Maybe I Could Feeze Myself
So my publisher, Del Rey Books, aka Random House, has decided on a schedule to release the three books they bought from me. They had originally said they were looking into publishing in fall of ’08.
Fall of ’08 is a LONG time away, when you sell your books in June of ’07, I thought, but my agent told me that a delay of about a year is standard, and not to fret about it, and that I should take the extra time to really rip into the sequel.
It was sound advice, and I took it, toiling away on book II, knowing I would have no reader input on the first book until long after the second was finished.
But now they tell me that they want to print the first book in Spring of ’09, to avoid being lost in the ’08 holiday shuffle.
I can appreciate that I am a new author, and am less likely to stand out amidst all the tinsel and half-off signs and whatnot, but this is still frustrating for two reasons. One, it means I essentially have to write all three books before I hear what readers have to say about them. I know you shouldn’t worry TOO much about what readers think, and focus on the stories you want to tell, but I was kind of looking forward to that input as a tool to grow my craft.
But more than writing in a vacuum, I just don’t think I can wait another year and a half for the book to come out! Holy shit, man. This is the culmination of my life’s dream, and I have toiled for countless hours in obscurity over it. I am signing conracts and filling out tax forms and selling the work all over the world, dealing with the project day in and day out, and now I have to wait 19 more months?
I can’t even friggin’ wait for the Iron Man movie, and that shit is coming out in May.
What am I going to do? How am I going to last that long? I already can’t sleep at night. It’s like I’m in Narnia, where it’s ALWAYS winter and NEVER Christmas.
But then it hit me. I could freeze myself.
I got the idea from an episode from Season 10 of South Park, where Cartman is so excited for the Nintendo Wii, which is coming out in 3 weeks, that he can’t contain himself. After pacing in front of the electronics store for days, he finally decides that he can’t take it anymore, and decides to freeze himself, like astronauts on long space journeys do in Sci Fi movies. That way, his friends can then unfreeze him in 3 weeks when the game is out, and it will seem as if no time has passed.
I should TOTALLY do that.
Of course, there is the risk of me being buried in an avalanche and waking up in 2507 when the world is at war with hyperintelligent sea otters, but that’s a chance I’m willing to take.
