40 By 40 Friday (a Day Late)

Ok, I know it's Saturday so I'm a day late.  I have no excuse except that I was lazy yesterday.  Point blank.  No other reason.  So my progress was spotty but at least existent this week. 

#16 : Read or get rid of all unread books in my current collection.
#34 : Read 50 New York Times Best Sellers

amazon.com

This week I read my first Stephen King novel ever.  EVER!  I can't believe I haven't read anything by him yet.  I've seen just about all the movies that have been made based on his books and love them, but I've never actually read any of his books.  About a year ago, I was having a conversation with a fellow waitress (when I was working as a waitress) and we got to talking about books we've read that we like.  She suggested The Dark Tower series by Stephen King.  So I picked up the book but never read it until this week.  It started off kind of slow, but the more I got into it, the more I was sucked in.  The setting reminded me a lot of some of the setting in "The Stand" movie, especially the desert parts.  Some of the characters in this book were quite confusing which just drew me in further instead of turning me off.  I think the hardest part about reading this book is some of the language.  Stephen has created a new dialect of the English language and while I was able to figure out what some words meant by context clues, others just sat on the page rotting while my brain tried to decipher them.  I have the feeling that the more I get into the series, the better I'll understand both the characters and the language.

So that brings me up to 6 NYTBS out of the 50 I want to read for my list.  I never really set a number for #16 because I'm really not sure at this stage in the game which ones I will eventually read and which ones I will end up getting rid of.  Sometimes it just takes reading a couple of pages or chapters before I give up on the book altogether.  I am, however determined NOT to buy any more books or even check out any from the library until I have read all the ones that are currently in my bookcase right now.  The fact that most of them fall into one of the other two categories (Classics or Best Sellers) just helps me get closer to my other goals faster.

Update:  I forgot that I also read Water for Elephants earlier this year so my list is now at 7 out of 50!  Woohoo!

#21 : Submit my book for publishing.

Ok, so I probably jumped the gun on this one a little so I'm not going to cross this one off the list just quite yet.  I have been dabbling on the Internet for the last 3 or 4 years trying to figure out the publishing business.  Some places say non-fiction doesn't have to be complete before you submit it to a publisher.  So, since my book is a memoir, I assumed that it was classified as non-fiction.  Last Saturday morning, I started searching the Internet for publishers who look for first time authors and stumbled upon Tate Publishing.  They had a form right on their web page where you can submit a manuscript so I filled it out and submitted the couple of chapters I have written so far.  A few minutes later, I received a standard form letter in my inbox "Thank you for submitting.  We'll be in touch".  The kind that basically says don't call us, we'll call you.  So I tried not to think about it and figured IF I did hear something, it may be weeks.

Sunday afternoon, on my way to the grocery store, I got a call from the acquisitions director who said she was interested in the book.  She said she thought it would be a great book and was one that would be marketed well with interviews on talk shows and such.  At first I was elated.  I couldn't believe she called so soon and that she was interested in the book so much.  But then the bomb dropped.  I would have to pay a $4000 retainer for a publicist up front!  Yeah, don't think this is going to happen after all.  She did say that they would break it up into payments for me and that it's refundable after 1000 copies are sold, but even broken up that would be like $500 a month.  Money we just don't have right now to pay out when we aren't even caught up on our regular monthly bills. 

So instead, I talked to my librarian at school who knows a few local published authors.  She's going to get in touch with some of them and try to get us connected so I can pick their brains about the publishing process.  I also did some more research about memoirs in particular and found quite a few helpful sites.  The more I read about memoirs, the more I learned that usually they are treated like a fiction novel in that they have to be finished before you submit them to the publisher.  So back to the writing process itself.  Time to get that baby finished.