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Illness, Politics and Book Capitalism
Feb. 7th, 2008 12:43 pmThanks to everyone for the well wishes. Shawn ended up coming home slightly earlier than she expected due to that crazy weather that southern Wisconsin experienced. She's glad to be home, but she's in a bad way.
She's always been a near-sleepwalker. She has these dreams she calls "wake-y dreams" because she's sitting up in bed doing things, but she's mostly asleep -- although usually sleeping lightly enough that I can either a) affect her dream, which I love to do being the evil Scorpio type that I am -- "No, honey, the rifles only shoot water!" and/or b) she wakes up easily, which means after the unsolicited advice, she usually wakes up enough to tell me what an evil Scorpio type I am for trying to mess with her dreams. One of the very first times we slept in the same bed, she woke me up out of a sound sleep to hand me something. I blearly looked in my hand and realized that she had given me something invisible and that she was asleep. She said, "Keep this until I need it." I swore to protect it with my life. She nodded and went back to sleep. In the morning, I asked her if she remembered what it was. She didn't even remember the dream. I was all, "Come on, is it perishable? Do I need to put it in the freezer? Feed it? Help me out." She didn't know. I still have it, of course. Personally, I think it was some kind of unconsious/subconscious test.
Anyway, last night she was clearly trying to save her dad. It was really sad.
But, in other news, you may have heard about the record turn out for the caucus in Minnesota. Well, I was one of probably thousands who were not able to get in. Granted, I had class on Tuesday night (the Loft didn't cancel, probably not expecting the number of people who wanted to go) so I had a limited time to get in and cast my preference ballot. Still, when I showed up there was a line around the block. I went off to do some copying at Kinko's, thinking that the line would die down and I could get in, but the line had probably quadrupled in that time. It was unreal. Another friend of mine, likened the traffic to what it's like when there are hockey games on... only worse.
I wish I could have participated, but the candidate I wanted to succeed did -- at a margin of 2:1, no less. I'm not surprised given that Obama's people were the first to show up to solicit my vote in November and they came around again, in person, to remind me of the caucus on Tuesday. I heard one appeal from the Clintons for money, and that was it. Still, I wonder if that margin would have been even wider if the people like me who couldn't get in to cast their preference had been able to. To me, that's probably the most shocking thing is knowing that we broke national records for turn-out and many people I knew, including myself. wanted to go, but couldn't.
In other strange happenings, I came downstairs yesterday to discover that Berkley printed a galley for Tate's ROMANCING THE DEAD. What's so surprising about this, you ask? Well, when they didn't print one for DEAD SEXY I asked them why they didn't and they told me that it's policy for them not to do galleys for series romances.
I half believed them then, because it was a bit of a stretch for me to imagine that say, Charaline Harris, who is also published by my publisher, doesn't get a galley early and often for every book she writes (hell, that she sneezes on). Still, I thought, whatever. I don't sell like she does. That's cool, even though I believe galleys are printed in-house and I can't imagine (though I may be wrong) that printing them and sending them out can't be that huge of an expense. But, still. I can understand how not printing one could be seen as money saving (even though they garner reviews that, well, sell books.) I mean, seriously, at this point in my career, I'm just happy that no one has called to tell me that they're taking my books out of print again.
So I called up my editor (and got my real editor, which to say, her assistant,) and said basically, "Hooray, but what the hey?" The response I got was a sense that Tate's books are doing well enough that they're putting more effort into promotion. This seems to be the deal, because today I got an email from a woman who is the publicist for ROMANCING THE DEAD soliciting ideas for publications with early lead times to send galley to. (BTW, I gave her obvious ones like Publisher's Weekly and Entertainment Weekly, and if any of you know of others she may not have considered --I assume one will be sent to Library Journal and Booklist as well --let me know and I'll pass them on.)
So, while I'm happy about that, it's just sort of strange. It illustrates to me that I don't really understand how publishing works. I would probably try to push books that aren't performing well in order to have a larger cadre of decently performing "products," instead of throwing money at the money-makers. But, then I'm not much of a capitalist generally.
Then I hear from my friend Rick that Dreamhaven is moving out of Uptown? What?
She's always been a near-sleepwalker. She has these dreams she calls "wake-y dreams" because she's sitting up in bed doing things, but she's mostly asleep -- although usually sleeping lightly enough that I can either a) affect her dream, which I love to do being the evil Scorpio type that I am -- "No, honey, the rifles only shoot water!" and/or b) she wakes up easily, which means after the unsolicited advice, she usually wakes up enough to tell me what an evil Scorpio type I am for trying to mess with her dreams. One of the very first times we slept in the same bed, she woke me up out of a sound sleep to hand me something. I blearly looked in my hand and realized that she had given me something invisible and that she was asleep. She said, "Keep this until I need it." I swore to protect it with my life. She nodded and went back to sleep. In the morning, I asked her if she remembered what it was. She didn't even remember the dream. I was all, "Come on, is it perishable? Do I need to put it in the freezer? Feed it? Help me out." She didn't know. I still have it, of course. Personally, I think it was some kind of unconsious/subconscious test.
Anyway, last night she was clearly trying to save her dad. It was really sad.
But, in other news, you may have heard about the record turn out for the caucus in Minnesota. Well, I was one of probably thousands who were not able to get in. Granted, I had class on Tuesday night (the Loft didn't cancel, probably not expecting the number of people who wanted to go) so I had a limited time to get in and cast my preference ballot. Still, when I showed up there was a line around the block. I went off to do some copying at Kinko's, thinking that the line would die down and I could get in, but the line had probably quadrupled in that time. It was unreal. Another friend of mine, likened the traffic to what it's like when there are hockey games on... only worse.
I wish I could have participated, but the candidate I wanted to succeed did -- at a margin of 2:1, no less. I'm not surprised given that Obama's people were the first to show up to solicit my vote in November and they came around again, in person, to remind me of the caucus on Tuesday. I heard one appeal from the Clintons for money, and that was it. Still, I wonder if that margin would have been even wider if the people like me who couldn't get in to cast their preference had been able to. To me, that's probably the most shocking thing is knowing that we broke national records for turn-out and many people I knew, including myself. wanted to go, but couldn't.
In other strange happenings, I came downstairs yesterday to discover that Berkley printed a galley for Tate's ROMANCING THE DEAD. What's so surprising about this, you ask? Well, when they didn't print one for DEAD SEXY I asked them why they didn't and they told me that it's policy for them not to do galleys for series romances.
I half believed them then, because it was a bit of a stretch for me to imagine that say, Charaline Harris, who is also published by my publisher, doesn't get a galley early and often for every book she writes (hell, that she sneezes on). Still, I thought, whatever. I don't sell like she does. That's cool, even though I believe galleys are printed in-house and I can't imagine (though I may be wrong) that printing them and sending them out can't be that huge of an expense. But, still. I can understand how not printing one could be seen as money saving (even though they garner reviews that, well, sell books.) I mean, seriously, at this point in my career, I'm just happy that no one has called to tell me that they're taking my books out of print again.
So I called up my editor (and got my real editor, which to say, her assistant,) and said basically, "Hooray, but what the hey?" The response I got was a sense that Tate's books are doing well enough that they're putting more effort into promotion. This seems to be the deal, because today I got an email from a woman who is the publicist for ROMANCING THE DEAD soliciting ideas for publications with early lead times to send galley to. (BTW, I gave her obvious ones like Publisher's Weekly and Entertainment Weekly, and if any of you know of others she may not have considered --I assume one will be sent to Library Journal and Booklist as well --let me know and I'll pass them on.)
So, while I'm happy about that, it's just sort of strange. It illustrates to me that I don't really understand how publishing works. I would probably try to push books that aren't performing well in order to have a larger cadre of decently performing "products," instead of throwing money at the money-makers. But, then I'm not much of a capitalist generally.
Then I hear from my friend Rick that Dreamhaven is moving out of Uptown? What?