Okay, I owe it to whomever is still coming back to check my blog....
You might have noticed (and if you didn't, I'll tell you now) that all posts up until and including the one where I got married to BK are gone. Don't worry, I didn't delete them, I just put them in storage.
Reason being; I signed contract on the book.
I'm very excited about it and a little nervous too. This was and still is my dream, to publish something of my own. To see my work on the shelves in the bookstores and say, "Hey, that's MINE!!" It would be soo cool to pick one up in front of my students and say, "Look! I don't make you write for nothing! I write too! I'm a writer!!!"
It's also a dream of mine to help spread the awareness of what it is like to be sick. So many people are doing tremendous chessed in our communities and lots more would love to join, but they don't know much about what they are getting into. I hope my book can help.
This is my dream, and I am taking my fragile hopes and putting them into the hands of the readers. I am putting everything I have into this book and everything I have into you! I am hoping that my dreams catch on and that others find them as inspiring (or at least enjoyable)as I do.
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to spill all my secrets, but I'm guessing it's a form of advertising so my publisher can't get too mad at me.
The book is tentatively titled "Riding Backward" and will be around 220 pages.
It's a better read than the blog because it was tweaked a million times by me, ten million times by my mother, mother in law, my sister in law and my nieces, another couple of times by my friends and then some more by my students (who by the way are gaining so much from going through an actual writing, editing and publishing process).
It also has lots more in it than the blog does- some more details, a new character, some actual names (instead of just annoying initials) and some other secrets.
I'm working on getting my Doctor to write a foreword and my friend, a fellow survivor said she's writing one too. I'm so excited.
I came very close to not doing the book at all though. I had a lot of hashkafic issues to begin with and didn't feel like it was worth bothering to fix them just to publish for such a small market.
I worked with an editor friend who told me to take another opinion by ArtScroll and see what they found wrong with the book, and then decide. Well, ArtScroll decided for me, and that's where you'll be seeing my book IY"H.
I'm not going to spill the publishing date now because it's not final, but I'll let you know when it gets closer.
I'll thank everyone that needs to be thanked when I get to writing my acknowledgments for the book, but for now I'd like to thank my blog readers who pushed my site counter up high enough to convince me that maybe I had something worth putting into hardcover.
Funny, for being too Excited for Words, I sure said an awful lot...
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12 comments:
I can't wait!! Will it come out before Pesach, so it can be my new Yom Tov book, or will I have to wait until Shavuos? Hatzlachah Rabbah!!
Can you post some pictures of your baby from Purim?
WOW! I am so excited for you! I can't believe ARTSCROLL is the one publishing it!! That's amazing!!
Mazal Tov!
So you'll get for me a good price on the book maybe? Not that I really read the book with my eyes the way they are or even hold the book up with my arthritis but maybe I'll put it on the coffee table (made back when they made REAL foiniture, not like the plastic garbage the make today in Mexico. I hear even the American stuff today is made from Mexican trees they get from the Amazon where they have the cheap books because the paper is made right there in the jungle) and maybe when my grandchildren come to visit (I should be so lucky once in a yoivil) they can see I'm getting a little culturated, even if I am locked in here all day by myself when nobody ever calls, so it's good to have a book what I can't finish anyway. So I'll put your nice book right next to the Jewish Press (that Ahrnold Fink, he's funny, no? I never met him but I had a cousin lived down the block from someone with the same name who wasn't related to this one but he was a real mentch so this one is probably too) so everyone will say 'ah, see, this goil must be a real writer, why else would it be next to a real newspaper (not like that New York Times with the ink always coming on my hands from the Bloomingdale advertisements which I can't buy anyway because who do they think can wear heals like that in the real woild? Not me, thats for sure. I would get a nose bleed just trying them on. You know the models aren't really so skinny either . Its just the high heels, they get too scared they going to fall, they take a deeeep breath and it makes them look skinny. You know a deep breath is the best thing for getting rif of the hiccup, you know that? I hoird this from a fella used to go to the same bungalow as my parents. He would have been a great doctor but he never finished high school because of the war. Not that war, the Korea War. His parents were so afraid from a draft, they kept him in three sweaters even in the summer and he wasn't allowed to take off his mittens, even in high school, so nu, how was he supposed to write on the tests? Only they found out later this kind draft don't get to nobody less than eighteen years old so he could have gone at least in eleventh grade.)
So like i was saying before I was detracted, I'm going to be one of the first to buy that book of yours, right after it goes on sale, I wouldn't wait an extra minute, and I am going to tell everyone in the store I know the writer and she is a nice young goil with a baby and still got time to write such a book (sure, big deal, raise a kid with one hand and write with the other, today you got disposable diapers. When I was young we didn't have disposable anything, we had so little even our breath wasn't disposable. We didn't take a breath fresh air until we used the old air, two, three, sometimes four times. I was the youngest you know, so all I had was hand-me-down air until my parents made it good with an apartment on the top floor in the Bronx, then the eevator would bring for us fresh air a few times a day) and they going to look at me and not believe someone what looks like a shopping bag lady (you don't remember, you are too young, but Korvettes had the best shopping bags. I shlepped for three kids stuff to coney island on the hot subway in those bags and they never broke even once, except when the older one tried to put the younger on inside and oy you shouldn't know from what a time we had getting everything home, we almost had to leave the empty soda bottles we found, we should get a nickle back, but whats a nickle woith today anyway, not like then, we rode the subway for a nickle and if you told the 12 year old to bend the knees a little and look stupid maybe you got them all on the train for free. Besides, why should we pay for a ride the train is going to anyway? How much more the conductor got to push the button for a few more people?) with such an old coat (from Syms, it lasts forever, and if you buy a coat in the summer you get the best price, even if it is last years color, so what, bright orange is never really goes out from style and anyway we still use a black and white camera so who's going to know?) could be a freind of such an important person so I'll give them your home phone they shopuld call you to find out for real, OK? Just make sure they don't call collect, its such a robbery, I don't feel guilty when I tell my daughter she should should tell the operator she wants to call collect and her name is Guttenshabbos, so the call is free because I say, I don't know this person but I know then she is OK but shy should she pay for a call all the way from school she goes to overseas in New Joisy? Just to say good shabbos? Not like she is going to tell anything waht she is really doing anyway if she calls and really talks to me, but it would be nice once in while, so I don't have to worry until she comes home every other day I should do her laundry and I can see she is fine even if whe doesn't eat enough and looks like she took a deep breath in the Bloomingdales picture and forgot to relax after.)
Oy, this is so exciting! I'm going to bake for you a cake. You like honey cake, yes? Good. I got a piece of one in the freezer, left over from Sukkos when my sister sent it to me special from Chicago because she knows I love her honey cake (I can't stand it, too heavy, three small bites and it lays on you like a stone until next wednesday because she uses cheap honey and keeps the cake frozen so long you can make for yourself an ice age) so I'll send it to you for a publishing party because anyway I need to get it out from the house so I can start cooking already now for pesach when the grandchildren will visit (I should only be so lucky) and you are going to love it. I hear alota famous writers ate strange food like that guy Van Go what cut out a piece his tongue so he should write even better because he couldn't talk so good no more, but don't try it at your home, the doctors in the hospitals today are all no good anyway I want to once see a doctor in a hospital older than the honey cake in my sister's freezer in Chicago.
Did you know it gets in Chicago in the winter?
Thanks Anons 1 and 2! No, it wont be out for yom tov yet, and I'll post some pics of him dressed up as a her ;-)
Yeah, I know, ArtScroll. I'm shocked too.
Old Kvetch, you got me again. I LOVE stale Honey cake. And how did you know that I have the Orange coat from Syms???
:-D
I'm so excited! Put me on the waiting list...
And if they have any hashkafic issues, you can just tell them "that's life."
b'Sha'ah Tovah!
yes finally. please let it be ready by summer. I need something to pass the time with. I'll be having lots of free time.... I am so excited. Wow Artscroll, that is so cool.
Hatzlacha Raba
Im so happy and excited!
Cant wait for it to come out!
Hm, Artscroll :-( That probably means all the romance has been deleted...that's the best part! ;-) Mazel Tov on signing the contract!
Amazing, I hope to have it out real soon. Summer would be a great time. Im working as hard and as fast as I can.
Dont worry StillinShidduchim, Romance was toned down, but its still there!! And it's even better I think...
ArtScroll wanted me to add more pages and now after talking to my sister and my mother there is so much I want to put in! I'm already up 25 pages!
THIS IS SOOOO EXCITING!!!
I am soo happy for you that it's working out and really happening!!!! Hatzlacha and can't wait to see it on the bookshelves and tell everyone about it!!!
And, woah! Who would believe your blog would be up to over 20,000 readers in less than 1 year?!
Remember last year Pesach when the word got out?! Woah, time flies...
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