The Latest on the Author Road

Well, I really enjoyed my last week of taking time off and watching football. Um, I mean, spending time with family and remembering all those things I'm thankful for. This has been quite a stretch without a post, so I will list here a bunch of random things that have happened recently on ye old author journey.

1. The artist, Bryan Beus, completed his 9 full page illustrations for the inside of the book. I've seen them and I love them! I can't tell you how insanely I wish I could show a couple of them on this here bloggy thing, but I can't. My hands are tied on that one. Maybe he'll show it on his website soon.

It's very surreal to see something you've worked on so hard and imagined so often in your mind suddenly come to life visually. It's a very odd and very exciting feeling. It's also a huge relief when you realize that you don't hate it. Especially if, on the contrary, you LOVE it. I think it will add a lot to the experience of reading the final version.

2. My publisher is working with a third party web design company to do the website for my book, which will be http://www.the13threality.com/. Right now it just has the cover with a "coming soon" comment. It sounds like they are going to do some cool things with it. For example, I've written a few riddles for the site that you can solve and win a prize. Also, they might do a monthly contest where kids can make up their own riddles.

Here's an example of one of the riddles, which are meant to be fun and pretty easy:

Count your knees and then add three

Plus your toes but subtract your nose

Your eyes and ears will do just fine

But minus your fingers, all in kind

Count each hair, do it nilly willy

Then subtract them all 'cause that's just silly

Add elbows and shoulders plus eight more

Then finally divide this all by four.

What's the final number?

3. I had a meeting with the marketing team at Shadow Mountain and it was really cool. They basically told me what their plan is, and I left speechless (no small feat). These people somehow make me feel like I'm the most important author in the world and treat me so well that I keep thinking it's too good to be true. I'll tell more in future posts, but here's one thing I'm really excited for: they're sending me to Book Expo America in L.A. from May 29 - June 1 (2008).

4. I also received blurbs (or puffs as my editor calls them) from Brandon Mull (Fablehaven) and David Farland (Ravenspell, Runelords, some Star Wars novels). You know I never brag (hardy har), but I was thrilled that David Farland (real name Dave Wolverton) apologized for taking so long because he refuses to give blurbs unless he reads the whole thing and really likes it. And he gave me one. Sweet! These blurbs, along with Brandon Sanderson's, will all be on the back of the hardback cover.

5. Lisa, my editor, called me while I was literally walking out the door to drive to Arizona last week. She said, in a worried tone, that we have a "problem." You can imagine what happened to my poor little heart. It turned out to be nothing serious, of course. They had miscalculated a bit and had a few blank pages at the end of the book and she didn't want them to be blank.

So she had a brilliant idea, as usual. We decided to put a "snippet" from Book 2 at the end. I delayed my trip a few minutes, ignored the look from my wife, and went upstairs to email Lisa the first chapter. It had been looked at and edited by my critique group, so I felt pretty comfortable giving it to her. She took her favorite section from it, edited, prettied, cleaned, and it will now be at the very end of the book.

6. Finally, one more thing: THE BOOK GOES TO PRESS TODAY!!!!!!!!!!