It's already New Year's Eve in Australia, so I guess it is legal on this site to start tolling the bell. This year has rocketed by, making the previous 57 look like days on the beach, and hopefully 2008 will be even more eventful, although I really don't see how. Jan, 2007, I signed a contract for my first book. April, 2007, said book was published by a substandard small press, poorly and with almost nonexistent distribution BUT I sold the book in the Sisters in Crime Booth at the Los Angeles Festival of Books--and it sold. In May the publisher decided to cut me loose. I was vocal with her about her unstated decision to make the book nonreturnable with bookstores, something that made it difficult for me to market it. My husband and I took a hard look at the situation and decided that if this particular "house" could publish it, how hard could it be? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. (Yes, that is maniacal laughter.)

We are VERY proud of the It's Me Ink! Press edition that came out this October, 2007, but don't try this at home while working full time jobs unless you give up sleeping. We educated ourselves and are STILL learning. Unfortunately, we are at the marketing stage now, and that one is a bugger, even WITH good distribution and a wonderful, Los Angeles, location. 2008 will be a year with an entirely new set of challenges, and, since my husband, also a writer, and I ARE the "stable" of writers, we have our work cut out for us. Somewhere along the line we have to keep writing, too. I'm having a hard time convincing him he's the next one to step up to the plate. I can't wait for him to rewrite his Sci/Fi epic. We're full of ideas as to how we want the next one to look. LOL

Happy appearances for us this year--Sisters in Crime, Crimespace, and many local and nationwide book friends and acquaintances. Sad disappearance...the RTA List we have been a part of in one incarnation or another for the last ten years, and where Beaufort Falls began as a chapter serial for its first few chapters, which may finally have died. I will mourn it deeply, even though I have phone numbers for almost everyone on it now, and call some of them frequently. I think it has been replaced by My Space and everyone's iindividual blogs. There are just so many times you can resurrect the dead, although I do believe in that. It's evident that I have a hard time pronouncing anyone--or anything, actually dead. My books are absolutely littered with characters that just don't die when they should, properly and with decorum. I don't give up easily and neither do they.

So, for the new year? I will learn to sell. I will show up anywhere anyone asks me to come. If you write me, I will answer. If you buy my book you can picture me doing the dance of joy. I do the dance every Friday evening when I come home from work, if my husband, who is off on Fridays, tells me books were sold the previous week. If I dance, I work like a slave all weekend. It's a lot simplier than solving the Screenwriters strike! (Not that I'm a screenwriter but Sisters in Crime told me that if I write the screenplay for BF, if it sells, I'll get the pay for it, even if it gets rewritten a dozen times. I'm trainable. I'm 12 minutes in!)

:-) Mari

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Comment by Mari Sloan on January 1, 2008 at 2:53am
Thank you. I have an incredible husband. The two of us make a good combination and we're brave together. It's a wonderful thing to have found the person you were meant to grow old with and to be in the middle of a project with him. It also helps that our entire existence together we've been as poor as church mice so we've had to learn how to do things ourselves. That's always a good thing. I love kissing my publisher every morning.
:-) Mari
Comment by Linda L. Richards on December 31, 2007 at 8:34pm
Amazing post, Mari! You sound busy, funny and brave: a super combination. Great getting to know you a bit.

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