I make these pacts with myself, like no blogging or knitting until I finish re-editing Daughter of the Bright Moon and get it uploaded to Closed Circle. Then life happens, Daughter lingers, and Face of Chaos languishes.
No more!
Just before midnight EDT (and sometimes I think I’m the only living soul who isn’t just thrilled that Daylight Savings Time starts so early now and last so very long….like we need more summer in Florida) and with Jane’s inestimable help, Daughter of the Bright Moon magically appeared on the virtual shelves of Closed Circle. It’s for sale…here!
It’s even got a new cover that I assembled myself
Assembled being the operative word. Unlike Jane and CJ, I’m not much of a visual artist. My new cover started with an image that had been the chapter heading for Daughter’s original ACE edition. Usually authors don’t have the rights to any of the artwork associated with their books, but the chapter heading is an exception….and a story in itself.
I was living in Ann Arbor, MI when I sold Daughter to Jim Baen at ACE, but I hadn’t been living there long and before that I’d lived in New York City. In NYC, I worked in the home office of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., located at 1 Madison Ave. The ACE offices were right around the corner, on E25th St, as I recall. (Like many new authors, I made the ritual pilgrimage to visit my editor in his office once the contracts had been signed and he took me out for the ritual editorial dinner at a very nice restaurant near the ACE offices, which went somewhat awry when the maitre’d recognized me from my MetLife days but didn’t recognize Jim at all….but I digress.)
Anyway, I worked for MetLife largely because my dad worked for MetLife. He wasn’t based in the home office, but he knew his way around 1 Madison Ave. and when he learned where his daughter’s publisher was located, he paid them a visit. The first, and perhaps only, time that an author’s father paid a surprise visit to the ACE offices. He asked lots of questions and, remarkably, got a good many answers, including the name of the artist who’d be doing the interior illustrations.
I don’t think anyone expected that he and my mom would drive to New Jersey to visit Steve Fabian to see how those illustrations were progressing…then, again, they didn’t know my dad all that well. Steve flat-out confessed that he’d never had an author visit his studio, much less an author’s parents. Fortunately for all concerned, by the time of the visit, the ACE art department had returned the illustrations. My dad bought two of them, framed them, and gave them to me for Christmas; they hang on the wall not ten feet from where I’m sitting right now. But Steve gave my dad the chapter illo, with reproduction rights included. I’ve used it on my business cards and stationery every since, and I’m very happy to see it, at long last, on Daughter’s cover.
Yay! Heading over to purchase now…
Cool story. So, helicopter parents existed before the 2000′s?
Just bought. Will read before next Monday — sometime.
Not so much “helicopter” as curious. My paternal grandmother was of the opinion that her curiosity was always worth sating. I don’t know from whom she inherited this belief, but it’s been thoroughly fixed into the Abbey DNA
Congratulations on Daughter of the Bright Moon…..unfortunately due to some unexpected expenses I wll not be able to purchase anything until april…(still…..the advantages of retirement far outweigh the disadvantages!
)
Love your account of parents and publishing and NO you are not the only one who thinks DST has gone out of control……SAD becomes a lot easier when the sun is up by 6:00 am………so much for that!
Are you going to post any travel pics? in all your ‘free’ time.
This is what makes Closed Circle so great. Once a story goes up on Closed Circle, it doesn’t go away. Buy it now, buy it next week, buy it next year…nothing changes.
The backlist is dead…
Long live the backlist!
Great!
I shall start reading it this evening which, fortunately, comes rather faster in London than it does in Florida…
Lynn,
Thanks for providing “Daughter.” I’m at work now but intend to start the download as soon as I get home to my computer and Kindle.
You’re not alone in despising Daylight Savings Time. The whole state of Arizona ignores the change. It makes so much more sense to allow early morning use of sunlight while temps are still moderate rather than down-right hot! Right now the sun rises about 6:30 for us and that is great although 5:30 is even better! Now comes the part of the year when we’re on Pacific Daylight time rather than Mountain. All the programming on my DVR needs to be adjusted because it’s not smart enough to record the show rather than a program at the time the show was on throughout the winter.
I should amend my statement about the whole state of Arizona… The Navajo nation does convert to MDT because their capital is in New Mexico which changes. The Hopi Nation (wholly within the Navajo Nation) does not change, so it can get confusing at times depending on where you are.
According to the Internets (which we know are god-smacked truthful), it was a Native American, perhaps from Arizona, who said —
‘Only a white man would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom of a blanket and have a longer blanket.’
I didn’t mind DST so much when I lived in Michigan, where if summer happens on a weekend we have a picnic, but here in Florida it marks the symbolic beginning of “Rising Summer” (our version of Spring), and I really don’t need the reminder.
hahaha! Great story, Lynn! Love it — thanks for sharing!