Daisy Update for July 27 – Touching Base With Five Star Friends

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Even when you don’t hear much from them, publishers are always busy moving stories along and publishing new books.

I checked in yesterday with the folks at Five Star, the publishers who will produce my first novel, Faith On The Rocks, next June.  I was excited to tell them that there are now 17 people who have signed up to read these blog posts of mine, 3 commenters, 3 Twitter followers and 136 Facebook fans following my Daisy exploits and other bits from my writing life. THANK YOU READERS!

WHY YOU ARE IMPORTANT

You are important to me.  You spend your precious moments reading this blog, and hopefully, you may purchase a Daisy Arthur story when it comes out.  I look for your feedback and take your comments to heart.

You are why this blog exists and why I keep getting up at five o’clock each morning to make sure I’m writing by six.

Some of you have your own blogs, which I check in on and enjoy a few moments in your world.  Some of you read my blog and give me suggestions to improve it.  Some of you are friends and family who want to be supportive.  But there are a couple of things you all have in common:

  • YOU READ – Reading is so important.  A society of readers is one that thinks, and, when the time is right, acts upon your best selves to lead and make changes that ensure generations to come have a better life, a safer world, a clean environment.
  • I ADMIRE YOU – We may not have met in person, but I think about you a lot and hope that the humble ramblings here and the stories I write will be something to engage your imagination and your thought processes.  You may be innocent or cynical, happy or sad, ambitious or tired, but you are who I write for.

WRITING CONFERENCES

No writer should ever feel that he or she knows it all where writing is concerned.  The art and craft, like life itself, is always changing.  That’s why writers’ conferences are important.  Not only do you get to hob-nob with famous and not-so-famous authors, you learn new techniques for breathing life into your stories and make them publishable or memorable or just plain better with the different break-out sessions and keynote speakers. If you are a writer, next to a critique group, writers’ conferences are essential.

I am happy to say that I signed up for the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Conference this week. Yipee! Three days of working, meeting others, selling myself and my stories, and just plain fun will be mine for the price of admission in this Denver event.  I will also take part in a first published authors’ panel.  Not sure what exactly that will entail, but I’m really excited about it.

BACK TO DAISY’S FAITH ON THE ROCKS PROGRESS

When I checked in with the Five Star group, I asked about what may be happening with my book.  As I understand it, there are two main sections of work with regard to publishing a book:

  • Developmental Editing – where an editor reads through your book for glaring inconsistencies, word choice errors, and general look and feel kind of work.  I was very lucky to have Alice Duncan review my work at this stage.  She did it quickly and guided me to better prose.  This stage is complete.
  • Copy Editing – This is where Faith On The Rocks sits right now.  The copy editor goes into detail work on each book assigned.  I think this is why there are so few typos and misplaced words in most books. The copy editor is responsible for typos, spelling, grammar, consistency, and more.  As you might guess, this will take a much longer time to complete.

When all of the editing is done, the book has to go into a more marketing oriented mode, I think.  At that time, Five Star will design the book cover (hopefully using the suggestions I sent over), promote the book to libraries, reviewers and others who can help make the book a success, and produce something called ARC or Advanced Reading Copies for “influencers” in the market.

A CONTEST

I will get a couple of these copies for my own promotional purposes.  If I receive more than 5 ARC copies, and you are signed up for my mailing list, I think I will try to come up with a contest where one of you will receive a signed ARC for your own book collection. Keep watching here for details.

Well, dear friend, I have rattled on enough for one morning.  Hope you like Daisy’s progress and will keep sending me thoughts and suggestions.  Have a great reading weekend.