Next week I’ll be at the London Book Fair doing a fair impression of a chicken recently separated from its mind. I’ll be attending for my job as an editor for Stackpole Books, meeting with a lot of foreign (mostly British) publishers to make some rights deals. Essentially, I look to pick up North American, or even world rights to hard covers first printed in Europe that I can then reprint/repackage (meaning new cover, removal of the letter u from colour etc., and sometimes adding a photo insert) here for the US/Canadian market. It’ll be three days of meetings, but I will find a bit of time for other activities while I’m there. One treat will be meeting my British editor at S&S UK. Over there, the book comes out in September and will be released as a trade paperback. I don’t know, but I suspect they’ll be busy adding all the u’s to my prose which is ironic seeing as having been born and raised in Canada I grew up putting u’s in everything to start with.

The day after I return I’ll be going to my first Comic Con which conveniently is being held right here in NYC. Good thing it isn’t far because I’ll probably still be jet lagged and a bit loopy…well, more so. Pocket Books have set up a signing and give away of advance reading copies of the book so anyone interested just look for the disheveled guy dunking an imaginary scone in an imaginary cup of tea.

As P-Day approaches (pub day if you’re wondering) the last chance to make revisions draws nigh. It’s a wonderful feeling, but there’s also some apprehension because my ability to tweak is almost gone. In conjunction with that is the crafting of the flap copy. It’s a selling tool and a chance, sometimes the only chance, to engage a reader who picks up the book and decides to give it a quick perusal. Get it right and a reader’s curiosity will be piqued. Get it wrong, and you have a serious problem. We’re fine tuning the copy now, and it’s as intense as editing the whole book. It’s a lot like the pressure to nail your query letter to an agent or an editor. I reject mss daily based on poorly written query letters. It’s a shame, but judgments get made that fast, and flap copy is similar. If it doesn’t intrigue the odds get longer that a reader will keep reading. Not unlike a movie trailer when you think about it.

In other news (now wearing my editor hat,) I have three books on the war in Iraq coming out this fall – Red, White, or Yellow?: The Media and the Military at War in Iraq; Achieving Victory in Iraq: Countering an Insurgency; and the trade paperback reprint of probably my most successful book to date, Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq. I also have a big book coming on immigration and border security titled The Border: Exploring the US-Mexican Divide. The books are strong by themselves, but with Iraq and immigration/border security likely to be major election issues they should all get extra attention. Timing books to coincide with events is often a very useful marketing tool, although it’s much tougher if not close to impossible to do with fiction. For the most part, fiction just isn’t news worthy. Not to say it isn’t worthy, but it’s the very rare novel that attracts any kind of attention from news outlets (fictionalized memoirs notwithstanding) so again, getting the flap copy right is critical.

Living in Manhattan means having every possible food on the tip of your taste buds. You just step out the door, go a few blocks and whatever your heart desires you’ll find. As an editor I meet with agents, other publishers and authors fairly regularly and most of these meetings take place over lunch. As an author I get in a few more. I decided a while back to take these opportunities to try new restaurants and new foods each time, in part for the sheer joy of it, and in part as research for dating. It’s definitely been hit and miss, but even the misses are interesting. A gourmand I’m not, but I’m slowly eating my way around the world via their representation in the Big Apple which in turn is giving greater impetus to get out of bed early in the mornings and go for that run in the park. There is, inevitably, a price to be paid.

My folks are snowbirds, wintering waaaay down south before making the trip back to the thawing tundra of Canada in the spring. This year’s migration will take a little longer as they are going to be stopping along the way at every bookstore they can find (and that will fit their massive RV rig into the parking lot). They’ve already tried a few with a great deal of success. The approach is low key – my father asks to speak to the manager, begins by referencing the many titles that I’ve edited that are already in the store, shows the manager the ARC (Advance Reading Copy) for A Darkness Forged in Fire and based on the response offers to have Pocket mail an ARC. My mother waits in the truck with the engine running, just in case something goes down and dad has to book (ah, the puns, the puns!)

Thus far, this is win-win-win. My parents are thrilled to help and take immense pride in my accomplishments (my brother’s too, but he can get his own blog, I’m not sharing 🙂 Most individual stores don’t get ARCs so this gives them a little bit of a leg up and a chance to impress customers with their ‘you heard it hear first’ scoop, and whatever helps sell more books is a good thing. It helps the publisher too in creating word of mouth and what’s known as hand-selling. The personal touch is worth its weight in gold. None of this, of course, replaces the cold hard fact that people have to actually like the book, but if they do, there’s going to be a strip of North America running south to north that will know a little more about my first stab at writerdom.