Ellen Meeropol

In one week, on March 3, my second novel will be published. The books are finished and printed. My book tour plans are healthy and still growing. I’ve selected a few sections to read at events and practiced them. I’ve thought about the questions I’m likely to hear during radio interviews and event Q&A’s. I’ve figured out a couple of as-dressy-as-I-ever-get outfits to wear at readings.

This week, I’ll be working hard to promote the book, submitting essays, sending out emails and postcards about events, and contacting people who might be interested in the book. But as I remember from the last days of pregnancies, many years ago, I will live in a peculiar limbo of anticipation and excitement and worry and hope. Will this baby come easily? Will she thrive? Who will she turn out to be in the world?

Publishing a novel brings as many unknowns as birthing a baby.

In addition, when you publish with a small press you understand that there are likely to be fewer resources - financial and personnel - to promote your book. You know that will be balanced by the passion that small presses bring to the books they publish, by their energy and enthusiasm. You know also that you will rely on the generosity of friends and strangers in your community of writers and readers.

In this odd limbo before pub date, I’m so grateful for that generosity. I’m grateful to Kate and Mark and the staff at Red Hen Press for their amazing dedication. To my publicist Mary Bisbee-Beek, who answers my emails even when I might step just a little over the off-the-wall-with-stress line. To my buddies at the Odyssey Bookshop, for support and helping me launch this baby. And for all those people – you know who you are – who have offered to read advance copies and write blurbs and reviews, to host house parties and invite their friends, to invite me to their book groups and their neighborhood bookstores. Who will buy an extra copy and put it into a friend’s hand, saying, “you’re going to love this book.”

Thank you.
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Last week I tackled my writing room – moved furniture, went through files, cleaned and reorganized. I had three reasons for this insanity. First, because my heavy desk was blocking the heat source and with the recent frigid weather, I could hardly type in there. Second, I was running out of file space, even with an embarrassing number of file drawers. Third – and most important – I was trying not to obsess about my upcoming book launch. Not to obsess, not to google the book title repeatedly, not to bother my wonderful publicist (who just might be getting a little annoyed with me).

I’m only half done, but the job is pretty much what I expected. I’m throwing away a lot, recycling a lot, donating a lot (someone might want those three-ring binders, right?) I’m not very sentimental about stuff, but I do have filled a box labeled “Stuff I don’t need, never use, and can’t bear to throw away.”

The most interesting finds are the notebooks. When I started writing fiction fifteen years ago, people told me to always carry a notebook to jot down thoughts and observations and ideas. I rarely write more than a paragraph by hand; I much prefer working on the computer, but still I took that advice to heart. So as part of the clean-up, I gathered those notebooks. There are nineteen of them ranging from big to tiny. Thumbing through them, I found sentences that ended up in a published novel or story, intact, like my friend Irene’s observation years ago – “I didn’t take the interstate for a whole year. I couldn’t merge.” – which a character says in my first novel. I also found terrible sentences, and some interesting advice to myself, like “Too sappy; dark is better.”

I also found twelve new notebooks, mostly presents from friends and family. That is particularly generous, since they know that my always carrying a notebook means it’s even more likely that they’ll end up in a story.  Read More 

I'm just home from Winter Institute, an annual three-day educational, networking, and author-meeting event put on by the American Booksellers Association. I’ve been to other ABA events with co-workers from the Odyssey Bookshop, but this was my first time at Winter Institute, first time as an author, and the first time my publisher, Red Hen Press, attended. This year the venue was the Grove Park Inn, a luxury resort in Asheville, N.C. with amazing views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. (There wasn’t room for the 500 booksellers and other guests at the Inn; I stayed at a hotel in town.)

The first time anywhere is confusing. Neither Red Hen managing editor Kate Gale nor I had much idea beforehand about what to expect. “Meet people and be charming,” people advised me. So I made business cards with the jacket design of my new book, and prepared to be charming.

Several things were spectacular, besides the views. One was the galley rooms, where advance reader copies (ARC’s) and finished books were piled on tables, free to Winter Institute participants. Picture that scene: many books, many passionate readers. It was only marginally more polite than sale day shoppers at Filene’s Basement. Luckily, there was an on-site shipping service to send all these books home.

Publishers, large and small, attend to promote their new books and they bring authors to hang out with booksellers and sign books. Those events are in the evening, and they are crowded and fun. There are keynotes and educational sessions for booksellers, and many small gatherings. There is a lot of partying. Literary partying, of course.

Some of the high points, for me:
• Sitting on a rocking chair in front of one of the massive stone fireplaces, working on my laptop and realizing I’m sitting next to the talented and well-known author of a book I just finished reading.
• Seeing my first novel on the shelf of a wonderful Asheville bookstore.
• Meeting booksellers from around the country (the world, actually; I chatted with a fellow from a bookstore in Australia, and another from New Zealand).
• Hanging out with my lovely editor, Red Hen Press co-founder Kate Gale.
• The helpful and friendly folks from the ABA, especially Mark, and Ann.
• Meeting a friend-of-a-friend and making a new friend, the talented and lovely Ann Bauer.
• Watching Kate at the podium, describing my book so that I wanted to read it.
• Signing many, many books and handing them to booksellers; joyfully sending this baby out into the world.
• Feeling part of this wonderful world of books, and the people who write them, read them, promote them, share them with all of us.  Read More