I’ve been incredibly fortunate with Harper, who took the time to ask me my thoughts about the original cover and made sure to get it right. 

The paperback is in the capable hands of Harper Perennial, which is known for their paperback editions of new and young fiction and non-fiction authors and their nail-it-every-dang-time editions of classic novels (including some that are featured in The Heroine’s Bookshelf). 

When my editor told me the paperback division wanted to take a stab at a new cover, I sucked in a deep breath.  But I love the first cover!  Uncertainty!  Strife!  But when the cover you see here was presented to me, I was overcome by not just relief, but a giddy feeling.  The paperback cover feels fresh, thrilling, and plenty booky.  Bonus:  it has gorgeous fonts AND a blurb from the fascinating and wonderful Wendy McClure, whose The Wilder Life is a can’t-miss for Laura Ingalls Wilder fans and those who want to know more about the Little House books. 

So…here it is! I hope you like it.  And I hope you’ll be around on November 15 to celebrate the paperback release. 

Click to enlarge.

Actually, my love affair with the crazy publishing industry started long before I got my debut book deal.  I’ve spent years poring over Publishers Lunch, following the gossip on Galleycat, and getting to know the wild and wooly industry that is ever-changing, fickle, absorbing, intense, and lovable Publishing, capital P.  But as usual, book-learnin’ doesn’t always serve me well…real-life experience is a much better (and harsher) teacher.

Here are ten things that have really surprised me during this process:

The Rollercoaster.  Yes, I’ve read a billion debut authors talking about the emotional rollercoaster of the publication process.  Every one of them is telling the truth.  One day you get a review saying your book reads like a crappy book report.  The next day, your book is featured as the day’s obsession on Vogue Italia.  Prepare for high highs and LOW lows.

The Collaboration.  I can’t even begin to think or thank the people who collaborated on the book’s publication.  Seeing a book come into the world was all the more amazing because I was surrounded by capable and concerned midwives.

The Waiting.  Oh, the waiting.  Hurry up and wait is the name of this game.  I’m not sure I’ve developed patience (yet), but I have at least come to expect lots of lags, then times of intense activity.  Which reminds me that…

It’s Not Personal.  What?  It’s not all about me?! This book is my baby, my late-night confession, a true expression of me as a person.  And yet to others, it’s an item they buy at the store.  I’m always surprised at how the ups and downs of this industry aren’t personal at all…despite all of my crazy tendencies to anthropomorphize.

My Day Job Isn’t Going Anywhere.  That is a good thing, my friends.  But it also pokes at the illusion that a Writer, capital W, need not worry about things like where her next meal is coming from.  Yeah.

Gratitude Is Not Enough.  Am I grateful for every reader, every reviewer, and every person who’s been so fundamental to The Heroine’s Bookshelf?  Oh, yes.  Do I have to show up on my own and my book’s behalf every single day?  Yeah.  It’s not enough to be grateful…there’s a lot of hard work to do before and after promo.

Gratitude Is Everything.  I always thought that Real Authors (!) sent thank-you cards to everyone they ever came in touch with and were polite and grateful as much as possible.  But the reactions of the publishing pros I’ve come across have been surprising…and revealing.  Shockingly, very few authors actually take the time to thank and acknowledge others in their process, to the extent that it’s surprising when they actually do so.  I’ve learned that a bit of politeness goes a long way…and makes my life that much more pleasant.

Work Fills The Space I Give It.  Any illusion that writing the book was the end of this process for me was shattered when I realized that copyedits, media junkets, correspondence, appearances, advertisements, and all kinds of supplication of others to buy my book, please, were on the schedule for the forseeable future.  I have made my peace with this, but it can be kind of shocking to the writer in me who would like to disappear back behind her screen, please.

I’m Really Self-Critical.  Okay, maybe this isn’t super surprising, but wow.  Nothing brings out Erin’s Inner Critic like putting my writing out there for the world.  At the moment, I can only work to counter this tendency…and I’m surprising myself all the time.

You All Rock.  I was so scared of running afoul of fans of the books I tackle in The Heroine’s Bookshelf…so terrified of conflict with my fellow writers and the people in The Industry.  Know what?  You have consistently surprised me with your openness, your charm, your dedication, your collaboration, your love of reading, and your amazingness.  It goes beyond your beautiful gifts and the amazing letters you’ve sent me.  It goes all the way to the root of what true friendship and camaraderie can mean.  And that’s the most pleasant surprise of all.

Fellow writers…what has surprised you most about this journey?

Favorite book moment of the week:

Literary challenge of the week:  Fear.  Yup…same old same old.  The cursor on the blank screen.  A half-baked idea itching to be refined and expressed.  My mantra:  I’m the only one who can do the work in front of me, and I have much support and many opportunities on the horizon.  After all, the scarier a piece of work is, the more deserving it is of my attention…right?  Right?  Besides, what better practice for The Glamour of Writing (Not): Romance and Writing In Spite of It All at the Boulder Writers Meetup? 

Review/testament of the week:  Tiffany says “I love love pink puffy heart love this book.”  Cue loving expression on my face.*

Current favorite “customers who bought this item also bought” pairing on Amazon: Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life, by Pamela Smith Hill.  Amazing.

This time ten years ago: I was rocking out as the lead singer of an indie rock band in Hollywood.  I am serious.  Oh, how things have changed…

Current personal heroine: Carlina White, the young woman who just found her birth parents after being abducted in a hospital when she was 19 days old.  Not only did she have the guts to doubt the lies she had been told about her life, but she found the courage and perseverance to actually act on those doubts.  23 years later, she’s been reunited with her parents and, I hope, will begin to tackle the task of reconstructing her life and self with the fortitude she showed in questioning her own identity.

*Wonder what the heck she’s talking about? Go to your local indie bookstore or buy The Heroine’s Bookshelf online and let me know what you think!

Favorite book moment of the week:

Review/testament of the week: I had the great pleasure of speaking to the first-ever Heroine’s Book Club at the Burke County Public Library in Morganton, NC on Saturday.  The topic was Louisa May Alcott, and one of the ladies had very nice things to say about how I addressed the author’s life along with that of her heroine.  Still beaming over here. *

Current favorite “customers who bought this item also bought” pairing on Amazon: Skippy Dies: A Novel, by Paul Murray.  I had the pleasure of hearing the Macmillan/Faber & Faber rep talk about this book at the Boulder Book Store’s book club event and it’s been inching its way up my crazy to-read list ever since.

This time two years ago: I was furiously working on the book proposal that would become The Heroine’s Bookshelf.  The more things change…

Current personal heroine: Tavia Gilbert!  You may know her as the incredible woman who voiced The Heroine’s Bookshelf in audio form for Blackstone (and what a job she did).  I had the privilege of meeting her on The Littlest Book Tour, and she is not only well-spoken, beautiful, and whip-smart, but she works on bettering herself and expressing herself every single day.  What more can you want in a real-life heroine, I ask?

*Wonder what the heck she’s talking about? Go to your local indie bookstore or buy The Heroine’s Bookshelf online and let me know what you think!

Review of the week: How could I not love this one? “PLEASE, if I ever decide to write a book—let me write like Erin Blakemore!!” writes Oregon Kimm at Fall In Love With Books. “[It's] no deep commitment to read [the book] cover to cover-—just gems of wisdom tucked away, begging for discovery as the need arises.” Thanks for your kind words, Kimm.  I’m honored that you liked the book and will be sharing it with friends.*

Current favorite “customers who bought this item also bought” pairing on Amazon: I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar. Looks like someone knows me too well.

This time last year: I was revising the book on a tight deadline, surrounded by piles of paper, mounds of Post-Its, and an economy-sized load of insecurity.

Current personal heroine: My business partner Juli, who balances big commitments with a commitment to herself…and looks damn good doing it.

*Wonder what the heck she’s talking about? Go to your local indie bookstore or buy The Heroine’s Bookshelf online and let me know what you think!

“Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”
Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

It’s that time of the year.  The time when your impossibly put-together friends announce that they are going to accomplish a Huge Goal in 2011 and then proceed to do so with a minimum of stress, pain, or evident strife.  I usually fall on the other side of the spectrum, looking toward goals but nervous about announcing them, doing what I can and lamenting what I can’t and somehow accomplishing a bunch in the middle.

However.

It has come to my attention that I’m in need of some next steps in terms of my literary career.  (I just almost typed that phrase, moved away from the keyboard, did some busywork, returned, and typed it slowly.  Oh, dear.)  Nothing earth-shattering…it’s just time I looked at what I really want, what’s next, and how I can get from Point A to Point B.

I was talking to a friend about it last night and she said “2009 you would weep over the Facebook status updates of 2010 you.”

She’s right:  2010 was a hugely productive, accomplished, and important year, and though it whipped me down it also built me up in many unexpected ways.  The best part?  Discovering my literary tribe through the readers, bloggers, book-lovers, reviewers, and allies flung all over the world…the people to whom I owe my greatest debt.  Now I get to take all of you into consideration as I ponder my literary future, too, and that is a privilege.

Anyway, my conversation with my friend reminded me that I have other allies, too…the women who wrote my favorite books and whose lives I was privileged to study and write about in The Heroine’s Bookshelf. As I look forward, I can remember that Charlotte Brontë wrote her way through grief and took an active role in her publishing career; that Betty Smith used her writing to catapult her out of the slums of Brooklyn and as a window back in.  My literary heroines spent less time agonizing over the direction of their careers than finding work they couldn’t not do.  Armed with that work, you guys, and a whole history of female writers, I think I’m well-equipped for a new day.

Footnote:  If you haven’t seen it yet, check out The Heroine’s Bookshelf as reviewed on the front page of The Washington Post’s BookWorld.  And stay tuned…I’ve got something really fun up my sleeve for February!

It has come! I thought it had come that other morning, but it was only coming. It is here now!

- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

I can’t believe I’m posting this.  At long last, The Heroine’s Bookshelf is in stores!

Though technically this journey began when I signed my contract with Harper last June, it’s been a far longer road.  From book-obsessed child who wrote on every surface and piece of paper available to her to struggling freelancer with something to prove to failed book-proposer discontented with her lot…I can’t begin to express how much I’ve grown and changed from the day long ago when I declared I was going to write a book.

More than anything, I’ve come to appreciate publishing as a collaborative process, a huge team effort between editor, agent, publicist, designer, sales staff, special sales, library relations, marketing, and much more.  This writer has been supported by so many friends, family members, mentors, teachers, colleagues, and fans who have become friends that it is impossible to begin to express my many debts of gratitude.

If you are reading this:  thank you.  I can’t tell you what an honor it is to be on this journey with so many kindred spirits.

Since news coverage is coming in fast and furious, I’ll probably start doing a “today’s news” summary so you can keep track of my many guest posts and appearances.  Today, I encourage you to…

…check out The Heroine’s Bookshelf in the New York Post, Denver Post, Boulder Daily Camera, Skirt! and BronteBlog

...take a moment to visit the website’s new book club feature

…come see me at my very first reading at the Boulder Book Store tonight at 7:30, and

…enter to win The Heroine’s Bookshelf on Goodreads or LibraryThing!

In the meantime, please congratulate Christina, Dana, Julie, cc, and Faith, all of whom won a galley of The Heroine’s Bookshelf!  I’ll be contacting all winners anon.

So, speaking of scary things…I want to write about something very un-heroinely.  I want to write about fear.

I try to avoid the stereotype of the slovenly, absentminded and paralyzed as much as possible (ha ha ha), but when I think about fear and the writing/publication process, many a moment comes to mind.

• The fear of anyone else reading my writing because I worried it wasn’t good enough…The fear of sending off a query letter to the person who ended up being my agent and then the fear of actually speaking with him once he expressed interest in my work…The fear that I was headed nowhere after my first book died on the marketing table of several major houses and went the way of many a great book idea…The fear that my career was over before it had even begun and that my agent would dump me because he had invested approximately 52 billion hours into me and gotten exactly $0.00 in return…The fear that my new idea wasn’t good enough…The fear that my proposal wasn’t good enough (are you sensing a theme?)…The fear that nobody would buy it, even when we had OFFERS ON THE TABLE…The fear that the contract would get jacked up due to factors beyond anyone’s control (not sure where this one came from)…The fear that I couldn’t write something book length that anyone but a mother would love…The fear of the editorial process…The fear of the copyediting process…The fear of the sales meeting happening and somehow being a disaster even though it had jack to do with me and I would never hear about its outcome…The fear that I would hate my cover or that it would somehow hate me…The fear that the Laura Ingalls Wilder fans would hate me…

ET CETERA, ET AL. I could list these events and moments ad infinitum, forever and ever, amen.  I cite them now because I really thought maybe I was getting over this constant fear thing, and then I faced…The Author Questionnaire.  This is a document you need to fill out to populate your author site with great juicy content for your hordes of admiring fans.  It also is The Harbinger of Fear!  For example:  it asks questions like “what is your best quality?”

Um.

Cue crickets and agog look of utter foolish muteness.  Repeat 100 times.

The thing about fear, at least my flavor of fear, is that it’s not really rational so it doesn’t do to say “oh, be brave!” or “it will pass!”  Imaginative people like to imagine byzantine and complex doomsday scenarios, and I am no different.  I’m really, really good at creating a mental landscape that is even barer than Jane Eyre’s moor, over which I must drag my wrecked, shattered body with not a soul or friend to comfort me.  Can you tell that melodrama plays a part in my fears?  Mm-hmm.

There is good news, however.  Despite fear rearing its melodramatic head, I remembered the lessons of my own book (holy cow) when faced with that blinking cursor, my old companion. For a split second, I thought about Jo March running in to see Mr. Lawrence and of Jane never flinching when Pilot growled and of Anne Shirley valiantly sailing to her near-death as the stricken Elaine…and I bucked up and filled out the survey.  That looks really, really anticlimactic, but I think it’s important for writers to talk about the ugly side of this process, the fear of the unknown and the weirdness that can occasionally strike even when All Your Dreams Have Come True.  And, just to bring everything full circle, one of the things that draws me back to my favorite heroines and authors again and again is my curiosity to see just how they’ll face fear in their lives, fictitious or real.

In the midst of all that bookish goodness came more bookish news…The Heroine’s Bookshelf has a new cover!  Due to the many machinations of the publishing industry, a new cover was in order, and I think it’s really lovely.  The book will be in hardcover and I can’t wait to see the final iteration.  Many thanks to Christine Van Bree and the folks over at Harper for their patience, savvy, and attention to detail.  Here’s the new cover (click for huge version):

Still, sometimes news arrives to sweeten the pot.  Yesterday I found out that Italian rights to The Heroine’s Bookshelf have been sold to Orme!

As I plot the Italian adventures of a book that used to be just me and a blinking cursor, I’ve been keeping (very) busy.  I guest blogged for Jesaka Long on roller derby and work/writing balance, and I even contributed a Little Women-themed page to GalleyCat’s World’s Longest Literary Remix.

What’s keeping your mind in the good life these days?