Exhaust(ed): The Book!

I thought it was about time to finish Exhaust(ed) this week. I put it on my to-do list.

1. laundry
2. buy feed
3. finish taxes
4. vacuum
5. write epilogue
6. publish book

Formatting and editing the book was really intense. It required so much concentration, that I forgot to eat, I forgot to shovel the snow outside, and I forgot I had a child to pick up at school. The phone rang and I let it ring, busily editing away. When the person on the answering machine said she was the school secretary, I thought at first that Little Z must be sick, and I should go pick her up. But no. It was after school, and she needed a ride! My internal clock was about three hours off. I was that much in the zone. I felt terrible!

When I picked her up, though, she was quite happy. When we delivered eggs that evening, Little Z was sure to tell all of our egg customers,

"My mom left me at school today!"

Later that night, I thought I had finished uploading the book, but there were no pictures! The computer ate them or something. Computers are finicky creatures. Sometimes they start to feel under appreciated and stuff. Then they are real emotional eaters, and they eat your work. Christina McMullen to the rescue! She told me basically what I needed to do was to figure out virtual zippers, but it was too late. I went to bed.

And then yesterday, I figured it out- Huzzah! You have to zip the words and the pictures together, and put them in a bundle, and deliver them to the internet tubes like that. Otherwise, the pictures get eaten.

After a day and a half of editing, I was a bit mentally frazzled, and it was then that I was faced with writing my book description, but I had no words left. I just sat and stared at the screen. It's a strange thing to describe your own work, in a way that is honest and yet makes people want to buy it. I mean, I guess I would buy it, but describing exactly why I would buy it was difficult. In the end, I took the most flattering quote from someone who had read the serialized version on line here,

“It’s like Jack Kerouac meets a nicer, more whimsical Hunter S. Thompson...”

My violin teacher said that! He's so nice.

I also wanted to express my appreciation to all of you who read the blog, and especially all of you who commented on the different chapters. I have written books before, but I had trouble writing with no immediate audience. The comments kept me going. I can't tell you how much I appreciated them! So, page three or four is this:



You guys are the best. Seriously.

So, hey! Here's the book! For the price of a magazine. You will find that Chapter two changed a little bit, and then you have a 20,000 or so word epilogue, complete with a silly picture that you have never seen before.

Also, remember I am donating 39 cents from each sale to The Sun Magazine. If you have never read The Sun, it is imperative that you start reading it right away- right after you finish Exhaust(ed)! They run on donations, and I think having no ads is part of what makes them one of the best things around. Writers learn to write mostly by reading, and I'm not kidding when I say The Sun taught me how to write.

Okay, enough of that! You'd better go and buy that book and read the final chapter! (By the way, if you don't have a Kindle, it doesn't matter. You can read it on whatever you're looking at right now.)

Many thanks to all of you.