My Publishing Journey--Part 11

I hope you all had a nice holiday. Now let's get back to business! BTW, I'm teaching a 6 week novel writing class in Northern Utah County starting in January.

Read Part 10 here

My Publishing Journey

Part 11

2009 was a banner year as far as writing awards. Abinadi won the Whitney for Best Historical and also Best of State in Literary Arts. I was surprised on both accounts, first on the Whitney because the competition was quite fierce (and I had won the Whitney the year before, so I thought voters would be looking for a fresh author), and on the Best of State because of the religious and very “LDS” nature of the book.

When I had tried to buy a radio spot for Abinadi on the local radio station, KSL, and have the radio host, Doug Wright, do the live read, I was told my book was “too religious” even for the Utah market. I could have a commercial produced and aired, but not read by Doug Wright or it would sound like he was endorsing a religious book. Pretty ridiculous if you ask me. So I guess having it win Best of State was a bit of a victory in that light.

In the summer of 2009, I also received the good news that my non-fiction book, Women of the Book of Mormon, had been accepted. There was a clincher though—it would be released for the next “Gospel Doctrine Book of Mormon” year in . . . 2012.

My publisher’s reasoning was that it would sell better when it was aligned with the proper Gospel Doctrine year.

I don’t know how many of you have seen the movie “2012” but it’s quite clear that the world is coming to an end around that date. I emailed my editor and in a semi-joking manner said that I might be dead by 2012. Or even worse (or better, depending on how you look at it), the world would end and Women would never be published. Also, (I continued to state my case) who really goes to Gospel Doctrine? For me, personally, I’ve been in primary or Sunday School for at least a decade and I’m sorry to say, I really don’t follow the Gospel Doctrine lessons. BUT . . . I do read the Book of Mormon regularly, by myself, and with my children, no matter what “year” it is in Gospel Doctrine.

I don’t know if my editor appreciated my humor, but she said I had great ideas and she’d sent them to the managing editor. (Wait! I didn’t really expect that and then started second-guessing myself. Oh well. Too late.)

The fall passed and I finished writing Alma the Younger and turned that in. On the third week of December, the managing editor called me and told me that they’d accepted Alma the Younger and it would come out in June (instead of the regular fall release I’d had for 6 years). That was a surprise. I took a gamble and asked if “Women” was still coming out in 2012. No, she said, it was coming out in April. 4 months away! It turns out that I found out before my editor did.

This meant that the design department was putting in holiday hours to get permissions on all the artwork that would go into the book (12-13 paintings). Press deadline was the first week of January. I spent Christmas Eve going through copyedit revisions while my husband took the kids out.

I never received the official answer for the early release date (by 2 years!), but I was VERY grateful when Women sold out of its first printing in 2 weeks. That was a record for me, and my publisher was very excited as well. It also proved to me that the Book of Mormon is a subject that can be sold regardless of the Gospel Doctrine schedule.

On a funny note, for those of you who think it’s glamorous to be a mother and a writer, I dropped in at my publishers just as the Design Director got back the proof sheets for “Women”. She saw me in the lobby and came out to show me them. They were made up of 3’x3’ sheets of paper with the book laid out—I can’t remember what she called the proofs. I had left my 2 girls in the car for a couple of minutes, and apparently, they started arguing. While I was standing around a host of editors and designers, marveling at my new book, my five year old suddenly stepped inside, calling out in a very loud voice, “Shut up!” to her sister, who’d remained in the car. (#4 kid gets away with a lot more, that’s for sure)

I put a big smile on my face and said, “I’d like you all to meet my daughter!”

My Publishing Journey--Part 10

Read Part 9 Here


My Publishing Journey

Part 10

A few months before Abinadi came out, I was sitting around doing nothing (kidding). But I did decide that now that I had 5 books almost out, perhaps I had developed enough of a platform to write on a non-fiction topic: Women of the Book of Mormon.

I often have readers tell me that they are grateful I’ve used women characters in my book since we hear so little about the women in the Book of Mormon. I agreed, but was I the one to do the research? Yes, I’d researched Sariah and a couple of the other women for various presentations I’d given, but was it enough to write an entire book?

Later, when I told my tax accountant that I had a book coming out on Women of the Book of Mormon, he said, “What is it, 5 pages long?”

The book ended up about 75 pages in manuscript form, and it took my nearly a year to write and research it. When I took the first chapter to critique group, they said it was reading rather dry. So I knew I had to make it more into a storytelling style—or essay style and not just a list of facts. So I got to work. I turned in the book the summer of 2009.

While slowly researching and writing “Women”, I worked on Alma. I ran into a snag while writing Alma, which is kind of interesting. Writers call it “writing into a corner” where you don’t know how to get out of it. I finally found a way out, but the plot had to get pretty creative. Originally I had the title for this book as Alma the Elder, but the publisher decided to have it plain “Alma” since he didn’t have any children born yet to make him an “elder”.

Alma was scheduled for a Fall 2009 release, and as soon as I got “Women” turned in, I started the next novel, Alma the Younger.

Alma the Younger was a bit of a different process. Yes, there would be the plot to follow in the book of Alma, but I had to make some character decisions about Alma the Younger. The book would ultimately turn out to be a character-driven book. I knew that some of my regular reviewers wouldn’t like the story angle, and I was right. In fact one reviewer posted on Goodreads why she wouldn’t be reviewing the book in her regular column. Researching Alma the Younger showed that he was a truly wicked and vile man, and I didn’t gloss over any of his wickedness. This book was darker than my other books, and harder to write for that reason. It wasn’t a happy “feel-good” book and covered some very difficult issues. It was writing about an antagonist who was also the protagonist of the story. I had one lady at a book signing say that she didn’t want to read about the redemption of a prophet, but just about the good things he did—not about the struggles it took him to get there. She didn’t want to have any bad thoughts about him.

But I was okay with that. The point of telling about Alma the Younger’s fall into the dark abyss and his eventual rise to become a righteous leader is perhaps a beacon of hope for many of us who might find ourselves in the depths of despair. And I’d already heard the worst on the book from a copyeditor. (A copyeditor is one of the final editors who proofs the manuscript for typos, grammar, and inconsistencies.) Going through the copyedit, I immediately sensed she didn’t care for the story. I discovered I was right when at the very end of the edit she proclaimed, “This book will kill your series.” (Which, by the way, statements like that are NOT in the job description of a professional copyeditor.)

I think it gave my editor pause—she second-guessed herself, wondering with all the work she’d done, she had been missing something. I said to my editor, “What was your first impression when you read the story?” She said, “I loved it.” I said, “Let’s go with that.”

Whatever the struggles I had with Alma the Younger, they were all completely erased when this review (by a non-member, no less), came in.

My Publishing Journey--Part 9

Some updates: I turned in my next manuscript today (Daughters of Jared). Also, check out my holiday book signing schedule on the sidebar.


Read Part 8 Here



My Publishing Journey

Part 9

Writing the next book proved to be an interesting experience. For those of you familiar with the story of Abinadi, he is a man who is asked by God to preach to a group of wicked people. Abinadi warns them that if they don’t repent, the Lord will destroy them. They, of course, throw him out of the city and King Noah threatens his life. 2 years later, the Lord asks Abinadi to return. Abinadi knows it’s a death sentence and is eventually captured and executed. Not a cheerful story to tell.

I had planned all along to write in the point of view of Alma (high priest in King Noah’s court) as well. I had planned for him to take up a chapter here and there, but as I started writing, he really nosed his way in and tried to take over the book. His character became an equal secondary character with as much storyline as the main character, Abinadi.

I also didn’t know who Helam was until about 200 pages into the story. I decided to make him Abinadi’s brother and so had to go back through the book and weave his character in. Helam ended up becoming quite pivotal to this book, as well as the sequel (Alma).

Several changes were in the works when I turned in Abinadi. I had a new editor and the book wasn’t coming out in hardcover. Also, my publisher wanted to move away from “series titles,” so although Abinadi would technically be the beginning of a next series, it would be promoted as a stand-alone book.

I was now on my 3rd editor. Ironically, my 2nd editor became the contract editor on Abinadi (even though when she was my editor, a contract editor did “Land of Inheritance”).

There was no real debate on the title for Abinadi. It was going to stay plain and simple. The editing process went very smoothly and there were no real glitches. During 2007-2008 you might remember that the economy took a massive plunge (due to those high gasoline prices). This trickled into all industries including the publishing industry. Reports were coming in that Simon and Schuster had laid-off 125 employees. It was felt by everyone and trickled into the smaller presses as well. Many friends of mine were having book contracts canceled or release dates pushed back.

I was lucky enough that Abinadi retained a 2008 release date, but only barely. It was pushed to November. This wasn’t so fun for promotion since I really only had about 4-5 weeks of promoting before the holiday season ended. So I went out on a limb (money limb) and purchased an ad on the local radio station (KSL). I first paid for the radio personality to do a live read of the advertising copy. Then I was told that he couldn’t do a live read because my book was too religious (translate “too Mormon”). I guess even in Utah, that becomes an issue. So the radio station produced the commercial instead of the live-read.

The only thing that really caused me a bit anxiety with Abinadi was the cover image. It was literally not finished until a couple of days before the book was released. How can that be so? It seems that a book can go to press, then later the cover is glued on. But I never had the cover image in advance to do any sort of pre-promotion.

My editor asked me for character descriptions because they were thinking of photographing live models for the cover. In my opinion, it would have resulted in poor sales, since it would either look like a YA novel or a Romance novel. That same weekend I was at a book signing and browsed through the covers. I found a couple of other historical novels that had live model pictures and asked the employees if the men picked up these books and bought them. The resounding answer was “no.” My publisher and I had gone to all the work of changing my name to H.B. Moore to attract the male audience, and now with the Abinadi cover, there was potential to alienate them.

So about midnight that night, I wrote my editor, telling her all the reasons why I didn’t want Abinadi to have live models on the cover. They ended using one, but it was just the “tied hands” and looked great. I guess I just needed a little more confidence.

Abinadi would eventually go on to win a Whitney Award for Best Historical (which was a shocker since I’d won the year before with Land of Inheritance), and it also won 2009 Best of State in Literary Arts.

My favorite reader response about Abinadi came from my son who was 14 at the time. When he told me he finished the book, I asked what he thought. He didn’t look too happy. He said, “Why did you have to kill Abinadi at the end?” I said, “Because that’s what happens in the Book of Mosiah.” He said, “So? You could have changed it. You made everything else up!”