SIBA

A little birdie told me . . .

Under the Skin made the SIBA (Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance) long list.

"The SIBA Book Awards were created not just to recognize great Southern books, but to give southern readers an enviable list of books to enjoy, read, buy, and give as gifts. As of this time, the SIBA Book Award remains one of the most far-reaching and high-profile awards for Southern literature."

But wait, there's more!  Also on the long list is Naked Came the Leaf Peeper by Brian Knopp et al (call me Al -- I wrote Chapter 4.)

My friend, past NC poet laureate. Kathryn Byer Stripling's Southern Fictions is there under Poetry.

and my friend Amanda Kyle Williams is there too with The Stranger You Seek! 

To see all the nominees -- Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Young Adult, Children, Cooking --  go HERE.

Your To Be Read list is in danger of growing longer.

Help! I Need Somebody . . .

Eat Your Words at Avenue M (on Merrimon Avenue in Asheville) is a new kind of book club. You don't have to join or bring food; you don't have to take a turn hosting; you just make a reservation and show up.  For a modest price, you'll get a four course meal and lots of discussion of the book of the evening (which you are asked to read beforehand.)  It's limited to 21 so that it can be a real discussion, not a reading or a talk.

By an amazing coincidence, Under the Skin will be the featured book next week (Thursday, November 17th at 5:30) and I'll be there to lead the discussion and answer questions.

Of course I'd love to see any of you who are in the Asheville area at this dinner. (Go HERE for information.) But I beg any of you who've read the book to help me think of topics for discussion -- seances? sisterhood? syzergy? (I threw in that last one, just to be silly and alliterative but on looking it up in Wikipedia, I found that one of its meanings (the union of opposites)  is appropriate.

Please, if you've read the book, help me out and suggest a topic suitable for book club discussion!Or any question you might have re the book.

It's Here!!!!

No, that's not me nor is it my camel. Nor did I take the picture. I saw it, unattributed, on Facebook and grabbed it because it makes me smile. 

But it does seem the perfect image to announce that (drumroll)

 

Under the Skin is out today!!!

I'll be celebrating with a launch party this evening at 6:30 at Fountainhead Books in Hendersonville, NC. You're invited and I really hope to see some of you who live in the area.

This is my sixth novel. Signs in the Blood, the first, came out in 2005 and I'm still kind of amazed at having completed another one.

Over in the sidebar are the other Under the Skin events I'll be doing this month and next. Coming soon, to a bookstore or library near some of you!

Things are a little frazzled around here -- as of 6 last night, we adopted another dog. More about her soon.We will return to commercial and Blatant Self Promotion free blogging tomorrow. I promise.

No Matter How You Roll . . .

On vintage tires...

Soaring high . . .

Trotting . . .

Ambling . . .

Swimming . . .

Crawling . . . 

Stepping out sharp . . .

Alone . . .

Or with a friend . . .

I hope you'll be one of the folks who buys or orders my new book tomorrow . . .
And many, many thanks to all of you who've pre-ordered!!!

FAQ - Do You Ever. . .

Q: Do you ever read your own books, once they've been published?

A: Until recently, the answer would have been No.  But last month  while I was at Wildacres, I read The Day of Small Things (and found it better than I remembered.) And yesterday afternoon, when the bound galleys (these are what get sent to early reviewers) of Under the Skin arrived, I began to page through, just to see how it looked in print, and somehow found myself caught up with the characters and unable to put the book down.

Ridiculous!  I hear you saying.  And of course, I know what the story is and how it ends -- I did write it after all.  

But I think that what caught me is that in this, the fifth book in the series, Elizabeth finally seems like her own self, rather than my creation.  For the first time, Elizabeth speaks in first person point of view and she's a somewhat different Elizabeth that the woman in the first four books. I found her somewhat unexpected.

As I've mentioned before, when I finally complete a book and send it off to my editor, I'm sick of it and never want to read it again.  But, of course, I have to -- slowly and carefully during the various stages of editing. And this kind of reading -- looking for errors -- is serious no fun and once again, I feel if I never have to read these words in this particular order again, it will be okay by me.

It's been about a year however, since I struggled through the last proofreading of Under the Skin. And this time I was reading fast and for fun - no looking for errors (though I did note one page where I'd used  the word smile or some variation thereof three times in quick succession.)

But on the whole I'm quite pleased. And I hope fans of Elizabeth will be.

Now, about these bound galleys.  Most are spoken for for but I'd like to do a little drawing for two of them.  If you'd like to be entered, just say so here in the comments or send me an email saying so. I'll draw two names Sunday evening and post the winner on Monday.

The New Cover At Last

So, here it is at last! The new cover for the now-to-be-in-trade-paperback Under the Skin - the fifth in the Elizabeth Goodweather series, coming to a store (real or virtual) near you on October 18.

What do you all think of it?  Some interesting changes have been made from the cover originally planned for the mass market edition (which They decided not to do.)

I'm delighted with the mountain background and the  colors that are very different from my previous book. The overall blueness of the first cover proposed looked a lot like the cover for my last book -- a little too easy to confuse the two. And I'm thrilled that they got rid of that Full Circle Farm Mystery tag which none of the previous books carry.

The two women on the cover kind of stopped me at first -- they don't look anything like my idea of Elizabeth and  her sister Gloria -- whose story this is. But they do suggest two women with 'issues' -- which is very much the heart of the book.

I'm pretty sure that what's in play here with the choice of this cover is that my editor and the team at Random House are trying to find a wider audience for my books. This cover looks far more like Women's Fiction than Crime Fiction -- and Women's Fiction is a huge market. Plus, the mention of the Anthony nomination and the comparison to Sharyn McCrumb will tip off mystery readers that this is part of the mystery genre -- even without using the word mystery on the cover.

Perhaps the cover is a little too feminine to make a guy want to pick it up -- and I do have some male readers.  But they could always conceal the book behind a protective covering of Field and Stream Magazine -- or read it as an e-book.

The italicized the still bothers me a little -- it looks interesting but it makes me want to read the title as Under THE Skin -- which make no sense. 

But, in spite of all this petty carping,  I'm very happy with the new cover -- and hope it will make lots of folks want to buy the book.  That, in the long run, is the purpose of the cover.

Don't Panic

I received a little flurry of emails this evening from folks who'd pre-ordered the mass market paperback of Under the Skin from Amazon. They'd been informed that their orders had been cancelled as the paperback was no longer available and they wanted to know what was up.

As I mentioned the other day, Random House has decided to issue UTS as a trade paperback, not a mass market. Thence the unavailability of the mass market paperback. (E-books are not affected.)

I emailed Herself, my editor, and she said that they would be updating Amazon quite soon -- that the decision to change formats only became official this morning.

So the trade version will be available for pre-order. . . again . . soon. 

Herself also said that they were working on a new and different cover -- I was reasonably happy with the blue road one but will be interested to see what they come up with now.

Many thanks to those of you who pre-ordered -- sorry for the inconvenience.

 

May Day Assortment

First of all, here's the cover for the fifth Elizabeth Goodweather book Under the Skin. The quote is just a place-holder till they get one for this book.

I'm pretty pleased with the picture; what do you all think? You can go HERE to read an excerpt.

A flock of about fourteen turkeys was wandering around our barn yesterday, I managed to get a picture of this handsome fellow as I was on my day down the road to meet our new milk cow. A second milk cow. . . Justin has dreams of cheese-making ,... I think we need some pigs.

 This is a used cow, unlike Marigold who we raised from a heifer. Silverbell is a Jersey from Yellow Branch, the same small dairy herd as Marigold. She was born six years ago at this time of year when the wild silverbell trees were in bloom.

Silverbell has just been dried up, in anticipation of a blessed event in early July.  She and Marigold are curious about each other in a guarded way.

At four weeks old, the broiler chicks are at that awkward age -- part fluff and part feathers. It's cool enough at night that they still need their heat lamp.

What a beautiful month April was!  There's a slide show of its highlights over at my latest Goodweather Report (a monthly newsletter/blog) if you want to check it out.

No Nature Girl

A few years ago, in one of my monthly newsletters (now morphed into The Goodweather Report blog,) I posted a closeup picture of a rather attractive fuzzy caterpillar, calling particular attention to his cute little pink feet.

As always, I had some email comments on my newsletter and there was a memorable one from my agent who took exception to my calling the caterpillar feet (or, indeed, the caterpillar) adorable.

In fact,  my agent's response was so  amazing that I  copied it to a file where I keep ideas for future use. And when I came to write Under the Skin, I used the response pretty much verbatim. putting it into the mouth of Elizabeth's sister Gloria who -- like my agent -- is no nature girl.

In the following scene, Elizabeth and her sister are at the beginning of a spa and seance weekend -- rather against Elizabeth's wishes.

--- As we walked up the path leading to the inn, I stopped by a high-arching clump of grass to admire a fuzzy yellow caterpillar teetering at the end of a glossy green blade. He had reared up and his tiny pink feet – the front six of them – were questing in search of their next step.

                        “Glory, come look at this guy and his adorable little feet!” It was worth a try, I thought. I’ll learn to love Dead Sea Salt exfoliation and maybe Gloria can get a little appreciation for Nature.

            My sister leaned down to see my find, wrinkling her nose in fastidious disgust. “Adorable? Those creepy little feet? If you killed that thing and stuck it with pins to some sort of board and looked at it under a microscope, you would see that those feet are anything but ‘adorable’ – they are vile little buggy mutant feet that look really gross close up.”

            She glanced at her watch. “We’ve got forty minutes before dinner – you can stay and visit with your yucky little friend; I’m going to go have a bath.”  ---

The butterfly pictures are for my agent -- she thinks butterflies are gross too. You can imagine how she feels about snakes.

But that's one of the revelations about writing -- if one just pays attention, there's a whole world of interesting material out there!

At Long Last!

You may recall that I sent in Under the Skin back in mid-May. And that I haven't heard back from my editor as to whether she liked it or not. Though I've tried to remain stoical about it, I have been fretting. Just a tad.

I didn't want to email and ask if she'd read it yet. After all, I'd been very, very  much past my deadline in getting the book in -- how could I expect Herself to hurry with reading my manuscript? Besides, she was probably busy hanging out with her big, important guys -- you know, Lee Child, Karen Slaughter, Deb Crombie, Laurie King . . . that gang of NY Times bestsellers.

Or maybe, the voice of doubt said, Herself has read it. Maybe she hates it and is trying to find a way out of the contract. Or . . . or . . .

Finally my agent mentioned to Herself that we were wondering if she'd had a chance to take a look at Under the Skin.

What? says Herself, I read it back in May and accepted it and sent Vicki a note with a cc. to you. 

No, says Ann, my indefatigable agent, we didn't get a note.

Hmm, says, Herself, I'll have to check when I get back to the office.

Okay, now I knew that the book had been accepted. What I didn't know is how Herself felt about it.  And that matters rather immensely.

So I braved up and emailed Herself. And this is what she said.

 I think it's the best thing you've ever written. I was totally enmeshed in it--the characterizations were rich and fresh and the novel-within-the-novel was strong and instantly compelling. I hated for the book to end, I truly did.

Calloo, callay! Oh, frabjous day! I chortled in my joy!  

Herself went on to mention one plot line that needed reinforcing -- which I shall promptly give some thought to and address when I get the line-edited, copy-edited manuscript back.

But oh! what a weight is lifted!