A couple of cool moments from this weekend—
First, while signing books at the mall yesterday, I had the chance to talk with a family who all read fantasy together. Dad reads the books out loud to all the kids, Mom has to stop herself from reading ahead in secret, and the kids all have a certain degree of enthusiasm for the practice. First of all, it made me decide on the spot that I’m going to read fantasy novels aloud to my children. But the really cool thing was when the father asked for our email address. Turns out one of the daughters, who is 12, is an aspiring writer. This was the highlight of my afternoon, because I remember being that girl. My parents, in like manner, tried to connect me with other authors and publishing people when I was that age. I was tickled to be able to turn around and potentially be a mentor to aspiring writers coming up.
Second exciting thing came yesterday evening. Sam and I got to Skype with our editor last night, and go through some of the preliminary edits. Every time this part of the process comes, I forget how intensive it is. But for the most part it was all agreeable, and we had a good discussion. The really cool part was talking with our editor about the cover art, which is in process. He was able to share with us some of the concepts, and we were told that we should be able to see some mockups here shortly.
Cover art is one of my favorite parts of the publishing process. I am not a visual artist by any means (as in, I can barely draw stick figures). I even have difficulty conceptualizing things in a visual manner, I am far more likely to express them in words. Seeing our story–a world and characters that previously existed only in our collective imagination–take shape in a visual form is fascinating. It helps that our cover artist is fantastic! I am ridiculously excited to see what she produces for Buk Tu.