"

"What before?" Stephen asks.

"To make me feel better."

I've forgotten the words he used. By Tuesday night, I will have lost all the words that exist in my brain.

He cracks a smile. "There's nothing you can do to make it bad."

Like a little magic incantation.  

"There's nothing I can do to make it bad," I say. "OK."

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(If you want to see me do nothing to make it bad, join me for my book launch of Who Killed One the Gun? at Powell's City of Books, October 7, at 7 PM. More information is here.)

a moment in the life of my book: first

My first reading is done. That's what I think as I walk, with my publisher Laura Stanfill, up the steps of movie theater four, where we just finished our presentation, and turn to go into movie theater three, where the novels and memoirs and poetry collections of the authors of the Sisters Festival of Books lie stacked up across a row of tables. My first reading, in public, from my actual book, not my manuscript-in-progress, but my actual, physical book (three weeks ahead of the official publication date but festivals get special privileges), is done.

Laura and I step past the tables of books and down the aisle, past the raked movie theater seats, to the little stage in front of the movie screen, to sidle behind another row of tables, and take a seat next to other festival authors who are waiting to sign books. And before I know it, someone is standing in front of us holding a copy of both Laura's book, Imagine a Door, and mine. Holding mine out to me to sign. 

It occurs to me that I haven't thought about what I'd write to people if they asked me to sign their book. My book. My book that is now their book. Back in the day when I signed copies of City of Weird, I sometimes drew a little cartoon of an octopus like the octopus on the cover. What cartoon could I draw now for Who Killed One the Gun? 

A... gun? 

I take my book from the woman's hand. I ask her name. When I put pen to paper, I write, Thank you for being at my very first reading.

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By the way, if you're in Portland, join me for my book launch of Who Killed One the Gun? at Powell's City of Books, October 7, at 7 PM. I’ll be in conversation with Margaret Malone (People Like You) and my reading will be accompanied by the crackerjack old-time-radio-style sound effects of foley artist David Ian. More information is here. My novel can be preordered now.

a moment in the life of my book: the number that got away

I'm sitting at my computer listening to the song "Pi" by Kate Bush. Her rich, sweet voice sings numbers over the pulse of the music. There's a hypnotic-ness to that pulse that seems to evoke the endless digits of pi as much as her voice does, singing the actual numbers.

The song was shared with me by a friend because a social post I made about my very numbers-heavy novel put her in mind of it. And listening to the numerals slide by, I feel a silly kinship with Kate Bush because of our apparent shared mathematical nerdiness. Most of this song is simply the digits of pi sung beautifully.

"Eight, nine, seven, nine, three, two..."

Then I realize in a blink! A name that I failed to create in the long list of numbered names for the characters in my book... One the Gun, Two the True Blue, Three the Goatee... with all the fun I had coming up with names for characters using that naming system, with all the available numbers and all the available corresponding rhymes, this name was there all the time and I didn't use it.

π the Pie. She could have been a baker.

Oh, man. I'm so sad I never thought of that. Why did I not think of that?

It's so strange, after all the time writing and editing and workshopping and editing again, to be in this place where the book is the book, not yet officially out in the world but set in stone, set in words and numbers and unchangeable.

Kate Bush sings, "Five, nine, two, three, zero, seven, eight, one..."

Pi runs to infinity, of course, but a song can't. How did she decide what number would be the last one to sing? How did she know when the song was done?

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By the way, if you're in Portland, join me for my book launch of Who Killed One the Gun? at Powell's City of Books, October 7, at 7 PM. I’ll be in conversation with Margaret Malone (People Like You) and my reading will be accompanied by the crackerjack old-time-radio-style sound effects of foley artist David Ian. More information is here. My novel can be preordered now.

a moment in the life of my book: trumpet

I've written up a little blog post about a lovely moment in my day, a moment about my book, and I'm sharing it to Instagram. My publisher Laura Stanfill, in a fun, dinnertime strategy session recently, had the clever suggestion that I make a graphic to go along with these blog moments I like to write, and I have that all plugged in, now, and ready to release it to my Instagram feed. But my hand on the mouse hesitates and my cursor over the go button hovers and waits. 

The nice thing about just sharing a moment from my blog is that it always feels appropriately small. Discrete. Adding this graphic makes it seem so big, and for a second I feel oddly ashamed somehow. Like, who am I to trumpet this so loudly, to make it so big on the page? 

It is too much? It's too much. Is it too much? Stop it, you're going to have to get comfortable with playing your trumpet. You do have a book coming out, you are going to have to, you know, help promote it. What is it they say, that writers make lousy promoters? But it's that tension between the comfort of quiet and the wish to have our voices heard that makes us writers in the first place. 

Come on. Be a writer. Play your trumpet. Press go.

a moment in the life of my book: zing

The morning news is nothing but bad as I listen to the radio at the start of my day. But then there's a ding in the inside pocket of my hoodie. I pull out my phone. It's Liz Prato, Forest Avenue Press's editor in chief. She's texted both me and Forest Ave. publisher Laura Stanfill together. It's just the word yay with a line of exclamation points and a screenshot of my book up on Edelweiss.  

Gives me a little warmth inside. Edelweiss is the website where booksellers go to discover and order books for bookstores. Liz has found the product listing for Who Killed One the Gun? and has been so sweet to text me and Laura to say so. 

I put a heart react on her screenshot and text back, "Eeeeee" with three blue hearts. Blue because the book cover is mostly blue. 

This strange era, where you can communicate with people through color-coded digital hearts.

I put my phone back in my pocket and continue working at my computer, but in a moment there's a zzzing in my pocket, not a ding but a zzzing. Ding means a text and zzzing means a react, and I pull the phone out again. The zzzing was Liz putting a heart react on my three blue hearts. Hearts on top of hearts.

Then she texts, "It gets realer all the time."

And my goodness, it does. All the tiny, tiny moments in the life of this book that isn't even born yet. I text back with a word that's not just real but more than real: "I know! Surreal. Does it ever get less surreal / exciting / scary / exciting (with more than one book, I mean)?"

Because Liz is a veteran in the book game, with a short story collection, an anthology she curated, and two collections of essays, not to mention a novel coming out next year through our beloved Forest Avenue Press.

"I don't think so," she tells me, with a laughy emoji. She says that there are certain things you get more comfortable with, but every book is a different experience. She says she hopes she never gets to the place where she thinks, "Yeah, I've got another book coming out, that's just what my job is."

I hope that for her too. And if there's a book for me beyond this one, I hope it for me too. Even with the scary part. Because the scary part holds hands with the lovely part. I need to remember that. As I worry over bad reviews or no reviews or, OK, just bad reviews, because no reviews mean no bad reviews, and there I go obsessing over the scary part again. 

I put a heart on Liz's text and put my phone back in my pocket. I'm loving the dings and the zzzings but I have to get back to work. Even so, I sit for just a moment with the sweetness I feel that she reached out to me about my book.

And, zzzing!, there goes another one. Maybe Laura catching up with our conversation. I leave my phone for the moment and continue with my typing. The morning news is nothing but bad, but I have a heart in my pocket.

a moment in the life of my book: strategy meeting

What other publisher comes to you for a strategizing session for your upcoming book bearing a delicious homemade beans-and-rice lunch? Laura and I sit around my dining room table with bowls and spoons, paper and pens, a stack of one sheets for my book, a newly-minted advance reader copy. I have a list of things to talk about but we're mostly free-wheeling our conversation, bouncing back and forth with thoughts and ideas.

We do the math, me counting aloud on my fingers, and find that we're less than six months out from publication. That time frame seems both really long and really short.

Laura's telling me one of the things we want to research is mystery reviewers and bloggers. I point my spoon at her and say science fiction too, and she nods. My book is a genre-bender: literary fiction, mystery, sci-fi. The sci-fi part feels less conspicuous because the trappings of the novel are so soaked in noir and old-time detective fiction—but what are time loops if not sci-fi? It's funny, though, how time loops are science fiction and not fantasy. Time loops trace their roots back to time machine stories, and that is straight-up science fiction. But often time loop scenarios are allowed to exist with no explanation as to why the phenomenon is happening, whether through something sciencey or magical. The time loops just... happen. My book Who Killed One the Gun? pretty much falls into that category. There's a why-do-you-think-this-is-happening discussion in one scene, with one character posing a theory, but that theory is just a theory, and it, too, falls into a nebulous place between science and magic. Which... when you get deep down into it, doesn't all of science turn into magic?

That all sounds pretty poetic in my brain, but when I try to describe the way the genres of mystery and science fiction live in my book, I find it's hard to put it into words.

"I mean, my book might not be wearing a sci-fi dress," I say, "but it’s wearing its underwear."

a moment in the life of my book: style guide

My publisher has sent me the copyedits for my book. It's another of the steps on the way to this thing becoming a thing. Seeing it in my inbox gives me one of those whooshes in your body that you can call excited and you can call nervous and I'm going to call excited. Along with edits to punctuation and spelling and suggestions to wording, is the copyeditor going to have found plot holes that I won't know how to solve? My book is, among other things, a mystery, after all. Every step along the way, I've worried about how easily a mystery, like any knitted blanket, can come unraveled.

But first, look. Something I've never received before. The copyeditor has done a "style guide" for my book. Wow! This is a document that informs the choices the copyeditor makes, that can guide the publisher and author as they respond to those choices, that can guide the proofreader once a book gets to that step in the process, but for me, it feels like a gift. Seeing the file name turns my knitting metaphor (I don't even know how to knit) into something bigger, turns my blanket into a flesh and blood being, and opening the style guide is like opening up the results from an Ancestry DNA panel.

And look! Here's a section of the style guide called "word and phrase list." These words and phrases are my words and phrases. I believe they're chosen because each can be spelled or presented more than one way and the copyeditor is designating just which way they will be presented on the page, but this funny assemblage of words tells a little story about my story.

aha
bull's-eye
card sharp
déjà vu

And somehow even most exciting of all, she's put together a list of "character notes." Here are the names of all my main and important secondary characters with a paragraph, each, of description. The people I created, listed out for me, as if they're real people, even with the odd names I gave them. One the Gun. Two the True Blue. Three the Goatee. 

And I don't know why, but the fact that she's put this list in chronological, instead of alphabetical, order makes my nerd heart sing.

a moment in the life of my book: thumbs-up

Rain is soft on the roof and I'm sitting at my desk, working through the latest iteration of the manuscript of my novel for my publisher, Laura Stanfill. I recently did a pass on the book primarily focused on catching any places in the story where the continuity is off or where any of my details don't quite jibe with my classic noir era time setting. Did they really put whipped cream on milkshakes back then? Probably not. Was the phrase I used in this bit of dialogue actually in use at the time? I don't think so. When I finished going through the novel, I sent that pass, with my comments and proposed changes, to Laura, and now she's sent the manuscript back with her comments and her decisions on my proposed changes.

I scroll through the manuscript, accepting changes as I go. All down the right-hand side of the computerized pages are our comments in little talking bubbles labeled with our names. 

One of the features that's new to the Microsoft Word reviewing pane—or at least that I maybe never noticed before—is that you can put a react on a comment. See there? In the corner of the talking bubble where I explained why I want to cut a phrase from a paragraph, there's a little thumbs-up. And if you hover your cursor over the thumbs-up, another bubble pops up, labeled "L Stanfill," with one little word, as if you need it explained further: "like."

She likes it! OK, then. I click accept.

It's such a pleasant, relaxing process, after all the hard editing stuff, to just scroll and accept, scroll and accept. I trust Laura's opinions implicitly, one of the many reasons I'm so glad she's my publisher.

But I start to notice. There's a little "like" pop-up bubble that isn't going away. I scroll to the next comment, accept another change, scroll further, but that little "like" bubble keeps following me around.

I hover my cursor around the bubble to look for an X I can click. There's nothing. It must be some little likey glitch. If I were working on the internet, I'd hit refresh. That would do it. But I'm working using my desktop app.

I let my cursor mosey around the bubble again, trying to find an X again. Nothing.

I'm sure if I press save and then close out of the Word file and reopen the file, it will disappear. 

I don't know. Maybe I won't. What harm does it do, bobbing along, over there at the edge of the page? I kind of like it. It's as if, no matter what, there's a hint of Laura following along, telling me this book is good. And I'm going to need to feel that as the pressure mounts, as we get closer and closer to the birth of this novel. So, I scroll and accept, scroll and accept, and the "like" bubble joins me on my way.