Help Write a Book Pitch! Be Involved from the Very Beginning!

From 12/24/07:
No carolers tonight, but there is a good shot at my finishing the first major edit of As in Days of Old tomorrow. Since there's so much else to do on December 25th. [snicker]

Okay, so I need y'alls help here. I need a good elevator pitch. An astounding one. A 25-words-or-less pitch for the book that will cause everyone who hears it to run to their nearest retail outlet (online or off) and buy it.

I wrote in detail about what a formal elevator pitch (EP) is on the MIPA blog, if you want to know details about it and how to develop your own. For everyone else, let's just say I need to come up with a 10-second (I wasn't kidding about the 25-words-or-less) riveting, compelling, highly provocative sentence to describe the book without giving away the ending.

So... what is the book about? It's the second in the Rabbi David Cohen suspense series, a sequel to Destined to Choose, and, if I may be so bold, much, much better. It takes place six months after Destined ends, during the weeks leading up to and during Chanukah. In it...

"Minneapolis Rabbi David Cohen intervenes to catch a violent stalker while his wife tries to become more involved in his career."

That's what I have so far. There's so much more I could say. That's the problem as the author, you get so caught up in the characters' lives and the story and all the details that it all seems important.

Like, I could tell you that Arik (Israeli-born Minneapolis cop) has a major role in this book, as does Batya (Arik's wife/Reform rabbi).

We get to see the story partly from Batya's point of view, as well as Sara's (David's wife).

Eli, who was briefly introduced in Destined, and his wife come out for a visit during Chanukah, and wind up in the middle of a crime scene.

We meet Shimon, an Orthodox rabbi, for the first time and get a glimpse into his and David's friendship (yes, a Conservative and an Orthodox rabbi can be friends).

And we get to meet members of the larger non-Jewish community as well.

Will you help? I'm thinkin' there might be something in it for you, too (mention in the acknowledgments, a free advance copy...) My publisher's marketing advisor, my editor, and others will have some say, too, but I've been asked for a pitch with the finished manuscript. I'd love your help!

Leave your comments (they get emailed to me so I'll be sure to get them) and we'll continue the dialog. Thanks!

Back tomorrow with updates.

Update 12/25/07: About 20 pages to go and the ms is DONE (with Edit #1) and ready to go to beta readers for their comments, which will result in Edit #2. [Then it goes to my editor for what will result in Edit #3.] I would not be surprised if the ms goes through as many as 5-6 edits all told before publication, but the first three are the big ones.

Already the first chapter has been rewritten and several scenes have been either rearranged or pulled entirely. You know what books need? We need a "special bonus features" thing like on DVDs, where the author can provide commentary during the book and there can be a section for a gag reel and deleted scenes. I wonder if there's a market for that sort of thing...

I am a little sad. It's always sad, finishing and having to say goodbye for now. I expect to be done by tomorrow morning, at which time I will need to - without a pause - write a compelling scene from Book #3, the third in the series (and mostly plotted out already). I really hope to get to the point of writing a book a year. This 4-5 years between books is so not okay. (But then I did give birth to children in the intervening years. That's my excuse and I'm stickin' with it.)

Wish me luck - tomorrow I'm looking forward to posting a DONE post!

Is Carol Coming to My Door?

Received this tucked in the door today:

We cordially invite you to listen to a musical caroling experience (time/date). If interested, please leave a front light on. [Signed by a neighbor]

What to do? What to do?

I want to support the neighborhood. I want to support my neighbors. I love music.

but...

I'm Jewish. I really don't want to hear about the birth of Jesus, sung to me personally, from my doorstep. Already I haven't been able to get "I'm Getting Nuttin' For Christmas" out of my head from a few days ago.

Husby didn't have any vacillation. He made sure the outside motion-sensor lights were turned off.

Update: due to blowing snow and whiteout conditions, caroling has been cancelled (or at least postponed to tomorrow).

I'm a little bit disappointed. I would have loved to have overheard them caroling to someone else who celebrates Christmas. The music is often beautiful, and I can listen to it so long as I know it's not directed at me personally.

And maybe it will replace "I'm Getting Nuttin'" and endless refrains of "I Am A Latke."

Update #2: The tune for the verses in "I Am A Latke" by Debbie Friedman has been buggin' me all evening, bringing memory snippets of Disney videos to mind. I finally put it together. The tune in the verses (not the chorus) is eerily similar to the tune of the verses in "Be Prepared" (Scar's Hitler-esque takeover song) in "The Lion King."

Hmm...

Chinese Food On Christmas

Just how I'm feeling, finishing up Edit #1 on "As in Days of Old," watching the snow blowing outside, and knowing most of the rest of the neighborhood is preparing for the "big day."

Plus, this guy's got talent!

The Moving Finger Writes, and Having Writ, Moves On

aka "Yay! No More Rosh Hashana Video!"


I am buried in books, folks. I've got quite a few I'm wading through for reviews (coming soon), an author interview with Tsvi Bisk (coming very soon), and stuff even I wrote (what a novel concept).

Spent Motzei Shabbat last night as the featured/guest author for a synagogue book group. I love audiences like this - warm, generous, genuinely interested. I was a little surprised when they said, "Okay, enough about the book. We're going to buy the book. We want to know more about you!"

My life is just so... well... my life. But some people find it interesting, which I find interesting. Maybe there's a book in there somewhere.

So what IS going on in my life? Some of the usual: kids, Husby, house, pets, vehicular challenges, winter in Minnesota (we're entering a warming trend, they said on the news: temperatures might get [up] close to freezing).

I moved my office from upstairs to dowstairs, which is actually a move up in the figurative sense though down in the literal sense. I have windows now and space. And boxes full of... uh... stuff, yeah, stuff from the former office, which is now a child's bedroom.

As for the writin', As in Days of Old is going through the first major editing and the cover art is starting to take shape. Beta readers ought to be getting their copies within a week or two. I'm hoping for a summer release; we'll see!

Some of you might remember my (very) short story "Saturdays," which was published on Elster's Storytellers blog a [ahem] year ago August. I've decided to give protagonist Coby his own book. Maybe not a series; I'm not sure. But I've got the perfect stand alone novel for him, and yes, folks, this one's a real honest-to-goodness murder mystery. Jewish perspective, yes, but not religiously so. If you've read "Saturdays," it's Coby post-police academy but without the encounter with Mike and Dan. (I have to take some writer's license, right?)

Meanwhile, I've been writing articles and shorter pieces (though obviously not blogging recently. Sorry about that!). One well-researched piece that I'm particularly fond of on the mitzvah of welcoming guests will be published in early January 2008; I should be able to either reprint it here or put in the link as soon as it's out.

I gave a 1-hour multi-media lecture last month on electronic marketing, or as I like to call it, "Book Marketing for Introverts." Due to responses to the lecture, I'm compiling my info along with other resources I've found for a small book. No release date for certain yet, but those who've read my articles on e-marketing (see my many posts on the MIPA blog) have said if the book were out now, they'd buy it sight unseen.

Pretty cool. I like hearing that.

I hope everyone had a meaningful and heroic Chanuka (or at least a nice time), and I'll be back soon. (Bug me if you don't hear from me at least once a week!)

I Gotta' Love You Rosh Hashanah

This video was sent to me recently asking, among other things, for my take on it.

So here's my thought:

The lyrics bear listening to. “Yom Kippur leaves me feeling empty inside.” Wow. That’s not good. Why, I wonder? “Passover reminds me of the tears that we cried.” Okay, that makes sense. Sad, but sense.

So, Yom Kippur = empty
Passover = sad
Rosh Hashanah = date night?

Well… why not? To overuse an already overused cliché, it’s thinking outside the box.

And THEN, I started thinking about one image – just one single image, the first image that comes to mind (oh, let’s be Freudian, shall we?) – for each of the major holidays.

Pesach. Easy. The moment when I was 15 and dipping parsley in salt water and really truly crying because for the first time in my life I finally felt HOME.

Yom Kippur. Also easy. Hearing Kol Nidre in a rich baritone voice and feeling like every nerve is on fire, like somehow this voice, this song, this moment is a fragile, precious reaching out from our most vulnerable to the divine.

Rosh Hashana. Not so easy. I want to say hearing the shofar, or apples and honey or something nice. But the first image that comes to mind… I’m sorry to say it… is what feels like interminable hours of standing and sitting and standing again and maybe getting to sit for a bit and then more standing. And then, exhausted at the end of the first day, my only thought is “You want me to do this AGAIN?”

Or the alternative… think about it a new way. When my feet feel like they want to fall off and I’m just not feeling that into it and I’m prayed out for the hour or the day and I just want to go home, would it be so bad to silently groove to “R to the O to the S to the H to the…”? I might do it. I just might.

Why can’t Rosh Hashana be like a date, that exciting newness of it all, a special “dinner” of apples and honey and wine, of coming “home” and seeing with new eyes, hearing with new ears, letting go of the past and embracing the Book of Life? Especially if it lands folks in shul. And especially if people look forward to it as Rosh Hashana and not simply “Thursday.”

R to the O to the S to the H to the HASHANAH...

What are your thoughts?

Shana Tova!

I've been running around doing the Headless Chicken Dance the past few days, but I want to extend a warm Shana Tova to all of you. Your support and comments and feedback have been wonderful and I look forward to sharing with you in the new year!

Shana tova u'metuka!

OMIGOSH! I'm in the NEW YORK TIMES?!

YES!

I just received an email from Lisa Hamilton, a fellow author interested in both books and beliefs, asking about my blog here, and mentioning that she read a reference to Books and Beliefs in yesterday's New York Times.

She WHAT? My blog is WHERE?

She is right. Sunday, September 2, the New York Times ran an article about author Amy Cohen's blog tour for The Late Bloomer's Revolution, in which I'd participated not long ago. The full article is titled "The Author Will Take Q.'s Now" by Kara Jesella. And there it is, paragraph six.

Wow.

Well, that totally made my day, and I owe big thanks to Lisa Hamilton, without whom I wouldn't have known it was out there. Her book, I should mention, is due out later this month, and called Wisdom From the Middle Ages for Middle-aged Women and Amazon.com classifies it as Christian (Anglican) fiction.

Thanks, Lisa! And wheeeeee!