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?

Let’s go back to some time last year…my editor asked me if I had any ideas for covers and I faltered.  I told her I LOVE the Penguin Classics series even though the silhouettes aren’t quite representative of the stories within.  She agreed that they’re great and instructed the designer to do girly, with a hint of nostalgia.  The first draft is to your left (click for larger version):

As you can see, the color and aging are TO DIE FOR.  But after talking to my agent, I wondered if it wasn’t a bit too nostalgic.  Part of the point of The Heroine’s Bookshelf is that these books are relevant today, and we worried that it might be skewing a bit to the über-reflective side without meaning to.

Luckily, my editor is a peach.  She not only listened to our reservations, but actively solicited our feedback.

Cue more waiting.  Much more waiting.  I began to dread the worst (though no news apparently is good news…)  And then, yesterday, this arrived in my inbox (lower right; click for swoonworthy detail):

Is it not just to die for?  I love the fact that it’s girly without a trace of pink…that the linen texture evokes nostalgia while somehow seeming fresh in its contemporary silhouette frame.  I love the colors and how they’ll pop off the shelf.  I LOVE IT.  My agent immediately wrote and asked if I liked it…I wrote back “I am sitting here clapping my hands and crying.  So…yes.”

It’s so interesting to see the ways in which the second cover retained some of the feel of the original one, including the blue and nostalgic detail, while coming completely into the now.

I’ve imagined how my name would look on the cover of my first book since I was old enough to read…now thanks to my extremely able and efficient team at Harper and to the extremely talented Christine Van Bree, my wildest dreams have been satisfied and surpassed.  After hearing so many horror stories of writers whose covers have felt like a violation or a messy afterthought, I feel doubly blessed…and I hope my readers will like it as much as I do.

Be patient, Jo, don’t get despondent or do rash things, write to me often, and be my brave girl, ready to help and cheer all.

- Marmee’s last words as she leaves to take care of Father in Washington, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

When I update my friends and (gulp) fans about book progress, there always seem to be a million unanswered questions.  Is there a cover yet?  Have you seen it in print?  When will it be in stores?  Have any of the foreign rights sold?  How will you possibly wait until October to hold your book in your hands?  Believe me, these are questions I share, too.

From sale (May 1, 2009) to publication (October 19, 2010) will have been just about a year and six months.  But before that came an even longer wait…three years of having an agent and no book to sell, years before that writing books that will (thank God) never see the light of day, waiting, working, and more waiting.  And I’m one of the lucky ones.  So many writers wait what seems like eons before finding the right publisher or agent for their work, before honing their craft or moving on or finding their perfect project.

Like Jo March, patience has never exactly been my strong suit.  I am quick to solidify an impression and even quicker to get flustered when things don’t go my way.  So this entire process has been an exercise in self-control.  Now that the years seem to speed by like unruly comets, I know that October will be here before I know it.  My challenge is to fill the wait with both enjoyment (this is my only time to enjoy being a first-time author, to experience the mystery of seeing my debut come into the world) and productivity (it’s time to get cracking on other projects so there is some kind of literary future ahead of me).  When people used to ask me about being a writer, my first question would be “how hard are you willing to work?”  Now I add “how are you at the whole waiting thing?” to the mix.  A heroine might not always be patient, but she can learn to love the wait, right?

Here’s the deal report from PM *beam*:

March 5, 2010:  Audio rights
Erin Blakemore’s THE HEROINE’S BOOKSHELF, a look at literature’s greatest and most enduring female characters — such as Jo March, Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet, Laura Ingalls and others — and their authors, who have helped shape the inner lives of generations of women, teasing out universal tenets of strength, wisdom, and survival, to Blackstone Audio, for publication in November 2010, by Janice Suguitan at Harper.