The first review of The Eagle & The Arrow has been posted!

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The book itself won’t be released until June 11, but the first review for The Eagle & The Arrow has been posted, and I am thrilled.

Please check out So, I Read This Book Today and give the review a read.

So, I Read This Book Today is a brand new book review site run by Leiah Cooper, a lover of books and a fellow knitter. (She also makes quilts. She’s a woman of many talents.)

Her review of The Eagle & The Arrow made my day. Here’s one part of the review that made me squeal and do a happy dance in my office:

If your interests are the smart, the funny, the snide and the thoughtful, don’t miss this little book. It is a true gem of Modern Americana with a twisted mindset that has me looking forward to going back and reading the first book, as well as look forward to anything Ms. O’Connell writes next.

I cannot convey you how happy this makes me.

This is the part of the blog where I admit to being a gigantic coward when it comes to reading my reviews. I’m always nervous when I send out the review copies, but I’m much more nervous when a reviewer emails a link to me and tells me that his or her review is live. The first time I read any review of my work, I look at it through my fingers, while holding my breath, like a kid at a horror movie.

This is why I set my five bad reviews goal this summer. That way, when I get a bad review, I won’t be quite so disappointed, because yes, I will be getting a bad review, but I will also be achieving a goal.

Thankfully, I’m not on my way to that goal quite yet. This review was so good, and so thoughtful that it made my day. You can check it out the whole review here.

If you want to see more from Leiah, check out the sidebar. I am adding her site to my Links section.

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I want five bad reviews this summer

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Five bad reviews of either of my books from people I don’t know. That’s my goal for this summer. I told my husband this last week and he looked at me as if I’d sprouted an arm from the top of my head.

I do have a good reason for wanting five bad reviews: if I don’t get any bad reviews, not enough people are reading the book.

This doesn’t mean I’m eager to read a bad review of The Eagle and The Arrow. And it doesn’t mean that I want more terrible reviews than good ones. No one likes a bad review. But no bad reviews are almost as bad as no good reviews, I think, because that means only my friends are reading it. Though I treasure my friends and want them to read my work, I also want to reach readers of all kinds.

And if I reach a wide enough group of readers, I will find the haters. Not everyone is going to love my work, I know this. I mean, look at Amazon. There are people, alive and dead, who hate The Great Gatsby, Pride & Prejudice and The Fellowship of the Ring, so there are definitely people around who will hate my work. This summer, I want to get my book into enough hands that I find some of them.

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Give it away, give it away, give it away now.

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Beware The Hawk novellaWow. The Goodreads book giveaway is no joke.

Today I launched my very first giveaway with the site, the first of several giveaways of Beware the Hawk I’m doing to lead up to the release of The Eagle and the Arrow next month.

My giveaway has been for one morning and already it’s been requested by several people. I’ve been checking back every hour like the obsessive person that I am, and it’s been kind of a thrill to watch people participating. Some people have added my book to their shelves. Some people have requested the giveaway. This is totally worth all the research, hair-pulling and cursing at the Internet I did on Friday when I tried to set up this giveaway.

I decided to try a series of giveaways after being prompted by other writers, every how-to-be-an-author-in-2013 blog post ever written and Goodreads itself. It was something I avoided last year, when BTH came out, because at first BTH was an e-book only (you can only give away physical books over Goodreads) and later, despite the advice of publishing friends, I was wary of giving away anything.

You know what? I really wish I tried the giveaway earlier. It’s a way to reach readers who a) I don’t know and b) don’t live near me. Even if the winner doesn’t read the book, or doesn’t like it, I will have still connected with a lot of readers who would be otherwise unavailable to me.

I’m pretty excited about all these readers. In fact, I’m excited about the series of giveaways as well. I’ll be doing one this week, next week and the week after, and then I will do some with the new book as well.

In the meantime, I’m working on some other goodness and I hope to post about that soon.

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Do you know of a great book reviewer? I want to know.

Eagle & The ArrowThis is a crowd-sourcing kind of post. I want you guys to tell me where to send my book.

Yesterday I started sending review copies of The Eagle & The Arrow to a few fantastic book reviewers with whom I have relationships, and also to an elite group of super-readers. (I like to call them The Resistance. Because why not.)

But now it’s time to open things up and start sending review e-copies of my book to reviewers I don’t know. So I thought I’d open this up here: Do you know of, or really like a book review site to which I should be sending The Eagle & The Arrow? Or are you a book reviewer (for this effort, I’m looking for people who write reviews for either book review sites, blogs or publications)? 

Let me know. Leave a comment with the name of the site or shoot me an email or tweet me or Facebook message me and tell me where you think I should send my review copies. Or fill out this form (I’m all about options):

You send me a recommendation and I will send an e-book galley to that site. I will write them a note and mention you by name and tell them that you loved them so much that you recommended them to me.

So tell me, who should I be emailing? I want to know.

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I could get used to radio.

WNPR, Colin McEnroe

Just after we got off the air.

Wow. That was fun. I’m just back from Hartford, and wanted to update the blog quickly and let you know how the show went.

First of all, the Colin McEnroe Show was a lot of fun. Colin, Lucy, Brian and Chandra had a lot to say about the state of the novel. The hour went by more quickly than I thought it would.

I really enjoyed the discussion. We heard “crap” used as an adverb in a clip, someone called in from Rwanda to talk about why e-books are such a gift to her, Lucy told us that the novel is called a novel, because it was a new art form and novel means “new” (which I guess I knew but never thought much about) and Game of Thrones was discussed. Repeatedly.

If you missed it, you can hear it online and see photos: click here for the show’s web page.

Oh, and I didn’t use my index cards at all. I had them out and I shuffled them on the desk in front of me, but I didn’t use them.

But then, I knew I wouldn’t.

 

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Headed up to Hartford for Colin McEnroe’s radio show.

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It’s almost time to depart Bridgeport for Hartford, Conn. in order to appear on Colin McEnroe’s radio show at 1 p.m.

index cards, author appearance, Colin McEnroe

Honestly, I can barely read these.

As I wrote Friday, I will be appearing with three other authors to talk about the future of the novel. (Is it dying? Is it being cheapened by popular fiction?)

If you want to listen and you’re in CT, the radio station is 90.5 FM. If you don’t live in CT, you can listen to the live show here. The live show is a call-in ((860) 275-7266) and starts at 1 p.m. A rerun of the show airs at 8 p.m. or you can listen to the podcast here.

I will publish all these links to all my social media shortly.

At the moment, I’m sitting here with my second coffee. The mad dash to finish up my index cards is upon me. I’m scrawling the names of authors, works they’ve published and years of publication. I’ve got a couple of quotes, the name of a series, and for some reason, the definition of “bowdlerize.” I can’t read half the cards I’ve written. There are arrows from one random word to another. Items are circled for reasons that now escape me.

All this is pretty standard, actually. I write up index cards like this for almost every appearance I do, but I never use them. I read from the top one sometimes, but then I completely forget about them. It doesn’t matter. It’s like taking notes in class; the act of writing down the notes helps me remember what I wrote. And anyway, I always feel better having them with me.

Anyhow I have to get moving. Come, listen to me, Brian Slattery, Chandra Prasad and Lucy Ferriss talk to McEnroe at 1 p.m. Call in. Tweet to me. Join our chat about the novel.

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So excited: I will be on WNPR’s Colin McEnroe Show Monday.

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Guys. GUYS. I’m going to be on WNPR on Monday. On the Colin McEnroe show.  On the radio.

I will be on the air with three other CT authors: Chandra Prasad, Brian Slattery and Lucy Ferriss.

We will be talking about the future of the novel with McEnroe, who is himself an author, at 1 p.m. on Monday, and folks, it’s a call-in show. This is the number: (860) 275-7266.  Call in. Ask lots of questions. The show airs on WPNR-FM 90.5 in Connecticut, but if you don’t live here, that’s okay, you can listen live (or listen to the file later) by going here.

UPDATE: If you miss the 1 p.m. show, a rerun will air at 8 p.m. Thanks to Betsy from WNPR for letting me know.

I’m going to be honest; I’m a little nervous to be on a panel with these authors. They’re all extremely accomplished. But I’m also excited; I can’t wait to talk with them about writing in general and the novel in particular.

For those of you who are not from Connecticut, Colin McEnroe is kind of a big deal. He was on AM radio when I was growing up and he must have been on at a time when I was home from in school, because his was one of the voices I heard daily.

I could go on and on, but I will make a long story short: in 2009, McEnroe moved to WNPR, which is one of CT’s NPR affiliates. He’s got a show that runs from 1 to 2 p.m. weekdays, and that’s the one I will be on Monday. He’s great to listen to; he’s a wit and he’s smart as hell and opinionated as a radio host ought to be. I once read a piece that described him as “The Hunter Thompson of Connecticut Journalism.” I don’t know if that’s really the case, but I aim to find out.

So guys, listen, call in. Tweet about it. It’s going to be fantastic.

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My galley proof is here, and I have a lot of feelings about it.

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The proof of my new book, The Eagle and the Arrow, arrived on Monday, causing me so much agitation I couldn’t write for the rest of the day, so I took a bunch of photos that looked like this and posted them on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo 34

Shamelessness: Just one of the reasons you should follow me on social media.

Here’s the thing, though; excited as I am when a galley (a proof, galley or galley proof is a preliminary version of a book) arrives on my doorstep, I’m also filled with dread. Why? Because when the galley proof arrives, that means I have to sit down and read the whole thing.

I know that probably sounds weird. But now, a month before the book itself is released is the absolute worst time for me to sit down and read it, because at this point in the process, I am always convinced that whatever it is I’m publishing – in this case, my book – is the most horrendous thing I’ve ever written.

 I ride a roller coaster of self-consiousness when I’m writing and publishing. it goes a little something like this:

  1. When I first write something, minutes after my fingers have lifted from the keyboard, I’m convinced that I’m a genius.
  2. When I look at it again, I regain my sanity and revise.
  3. When I revise again, after my writers’ group has seen it, I’m once again convinced that I’m brilliant.
  4. Then I submit it somewhere, and am certain that it’s the worst thing I, or anyone else, has ever written.
  5. If it’s accepted, I believe I’m a genius again.
  6. If it’s rejected, I also believe I’m a genius, but that no one appreciates me and that somehow makes me more awesome and when I die an old hermit, someone will discover my manuscripts under hundreds of tins of cat food and realize I was a genius and then people will teach graduate courses about my work.
  7. When the publisher and I start work on rewrites, I regain my sanity for a while.
  8. But when the rewrites are done, the copy editors have done their thing, and it’s time for me to read the galley proof before it’s finalized and sent out to reviewers, I hit my biggest low since Step 4 and I believe that this book is the crappiest crap to ever have been written in English or any other language.
  9. I also go through a mini version of this whenever I stand up to read from my work to a group of people.
The Eagle & The Arrow, book, A.J. O'Connell, Vagabondage, Battered Suitcase, Beware the Hawk

It’s here!

Why do I do this? I don’t know. At this point in the process, several sets of eyes have been over it and the book is certainly better than it was back when I thought I was a genius.

Maybe it’s because the reviewers will be the next people who read this and OH MY GOD THEY MIGHT HATE IT. Maybe it’s because after the reviewers read it, everyone else will be able to read it and OH MY GOD THEY MIGHT HATE IT.

Although the insanity doesn’t last long; last year, when my first book came out, a couple of weeks after the release, after I forced myself to look at my reviews on Amazon, and then I was fine. I’m hoping that’s what happens this time, too.

And so my first reaction, after the galley arrives is to be very excited about it and then to carry it around in my purse but not read it for a day or so. And then when I try to read it that thing happens where I read the same page three times but no words actually get from the page to my brain.

Luckily I have my husband, who reads the whole galley first, points out errors, and then, somehow it’s easier for me to read it.

The thing that makes me feel extra divaish about all this is that I’ve only published short stories and novellas. I can sit down and read my books in a few hours. I can’t imagine what it would be like to publish a full-length novel and have to sit down and read through the whole proof by the end of the week.

Someday, though, I intend to find out.

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May: 2013 goals

It’s May! Winter is over for real-real, not for play-play! And it’s time to check in with my goals for this year. But first, let me distract you with the happiest music to come out of the ’90s, Moxy Früvous’s “King of Spain.”

What? You’ve never heard of Früvous? You didn’t know ’90s music could be happy? Click on the video below and learn, young padawan. (It’s not my favorite version of this song, and the video was clearly shot by the same cameraman who worked on The Blair Witch Project, but still.)

My novel: This year I’m resolving to spend the first hour of every weekday working on my novel until it’s done, no matter what other projects come along.
I’m up to chapter 20. Which is good, but not quite good enough. I need this draft done by the end of August.

Marketing: My goal is to spend an hour of each weekday working on marketing projects, including the upkeep of this blog, my social networks, reading up on marketing and emails to bookstores and libraries and reviewers.
I need to up my game with this. I have a month until my new book comes out. That means more blog posts and more status updates that are real updates and not spam.

Making a marketing plan for my new book: See my above status.

Publishing: My goal is to publish three things that aren’t my upcoming book this year.
I have not sent out anything. I’m writing on the semi-regular for GeekEccentric, though.

Reading: My goal is to read 33 books in 2013, including one by Jane Austin and one by Charles Dickens.
I started reading Game of Thrones last month and ohmygod, I haven’t stopped. Because Game of Thrones is Made of Crack. I basically spent April reading Game of Thrones, Clash of Kings and Storm of Swords. And as soon as I’m done with the third one, and caught up to the television show (and not afraid to read my HBO-watching friends’ Sunday night status updates for fear of spoilers) I will take a break and read something without dragons in it. Like maybe that Charles Dickens book I said I was going to read. But I will come back to Westeros. Oh yes, I will.

Conferences: Attend at least one new conference or retreat.
I went to AWP. I’m considering Thrillerfest in NYC, but I’d rather see what the New England Horror Association and Sisters in Crime are doing for events.

Grants: Apply for at least three fellowships or grants.
I’ve applied for an NEA grant, and the state of Connecticut’s Scholarship program.
Also, I got an email thanking me for applying for a grant I completely forgot about, and letting me know that though I didn’t win the grant, I should take heart, and also purchase the organizer’s new poetry collection for the low, low price of whatever she’s charging for it. Huh. Stay classy.

Weight: I feel most comfortable when I weigh within a certain five-pound range, and I am always two pounds away from that five pound range. For 2013, I would like to get within that range and stay there.
I’m holding steady at a reasonable weight, but I’m not terribly fit. Time for yoga again.

Punctuality: I’ve been a late for everything since childhood. In an effort to put a stop to this, I’ve decided to put a dollar into a mason jar whenever I’m late for anything, and donate it to charity in a year.
The only time I was late for a thing this month was intentional, so I don’t think I have to put a dollar in the jar for that.

My big-picture goal: I’ve planned to look into all political issues I can, and make up my mind about how I really feel about them.
I might drop this goal. I’ve been more or less ignoring it.

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