To celebrate summer, we made our annual jaunt to Woodman’s of Essex for fried clams. To celebrate Ken’s retirement we went on a WEDNESDAY.
Being Wednesday and cloudy, the place was reasonably busy — not slammed with customers and lines and cars like it usually is this time of year. That was part of the treat.
When I was little and we came to Rockport for our week of vacation, I would buy two things: a silver charm for my charm bracelet and a small porcelain creature (mostly cats).
This little mouse in a bookstore display also made me nostalgic because I had a real thing about mice. Look how darling she is!
This display is less darling but funny. And yes, we did stop at the famous Tuck’s for a box of chocolates.
As some of you know, I collect rocks shaped like hearts or marked by stripes. Only one was a keeper.
Here I am with my second proof. Arrived yesterday. Several changes, checked and settled. I hope I don’t panic as the release date approaches. Maybe having to go to California the very next week will keep me grounded.
I AM adding to my history post but maybe not as quickly as I’d like. My laptop and phone don’t always talk to each other and that gets discouraging.
This restaurant is at the end of Bearskin Neck. Ken and I had our rehearsal dinner here 34 years ago. Looking back, we both wish we’d left it at that. Gone to City Hall the next day. That small, casual, and delicious dinner was so much better than our wedding reception.
At a friend’s house yesterday, we both admitted that we’re not up to much creatively these days. She, because of back surgery and a fairly recent retirement from a demanding job. Me? The book I guess. “It takes up energy even when I’m not doing much,” I lamented.
But then I gave her a rundown of the tasks I had completed on the day before. Just the one day. It shocked me how much there was to recite.
I’ll post at the end for my own sake. I don’t expect anyone (except maybe someone in the middle of self-publishing) to be interested.
Comma La — get it?
The mood in my circle of friends is unanimously ebullient. There’s hope again. Relief and energy too. Many of us had no idea just how much dread and fear we were holding in our bodies. I feel like I can breathe again, I kept saying.
On my almost-weekly Tuesday call (the one that’s been going since Trump got elected), there’s been a need during the final moments of our half-hour together to find something positive to report. It’s often been so grim that it’s difficult to think of something.
How wonderful, then, to not need the flourish of positivity at the end of this week’s call. The entire half-hour was buoyed by optimism.
Here we go! Are you ready to pitch in? I just asked for 25 more addresses from #PostcardstoVoters but I want to do more.
His George Washington moment cemented his legacy
Now the boring book details:
Wrote a third person, short “about page” for blog like they recommend. Researched how to pin it to top of blog and nearly gave up (invariably the first three buttons I’m supposed to “just click” are not in evidence). But then when I finally figured it out, I promptly undid it because it left a huge white space below, making accessing the blog inconvenient.
Revised longer ABOUT. It was very dated.
Spent a couple hours scanning the proof copy of my book and making notes for HISTORY post (this time Hell Hole Swamp and George Whitefield got written up and posted in draft).
Waited anxiously for my designer to send the copy of book cover for Amazon that includes the bar code. I had to ask him to take D2D’s out because their barcode override button is broken. Then I had to ask for both versions of the cover to have wider images so that the white stripe would disappear. He didn’t answer right away and I thought he might not at all because there have been a lot of changes. He complained. I paid him more than 20% extra on Sunday so I perhaps should’ve been comfortable expecting him to get the Amazon cover correct but I wasn’t. (It arrived the next day).
Signed in to Twitter and Instagram on my laptop. Still have to do Facebook. Naturally this involves changing passwords. Learned that FB is taxing the ads that you post there (which everyone says to do to promote your book) and that you can avoid that tax by accessing your account through a laptop. I don’t actually know.
As I was pondering whether to offer some free ARCs (advanced reader copies), I was dismayed to learn that Amazon might be making it difficult for someone who did not purchase the book through them to post a review (it’s the whole reason you give ARCs away). Okay, so maybe skip them.
Then I learned that Amazon is running bots to prevent review-scams. There are some scams out there, but friends and family of a self-published author posting reviews is hardly one of them. I’ve seen threads where authors crow about getting their first non-acquaintance review, so maybe this isn’t happening to the degree that I read it is.
Definitively decided not to post to Barnes & Noble directly because of the apparent demand that that they be supplied with a Barnes & Noble-specific ISBN. What bullshit! And honestly, the threads about this are contradictory and confusing even in the Barnes & Noble frequently asked questions section. So at this point I just can’t be bothered.
Okay okay! I should’ve done this years ago, but at my doctor’s suggestion I am now leaving my phone downstairs at bedtime. I do the NYTimes crossword sitting in the living room instead of propped up by pillows. But more importantly, there will be no more grabbing the device and reading in the wee hours (sometimes for many sleepless hours).
It is good to minimize exposure to blue light and to shun extraordinarily upsetting information when I should be resting. What a shitshow the news is! Watching the collapse of the press is another and secondary shitshow to the campaigns, but one that informs all other shitshows and is really, really upsetting. (Of course you will have noticed that I still subscribe to the NYTimes).
I’ll save my thoughts about the Biden question for another post (or for no post at all), but let me just say I flip from one side of the resignation idea to the other at least ten times a day.
My PCP also suggested no books in bed, but there I push back. It feels really good to go back to my old custom of reading a novel for 30 minutes or so before turning out the light.
(How else am I gonna get through Lonesome Dove? Have you seen the size of that book?)
The proof from Amazon arrived and there is, I confess, some magic in holding my book even if the cover was screwed up (see that white band along the bottom?)
Naturally I found a mistake. Not a typo so much as an out and out mistake. Referring to a character’s horse as male and then three paragraphs later, as female. Oops!
Ken is very patient and good thing because I’ve found other words that I want deleted or changed and at this point that means fixing three versions of the manuscript.
Mostly though I’m re-reading and making the historical notes that in my Author’s Note I promised would be published on my blog. I’ll probably post it before it’s done and revise as I go. There will be tons of disclaimers — I am not a historian, my research was idiosyncratic (i.e. the opposite of thorough), etc.
But there is a lot that I can confidently assert — that the name of the family’s property on Antigua was in fact Cabbage Tree Plantation, that Eliza, contrary to my telling, got her small pox variolation in England and not in South Carolina, that her mother was reported to have malaria.
The Notes are very much at odds with the standard disclaimer THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION, but I think readers might like to know what I based on the historic record. I’m especially committed to this idea when it comes to a couple of the most egregious and sadistic torments inflicted on the enslaved (I didn’t make it up!)
South Carolina. Mid-1700’s. Four narrators: one privileged and three enslaved.
When Eliza is just sixteen, her father departs for the West Indies leaving her in charge of three heavily mortgaged plantations. Her authority will be challenged, including by her mother. A second epidemic erupts and a slave rebellion sweeps the countryside, upending assumptions about safety and order. Can Eliza survive and bring a profitable indigo crop to market? Can she hold out for love rather than settle for a marriage of convenience?
Melody, also sixteen, fights against the constraints of slavery with small rebellions. Her most subversive act? Teaching her sons to read. Will freedom lay down a path near enough for it to matter?
July sews like a Parisian couturier, but her defensive pride crumbles when two boys die of the pox. She cries out to the Ancestors for help.
Saffron and her daughter, Maggie, are bewildered and traumatized by the harrowing voyage from Africa. Saffron calls upon her innate gift of language to make sense of things, but Maggie’s nearly catatonic. Meanwhile, the plantation’s best hunter, Indian Pete, catches Saffron’s eye, and she wonders if love can exist in such a place. His knowledge of the landscape holds the key to a daring opportunity that could change Saffron and Maggie’s fate forever.
The Weight of Cloth offers an unflinching view of history through facts gleaned from the letters of Eliza Lucas Pinckney and extensive research. In spite of the relentless degradation of slavery, the story speaks to the power of resistance and love and highlights both small and large acts of courage. These characters and their stories will stay with you long after you finish the last page.
Tomorrow my first proof arrives! It’s coming from Amazon.
I’ve set a publication date for September 5, 2024.
Yeah it’s hot but I’m outside anyway. Camp has begun next door at the school but so far it has been tolerable (no electronic bullhorns or high volume dubstep music).
The book details continue to be challenging. This morning I’m revising the all-important blurb (thanks Deb! Insightful as always).
Yesterday, in trying to get the spine dimension for my book cover designer (which requires knowing not just the number of pages but the weight of the paper), D2D’s support team supplied me with incorrect information (that’s Draft2Digital — a self-publishing aggregator). Groundwood paper? Really? The stuff that turns yellow with age and gets brittle?
Both on Reddit and Facebook, I posted this info and asked if others thought it problematic and if so who should I use for print-on-demand services instead.
The CEO of D2D entered the Reddit thread with the correct info (no, they don’t use groundwood paper). The CEO.
I was a little gobsmacked honestly. I don’t wish ill on the person who supplied me with wrong information, but if she were to be fired it should be for the terse “see my previous email” tone and not for her mistake. Bad form.
The NExT email came from someone else and instead of bitchily referring me to tutorials, explained what I needed to know in some detail. Apologized twice. Onward!
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This at-times-blurry video (below) of a work-in-progress is 54 seconds long. The wobble of cloth is caused by the air coming through a vent near my feet.
Shown: words printed on silk. I also printed them on a sturdy canvas but I think I like the delicacy of the silk. Now to decide where to put them and whether I want pink cloth behind them or not.
It’ll be 93 here in another hour and a half. Not radically unusual but hot and sticky nevertheless. My weather app says that, counting in the humidity, it will feel like 101 degrees.
