I
know…you’re asking yourself what the heck is this woman going to write about
this week that has to do with Hell’s Highway?
No, it’s not the forest fires in Arizona…although it is hotter than nine
kinds of hell and half the state seems to be burning. (May the families and firefighters involved stay safe!) This week’s topic is my journey to
publication…or as I like to call it…Hell’s Highway.
Those
of you who know me well know that I’ve been on this journey to publication for
about seven years now and it seems to be one of those freeway loops that takes
you all around the town but if you drive long enough, you see nothing but
concrete plants and airports and you always end up right back where you
started. Welcome to my world!
When
I first started down this path, I was starry eyed and full of wonder and
excitement about writing perfect manuscripts that only needed one round of
edits before they were WOW’d over by editors and agents across the planet. Publishers would vie for the chance to publish
my stuff. I would be treated to book
tours and signings scheduled from one end of the country to the other and there
wouldn’t be enough hours in the day to sign all the books and talk to all the
people in line. I would be invited to
attend dinner parties and I’d be beautiful in my sequin gowns, with everyone
fawning all over me wanting a moment of my time. My picture would be on the front cover of
every rag on the newsstand and you couldn’t walk through an airport or grocery
store without seeing the cover of my newest book on the end cap shelf. Every household would have a Kayce Lassiter
masterpiece sitting on the bookshelf or the mantle.
Yeah…right. The alarm is going off, time to wake up and smell
the roses. LOL
Reality
somehow always seems to pale when compared to our dreams, especially when we
are in the middle of the journey.
Probably why we have dreams that are a bit unrealistic. Because I think if we fully understood the
reality of a goal like this, we’d be so overwhelmed at the beginning, we’d
never start. Sometimes ignorance truly
is bliss. (That’s the story I’m going
with…don’t burst my bubble!)
So…here’s
what really happens. The manuscripts I
write are rewritten no less than five to six times, there are 327 rounds of
edits, and I’m reduced to trying to corner editors and agents in elevators and
bathrooms to get their attention. That’s
not working so well for me either (go figure).
The book tours and signings would happen next week if I won enough money
in the lottery to pay for them. Of
course, if I can afford to buy the book signings and pay my own expenses across
country, I expect the lines would still be long and full of awestruck
people. Hey, this is my fantasy…get your
own! LOL
The dinner parties are sparse and the sequin gowns are still hanging on
the clearance rack at Goodwill. What I’m
spending time in these days is jammies, but the good news is that I have lots
of jammies and they are more comfy than sequin evening gowns. My picture for the magazines got lost in
transit but I’m sending another one, so look for it soon. (NOT)
As for every household having a Kayce Lassiter masterpiece on the
bookshelf or mantle—I’m still hopeful.
Not
exactly what I’d expected.
The
reality of the situation has been setting in slowly over the last few years,
but I don’t think it really completely hit me until this last week when, in a
fog of exhaustion, I realized this is a lot of freaking hard work. DUH! I
know, every published writer I’ve ever known has warned me of that, but I was
in a fog of expectation…I couldn’t freaking HEAR YOU!
So
what’s changed? Well, what’s changed is
that I’m going through the steps to become indie-published, which is the new
term for self-published. What I’ve found
is there’s a reason that publishers take a significant portion of the royalties
on a book, and that’s because there’s a lot of damned hard work involved with
getting it shelf-ready. But the publishing
house has a huge staff of people to do it all for you while you slave over your
next masterpiece. In the case of indie
publishing, it’s a mom-and-pop shop operation with a staff of one…er, two…er,
two and a critique group and a whole stadium full of cheerleaders.
What
I am finding is that I didn’t know enough to know what I didn’t know. I didn’t know how much work it would be to
finalize edits—and thanks go to my critique group here for the hours they put
in (over a course of years, literally) reading the same story over and over
again, every time I made new edits or added a character, or rewrote the darn
thing. Those girls are saints! I also didn’t know that once the edits were done,
that’s just the beginning. You work so
hard to get the formatting just right for critiquing, and then you have to
reformat it all over again for printing.
Why? Because the print format is
too hard to work with while doing edits.
Who knew those formats I’d work so hard on were throw-away? I know, it should have been obvious and you
did tell me. Did I not mention…I couldn’t
freaking HEAR YOU?!
So
once the manuscript is done, then the arduous journey begins to format the
document to fit within the print format…which means making sure the headers all
are consistent, the top and bottom of the page is consistent, there are page numbers,
it is two-up, and it fits within the print window. Oh, and did I mention there is some sort of
icky thing in Word that causes lines to overlay each other if you insert a word
or delete a line somewhere? Yeah, I didn’t
know it either. So you’re flying along
and all of a sudden there’s these lines that are all garbled in your document
and you suddenly realize you are going to have to go through your 350 page
manuscript line by line to make sure Word hasn’t “helped” you a little too
much. Okay, those are just some of the
editing/formatting nightmares. I’m not
yet all the way through the process, so I’m sure there are more to come. (Stand by for more whining!)
Then
you get to the cover. Who knew you’d have to spend hours cruising stock photo sites looking for the perfect pictures? You know, those pictures you’ve seen millions of times in ads and on the covers of other books, but now elude you as you try to find something (anything) to suit your purpose. You’re bleary-eyed, you’re sleep-deprived, you’re cranky, the internet is acting hinky, the photo site is frozen, and you’re about to turn your laptop into a Frisbee. Finally, you find what you think are not the perfect pictures, but they are close enough. Then you realize to purchase those 
pictures, it’s going to cost you about $200, which is probably
more than you’ll make off the sales of your first book. Really?
So then you spend another 3 bleary nights searching for cheaper but
equitable substitutes. Then you’re
relieved that you’re done. LOL Stupid
Girl! In my case, I am damn lucky
that I have a wonderful friend who is a web and cover designer (see http://www.bellamediamanagement.com/
). She is going to build my cover for me
and walk me through the process. (I’m
sure she had no freaking clue what she’d bitten off!) So I send her the pics and I’m off to finish
reformatting for print.
I’m
thinking I’m almost done. Oh, hell no, I’m
just getting started. Carol comes back
to me with a mock up of the cover using the pictures I’ve sent her. This is the first stake in the ground and
this is where the real work begins. Now
we start picking out font styles, font colors, background colors, background patterns,
rearranging pictures, and changing pictures (because after you stare at them for
hours on end, you come to hate them).
You try different sizes, different page layouts, you make the font
bigger or smaller, you turn it all upside down or sideways and throw it in the
trash three times, rescuing it each time to begin all over again. Have I mentioned yet that I love my cover
designer, Carol? She’s another one that
should be up for sainthood. I’m sure she
has a picture of me on the wall over her desk with a quiver of darts at the
ready, but she’s always so kind and loving as she sinks one of those darts into
an eyeball on the wall.
So
once Carol thinks she has a good idea of what this author wants, she goes off
and buys pictures and builds the real thing.
She lovingly incorporates all of your brilliant (and stupid) ideas into
a cover that is so gorgeous it makes you cry when you open the file for the
first time. Have I mentioned yet that I
love Carol? Then as you stare at it
through your veil of tears, the nitpicking begins. You think maybe the font color should be
chartreuse instead of brown, you think maybe the entire color scheme is all
wrong, you think the cover should be turned 80 degrees, you think maybe the
girl in the picture should be Asian instead of Caucasian, you think maybe you
should go into pig farming in Montana in the dead of winter instead of being a
writer!
Now
you send your designer another email with all of your new suggestions and she
lovingly sets to work on the changes (after slugging back a shot of Jack
Daniels and emptying the dart quiver once more). She sends you another mock up that is exactly
what you asked for and, again, it’s so beautiful that it makes you cry when you
open the file. Then as the tears
subside, you start to compare it to the first version (the one that was the
wrong color, had the wrong font, and the wrong picture…yeah, that’s the
one). You start to notice that there are
additional changes that can be made to the new version—tweak the font a little
here, change the font color a little there, change the font color on the back
cover completely, switch the front with the back—you get the idea. Now it’s back to Carol, who polishes off another
five shots of Jack, pulls out a pistol to practice on your picture because the
darts are not doing enough damage, and then returns to the drawing board.
Carol
then comes back with the perfect cover flat.
Everything is exactly as you asked for, but more gorgeous than you can
even begin to imagine. It’s
stunning. It’s a masterpiece…but it’s
not quite right. Hmmm. You put it up on the screen next to the first
one and now you realize that the first one is really the one you love. It’s perfect.
Well, perfect except for the last set of changes you had Carol make to
the second version. So you put on your
suit of armor and you send Carol another email asking if she can make the additional
tweaks to the original version because you’ve come to realize that you like her
color scheme better than yours.
Why? Because she is, after all,
the professional DESIGNER. Stupid Girl! So Carol, because she is the consummate
professional, polishes off the remainder of the bottle of Jack Daniels and sets
your picture and the darts on fire in her living room, before returning to the
drawing board. Have I mentioned yet that
I adore my designer, Carol?
Well,
that’s where I am now. Carol has created
an absolutely stunning cover and as soon as she sobers up and airs out
her living room, I’m going to talk to her about modifying the cover to work with
an e-book version. Have I mentioned yet
that the woman is a saint? So watch for the announcement of my debut release, Katie's Rock, which will be coming out SOON!!! Yahoo! I'd show you the fabulous new cover, but it's too soon. So you will just have to stay tuned. Have I mentioned yet that it's got a couple of yummy cowboys in it? Uh-huh...that's right.
Okay,
that’s the update on the early part of my journey…Indie Publishing 101. And, as I’m starting to learn, I’m sure the
work has only just begun. So it’s coming…wait
for it…I really am going to get a real book out there one day VERY SOON. That is, if Carol and I can survive Hell’s
Highway. Let’s hope this doesn’t turn
out to be another Thelma and Louise adventure!
Wish
us luck!
That’s
my story, hellish and horrific, and I’m stickin’ to it. Hang on tight now ‘cuz we’re gonna go real,
real fast!
Love
ya,
Kayce
Pirates and scoundrels and rakes, oh my! Cowboys and Highlanders and Dukes. Let’s not forget spies and corporate raiders, doctors, lawyers and military men. Lawmen and thieves, too. These are the heroes who populate the novels we love. And admittedly, we fall in love with each one as we read their stories. 
