The March of the Novel

It is almost done. The editing part. I received what has to be one of the best letters ever from any editor anywhere. And then I read the manuscript, which was odd – I haven’t read it in over a year. I went through my editor’s comments. We Skyped (she’s based in Brooklyn). And then, in a kind of frenzy, I went over the manuscript like a sudden and violent downpour. And then it was done. I think. And, over the weekend, the managing editor at ECW wrote me asking me about thoughts on the cover. I told her I had no idea. The designer is going to have some heavy lifting to do, but then again, they always do; book design is important because you CAN judge a book by its cover. What this thing is going to look like is something that’s occupied me and hasn’t: I have ideas but all of them are bad. I imagine there’s going to be some back and forth on this. For Squishy, I had a basic idea: a female finger poking the fat on a belly. The designer took that and ran with it, in the end showing a finger poking a big Conehead-esque head, creating something memorable and slightly disturbing, but, more importantly, creating something far far better than I could have created. That’s why I’m not a book designer. I just write.
And even though the novel’s publication is a year away, it feels close. I had lunch with my publisher last week and visited the ECW offices and met most of the staff. I felt a part of something larger. These people are going to work for me and I’m going to work for them. I opened myself up to as much publicity as they want to throw at the world. Why not? I’ve been writing this book for a long, long time. Might as well do everything I can to sell a few copies.