Something happened when it came time to send The Things We Crave into the world. I froze. I couldn’t pull the trigger. “The book needs a rewrite,” I told my friends, smiling like a goon. “It needs revision…”

The revision lasted several months. During this period I reworked scenes, then entire chapters. I paced about my apartment and acted out dialogue, as confident as a long haired cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I didn’t know it at the time, but a Dream Eater had me by the throat; and I was the Dream Eater.

Your best friend and worst enemy is the guy or gal in the mirror. This is true for writers, especially when it’s time to share their work with the world. It’s one thing to write a story and show it to you friend and quite another to put a book into the hands of strangers. But writing is about sharing your work. It’s what Ariel Gore means when she says, “Nourish the world with your words. Yo.” What good is a manuscript on a hard drive? On that note, what good is that writer?

Publishing your work is proclaiming to the world, “This is the best I can do. It’s the best book I can write and it’s worthy of your time and money because I say so.” That’s frightening because it goes without saying that somebody is going to disagree. Hell, maybe a lot of somebodys will disagree. And if too many somebodys disagree it’s going to hurt. It’s that fear that the internal Dream Eater feeds upon. The paralysis will keep your words hidden away while someone else’s earn an Amazon ranking.

The fact is The Things We Crave is the best book I can write at this time. Will it be the best book I can write next year? No way, next year I’ll be better. Did it benefit from months of revision? Not really. Will some people like it? Yup. Will some hate it? Definitely. Does it matter? You know the answer. 

What I know for sure is that one particular Dream Eater is dead. I’ve got my sock clad feet propped on his sorry, dead ass right now. ”Rest in peace, mother fucker.” Good riddance to him. And now that he’s down the world’s gonna hear a lot more from me.

It’s official – The Things We Crave is now for sale.

I don’t know how long it’s been available. Last week’s communication from the Booksurge people mentioned something about two weeks… So imagine my surprise when two friends told me, “We’re on Amazon and looking at it right now.” That was a cool moment.

An inside look at James Castle’s monster journal will soon appear here at LLO.com – you’ll need a copy of the book to access it, though. If you want to pick up a copy hit the cover below. For now, I’m celebrating rather than blogging. More later.

L.L.

A funny thing happened after receiving the Crave galleys – I could not stop revising the final draft… Every page contained something I wanted to be better. Every line of dialogue made me question the character’s intent. I ached over the placement of plot points… It went on for nights until I felt like the tortured kid in that movie The Haunting in Connecticut.  

You Must Stop Editing Your Novel!

But now it’s done. Special thanks to members of the Chicago reading team (you know who you are) who prodded me back to sanity and co-writer Chris who said, “Go home and finish it right now and I mean it.”

I’ve got a new addiction now, outlining my next project. The Weeping outline is over 60 pages and getting longer every day, but more on that later.

Peace,
LL

The galleys of The Things We Crave are in hand. Galleys are the interior pages of the book showing the:

• title
• author
• pub date
• ISBN
• total pages

and a great big disclaimer that says, “UNCORRECTED PROOF: DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION…”  

This is kind of cool. They’re unbound galleys, but they look very much like a book. The ISBN is especially neat. Lots of independent writers don’t get one and most book stores only handle books that have one, so I’m especially thankful for the relationship with the pub company tonight.

In the old days, the galley would be marked-up and sent back to the publisher by mail. Now, all changes are completed by a electronically transmitted form. It takes a lot of the romance out of the process, doesn’t it? I’ll post a few sneak peeks here pretty soon. For now, know that only two copies of The Things We Crave galleys exist in the world. Only two…

Copy one is going to my friend the poet in Fort Lauderdale because, well, he deserves it. I’m not sure what I’ll do with copy two. Any ideas?

Some Historical Information:

Galleys used to called Cranes. This is because Priscilla Crane’s company, a little print shop in Cape Cod, used to make a dozen or so advanced copies of books for publishing giant Viking. Priscilla’s shop was the only one that did this and thus the printed pages were dubbed Cranes.

Writers – we’re full of useful information like that…

Peace,
LL