Landed publicist for "The Emily Updates" - now with new subtitle
Saturday, July 30, 2011 at 11:06PM 
While still working out the arrangements with my literary agency (Zachary Shuster Harmsworth) since this is a proof-of-concept effort for them, I did manage to land my publicist from "The New Map" series, Steve Oppenheim (Oppenheim Communications, based in Manhattan). It will be a first-time process for Steve too, doing a straight eBook with no hard-copy version, but both of us agree that we like the non-rush of trying to make all the PR happen in a two-week period.
Steve is a great guy and I deeply enjoyed working with him on the three previous books, plus we feel honored he likes the material enough - and believes in it enough - to go down this new path with Vonne, Emily and I.
Other positive news: looks like Esquire will give us a nice plug in the magazine.
Vonne, Emily and I, having all three spent the last couple of weeks taking notes on the first four volumes, held a production meeting today in my office to pitch our ideas to each other concerning the fifth volume retrospective. Emily is working about 15 themes, while Vonne has 18 in hand. Me? I have 26 pages of notes. Between us I am certain we have the 50,000 words for the volume. No doubts about my ability to write on demand, and Vonne is highly incentivized to finish before she starts a Masters in Social Work program at IUPUI (Indiana U/Purdue U @ Indianapolis - home to the oldest MSW program in the country). Em, of course, must finish up before heading back to IU in Bloomington for her sophomore year. Vonne has been writing for a bit now, and Em I know can crank, since she routinely generates fan fiction pieces in the tens-of-thousands range.
The goal is to have the first draft done in 2-3 weeks and a final draft by the end of August or mid-September at the latest. We then get the four volumes back from Ebook Architects (in their various file formats) NLT mid-September to make the 9/19 publication of the first volume on the major sites (Amazon, B&N, iBookstore). I'm hoping to have the fifth volume polished by Labor Day so I can spend the rest of my free time in September blowing up the Emily Updates site-within-this-site (photos, videos, etc.)
All an experiment for me, but a fun one.
On the subtitle: just enough pushback from the agency on linking "three-year-old" with "cancer" that I rethought the approach. "The Girl Who Lived" has been a theme of ours for years, as Emily has long identified with the Harry Potter character's backstory (near-death experience as toddler, the telltale scars, the questions, and the weird fame within our circles for something she barely remembers . . . oh, and the ever-present fear of the return of the disease that no one likes to mention! Is it still inside her on some hidden level?). I wanted to keep "One Year in the Life" bit because of my years of working Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's many books, and we thought the two riffs went well together. The Emily Updates are full of fan-fictiony-like references to books and films; it's just who we are - a family of fanboys and fangirls.
So it stays "The Emily Updates" because that's what I called all the weekly summary emails I sent out (numbering them as well), and we say "One Year in the Life" because we're not asking you to read the life story of a 19-year-old, just about this one amazing year (actually about 14 months but basically her third year of life), and we wanted to put out there in the title that she is "The Girl Who Lived" so as to not scare people off too much. This was a crucible experience but one that our family, our marriage and our child patient survived. We figure the three themes (The Emily Updates seems to be a diary, One Year in the Life says this was some extraordinary period, and The Girl Who Lived dispels any cliffhanger fears while insinuating that, like Harry Potter, Emily survived a very deadly set of circumstances/events) and the picture will convey the right mix of themes.
The covers as I've put them together now:
Why the black and red motif? You can't tell from the black and white photo, but she was wearing a red shirt over her Spandage vest (which is why her neck looks kinda fuzzy), plus her hat was blood red with black trim. So when I see that picture (we just refound the black-and-white negative in the memorabilia box we unpacked and perused today), I see red and black - simple as that.
Reader Comments (2)
Wondering; I have a completed historical novel (circa 1900, Phillipines, China, Japan, US topics with two more books in the series planned) and was considering ebook publishing as likely the only way to get it out there. This look like the best way or only way to go for an unpublshed author? Just looking for an opinion.
No one can make that call for you. I think e-route is the future route anyway, so no harm in going that direction.