Everybody’s Perfect

It’s DONE!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, the reason why I’ve been super distracted and absent from the wonderful world of wordpress is finally over: my third novel is DONE. Finished. Finito. You get the idea.

Now, it’s no longer an idea in ether, waiting to be written down – it’s actually a book. Yes, it’s a book you can read and everything.

I finished writing (after a few agonizing months of writer’s block, procrastination, discarded drafts, and more procrastination) about two weeks or so ago and my two angels, The Beautiful Russian and The Lovely Jen, pored over the pages and edited the novel so it’s ready to be published.

And it is finally published.

Before you get any ideas, it’s basically self-published. I’m still a struggling writer 🙂 And as any struggling writer will tell you, getting published by a major company is not that easy to do, so I did the next best thing to get the novel out there. I found this great self-publishing website, Lulu – it’s also the same company who published my first two novels – that not only prints out my books but also distributes them to retailers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. They even offer to get my books into major Book Fairs such as Book Expo America (for a price, of course. It’s a business, not charity).

I know it’s not going to make me a New York Times Best Selling Author but it’s a good way to get my work out there in the world and who knows, maybe if it sells really well, a real publisher will finally take notice. It’s better than sitting on my ass and hoping that one day Random House discovers me.

What’s this third novel about?

Well, Kurt Vonnegut once taught me (from one of his books, of course) that you have to write what you know. The story can be fiction but the message has to be honest so you can connect with your readers. Keeping that in mind, I scraped all ideas that are not “honest” and write about the things I do know: friendship, love and growing up.

The title of the novel is Everybody’s Perfect, and it tells the story of six friends in New York City (Danielle, Connor, Kieran, Ryan, Todd and Joey), all in their late twenties and early thirties, who “spend their nights hanging out and drinking in Connor’s underachieving West Village bar, playing poker and discussing what kind of job would a vampire have or what type of beer Bin Laden would be drinking in his spare time in the cave”. They all have one thing in common: they hate change and they refuse to grow up. Okay, so those are two things, but you get the idea.

But then, life happens. Dani and Ryan fall in love, Kieran’s absent mother returns bearing bad news, Connor’s bar building is being turned into a boutique hotel by his father and Joey loses his Wall Street job from the recession – and their perfect little world starts to unravel… and their only choice is to finally grow up, take charge of their lives and become adults – hopefully without losing who they really are in the process.

I would say the novel falls into the category of “Pop Fiction”, it is peppered with pop culture references and zany dialogues reminiscent of the works of Douglas Coupland and Chuck Klosterman. And I think the theme of growing up is something I’ve been struggling with ever since I turned 30 so writing the novel was also my way of dealing with becoming a “real” adult.

And speaking of being a “real” adult, tomorrow (April 9th), I turn 31 and to celebrate this birthday, I am launching my book in Lulu!

For now, you can only get the book through Lulu website but in about a month, it’ll be distributed to Amazon worldwide (.com, ca, uk, etc) and Barnes & Noble. The novel is available in paperback (US$ 27.99) and download (US$ 6.49) and it’ll be shipped to your address should you decide to purchase it 🙂

Now that I’m done writing, and the novel is finally launched – I can finally do what I haven’t been able to do in the last few months…

CHILL.

And yes, I’m going to be blogging regularly again, as well as checking out your blogs. Now that I don’t have my novel to worry about, I can focus on everyone else’s writing!

Hopefully the novel sells well and becomes a cult internet hit… but honestly, I’m happy that it’s out there. One of the characters in the novel, Joey, had this to say about success: “Sometimes success is measured by the courage you have to put yourself out there and fail.” So whether or not anyone buy and read my book, I know I have succeeded. Because I had the courage to put myself out there and fail.

So any aspiring writers out there, I hope you all have the courage to put yourself out there – just do it. You’ve got nothing to lose, and possibly everything to gain.

And if you’re wondering what the book looks like, here’s a look at the cover:

The cover photograph is actually a mosaic of my collages that I made using the Mozodojo program. And I have to thank you wonderful people who visited my blog for that idea. Someone suggested the program when they saw the collages I posted in “I Turn My Camera On”. When I had to come up with a cover art, I decided to just make a mosaic of the Chrysler Building using my collages. And it came out pretty cool, so THANK YOU.

And if you are interested in getting the novel, you can just click the button below and it’ll take you straight to the Lulu website. And from now until May 1, 2010 – you can enter the code: ‘FREEMAIL 305’ at checkout and get $3.99 off your final shipping cost. That means, “free shipping” by mail for US residents. Pretty good offer, don’t you think? 🙂

Thanks for all your support!

xoxo

Binky Bee