Amazing Authors and book clubs...

Next week we will be back with another Amazing Author interview by the Amazing Author Caroline Leavitt! But today, I wanted to write a little bit about authors themselves and why they really are so amazing.

It takes a long time to write a book. Sometimes it takes a few years, sometimes it takes many years. I recently heard that John Irving won't write until he knows exactly what the beginning, middle and end of his book is going to be, then he puts pen to paper. It can him 10 years to write a book. It took me 3 1/2 to write my first novel. And I am coming up on 2 years with the one I am working on now, after walking around with an idea for it for many, many years before I started. Another author friend of mine, takes 2 years, just to find the story, then another 2-3 years writing it, often tossing away hundreds of pages and doing as many as 11 revisions. When all is said and done and the author has a beloved book, they send it to their agent if they have one, or spend a good year trying to find one. Once the agent has the book, it is still a few months to read it, and then if more revisions are needed, it gets revised and when it is finally ready, the agent can spend a year shopping it around. Each editor needs the time to read it and carefully consider it and that means months. Then the book finds a home at a wonderful publishing house, where there are often more revisions, which means more months and then a date is announced for publication, which is often at least a year in the future.

When the book comes out, many years after it was started, the author, does press and readings, and book signings and hustles to get their book in the hands of readers. And many of them, so many of them, will even do a Skype conference with a book club if they are asked!!

The amount of effort not just to write, but to sell, and promote, and make sure that readers connect to the work, is just amazing to me! So please...buy books, invite authors to speak at your events, write reviews on Amazon if you like someones work, and start your own book club. I have one and it is hilarious fun. We rotate who chooses the book and who hosts, and we get together and eat too much and drink too much and laugh and talk and share our thoughts on what we read, and we have a great time doing it. And it only takes us hours. Hours, not years. But the stories that we love, that all those authors spent years crafting... well, those can last a lifetime. Aren't we the lucky ones.