It’s Coming Together

Beta Readers…people you pay to be brutally honest about your manuscript.  Fortunately this process was not too painful. We have been told that we have a great story and great dialog…and in my opinion that is all you need.  However it was suggested that we do a bit of tightening up.  You know what that means…DRAFT 18.

Of course we know to sift through the notes and take the good and toss out the bad.  We are confident that we will be putting out a strong first book by time it is all said and done.  We also know that our book is coming out sooner or later…hopefully sooner.

In other news, we have another draft for our book cover!

DOPENESS! Further confirmation that its happening! We are pleased with our cover illustrator, Sasha Fowler.

Fear of the Unknown

If you think the scariest part of writing a book is starting to write it, you’re wrong. To me, that’s actually the most fun part. Why, because it’s a place where I can escape and not be critized.  But now… Now it’s time to recieve reviews from foreign eyes. (Deep Bass) The Editor. When I first submitted the book to our editor, I was losing sleep asking myself so many questions.  What if she told me I was a horrible writer? What if she told me that I needed to scrap the entire manuscript (3 years worth of writing) and start over?  What if she said there was no hope and I should go back to twirling signs in front of H&R Block?  These thoughts continued to haunt me because I hated dressing up as the statue of liberty.  Yet, when I received the feedback from her- Christine-, she offered no words of condemnation but gave much praise.  But the scary part still wasn’t over.

Just today we sent the manuscript to three beta readers.  To date, this is the scariest part because their job is to only critize it. Good or Bad.  As I question myself as a writer and my ability to appeal to a mass audience, I realize that the unknown will always be scary.  I know I’m good writer but I know I can’t please everbody. It’s like getting an HIV test, knowing you haven’t been with anybody else but the unknown of “What If” is always terrifying. Uncertainty is what causes my nerves to be on edge.  Every step that we make with this book moving forward is another step into uncharted territories for us.

But I Thought You Made Movies

It’s no secret that this book is our first book.  Neither one of us has a literary background but both us have experience as script writers.  So although we can’t say we are experienced we do have experience as story tellers.  I say all this because every now and then when people ask us “Hey, what’s LackToast Entertainment’s next project?” and I answer “We have a book coming out” I feel that I have to further explain how it is that we arrived at this point.

 

Long story short is that Dion had an idea that was originally for a script and as we started writing it, we realized that this idea was bigger than a script so “Voyage of Truth” was birthed.  But if you look at the trends with major publishers and studios, our plan is not that far off the mark.  Many book publishers are now dabbling around in production by creating in house production companies so that they can maintain the rights to their books.  Also movie studios, who are apparently starved for original ideas, have been joining up with publishers to option books as scripts.  We see this with hit TV shows such as “Gossip Girl”, “Vampire Diaries” and “Game of Thrones” and movies such as “The Hunger Games”, “Harry Potter” and “Twilight”.

Yeah we are definitely venturing into new territory for us but books and movies are both sources of entertainment and ultimately that’s what we strive to do…entertain.  I could explain to people but it seems for a long winded explanation for such an easy question.

Or I could simply just resort to my usual “It’s all part of our plan to take over the world!”

That moment when playing around on Facebook is much more intriguing than researching book marketing techniques.

The internet has so many distracting goodies all of which are more entertaining than navigating the ins and outs, the do’s and don’ts of book publishing.  As I often state, it is all a bit overwhelming but it is also exciting.  I am learning to sift through all the information and find what’s applicable to me.  For all the stuff that sounds Greek, I’ve learned that it is okay to pay a professional to help make sense of it all.  Otherwise I find myself looking foolish.

Things I Think About As I Write…

As I write, sometimes random thoughts cross my mind.  In my effort to be open and share my experience in this process, I decided to share:

• I’m pretty sure my laptop hates me
• I should produce this into a audio book with real actors! How much would the ADR be an hour? Oooook… eBook it is!
• Thank GOD for SchoolHouse Rock for explaining what subject and predicate actually mean
• Thank you but stop please judging me MICROSOFT WORD … I hate your green and red swiggly lines
• Had I known I would be writing a book, I would’ve actually studied those SAT words.
• When do you use really suppose to use a semi-colon?
• Why is the English language so complex?
• Am I using too many adjectives
• I like cake
• If Twilla uses superfluous one more time…
• We should hire an editor to give me constructive feedback.
• How much does an editor cost? How MUCH? Nevermind, sorry Twilla… READ IT AGAIN!!!