11.06.06
The ARCs Have Landed!
I’m so excited I can hardly stand it — I’ve just gotten the ARCs (Advance Reading Copies) of Virgin in the mail.
For those who don’t know what an ARC is, it’s the first time in the process of a book’s production that you get to see the book as a physical book, typeset, bound, and with the relevant cover art. All prior incarnations are just stacks of loose pages of one sort or another. The ARC exists so that reviewers and distributors and bookstore representatives and so on can have a convenient book-shaped version of the book, even though it is not quite the same as the final version that’ll end up on the shelves. It is, if you will, the pre-book book.
I keep having to pick it up and open it to make sure it’s really real. After having worked on this book for basically all of the last four years, between research and writing and revision and the production process, it’s almost hard to believe that it’s finally… a real live book.
(It’ll be on the shelves in March 2007. You’ll just have to wait. But trust me, it looks really good.)
Oh, and while I’ve got your attention: if you’re American, and you’re eligible, do please go and VOTE tomorrow, won’t you? Need information on national issues or on your local candidates and/or ballot initiatives? Try The League of Women Voters — you can look up your state/regional chapter, which will have information on your individual state ballots, candidates, issues, etc.
I don’t mean to be partisan, or at least not too partisan, but: let’s throw the bums out. Time to play Put The Reins on the Cowboy, boys and girls!