Q&A: Publication Questions

Thanks to everyone who emailed me questions! You saved me from sitting here, staring at a blank screen, wondering what I should share. (Although I STILL wondered that.) I know y'all don't love really long posts, so I kept this one to mostly publication stuff. Tomorrow I'll talk a little about the agent questions I got (because I had never really figured out what to share about that before, either). I got some query-related questions, too, but we're going to have a query writing extravaganza next week! Okay, maybe not an extravaganza, but we'll talk, okay?

When will Through the Bomb's Breath be on shelves? / Is there a launch date?
2013, more than likely fall.

How many words is your MS?
60,000. -ish.

Have you been sent more revisions from Random House?
Nope. Nothing will happen until January. Then I’ll get my editorial letter, and jump right into revision mode. (And have I mentioned how much I love revisions? (You read that without any sarcasm, right? I really do love revisions.))

What does pre-empt mean? / Did it go to auction? / Didn’t that happen fast?
I’d actually love to answer this one, because before I went through this, I'd THOUGHT I'd understood what a pre-empt was. It turns out I really didn’t.

Yes, it did go quickly. I had originally guessed that we wouldn't even go on submission with TTBB until January, but Sara felt that right now was the right time for it. Still, though, I hunkered down for the long haul, because these things take forever, right? I was taken completely by surprise at their speed. Sara told me on a Monday that Random House was interested, after being on submission less than a week. By Tuesday morning, Sara called me at work and told me that the editor, Shana, wanted my query and synopsis of book two that day if possible. I got off work at lunchtime and went home and worked like crazy, every muscle in my body tensed. (Apparently when I need to focus tons and work fast, I tense EVERYWHERE. Seriously. When I finished, I was exhausted in every muscle from the top of my head to the ends of my toes.) I got the synopsis to her that night, but the query wasn’t in a good enough state yet, and my exhausted brain couldn’t see a way to fix it. Sara told me that the three page one was good for that night, and the query could wait until morning. I emailed her the query at 7:03 Wednesday morning. At 7:20 am, she emailed to say that both were in the hands of Random House. At 9:00 am, she called me with their offer. By 9:09, I had nearly passed out from shock and excitement.

So why the speed? Random House’s offer was a pre-empt, which took it off the table for everyone else. They offered the pre-empt so quickly to prevent it from going to auction. (I had thought  pre-empts only happened when an auction was scheduled.) Would an auction have been fun? Of course. I mean who wouldn’t love an auction? When Sara told me about the offer, she said that we could turn down Random House’s offer and push it to auction if I wanted to, but that I should talk to Shana before deciding. She was convinced that my mind would be made up if I did. But really, it was already made up. I could tell by the way Sara talked about Shana that she thought it was an amazing match up, and every single part of me felt that turning them down was the exact wrong thing to do.

So when I got off work at noon, Shana called. Sara was so right! I was pretty much convinced at “Hello.” Shana had so much excitement for TTBB, wanted to push it great directions, and was someone I could talk to like I talk to you guys. She’s unstressful, amazing, positive, helpful, and I knew instantly that I would love every minute of working with her. Was it hard to turn down an auction? Not one tiny little bit. It was the easiest decision in the world to make. I mean I had already struck gold with RH! Plus, I couldn’t imagine another editor ANYWHERE who would be as perfect of a fit as Shana is. I love her. I love Random House. And to have a publishing house love my book enough to push it with that kind of speed? Yeah. There was no way I was going to turn that down.

The announcement said it was a two-book deal. Will the second book be the M.I.S. HAVEN you've been so cryptic about in your "What I'm Working On" page, or will it be TTBB 2?
Hahaha! Cryptic. I actually didn't mean to be cryptic. Writing the summary for that page is a lot like writing a query. It's just a little bit possible I may have been procrastinating... But to answer your question, it is THROUGH THE BOMB’S BREATH number 2. It’s a trilogy. Although I love M.I.S. Haven, it will have to go on hold for a little while. Instead, I'm going to go have a blast writing a book I have been dying to write.

Any questions I missed? Just ask me in the comments.

Evil Friday

It's wise to avoid black holes like your life depends on it.

When you are bad, you get black coal in your stocking.
The bad kid in the family is called the black sheep.

It's bad luck when a black cat crosses your path.

The stock market crashed on Black Monday.
The pot AND the kettle are black.

 A heart can be black.

Pitch is black.

Now, I don't think that black is evil. I actually rather like the color. I'm just pointing out that it's not a stretch to say that

Black Friday Is Evil.

I hate it for a mix of reasons ranging from sleep deprivation, to frustration, to unbelievably large crowds of sleep deprived, competitive, and often frustrated people. Plus, it's cold outside! If I go, I am reminded why I hate it so much. If I stay home, I am left feeling like I missed out on some really great deals.

Maybe my attitude comes from being burned for a few years in a row on this special day (burned... as in black... as in EVIL! I'm just sayin'. Logic wins here.)

But I know that not everyone feels the same.

It's my sister's second favorite day of the year. It should have federal holiday status in her mind. It should be on all the calendars you buy, and everyone should get the day off work to celebrate.

She loves the routine-breaking excitement of being out shopping at an hour she'd normally be sleeping. She loves hanging out with family, friends, and crowds much in the same way people love going to midnight showings. She loves coming home so early in the day with her arms laden with great deals. I think that when she goes shopping on Black Friday, the world turns green as summer for the day. The sky is filled with rainbows. Choirs of angels sing. The sun smiles down on her even when she starts shopping at an hour that is indisputably still the middle of the night.

So, where do you stand? Love it like a huge party, or hate it with a fiery passion?

Either way, happy official start to the Christmas season, everyone! (I'm feeling nice and rested. How about you?)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Photo Credit

I hope your day is full of                                                                        

Gratitude                 

Loved Ones

                     and Pie.

The Way We Are: Holiday Writing

Three things:

1. THANK YOU! Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your kind words and excitement and happy dances and emails and tweets and blog posts about my book deal. Seriously, HUGE thank yous! I got choked up on every single comment. For the first time ever, I decided to do personalized thank yous by email. When I replied to your comments, it just listed your name in the to: field; not your email address. I know that not all of you have email tied to your Google account, but like the noob that I was, I figured if you didn't, I'd get a Hello! That wasn't a valid email address! message. I was probably 90% through thanking everyone, completely impressed by how many people had entered their email in their profile, when I realized that if I hovered over the name, it showed the email address. And TONS of the last 10% had the email listed as noreply-comment@blogger.com. Doh! So if you commented on my post on Monday and didn't get an email from me, it's off floating in cyberspace. Please accept my apologies and an extremely heartfelt thank you.

2. I'm going to do a question & answer / parts of my story thing on Monday. I'm a little weirded out writing a post about me, unless I know it's going to help you. And honestly, I don't know what to tell. Help a girl out? If you have anything specific you want me to share-- like how things worked, or what a certain part of the process is like-- or if there are any questions you have that I might be able to answer, please email me. peggyeddleman [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks, guys!

3. Okay, the ACTUAL POST! Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in US. And then of course we have lots of holidays coming up in December. (< tangent > Oh my gosh. I am SO EXCITED! < /tangent >) So my question is:

Do you see a holiday as a time you can get in more writing time,

or as a time to take a break from it?

For me: Actually, it switches. Sometimes it's driving me nuts that I haven't gotten enough writing time in, and I'll decide to put more focus into that. Sometimes it's the house that's driving me nuts, and I'll decide to put more focus into that. A lot of times, all I really want to do is spend the time doing fun stuff with my family, so I put more focus into that. Which is sort of how it is every single day. I answer the things calling the loudest. And wow. That was a completely vague answer. What kind of an example am I?! Okay, I'm going to make a graph right now. It's going to have an "It makes no difference" option. I guess my answer falls into that category. :)

So what category does yours fall into?

Something to Write About

Hey, guys! I'm over at Abby Fower's blog today, guest posting about enjoying this journey we're all on at Something to Write About. Come on over!

Yes. This is *THAT* Announcement.

 From Publisher's Marketplace:

Children's/ Middle Grade: Peggy Eddleman's debut THROUGH THE BOMB'S BREATH, about twelve-year-old Hope, the worst inventor in a town of great inventors struggling to recover from the green bombs of WWIII that wiped out nearly all the earth’s population; but when the town is invaded by bandits, they find that inventing won't save them, but Hope's daring and recklessness that usually gets her into trouble just might, to Shana Corey at Random House Children's, in a pre-empt, in a very nice deal, in a two-book deal, by Sara Crowe at Harvey Klinger, Inc (World English).

Oh my gosh, you guys. I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. RANDOM HOUSE! (Did I die of happiness when I heard who offered? Why yes, actually, I did. Am I still? Um, yeah. Little bit.) And I'm not kidding when I say that Sara found the one editor in all the world who was most perfectly matched to ME and most perfectly matched to THROUGH THE BOMB'S BREATH. I couldn't be more thrilled. I am so incredibly grateful to Sara, and to Shana, and to Random House-- so full of gratitude, I'm ready to burst! (And seriously-- could this huge amount of gratitude come at a more appropriate week? I think not.)

Thanks for hanging out with me on this journey, guys. And thanks for being here with me to celebrate! You all rock my world.



P.S. I'm going to do a question and answer day after Thanksgiving. Like next Monday. So if you have any questions you'd like me to answer-- about the book deal, or meerkats, or querying, or why having every light on in the house is a good thing-- just email me at peggyeddleman [at] gmail [dot] com.

Quotes and Cookies: The Moment of Decision

Today's quote is brought to you by the 26th president of the United States.

"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing."

~Theodore Roosevelt

Is this great advice for life in general? You better believe it.
Is this great advice for your characters? Ohmygosh, YES! A huge, huge, huge YES!

So... is it okay to make your MC indecisive? Of course! As long as you deliberately want them to fail as part of their character arc. If it's not part of their arc, or if it's later in the book, then I think the answer is NO.

Of course you want your characters to be sympathetic. You want the reader to root for them. If the MC can't make a decision, or if they don't care enough to decide, or if they just wait for other characters to decide everything for them, the reader stops rooting for them. They may, however, start rooting for that secondary character who IS making the decisions, but do you really want the reader to wish the MC would just die so their title of MC would be available for the secondary character? Of course not!

So yay decision making! Go out and make a decision right now! Even if the decision is to stare at these cookies for a while. I know that's what I'm deciding to do right now. Mmm. Plus, there's chipotle powder in them. And lemme tell you. Cold day outside... warm heat in a a cookie... heaven. (The recipe is in the photo credit link if you're drooling right now.)

Photo Credit: Merryweather Mama

Have a FABULOUS weekend!

WINNER & You Guys Are So Funny!

And the winner in the Divergent giveaway is......

Prerna Pickett!!

Congrats, Prerna! Get me your info, and I'll get it sent right out, new-hardback-crack and all. I wished I had ten more copies! Some of you pulled at my heart-strings, and some of you tickled my funny bone.

I was going to write a post about garbage men and triggers today, but I changed my mind. In the giveaway, remember how I said you'd get extra credit for using the words holy frijole!, blue 42, snowplow, kablam, and/or meerkat in your comment? Well, some of you darn near killed me! I just HAVE to include some of the responses, so you can love them, too.

This one... well, didn't LITERALLY almost kill me, but it could have. I read it as I was leaving work and stopped in the middle of the street to double over in laughter. I've probably read it a dozen times since then.

JeffO said... " The snowplow, the one with the blue42 on its side, swept away my mailbox last week in the storm, so the mailman left my copy of Divergent on the doorstep. That dang meerkat from across the street ran off with it. I saw him sitting at the edge of his little meerkat burrow, reading MY book. So I threw open the window and took a potshot at him with my trusty 12-gauge - kablam!

Holy frijole, I missed the meerkat but hit the book! So, I definitely need a copy."

@laurathejane said... I was going to cook a holy frijole tonight in the oven, but read the ingredients and was snowplow'd by the blue 42 and meerkat. Seriously, what happened to chicken and red dye? I could totally use a copy of Divergent to read while I stand at the oven, and hope the food doesn't kablam over the sides.

Cassie Mae said... Holy frijole batman, this book is so awesome, I want it more than a snowplow! And that's totally sayin' something since I live in the blizzard capitol of *ahem* Utah. Every time it snows, it's like KABLAM! And all the meerkats go scurrying into their holes.

And this one, for her creativeness in splitting up the Blue 42 and the Holy Frijoles!

Carterista said... This coming winter I'll be watching an enthralling episode of Snowplows Gone Wild when KA-BLAM! Out of the blue, 42 meerkats will waltz in looking all holy. Frijoles will be served with rice and the show will be enjoyed by all.

I should probably stop now. But if you guys have time and are looking for a laugh, definitely go check out the comments! Just click here.

The Way We Are: Writing Munchies

I know there are some people who can't eat while they're writing. I'm pretty sure the larger percentage of us, though, get the munchies as we write. So my question for today is:

What's your favorite writing food?

Do you go for the junk food, or the healthy food? Or do you skip food entirely and barely even realize you are hungry?

For me, sometimes I get so in the zone, I don't even realize I haven't eaten. That's when I know that some really good writing is happening! When I'm in more of a procrastinatory mode, my favorites are Diet Coke (which I am honestly trying hard not to love so much!) and something crunchy. Like pretzels or M&Ms.

But man. One of those smoothies is looking really good right about now...



Oh! And today is the last day to enter the DIVERGENT giveaway!

I've Got a Theory: The List

I'll admit: I'm a list-maker. I make lists for everything. Lists cover my desk, my kitchen counters, my fridge. I kind of make them often. In fact, a couple of days ago, my son sat next to me while I had my blog open, and he pointed to that About Me paragraph over there on the right and said, "You should probably change that line that says 'I make lists as often as I eat lunch.' It makes it sound like you eat lunch ALL THE TIME."

But lists are a good thing! Really. I even have a theory about them.

You see, in your brain you have spots to hold a items in a list. The average person has six slots. Really incredible people have ten. A select few have a freakishly large number. (In your main To-Do list. You've got lots of other lists in your brain, too. They look remarkably similar to your main To-Do list.) Your list stuff fills those slots.

But once your list spots are full, if you add another thing anyway, it just flops down on top of the first thing in your list.

And these things are heavy! One spot can definitely NOT hold two things. So it breaks the slot, and the stuff from that list breaks through to the next line... and the next line... and the next line...

Until all the lines are broken, and the list is all free-floating in your brain. That's what causes overwhelmed, stressed-out feelings to surface. (Unless you're one of the few that thinks it looks like confetti, and then your brain thinks, PARTY!)

I know what you're thinking. Sometimes I just have TOO MANY things in my list! Oh, no! What do I do to keep it from breaking apart?! (Or something entirely less dramatic.)

The answer's easy. Transfer the things in your brain list to paper lists, and it thereby frees up brain lists. Your brain's happy. The people around you are happy. All is well with the world.

Oh! But it does remind me of a quote!

“I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on.”
~Beryl Pfizer

Just keep telling yourself that all is well with the world, and you'll be alright. But tell me: Are you a list maker?



P.S. If you want to enter the DIVERGENT giveaway and haven't yet, you still have until tomorrow night!