In the Works

I’m starting to get bits and pieces of news about Hester.  It’s enough to start getting me a little psyched.  My editor’s assistant emailed me to inform me that my contract allows me 10 galley copies of the book.  Galleys are all laid out in book form and usually bound in a blue cover.  The final stage of editing is not complete, so it may still have a few typos, but anyone receiving one expects that.  Galleys are what the publisher uses to publicize the book—get cover quotes from other authors, that kind of thing.

I’ve never gotten galley copies before!  (Yes, that’s an exclamation point.  I think this is very cool.  I feel important, because I didn’t rate galleys with my previous books.)  I didn’t even know what to do with them.  This is yet another good reason to have an agent.  I ask her all my dumb questions, like “what do I do with  galleys?”

She’s taking 8 copies because she has connections and may be able to get good cover quotes.  I’m taking 2 for promotion.  I don’t know what I’ll do with them yet, but we’re a long way from galleys actually being produced, so I have time to figure that out.  I haven’t even done copy edits yet.  (That’s what it’s called when my editor and I are finished reworking the book for content and a copy editor goes through looking for mechanical and consistency errors.)  It’s just exciting to think about the fact that it’s all really and truly in the publication process.

The galley email got Kristin and me into a discussion about possible author quotes.  Lindsay (Kristin’s marketing director—another perk of Nelson Literary Agency) said to make a pie-in-the-sky list of bestselling authors along with a list of other St. Martin’s authors (one of whom is on my pie-in-the-sky list, so I actually have a shot there) because my editor has connections with them, and then good authors from other houses who are more realistic than the first list.  I wracked my brains for other literary pastiche authors and sent her a list.  From there, we’ll just have to see…

Also, Nichole sent me the draft of the catalog blurb:

KEYNOTE
In the spirit of Ahab’s Wife, an imaginative and beautifully wrought tale of one woman leaving a dark past behind, to honestly and fully grasp her future, her destiny, and her love.
 
TEXT
Upon the death of her demonic husband, Hester Prynne is left a widow, and her daughter is left a wealthy heiress. Mother and daughter travel to England where Hester seeks a quiet life-- only to find herself drawn into the circle of the most powerful Puritan of all time, Oliver Cromwell.
From the moment Hester donned the famous scarlet letter, it instilled in her the power to see the sins and hypocrisy of others, an ability not lost on the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth.  To Cromwell, Hester’s sight is either a sign of sorcery or a divine gift that Hester must use to assist the divinely chosen in his scheming to control England.  Since sorcery carries a death sentence, Hester is compelled against her will to use her sight to assist Cromwell. She soon finds herself entangled in a web of political intrigue, espionage, and forbidden love.
Sweeping, engaging historical fiction, Hester will carry readers away to seventeenth century England with a deeply human story of family, love, history, desire, weakness, and the human ideal.

BIO
PAULA REED teaches The Scarlet Letter to her high school English students every year, and each year finds something more to love about Hawthorne's novel. She lives in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado with her husband and two children.

The catalog goes out to distributors in hopes of getting them to buy the book and sell it to bookstores.  I love it.  I read it and I think, “I wrote that book?  Really?”

Cover art.  That’s what I want.  Still, all this is cool, too.