Nayt said, “No problem,” to my request for a postponement to May 31st for the return of my edits. Phew! I’m very relieved about that.
Meanwhile, the vet couldn’t figure out what was wrong with Dukie. He’s home with us now after receiving a shot of heavy-duty antibiotics. The vet also gave him prescriptions for more antibiotics and for some pain killers. I sure hope they work.
…And then life interferes. In the past two weeks, my personal life has gone haywire to the point that I’ve had little or no time to review the edits from New Rivers Press.
My younger daughter, Laura, who’s had substance abuse issues for years, ended up in an alcohol/drug rehabilitation facility located outside of Portland, Oregon. I hate having her so far away and am very worried about her health and happiness, short-term and long-term.
Then my father died. He’d been suffering from medical complications due to dementia but his sudden death was still an unexpected shock. We are in the process of planning a memorial service to be held in Florida in a few weeks.
And today Duke, my twelve year old beagle and best buddy, is sick…really sick. He has a fever of 104 degrees (101 to 102.5 degrees is normal for a dog), won’t eat, and seems to be in considerable pain. We have an appointment with the vet in a few hours.
So, I have to ask Nayt at New Rivers Press for an extension on my edit review deadline. I hope the delay won’t adversely affect their production schedule, but I’m afraid it is unavoidable.
BLOCK ISLAND MAP - 1900
After a months-long hiatus, Nayt from New Rivers Press contacted me today, sending me the next round of edits. This time, Frozen Voices was edited by Joan, a professional editor, as opposed to the student editors who had previously been working on it. Reading through the edits from Joan, I was struck by how her comments about the novel differed from the students’ notes. She seemed to focus a bit more on the over-arching themes of the work while the students seemed to look more at the individual scenes. By combining these two perspectives, I feel like FV will benefit greatly, having been carefully examined on at least two different levels of thought.
Now I need to read through all of Joan’s edits and decide which ones to accept and which to reject. With just a cursory review of her comments, though, I am fairly sure that I will be accepting most of her suggestions. They seem quite insightful and appropriate for what I was trying to accomplish with this novel.
Nayt also sent me two different versions of the artwork for the cover of FV. The designer stayed with his mirror-image version of the Larchmont, showing the ship as a silhouette on the water and then again as an outline in stormy waves underneath the ship. One of the versions is done in sepia tones and one is done in blue-gray tones. I prefer the color of the latter one. It looks more “frozen” to me.
I am a little concerned about the font used for the cover. The letters are quite thin and actually become illegible from just a short distance away. I think I’ll suggest bolding the font or switching to a different font.
Nayt requested that I return my comments on the edits and my reaction to the covers by May 25th. That shouldn’t be a problem.
PILOT HOUSE OF A STEAMSHIP - 1899
Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas season and a happy, healthy 2016!
Since both of our family’s dogs recently had surgery (they are doing fine and recovering quickly), we could not board them and therefore had to remain home for the Christmas Holiday. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise since we were able to have some wonderful, quiet days, hosting visits from some close friends and family members. Christmas Day itself was spent at home with just the four of us: my husband, my two daughters, and me. We opened presents, had breakfast (our younger daughter made us a cinnamon breakfast pastry that was a thing of beauty), and then took the dogs for a walk in a local park. Mid-afternoon dinner was a relaxed affair, followed by some music-making (my husband is an excellent fiddler), and then watching some James Bond movies with family popcorn and candy. A very enjoyable day.
Last weekend and this weekend, as we visited with friends and family members, it seemed that at some point during each visit, I ended up talking about how Frozen Voices is going to be published next year. I guess I’m really excited about it! This is literally a dream come true. And everyone I talk to about FV is so encouraging and happy for me, it makes the experience that much more special. I am so glad to be able to share this amazing journey with everyone and feel truly blessed.
Today, I received an e-mail from Meghan, my liaison from New Rivers Press. She apologized for not being in touch as much lately. Apparently she and the rest of the Team at Minnesota State University Moorhead are in the midst of finals and other end-of-the-semester obligations and haven’t had time to do much else. I certainly remember how that felt and then how glad I was to go home for Christmas vacation. Most years, I went home from college with a cold or worse, run down from lack of sleep and an overabundance of assignments to complete. I definitely wish Meghan and Company much success completing their school tasks and then a restful, rejuvenating Christmas break.
I also received an e-mail from Nayt Rundquist, the Managing Editor at NRP. Nayt said he’d received the edits from the Team. He said he’d be editing Frozen Voices once again and would send me his notes by mid-February for me to comment on and return by the end of that month. Then the designer would have until the end of March to lay out the whole book, which Nayt and I would review and return to the designer by mid-April. The designer would make his final changes by the end of May, with the final round of editing done by the second or third week of June. Publication is set for sometime in November. It sure takes a lot of work to produce one book!
Nayt also mentioned the book cover, saying he’s waiting to see cover images from that designer. He said that the designer has been working with two design professors and Al Davis, too, and that he’d let me know when he has more to share about the book cover.
I noticed that no one at NRP commented on Kaitlyn’s book cover, which I sent to them over a week ago. I think I’ll resend it and ask for opinions. I’d really like to know what they think about Kaitlyn’s cover and whether or not they feel it would be good for FV.
Chris and I were looking at book covers in a store today, mostly best-selling hardcover fiction. The covers seemed to run the gamut from being very representational of the novel’s story to being more symbolic of the type of novel. A historical fiction cover contained sepia-toned photographs of the main characters whereas a modern day spy novel cover had a silhouette of a man wearing a trench coat, carrying a pistol.
What makes a good book cover? I actually Googled that very question and received quite a wide variety of responses. I’d be interested to hear what the folks at NRP think about the subject. As usual, I’m finding this whole publishing journey to be a fun, learning experience.
Kaitlyn published the website last night and then today, I sent out Facebook messages inviting people to check it out and let me know what they thought. I posted one notice on the Fairfield MFA Facebook page and another on my own Homepage.
Within an hour, I’d received over a dozen messages from friends and family, saying that they liked the website a lot. One MFAer, who I don’t think I’ve had the chance to meet yet, offered me some excellent advice about a few changes she thought I should make. I like her suggestions, agree with them, and think I’ll try to implement them soon.
I also sent an e-mail to Meghan and Company, telling them about the website/blog. I hope they enjoy reading the blogs about all of the hard work they’ve done and how much I appreciate it. What a great Team to work with! I e-mailed Kaitlyn’s latest cover design to them, too. Kaitlyn updated it yesterday, shifting the ship up the cover a bit. I really like it. I’m curious to see what the Team thinks about it and sincerely hope they like it, too.
OUT FOR A PICNIC - 1910?
I inserted a bunch of photos/images into the blogs and I think they really enhance the text and give the flavor of the book. Unfortunately, while putting in the photos, though, I somehow screwed up the order of the blogs and was unable to reorder them correctly. I sent an e-mail to Kaitlyn, asking for help, but it made me worry. What if I mess up the website/blog while she’s in Asia? I guess I’m going to have to learn this software better or, as my daughter Julia says, get better at looking up the solutions to software problems on the Internet.
I’m hoping to publish the website in the next few days. I’m anxious to get it “live” and see what folks think about it.
This was a fun and productive weekend, as far as Frozen Voices is concerned. Yesterday, Mom, Chris, and I went to an old bookstore and an antique store, looking for images from the turn of the last Century. We bought dozens of old photos and postcards showing people and local places from around 1907, the time setting of the novel. I plan to scan them and then put a photo or postcard image in with every few blog posts to make them a little more interesting. We really enjoyed looking for the images… Almost like a scavenger hunt.
PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG WOMAN - 1902
Then today, I uploaded dozens of new blogs to the website, trying to follow Kaitlyn’s instructions. It took me a little while to figure out how to work Squarespace, but I did eventually manage it. Now, I just need to scan/inset the photos and postcards.
Happy Thanksgiving!
As part of their celebration, Chris’s family conducts a little show-and-tell after Thanksgiving dinner, where family members gather and talk about what they’ve been doing during the course of the past year. This year, I got up in front of 25 to 30 family members and told everyone about Frozen Voices: where the story’s idea came from and how I’d won the book prize. Then I showed them the various ideas for the book’s cover. The two favorites were the mirrored-image ship from NRP and the latest draft from Kaitlyn. Those are my favorites, too.
I enjoyed doing the brief presentation to the family. I liked talking about my book and I felt like it was good practice for giving book readings/talks after the book is published next year. I just hope every crowd is as friendly and encouraging as the family was!
Kaitlyn said that she’d try to come up with a new draft for the book cover and boy did she deliver! Today she e-mailed me a cover with my name and the ship steaming out of the harbor on the bottom of the cover, the book title in the middle, and photos of the four narrators at the top. It looks great! With just a little tweaking, I think it will be exactly what I want. I’d like the ship a little higher on the cover and my name superimposed on the water under the ship rather than being placed on the hull of the ship.
I e-mailed Kaitlyn to say that I loved the new cover. When I showed it to Chris and the girls on the way to Rockport, MA, for Thanksgiving, they all liked it, too.
Yahoo! I think we are zeroing in on a good design.
HARRY HOUDINI - 1899
Tonight I had my second meeting with Kaitlyn, the website/blog designer. She showed me the changes she’d made to the website based upon our last meeting. I like the website/blog even better! It looks clean and simple, without a lot of links to this or that, and without a lot of clutter, which is a lot like my writing style—very straightforward. Since the last time we met, she’s added pages for appearances (none listed so far!) and contact info, too.
While she was here, Kaitlyn showed me how to manipulate the contents of the website/blog and sent me a Squarespace invitation so that I may update things while she’s on her trip to Southeast Asia. She leaves Sunday night. I sure hope I don’t do anything that messes up all of her hard work while she’s gone.
Kaitlyn and I also talked about the book cover. She explained to me what she didn’t like about the composite I’d come up with (it was too busy/cluttered) and I explained what I was hoping to end up with as a cover (a striking image that captures the essence of the story). She said she’d try to come up with another draft before she left on her trip.
I’d like to finish work on the website/blog and the book cover soon so that I may move on to working on other books, too. I know there will still be a few more rounds of edits for Frozen Voices, but I feel like once we publish the website/blog and agree on a cover, the lion’s share of the work will be behind us. We’ll see…
A COUPLE ENJOYING THE SNOW - 1907
Using some of the book cover designs from the NRP Team and the design from Kaitlyn, I cut and pasted a mock-up of a cover that I think would capture the true nature of Frozen Voices. It shows the silhouette of the ship at the top, which fades into dark/stormy water in the middle with “Frozen Voices” and “Lynne Heinzmann” superimposed on it, and then the soggy photos of the people are placed at the bottom of the page. And there’s frost around the edges of the cover.
I know the book cover I put together today is terribly executed. All of the cut lines are visible, the text font is all wrong, and the wrong photos are shown, but I sent it to Kaitlyn anyway. Hopefully, it will help explain what I’m looking for.
Yesterday, I searched the Internet and found several appropriate images from around 1900, showing men and women, who look like my characters. All of these photographs were classified as being “free domain” and “available for commercial use,” so should be suitable for the book’s cover without danger of copyright infringement. I sent them to Kaitlyn, too, for use on the website/blog as well as for the book cover.
I contacted Kaitlyn this afternoon about designing the book’s cover and, within a few hours, she sent me a design for a cover that I really liked! She took some of the photos of the narrators and put them in seawater, as if the photos had been lost in a shipwreck. Brilliant! I feel like this is really beginning to captivate the focus of the novel—on the people. Now, if we could just incorporate an image of the ship, too…
I sent an e-mail to Meghan today, telling her my thoughts about the proposed book covers. I started the e-mail by telling her I liked those two covers very much (frosted sky/sea and mirrored ship silhouettes). Then, I included this one-sentence summary of FV, thinking it might be helpful to the cover designer to assist him in focusing the cover on the book’s main theme: Frozen Voices is a captivating tale of four lives, intertwined and changed forever by the worst accident in New England’s maritime history.
In my note to Meghan, I added, “I was wondering if the cover could reflect more of the human aspect of the story. Show silhouettes or fuzzy images of people or have some people visible on board the ship. Although the shipwreck is the event that brings the characters together, it doesn’t happen until three-quarters of the way through the novel. The novel is about the people more than about the ship.”
A few hours later, I received a reply from Meghan. She said she’d spoken to Dan, the cover designer. He said that he may be able to add some silhouettes of passengers to the mirrored ship design but besides that, “nothing else would really work.” Since most of the photographs were not pictures of the real people, he felt uncomfortable using them without having clear copyright approvals. Dan also said that the fuzzy effect may take away from the quality of the book cover’s look.
I think I’ll contact Kaitlyn Lamb to see if she’d like to take a shot at coming up with a book cover design. I really liked what she did for the website/blog and would be curious to see what she’d suggest for the cover.
FORMER TRAIN STATION IN PROVIDENCE - 1901
Tonight I met with Kaitlyn Lamb, the young woman who’s designing my author’s website/blog. She showed me what she’s come up with so far and I was thrilled! The design is nice and simple and just what I was looking for. The home page contains a copy of the photo showing the Larchmont steaming out of the Providence Harbor. Then there’s a bio page, a page about Frozen Voices, a contact page, and a link to my blog. I especially liked the logo she developed, using my name and an old-fashioned fleur-de-lis. Kaitlyn said she could incorporate that same logo onto business cards and bookmarks for me, too. She’s going to tweak a couple of minor details and then meet with me again in a week or so to turn over the website/blog to me. We should be “live” by around the First of December. How exciting!
A LOVING COUPLE - 1903
This morning, I received some book cover ideas from the Team’s designer. I was so excited, I showed them to several people in the office. I especially liked two of them. One shows a stormy sky and sea with frost around the edges of the frame. Another shows a silhouette of the Larchmont on a white background with an inverted silhouette of the ship underneath it, in stormy water.
Thinking about my book’s cover… I want it to be eye-catching, something that would make someone walk across a bookstore to pick it up and check it out. But I also want the cover to be a fair representation of what the book is about. I feel like the covers from NRP might be too much about the ship and the disaster and not enough about the four narrators of my novel. I’ll have to consider this for a few days before getting back to Meghan and the Team.
At work today, I received an e-mail from Meghan requesting that we discuss the book edits by telephone, so I’m guessing that the Team didn’t agree with at least some of my editing comments. Meghan and I set up a time for her to call me this evening.
When she did call, I really enjoyed talking to her. I could tell that she and the rest of the editing team really do care about FV and want to help sculpt it into the best novel it can be. Pretty cool. They could consider the novel as just another school assignment but instead seem to recognize its larger scope and are putting extra effort into assuring the best possible end product. Thanks Team!
Meghan brought up the issue of the commas, saying she was a stickler for putting them in all of the technically “correct” locations. I explained that I’d recently been taught to eliminate as many commas as possible, since they inserted unnecessary pauses into the sentences and slowed down the pace of the writing. So, we agreed to a compromise, inserting commas only where absolutely necessary in order to assure the correct interpretation of the text.
As far as Anna Jensen and her Swedish phrases/translations, Meghan and Co. made a good point: she said that Anna probably thinks entirely in Swedish. Therefore, to have Swedish phrases stated and then translated within her interior dialogue sections is somewhat redundant. If I’m already translating all of her thoughts into English, why would these phrases be given in Swedish and then in English versus being just in English, to begin with? After a rather lengthy discussion, Meghan and I agreed that Anna’s thoughts would be strictly in English but that all of the Swedish phrases and their translations would remain in her exterior dialogue, even when speaking to her husband, John, and her daughter, Louise.
Meghan and I chatted for a long time about many other aspects of the novel and about writing, in general. Then we digressed into a discussion about our lives. She said that once she completes the Certificate in Editing Program at MSU Moorhead, she plans to go into book editing as a career. She also mentioned that she enjoys writing children’s books, too. What a delightful young woman!
Meghan e-mailed me today to say that she sent one of the Larchmont photos to the book’s cover designer. He’s going to come up with some possible designs for us in the next week or so.
STEAMSHIPS AT DOCK IN PROVIDENCE - 1899
I am very excited about seeing ideas for the book’s cover. I feel like that will make the novel more concrete, more real, in my mind. I guess I’m still having difficulties believing FV will actually be published!
I guess technically, it’s Friday, October 30, since it is now a few minutes after midnight. I just finished reading through FV and checking all of the edits—again. I wonder how many times I’ve read the entire novel now, beginning to end. Twenty times? Thirty? Anyhow, tonight I finished reviewing it, wrote a cover letter, and sent it off to Meghan and Co. I do hope my delay doesn’t mess up their course schedules.
In the cover letter, I told Meghan that I felt the Team had done a great job catching a lot of edits that I’d missed, especially eliminating the word “that.” I had no idea I used that word so much! I also mentioned I was concerned about the number of commas the Team wanted to add to FV. During my MFA program at Fairfield, we were told that commas were now considered passé and should be eliminated as often as possible. In reviewing the edits, I tried to keep the commas only where I felt they were absolutely necessary. I did my best to explain my thoughts on Anna and her Swedish phrases/translations, too. I’m curious to see what the Team says after they read my comments and review my edits.
HORSE DRAWN CARRIAGE - 1901
Yesterday, after I finished entering my edits into Word, I turned off the Edit Tracker and read the novel, as it was. In the first five pages, I found nearly a dozen mistakes caused by the overlaps of edits (people correcting and then re-correcting the text). So, now I’m reading through the whole manuscript again with the Edit Tracker off and making final corrections. This will mean toggling back and forth from Edit Mode to Final Draft Mode and will—I imagine—take a long time. But there’s no way I can send the manuscript back to the Team with less than my best effort. I just hope I can complete it by Thursday, as promised.
