Smelling Books

In high school there was this girl I really, really liked, but she had a boyfriend, so…we talked…a lot. I would lend her some science fiction and fantasy books to read and one day when she returned a paperback she was embarrassed and apologized because, as she explained, her perfume leaked in her purse and my book was in there and it soaked into the book.

Every day after that I would come home from school and take the book off my shelf, put it to my face and inhale the smell of her perfume. In time, the perfume began to fade as it merged with the odor of the pages. Eventually, all that was left was the smell of paperback. 

Years later, she admitted that she purposefully drenched it with her perfume just before returning it to me because she knew it would drive me crazy.

It did.

The One Last Look Edit

It looks like I’m almost finished with the editing process on my book that started back in May. So far it has gone through about five rounds of edits. I know that might sound like drastic changes; but not really, it’s mostly a grammar/punctuation/format focus. Sometimes my editor would ask me to explain something, or to trim down and streamline places that slowed the action or pace of the story. There were some suggested alterations on which I disagreed and those have caused the most anxiety for me. But after I justified my choices, my editor easily conceded. I figured out that the publishers weren’t out to change anything, just help me polish and perfect what I have.

I now have what my editor calls the “one last look” edit, so I’m slowly reading the story from start to finish one last time before sending it back. I have some other forms that I need to fill out that will include my “blurbs” for advertising, my bio, and the excerpt that will appear as the preview of my book.

I haven’t seen the cover art yet, but I do have a tentative release date of October 2014.