Interview with Lena Nelson Dooly Posted

Hey, everyone! I just want to let you know that Lena Nelson Dooly posted her interview with me on Friday, May 9th on her blog at http://lenanelsondooley.blogspot.com/. She's also giving away a free copy of One Holy Night, so go on over and make a comment on Friday's post to be entered for a copy! And if you don't win but would like one of my OHN bookmarks, which are very pretty, send me your address at jmhochstetler@msn.com, and I'll get one in the mail to you.

I apologize for making this announcement so late. I was involved with a community-wide yard sale this weekend and wasn't online for a couple of days. Wouldn't you know it! LOL! I didn't get Lena's message letting me know about it until this morning. And now, of course, Jay and I are heading off to our place in south Georgia in a couple of hours, so I'll be on the road all day. But I promise I will be online tomorrow, and I'll catch up with everything then!

Rockin' and Rollin'

Here it is, folks—the full cover for Bouncing Grandma! All we need now is the exact spine width and the cover will be finished. I’ll get that measurement from the printer as soon as we have a final page count. My guess is it’ll come out around 240 pages, but One Holy Night ended up shorter than I anticipated, so I’ll just have to see. It all depends on the the font and how the text lays out on the page. Plus, we also decided to include the first chapter of book 2, The Case of the Mystified M.D., at the end to entice readers to look for the next hilarious installment about our Bouncing Grandma. So it might be a bit longer than I estimated.

The copy specialist is flowing the text now and should have it ready for me by mid month. As soon as I get the file, I’ll do a quick run-through to correct any formatting issues, and then I’ll send hardcopy to Alice—what used to be called galleys, but is now simply called a copyflow proof. This will be Alice’s last chance to make corrections. When I get it back, I’ll enter her changes, do a final proofreading to catch anything that might have slipped by us, and finalize the pages. Then it’s off to the printer! We want to have both BG and It’s Not About Me in the warehouse in time to ship to the Barnes and Noble at the Mall of America for the ACFW conference book signing.

BTW, I apologize for taking so long to post another update on how business is going. My husband and I are dividing our time between Perry, GA, and our house near Nashville, TN. We’re getting this property ready to sell so, as you can imagine, we’re totally covered up. What I need is another 24 hours every day!

Currently I’m working on developing some Sheaf House ads to place in the new Christian Fiction Online Magazine that Michelle Sutton is heading up. That project is attracting a LOT of interest, and I can’t wait to see the first issue, which publishes in July. A lot of the big-name publishers are buying ads, and Sheaf House has locked down a regular slot. I’m also tinkering with the idea of placing an ad with one or two of Christianity Today’s stable of online mags. You wouldn’t believe the price of advertising in their print publications—it’s in the stratosphere—but their market is targeted to exactly the market we’re trying to hit. So I’m going to see if I can work an online ad into the budget.

So far I’ve sent out a couple of press releases and will need to send one out for BG and INAM as soon as they’re in the warehouse. OHN is going to be represented at BEA by both my distributor, APG, and PMA and at ICRS by CSPA. So hopefully that will get some action. My contact at APG met with Books A Million Friday to try to persuade them to carry Sheaf House books, but I haven’t heard yet how that went. Hopefully they were impressed by all the ammunition I sent him and couldn’t wait to sign on the dotted line. LOL! And by the way, have you checked out the Sheaf House site lately? We keep adding new stuff like the slideshow.

Next up: Dineen Miller will be starting work on designing the cover for Wind of the Spirit—which I still need to finish! Thankfully the end is at last in sight. If we can figure out how to do what I want to do with this cover, it’s going to get some attention. I found a blow-your-socks-off image for the background, but it looks like we’ll probably need to have an illustrator do the figures. I have my fingers crossed it doesn’t end up being prohibitively expensive.

And, of course, Kathi Macias’s powerful story My Son, John is up next, so I need to gear up to get that cover rolling soon. Can’t wait to see the manuscript! This one is going to blow readers away. Then Mystified M.D. and Michelle’s It’s Not About Him follow the next fall. And I’m working with my new assistant, Jen Stephens, from my local writers group to get her women’s fiction The Heart’s Journey Home ready for publication in January 2010. I’m really excited about this one—not to mention that she’s going to intern with me this summer during her break from teaching. Talk about an answer to prayer—it’s a miracle how the Lord brought us together, and we’re both praying that at some point I’ll be able to hire her so she can actually get paid.

Wow—things are rockin’ and rollin’! It doesn’t look like it’s going to slow down anytime soon, does it? But when you’re working for God, it’s like Jesus said: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” It truly is.

Final Logo, Final Front Cover, and More!

Here they are, folks: the fully rendered final version of the logo and the final designed front cover. Take a look at these! Aren’t they wonderful? Alice and I are pretty happy, as you can probably tell.

At the moment, Alice is hard at work going through the edits for Bouncing Grandma. Meanwhile my designer is working on the interior and the back cover. And today I’ve been working on the copyflow proof for It’s Not About Me, which is going to land in Michelle’s lap in a few days. I know she’s looking forward to that. LOL! Then Bouncing Grandma goes to the copyflow specialist to flow into Quark. And after all that gets done, it’s time to talk to the printer.

More good news: One Holy Night officially released yesterday! Yay! There were times when I wondered whether it was ever going to happen. The not-so-good news . . . Amazon has finally opened up OHN for pre-orders. Hellooo!! In the Amazon world, it should have been open for pre-orders 45 days BEFORE the pub date, but oh, well. At least now readers can order it, and since it actually is in the warehouse, they stand a good chance of getting it promptly. My distributor is working on getting things straightened out, and I'm hoping Amazon will open it up for regular orders soon—which will also mean people can actually post reviews—finally!

You know, at times I feel like Sisyphus: condemned to endlessly pushing that huge rock uphill until I get to the top . . . where it rolls back down. Sigh. But at least we're still moving forward. One Holy Night is also available for pre-order at Barnes and Noble.com, which incorrectly lists it as pubbing April 28. Target.com is also listing it, though they still show it as being out of stock. You can also order through Borders.com, which links to Amazon. The distributor is working on Wal-Mart. Little by little, we're getting the word out.

Of course, you can to Sheaf House and order the book directly. We’ve set it up so customers can order as many copies as they want for a flat $4.50 shipping cost. What a deal! And while they're there, they can take a look at our upcoming books for this fall.

BTW, One Holy Night is getting great reviews, and you can read some of them at the One Holy Night blog. I was featured on two blogs on Monday: Mary Connealy's blog and Carol Ann Erhardt's Inside the Writer's Mind blog. My author Web site has undergone an extensive revamping during the last few months too. If you're interested in history, homeschool, or are an author of historicals, I've added a ton of links to historical sites and resources, with more coming soon. And you can sign up for my new historical eNewsletter, Lamp of History.

Gah! All this is making my brain hurt. And I still haven't started setting up booksignings, which I intended to do the beginning of the week!

I thought life was busy when I was just a writer! Ha! I also thought adding the title of publisher was going to be fun. Actually, come to think of it . . . it is! I may have a slavedriver for a boss, but I’m loving every minute of it!

Bouncing Grandma Series Logo

The fun just continues, folks! It doesn’t get any better than this. Here’s the logo for the Bouncing Grandma Series. Take a look and let me know what you think.

The illustrator still has more work to do to give it a completely rendered look, but Alice and I are already pretty ecstatic about it. Personally, I think this perfectly captures the spirit of the main character of the series, Glory Harper. Doesn’t it just make you want to bounce? LOL!

Meanwhile we’re working on choosing just the right fonts for the front cover, and then the designer will need to work the logo into the overall design. Keitha is already working on the back cover too. So there’s a lot of excitement coming up. I can’t wait to get your feedback on the logo! And of course, stay tuned for the finals of the front and back, and after that for the whole cover with the spine.

We’re cooking, baby!

Cover Mania Redux!

We are certainly having a good time here at Sheaf House! Actually, it ought to be illegal to have this much fun!!

Take a look at the final illustration for Alice’s cozy mystery, The Case of the Bouncing Grandma. Is it perfect, or what? The title will go on the valance of the curtain, and Alice’s name will go across the bottom in the shadowed area.

If you click on the image, you’ll be able to make out the raindrops on the window. Don’t they look totally cool? Natalie did a terrific job of pulling this all together and giving this illustration a cozy-scary feel. Give me some feedback and let me know what you think!

The file went to my designer today, and we should have a preliminary front cover with the text in place tomorrow. That version will go to my distributor along with all the pub info and a marketing plan for inclusion in their fall catalog, along with It’s Not About Me.

My first fall list—tiny though it is! I’m teary-eyed. Who would have thought Sheaf House would get here so soon? This is quite a milestone, like watching your first baby take her first steps. Sigh.

Okay, enough sentiment. Back to business. LOL! The illustrator is diving right into creating a logo for the series, and as soon as we have that I’ll post it too. It will be added to the front, along with any tweaks we might want to make to the text—a different font or different arrangement—for the final version. Then we’ll do the back cover. We’ll make it pretty too—possibly isolate some elements from the front to repeat on the back.

By the time all that’s done, we’ll have the text ready, and the next stop will be the printer. I know Alice and Michelle are going to be excited when they finally hold their first book in their hands. And you know what? I think I’m going to be just as thrilled!!