Building a book trailer

I’ve decided there is never an end to the things that need doing in getting a book published and out there to the world. My latest chore is developing a book trailer, and when I began – just days ago – I really didn’t have a clue about how to do it.

I actually thought about having a trailer some months ago when I saw the one for Alice and Richard’s book The Art of Aging. And then when two of my Lucky Press author colleagues came out with theirs, I decided it was time for me to get a move on. And since I’m a me-too kind of person, I didn’t want to be left out. Their books will be released after mine, and their trailers are already on YouTube.

So I asked my son Ben if he would work on it with me – he of course with his acting talent and his experience in writing, directing, and producing short films – he was the logical choice. And like a good son, he said he’d be glad to help – which really meant doing most of the design and production work.

We met on Thursday and talked about a script. Obviously for a piece about two minutes long, not much of a script is needed, but the details need to be thought through carefully. I brought a review copy of my book, and while we ate our burger bowls at The Counter in Marina del Rey, we each marked photos to include in the trailer – my idea is to have a background that is a montage of the photos that tell the story. Ben had the brilliant idea and some words to typify a beginning, middle, and end of the story.

And since Ben is in the business of making films he felt he could call upon a couple of his friends to help out. One of his friends has the skills and access to the equipment needed to produce the piece. And although I had originally thought that either Ben or his wife Marissa, also an actor, would do the voice over, Ben called another one of his friends who is more experienced. Both agreed to help out. Wow, am I lucky.

Then yesterday I spent the afternoon shipping off music and pictures to my two producers who worked into the wee hours of the night to come up with a draft. Needless to say I sent them more than they used, but they definitely picked out the right stuff. Their initial product is beautiful. No voice over yet – I’m still deciding on what the voice will say – but the look is beautiful and very heartfelt. Of course throughout I’ve had the help of wonderful photographers whose work is in the book and will be shown on the video. Plus I took a few of the photos myself.

Picking the music is another issue. I decided early on to have Paul’s music in the background, and I mistakenly sent my producers the wrong tracks. So for the draft Ben and Frank used one that wasn’t composed by Paul and that had a lot of saxophone playing besides Paul’s piano. Today I spent some time listening to what I think were his latest compositions and sent that off. Hopefully it won’t be hard to take out the music from the draft piece and include another piece. My goal is to have only Paul at the piano in the background.

Another one of my original ideas was to have a couple poem excerpts read as the photos and music plays on screen. But, seeing how short two minutes are, I’m reconsidering. Perhaps it will be statements that typify the beginning, middle, and end of the story. I have a few days left to decide on that.

I’ve discovered a process has been associated with each step of my book’s creation. I drew my material from my journal entries, using my poem manuscript as an organizing tool. I did my revisions and reviews based on the processes I learned by working proposals in the aerospace company: revise, review, revise, review until done; storyboard the entire manuscript, and save every hard and soft version until the book is published. And by the time this trailer is finished I’ll have a process to share about doing that. In the meantime there’s a lot of lessons to be learned. 

The final, final, final review

Great cover photo by Madison Poulter
http://www.LuckyPress.com/madelinesharples.html

I’ve been procrastinating about getting down to my writing all morning. And I didn’t write a word yesterday. Am I feeling the need to relax a bit about my writing schedule – after all I’ve sent off the final, final, final corrections for the book prior the launch just about six weeks away.

Dealing with the final corrections is a whole other story. I received my review copy early this month – in a paperback edition although the book will come out next month in hardback. I really hadn’t intended to read it. I just wanted to have a copy for my records. So my husband Bob decided to read it front to back. He had read little bits of the book when I had the drafts posted on the storyboard wall, but I had never asked him to read or review it before. (I was told some years ago not to let a significant other read your drafts – the risks of hurt and hard feelings are too high.)

So needless to say, his reading the book at this point was a huge confront. Although I didn’t worry that there would be any hard feelings, because he's an excellent editor, I did worry that he’d find things that were too late to fix.

Luckily he was kind and he only made a few suggestions. In fact, at first he didn’t even know if I wanted him to mark any typos. So by the time I asked him to, he had already found a couple in the first half of the book and didn’t note where they were. That was my undoing. I felt adamant against coming out with a book with known typos. I looked through the first half of the review copy and couldn’t find them. I looked through my last word version online and couldn’t find them, and Bob didn’t have the time or patience to go through the book again to see if he could find them.

I finally asked my eagle-eye friend to take a look, and although she found only one of the places Bob mentioned (he said he saw two places where two words were run together) she found a couple of other typos as well. And then we had to be done. My publisher gave me a deadline of March 28 and we were down to the wire.

So what I know is no matter how many times I read the book and no matter how many times I say it is final, final, final, I know it could be looked at one more time. And there is always the need for another pair of fresh eyes to take a look. Of course I also know if we had unlimited time to keep reading and reviewing, nothing would ever get published.

My only hope now is: if it was so hard for my eagle-eyed friend and me to find the other pair of run-together words, none of my readers will find them either. Even though you know it’s there?

  

Next steps to book launch

I've finished my final review of my book's design and galleys and sent off my notes to my Lucky Press publisher. Next steps are sending out review copies, getting back comments and hopefully some good blurbs for the back of the dust jacket, and then the book's Mother's Day release. Right after that I have my first scheduled book signing - May 12 at our local Manhattan Beach bookstore, Pages. I'll be sending out invites to that soon. http://www.LuckyPress.com/madelinesharples.html

So, in the meantime I'll post a few of the poems that are interspersed throughout. Here's "Leaving the Hall Light On," originally published by The Muddy River Poetry Review under the title, "What Is Loss?"


Leaving the Hall Light On 

I lose my keys or sunglasses

and find them in my hand all along.

I lose my little boy in the department store

and he pops out squealing with laughter

from under the clothes display,

I lose important papers

and find them

in the stack of other papers on my desk.

I didn’t lose my son, Paul.

Paul is dead.

Death is forever.

There’s not a chance of finding him.

The light I’ve left on in the hall for him

every night since he died

doesn’t show him the way back home.

There are no more piano gigs out there for him.

The Sunday paper entertainment guide

doesn’t list his name at any jazz club.

He can’t join the young guys at the Apple Genius Bar

and help people solve their computer problems.

Paul would have loved that job.

He was made for that job,

but he checked out too early.

The new meds and surgery for manic depression,

the new information about mental illness

are not for him.

Why do people refer to death as loss?

Maybe just to encourage

people like me.

Maybe just to keep me looking for him.

Maybe so I can pretend he’s still out there.

Maybe that’s why I long to mother

the strong young men at the gym

who hardly notice me

and the bright ones at work.

They are the right age.

They have the same look.

They have the same appeal.

Every time I see a young man

with close-buzzed hair,

well-worn jeans,

a white t-shirt, and a black jacket,

sitting outside of Starbucks,

sucking on a cigarette,

every time I see a skinny guy

walking fast across the street

carrying a brown leather bag over his shoulder,

I look to make sure.

Small Stones seven through thirteen

Jan 7: I’m going through each page of my manuscript combing every line for my editor’s neatly printed turquoise blue pen marks.

Jan 8: We sit crushed together on hard folding-chair seats, gobbling down every word our writing gurus say.

Jan 9: The little babies converse across the booth seat as we eat at the Corner Bakery this morning.

Jan 10: I watch the tiny leaves sway in the yard next door under a gray, gloom.

Jan 11: One loud jolt, then a short rumbling shake. Yes, a small earthquake but I don't worry. (And I lived to write about it.)

Jan 12: The waves roll in lazily; their whitecaps barely able to touch the shore.

Jan 13: A starling family hops around a small garden near the beach, their dark metallic feathers etched with gold specks.

Small stones four, five, and six

Jan 5: I walked through our town’s new sculpture garden this morning. The hilly grass a perfect backdrop for our budding artists.

Jan 6: She brushed my hair flat against my back and snipped little sections diagonally about a half an inch, trimming the ends.

Jan 7: I’m going through each page of my manuscript combing every line for my editor’s neatly printed turquoise blue pen marks.

Okay, what's happening with the book?

Since I used the whole month of December to honor my son Paul’s memory I failed to provide an update on the status of my book.

My goal was to complete all revisions by December 4. My publisher asked for it on December 27, but, I wanted to take the month of December off so I pushed hard to reach that goal. And since she would be on a family vacation she asked that I not send it before she got back on December 13 so it would arrive when she returned. I’m glad that she agreed to let me send it early, probably understanding that if I kept it in my possession any longer I might be tempted to make more changes to it.

Fortunately I knew I was finished when I couldn’t think of anymore changes, edits, adds, or things to move-around that it needed. I could sleep at night not thinking about what I was going to do to my book the next day. The five months of living, breathing, and sleeping with my book was really over.

With the manuscript –which I sent electronically – I sent copy for the book’s jacket cover. And by snail mail I sent a DVD with photos for the book and the cover and hard copies of the permissions to use other author’s quotes in my book.

I had spent a lot of time amassing the photos that will be divided into three sections in the book – not distributed chapter by chapter. I also had my photo taken for the book jacket. It turned out to be quite a glamour shot, of course vastly helped by my wonderful makeup artist (my actor daughter-in-law insisted I get the best in the business and I listened) and my photographer (the photog for our The Emerging Goddess book of photos and poems), who did some expert touch-ups.  And my young friend (the Sundance_Kidd) took some very creative stills for the front cover. So the photo part of the book became almost as time consuming as gathering together the book’s text.

I also had all the permissions I needed except one. Some of my readers were right when they suggested that the quotes might need no permission if they were in the realm of fair use. That was indeed the case with the Random House quote. The other two quotes were not and each publisher asked for a small sum of money if wanted to go ahead and use them. I’m happy to pay since I feel the quotes are so important to my book.

However, I’m still awaiting one permission – one that I had no idea I would need. Random House referred my to another company (that shall remain nameless) if my book is to be distributed in the United Kingdom. I immediately queried and within minutes I received a new form to fill out. That was in mid November. When I hadn’t heard after the allotted time of four weeks I queried and received a snippy response that if I query them it will only take longer for them to review my request. Now it’s almost eight weeks later, and still no response. In the meantime, I wait silently.  

That’s the recap of the last month.

At the very end of the month I received a lengthy email from my publisher telling me she had finished reading my book two times. Whew! That’s a huge commitment and one I’m so thankful for. And she says she loves it. She gave me lots of compliments that I truly cherish, and she gave me suggestions for a few changes. Since I agree with her suggestions, once I get her mark-ups – they are coming via U.S. Mail as I write – I won’t have to spend more than a day to electronically make the changes. I couldn’t have gotten a better reward for spending those five months revising my book. It was well worth the effort and time.

I’ll be back with a report on my re-revision progress and next steps.

And, remember, my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On, will be released by Lucky Press LLC on Mother's Day 2011. http://www.LuckyPress.com/madelinesharples.html