Much as I love the US cover, I understood and expected this.  Every time I go to a bookshop in England I am always struck by how very different book jackets are designed, in comparison to the States.  As a general rule, in the UK publishers tend to use more photographs – over here, more oblique designs and illustrations are more prevalent.

Here is what the Penguin UK art department have come up with (complete with fake quote from the Daily Mail!)  I’d love to know what you think.

About seven years after I set out on this journey with Frederick and Jette Meisenheimer, their story is published today.  Tonight I will stand up in front of a group of people at Barnes & Noble in Columbia, MO, and read from my finished book for the first time.

It will be a sweet moment, I am sure, but one tinged with sadness, too, for neither my parents, nor my sisters, nor my children will be there.

But there will be friends.  And that is what I want to talk about today.

Writing books is a lonely old business – I just sit here at my computer and peck away at the keyboard, wondering if anyone will like the story in my head.  To have transitioned from such a hermit’s existence to enter the warm and welcoming online world of readers and writers has been a wonderfully rewarding experience.  I have been astonishingly lucky to have made some fantastic friends on this journey.  Of course, in this internet age, I haven’t met all of them – or even most of them – but that doesn’t diminish the warmth with which we interact online and the comfort and connection they provide me.  I hope the feeling is mutual.

I began thinking about this post with the idea that I would list everyone I wanted to thank, but quickly realized that would be (a) very boring and (b) perilous, because I would almost certainly forget one or two people, and that would be very bad.  So instead I just want to say a huge THANK YOU to every blogger, bookseller, librarian, writer, and reader that I have met over the past several months.  You all know who you are.  I could not have done this without your friendship and support.  People have been so generous with their words of encouragement – whether comments on my blog posts, tweets, emails, reviews, or the wonderful blurbs which now grace the book’s jacket.  I hope to meet as many of you as I can, one day.  It’s been an honor to get to know you all.

As some of you know, this has been a very difficult year for me on a personal level.  I have not written about it out of respect of the privacy of others, and I do not intend to start now.  But it has been a difficult time.  The process of shepherding my novel towards today has been largely responsible for keeping me in one piece, and the friendships that I have formed along the way are an integral part of that.  So thank you, each and every one of you.  Words aren’t really enough, but they’re all I’ve got.

Finally, on the subject of keeping me in one piece, there are two other people I need to mention here, who have done more than anyone to help in that regard – and who inspired the title to this post.  Thanks, guys.  You’re my whole world.

This is just a brief update to let you know about various things that have popped up on the web, if you missed my incessant tweets and facebook updates over the past few days.

Publication isn’t officially until Tuesday, but the book has already been spotted in the wild.  This is in Freeport, Maine:

A GOOD AMERICAN was named as one of amazon’s Best Books for February.

Here is an interview I did with Nicole from the excellent book blog Linus’s Blanket – I only answered six of the twenty questions she sent me, and everyone should probably be grateful for that.

Also, a smart and funny review by Amanda Nelson of the Dead White Guys blog.

And this review appeared online yesterday at the Kansas City Star.  Not sure when it will appear in the paper edition.

Talking of paper editions, Columbia, MO residents be warned: there’ll be an interview with me in the Sunday edition of the Columbia Tribune.

And speaking of Columbia residents, if you have nothing better to do next Tuesday, please consider coming to Barnes & Noble at the Mall at 7 p.m. to help me launch A GOOD AMERICAN out into the world.  I’ll be giving a small talk about the book and reading an extract.  I’d love to see you there, before I set off on my travels later in the week.

Not sure how much blogging will get done in the forthcoming days and weeks.  I’ll do my best to keep this updated as and when I can.  In the meantime, thank you ALL for reading, your comments, and your support.  It means the world to me.

There’s so much going on at the moment that I often lose track of what day of the week it is.  So this is a quick post to bring you up to date with a few snippets of news, then I’m off to spend the weekend doing legal work, catching up with the stuff that has been piling up, both figuratively and literally, on my desk over the past week or so.

So – publication of my book, A GOOD AMERICAN, is now just over a week away.  Luckily I am too busy struggling to get out from beneath a backlog of guest blog posts, interviews, and other fun things to be too anxious about it.  Things are a bit of a whirlwind and I am grateful for my Luddite-friendly kitchen whiteboard to help me keep track of everything.

If you have nothing better to do a week on Tuesday – February 7 – I’ll be doing a reading at Barnes & Noble at the Columbia Mall at 7.00 p.m.  That’s the official launch date of the book, and I’d love to see you there to help me celebrate.

On Sunday and Monday I was in Dallas for the American Libraries Association midwinter convention, which was a great way to start the week.  I wrote about that here.

In a wonderful review of the book last Friday, influential book blogger Beth Fish Reads called it a “near-perfect novel”, which – as you might imagine, rather made my day.  I also wrote a guest post on the site earlier this week about the restaurant in the book, and how it became a character in the book in its own right.  That was a lot of fun to do.

There will be various other interviews and guest posts and I will do my best to keep track of them here.

In other book news, my friend and fellow Columbia resident Keija Parssinen‘s debut novel, THE RUINS OF US, was published last week.  I am half way through it, and am loving it.  It is a rich, soulful exploration of life and love, and it has me transfixed.  The writing is gorgeous, and its setting – Saudi Arabia – is exotic and bewitching.  The principal character is an American ex-pat who has married a Saudi native and now lives far from where she grew up, so there are certainly echoes and themes in the book that I am relating to strongly!  Highly recommended.

Earlier this week possibly the nicest thing to happen to me for ages occurred.  My very good friend Chris Stevens, who just happens to own the wonderful PS: Gallery in Columbia with his wife Jennifer, stopped by the office, with this:

It is, as you can see, a drawing of a pig, by local superartist Joel Sager.  When I went to New Orleans with Chris last July I had coveted (but failed to buy) a wonderful picture of a pig (I do like my swine) in a gallery in the French Quarter, and when Chris saw this in Joel’s collection, he had it framed and gave it to me.  Talk about random acts of kindness.  It was such a thoughtful and generous thing to do.  I am a lucky, lucky man.

Just in case legal work and the book wasn’t enough to keep me occupied, on February 16 I will be traveling to Kansas City to take my oath to become a United States citizen.  In the book there is a scene where my characters go to the courthouse and take their oath to do the same thing.  Its one of those serendipitous things that I should be doing the same almost exactly as the book comes out.

Next, a favor: if you haven’t already done so, would you please take a moment to go to my Facebook author page and click “like”?  Thank you. I am a needy author, assailed by self-doubt, and these little acts of affirmation from the outside world mean a lot.

Finally, and a propos of nothing at all, I wanted to share this fantastic video with you, for no other reason that I think it’s brilliant.  This is Seal’s “Kiss for a Rose,” given the blue grass treatment.  Enjoy.

watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9UcLEklYnaE

Let’s play a little cultural word association.

If you ask an Englishman what comes to mind when he hears the word “Dallas,” he would probably answer Larry Hagman, JFK’s assassination, and possibly cowboys (although the cowboys would be wearing ten-gallon hats, rather than football helmets.)

I’m told that if he was of a certain age and inclination, he might also think of a lady named Debbie, although I wouldn’t know anything about that.

What he probably wouldn’t think of is: librarians.

This Englishman, though, will always associate the place with librarians, after my flying visit there last weekend.  The event was the winter convention of the American Library Association.  I had been invited to speak at a breakfast with five other authors.  The idea was we would stand up in front of a roomful of librarians and talk about our books.  They would be a sympathetic crowd, I had been reassured by my publicist.  ”Just remember to tell them how much you love libraries,” she said breezily.   Libraries.  Right.  I decided to tell them about the summer when I was 10 when my library card had been misfiled under the name of George Alexander.  It wasn’t exactly gripping stuff, but it was all I had.

I flew in from Kansas City on Sunday evening.  One of the brilliant things about these trips is that you do feel just a little bit like a rock star.  There was a guy standing by the luggage carousel with a card with my name on it; we walked out to a gleaming limousine and scooted into town.  There was even a bottle of water in the back seat.  Just for me.  I mean, really.  Living the life, baby.  My driver, James, had the football game on the radio, which gave me an opportunity to display the profound depths of my ignorance about the game.  They take football very seriously in Texas.  It’s testament to James’s professionalism that he didn’t throw me out of the car and make me walk.

The hotel, the Joule, was achingly hip and beautiful.  As is now traditional on these trips, I took a picture of the bathroom, in this instance the sink.  (At least I think it’s a sink.  It might just be a salad bowl that someone had left there by mistake.)

The room was gorgeous, although it took me several minutes to work out how to turn the taps on and switch the lights off.  (These days I am used to being outsmarted by hotel facilities.  When Penguin put me up at the Trump hotel in Soho, I couldn’t for the life of me work out how to empty the bath, so had to leave with my dirty water still in the tub.)

The other problem with swanky hotels is that they never have those little Mr. Coffee machines in the rooms.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, Mr. Coffee coffee isn’t great, but it’s still coffee.  The next morning I stumbled around, dangerously uncaffeinated, while twitter friends assured me there would probably be FREE COFFEE in the lobby.

Thankfully they were right.  I gulped down two cups and had pretty much stopped twitching by the time I met Alan Walker of Penguin Academic Marketing, who was in charge of corralling the various Penguin authors who were appearing at the convention.  Alan is very chilled and fantastically nice.  We discovered a mutual love of squash – the game, people, not the vegetable; we are men, after all – as we walked to the convention center.  When we arrived at the author breakfast I met Alan’s colleague Dominique, who is as lovely as Alan.  (Where do Penguin find these wonderful people?)  I was directed to the author table, and poked anxiously at my eggs as I waited for the event to start.

I should say here that I don’t much like public speaking.  Much as I am very fond of the sound of my own voice, the only way I can get through these ordeals is if I have thoroughly prepared and know what I’m going to say.  Consequently I had three pages of typewritten remarks tucked into my pocket, which I patted for reassurance every so often.  I was up second, which was a blessing, as I didn’t have time to be completely traumatized by the fact that all the other authors spoke without any notes at all.  In particular, Robert Leleux and Val McDermid were utterly brilliant, impassioned and hilarious.  Anyway, the audience seemed to like my library card story, and nobody threw any tomatoes.  The other authors were all fascinating to listen to and I found myself desperately wanting to read all of their books, especially Pure by Julianna Baggott.

After the breakfast Alan took me to the Penguin booth where I signed copies of A Good American for an hour.  By the end, my signature bore no resemblance to the scrawl it usually is.  It was equally illegible, though, so I suspect nobody will ever be able to tell the difference.  Everyone was fantastically nice, and seemed excited to read the book.  Gratifyingly, many people had already heard about it.

Once we had run out of books, Dominique and Alan helped me choose some brand new books for my children and then it was time to find James for the return trip to the airport.  It was a whirlwind trip – less than 24 hours – but a wonderful one.

Oh, and by the way.  I managed to fit eleven books into my tiny backpack. It’s amazing what you can achieve when you put your mind to it. (I knew there was a reason I packed so light.)

Lots of news to share with you.  Where to begin?  Let’s see…

A GOOD AMERICAN was named #1 Read to Pick Up for February in O Magazine.  Yes, that’s Ms. Winfrey’s little publication.  Kind of a big deal, and we’re all very happy about that.

The book has also been named as a Midwest Connection Pick for February.  These are books chosen by the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association.  I’m very honored about this, and obviously pleased and proud of the novel’s connections to this part of the world.

My editor, Amy Einhorn, was profiled in the New York Observer on Monday.  And yes, she really is as smart and as kind and as generally wonderful as the piece suggests.  My book got a mention as being this year’s February Amy Einhorn release, following in the footsteps of The Help, The Postmistress, and The Weird Sisters.

So.  No pressure there, then.

As I type, I am suddenly spooked by the lack of definite article in my book’s title.  Eep.  (Because, like, I didn’t already have enough things to keep me awake at night.)

This week also saw the online publication of a great interview with BookPage, which will appear in next month’s magazine proper.  It was one of those interviews that was scheduled for 30 minutes… an hour later, we were still talking.  (People who know me won’t be especially surprised by this.)

You will have already noticed that things have changed a little around here.  Yesterday saw the launch of the new site design , and I hope you like it.  Quite possibly (= almost certainly) there are typos and mistakes lurking; if you catch any, or find some dodgy links, or have any other suggestions as to how the site could be improved, please do write to let me know.  My deepest thanks to web genius Paul Boomer for all his hard work on this.

Finally, speaking of travel-related matters, on Sunday I am flying to Dallas to the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting.  I get to deliver a little talk to a roomful of yawning librarians on Monday morning while they eat breakfast.  Tough room, I’m guessing.  Now we’ll really find out how far a cute English accent will get you.

This is a page chosen more or less at random, during the second six month rewrite, after I had signed my deal with Amy.  I am hopeless at editing on screen – I need a pen, paper, and lots of time.  (And quiet.)  And then I do this sort of thing.  Whether you call it fine pruning or hacking with a machete is, I suppose, a matter of opinion.

One of the reasons I wanted to post this photo is that this kind of close editing is one of the most enjoyable parts of the process for me.  The careful chipping away of unnecessary words, the cleaning up of infelicitous syntax, the hunt for clarity – all these things are immensely rewarding.  The only downside to it is that it is a never-ending process.  I know that if I were to pick up the book today I would still find things I’d like to change.  But I cannot.  I am learning to ignore those little voices in my head.  My work here is done.

This blank sheet of paper (and a few hundred others) got written on.  Some guy had an idea for a story, and every morning at five o’clock, he hauled himself out of bed, switched on the coffee machine, and sat down to write for two hours, while the rest of his family slept.  The story was an elusive thing.  There were many wrong turns taken.  Whole plot lines lay abandoned on his computer’s hard drive.  Once-cherished characters got written out entirely. Some good ideas turned out to be very bad ideas.  It was an exhausting, enervating, frustrating and utterly wonderful journey.

Five years later, this is what he ended up with:

So: a book!  Or rather: a big block of paper with lots of words on it!

The guy sent this big block of paper to his literary agent in London, who liked the story.  His agent sent it to another agent in New York, who also liked the story.  Submissions began simultaneously in both markets.  Within days, there was a response from a well-known editor in New York.  She loved much of the novel, but couldn’t make an offer for it.  The last third of the story was too flawed, she said.

OK, said the guy, wobbling only slightly.  As rejections go, that’s pretty heartening.

Over the course of the next few months, the big block of paper was rejected by everyone else, too.  Many people professed to love it, but nobody wanted to published the damn thing.  Most mornings there was another rejection waiting in the guy’s inbox.  He began to dread waking up.  He became despondent.  Sure, he still had his big block of paper – nobody was ever going to be able to take his story and his characters away from him.  It was still, people told him kindly, a wonderful achievement.

But.

Finally, the guy called his agents and told them to stop the submissions.  Something was obviously wrong with the story.  It needed more work.  He hunkered down, and with a slightly heavy heart, attacked the manuscript once again.  The five o’clock starts acquired a new focus.  Six months later, he had a streamlined story, with a completely new ending.  This time, they submitted the manuscript to just one editor – the very first person to respond last time around.  And, this time, she liked it, and made an offer to publish it.  But, she warned, it still needed a lot of work.  Oh, and a new title.

The guy and his new editor talked long and often on the telephone, discussing what had to be done.   “A lot of work” was something of an understatement.  The guy sat down and beavered away for another six months, making wholesale changes to the story.  And the story was immeasurably better as a result.  A few weeks after he delivered the revised manuscript, this arrived in the mail:

That, ladies and gentlemen, is an uncorrected early proof copy.  It is, frankly, a mess.  It’s full of typos.  The font size changes at haphazard moments, the pages are not properly formatted, and the cover, you’ll notice, won’t be winning any design awards, either.  But, to the guy’s eyes, it was a thing of beauty.  All those words he had been wresting with for so long finally looked like a book.  He no longer needed a carrier bag to haul his novel around.

Work continued.  The text was line edited, copy edited, proof edited, fact checked.  Every last syllable was scrutinized.  The guy read and reread, wrote and rewrote, until the words were swimming in front of his eyes.

Then came the cover.  And it was a thing of beauty.  Soon after that, galleys were printed, resplendent with gorgeous design and kind quotes from early reviewers.

These beauties were sent to reviewers, booksellers, magazines and a fair few were sent out to readers.  Soon people began to talk about the book.  Reviews began to appear online.  A buzz was building.  (By this time, the guy’s left arm was a mosaic of black and blue bruises from all the pinching that had been going on.)

And then, just after  Christmas, this arrived in the mail.

I’m kind of anxious to find out what happens next.

Exciting times!

Through the Indiebound collective, booksellers from independent bookstores across the nation submit nominations for the books published each month that they’re most excited about.

I’m proud, and slightly startled, to announced that A GOOD AMERICAN has been selected as the #1 pick for February 2012.

As you might imagine, this is fabulous news.  Independent bookstores remain the beating heart of the publishing industry.  Their influence is of unparalleled importance when it comes to creating a buzz about new titles and handselling the right books to the right customers.  Indie bookstores are owned and staffed by knowledgable, articulate, fantastically well-read people who are passionate about books.  I can’t imagine a more gratifying nod of approval.  I’m incredibly humbled and flattered.

So – thank you, thank you, indie bookstore people everywhere, for your amazing vote of confidence in A GOOD AMERICAN.

Kayt (who is a friend of mine, full disclosure, blah, blah) was good enough to send me an advanced copy of DIRTY MINDS a while ago.  I loved it.  I’ve been going on about this book on twitter and facebook for a while now, and I’m excited that the day has finally come that the rest of you are able to see what the fuss is about.   Here’s what I wrote on Goodreads:

“Kayt Sukel’s debut takes a long, hard look at human relationships from a unique perspective. With her background in neuroscience, Sukel examines what goes on inside our brains when we think about love, and sex, and all that good stuff. It’s a fascinating read. The brain is such a complex organ that much of the studies performed so far are not conclusive, but the book sheds a whole new light on some of the most enduring questions of mankind, which have hitherto primarily been the provence of artists, writers, and musicians. The collision of biology with the vaguer arenas of emotion and love is a compelling saga in itself. The author does a wonderful job of setting out the research in a way that makes it easy for non-scientists like me to understand. If this all sounds a little dry, though, don’t be fooled. It is an extremely funny book, and Sukel’s ultra-dry wit had me chuckling throughout. Informative, entertaining, relevant – who could ask for more?”

Highly, highly recommended.  Depending on your preference, and for your ease of shopping, might I recommend the following links?

• Indiebound
• Amazon
• Barnes  & Noble