Bookwork in L.A.

I turned in the proofread galleys for Fata Morgana to Blackstone this week. Other than reviewing the corrected proof and final cover jacket, there’s little production work left until June. Woo hoo!

Next week I’ll be in Los Angeles, which I’m excited about for three reasons:

1. March Field Air Museum has generously allowed Ken & I the use of their B-17G, Starduster, for our author shoot! How awesome is that? Big moby awesome. Definitely looking forward to this!

2.  They’re recording the Fata Morgana audiobook at Deyan Audio in Tarzana. Deyan  is where the Ariel and Elegy Beach audiobooks were recorded (I posted about My Day at Deyan Audio back then), and Bob and Deb Deyan became good friends. I was devastated when Bob died of ALS two years ago. He was an amazing, generous, and just plain fun guy, and my friendship with him was just getting off the ground when I moved from LA to the SF Bay area. He is hugely missed by a great many people.

Deb will be out of town while we’re there, dammit, but Ken & I will  get to meet the narrator, actor MacLeod Andrews, along with the production team. The opportunity to do that is priceless.

3. I haven’t been to LA in nearly five years. That freaks me out a little. I lived there for 30 years, and loved the hell out of it, until I didn’t any more. I never would have imagined I’d go five years without a visit. I won’t have a lot of time to hit all my favorite spots, but I plan to try.

Christmas Comes Early!

Cheese! (No, not the book. I mean say “cheese.” Jeez.)

You spend years writing & revising a book. You go through all kinds of anxiety marketing it. You sell it, you work with the publisher on all kinds of aspects. Gradually the idea of it, the abstraction of words, becomes imagined as an object: The embodiment of words.

Yet however many times you go through that process, nothing prepares you for the moment you hold the thing itself. Some superstitious monkey part of your brain thinks, I have thought a thought inside my head and now it is a thing out in the world.

In my case, that thing — the Advance Readers Copy — had been delayed by snow for days, and when UPS rang the doorbell this morning I ran down the stairs like a kid tearing for the Christmas tree. (Which also explains why I look as if I just got up. I don’t know how to explain how I look the rest of the time.)

And as much as Ken and I have worked to make this book real, and as much input and collaboration as we have had with our publisher, Blackstone, to realize this idea, I still think it looks unbelievably better than how I thought it would look. And I thought it was gonna look pretty good!

Fata Morgana is Ken’s first novel — he’s over the moon right now!

And the hardcover pre-order is being discounted at $19.56 at Amazon. Get thee hence, I say!