Sunday’s Cake, Friday’s Cocktail . . . and Lerner!

Full disclosure: there is no Sunday’s Cake at this moment.  The husband’s leaving town for a couple days and so if he’s not going to whisk a cake away to his lab, there’s no way I’m tempting fate by having a scrumptious cake hanging around begging for me to stick a fork in it.  So this week’s cake will likely be a Tuesday’s Cake, since he heads back to work on Wednesday.  But we’ll see.  Just depends on how crazy it gets.

This week’s cocktail was . . . interesting, because I hadn’t intended to make it.  I’d had my eye on an Ampersand all week because I really wanted to try out a lovely bottle of Old Tom I’d snagged.  But then Leonard Nimoy died, and I thought, you know, it would be appropriate to do something Trek-related.  Now anyone who knows Spock knows that he only drank some kind of alcohol-based something or other a few times during the entire series.  (In ST VI, he shares some kind of tea concoction with Valeris–at least, I think it’s tea–and I thought, well, that’s a non-starter for a cocktail.)

Now what’s iconically Trek is Romulan ale.  That stuff is mentioned several times over; and we know it’s blue because Kirk and McCoy share a bottle on Kirk’s birthday in STII.  The catch, of course, is that Romulan ale is illegal, but McCoy only uses it for medicinal purposes, so…

Then I remembered a terrific episode from the third season (and I do believe that it was the season opener), “The Enterprise Incident,” where Spock shares a glass with the Romulan commander (whose name we never figure out).

So I thought, okay, my version of Romulan ale, it is.  Finding blue drinks is, surprisingly, not that tough.  Finding palatable blue drinks is. I finally stumbled on “The Diamond Blue” that’s supposed to have been inspired by Kate Middleton’s blue sapphire engagement ring.  Okay.  Cool.  What was even better was that I also had all the ingredients right on hand: Hendricks, Creme de Violette, Blue Curacao, lemon, and a nice Champagne.   (I know purists will be horrified that I used a bottle of Roederer, but I’ve had too many bad Champagnes that give me a headache.) I might have overdone the lemon a tad because mine had more of a greenish hue and wasn’t nearly so vibrantly blue as it was supposed to be.  On the other hand, the photo I found of it was clearly backlit to bring out that blue.  The reason I added more lemon than the recipe originally called for, though (they said a wedge, which is probably less than .25 oz) is that the drink is described as pretty sweet.  Me, I’m not a fan of cloyingly sweet drinks; in fact, I had considered making this with Old Tom instead of Hendricks only because it’s a softer gin.  The thing is, it is also sweeter (more on that when I talk gins next week) and given all the sweet stuff already in this drink, I opted for a bit more citrus punch.

Well, folks…this was tremendous: not too sweet, very smooth, a lovely citrus finish.  It was so good we almost had two apiece but stopped ourselves.  As Kirk said, “Too much of anything . . . ”  Although I was sorry about the circumstances under which I discovered this drink, I do believe it was a fitting toast.  Here’s to you, Leonard Nimoy. \V/

* * *

As you’ve all probably heard by now, about 100 Egmont titles were scooped up earlier this week by Lerner, and mine were among them.  As I said to PW in an interview about the acquisitions, this is a good thing.  Carolrhoda Lab’s Andrew Karre effectively launched my career; Draw the Dark was one of the inaugural books in the imprint’s line; and the people at Lerner couldn’t be nicer or more enthusiastic.  Is it a smaller house?  Sure.  Will my books have a better shot at remaining visible with an American-based publisher?  You bet, and I think that Lerner’s already-strong presence in both schools and libraries will only help. (For the MG folks on the list, it’s a godsend.)  Of course, we bring something to Lerner, too: books that were acquired by a house with a different emphasis and audience.  This is perfectly fine with me.

So there is a kind of happy ending to the EgmontUSA saga, I guess.  I’m still very sad that the house folded; I was sad when my publisher and then editor left, and I’ve already said I had a sense that something bad was about to happen . . . and then it did.  To be fair, I haven’t digested this all yet.  I don’t know what my takeaways are in terms of lessons learned.

What I can say is that this is not the end of the Last Listers problems.  Yes, our books are coming out, but with the probable exception of Len Vlahos’s Scar Girl (sequel to Printz nominee Scar Boys), no one will get a marketing bump or push or boost.  The Dickens Mirror will appear on March 10, but whether it gets noticed at all will be much more dependent on word-of-mouth than ever before.  We Last Listers will be on all sorts of blogs beginning tomorrow when there’s a huge blitz; I’ll be doing a podcast mid-week, and then doing more blogs and guest posts during the month.  I’ve even floated the idea of doing a Twitter chat in late March or April with all the Last Listers because I simply can’t believe that our experience is that unique, and I’d like to think that I might be learning a thing or two in this whole process.

What that is, exactly, I’m not sure . . . although I can say that I’ve been really impressed by the power of social media. I know that sounds hackneyed, but the reach of these outlets to help spread the word is, I think, far greater than more traditional mediums (newspapers, ads, that kind of thing).

The problem, though, is one of sheer volume.  How many blogs can anyone read in a day?  (And how many blogs do you read all the way through?  Come on; be honest.)  So it feels a bit scattershot; we’re blasting away hoping to hit a target we can’t even see.  But perhaps that’s the way of all marketing; I don’t know.  What I do know is that a) we authors are being asked to shoulder more of the marketing push than we ever were (I was doing that well before I became a Last Lister; I think my high is somewhere around *35* blogs for either ASHES or SHADOWS, I can’t recall which) and b) it’s damned exhausting, not to mention counterproductive if your job as a writer is to create product.  Every second I’m writing a blog I am not working on a book.  So it becomes a judgment thing; how much of your time can you really devote to marketing?

For us, this is time-limited.  I remember how shocked I was when an editor said that a book has about a month to make a splash . . . and then it’s on to the next book.  As a newbie, I expected . . . I don’t know . . . some sustained effort?  That people would be just so in love with one of my books that they would push it at every opportunity?  Well, that would be no.  Yes, a publisher can love a book.  But, theoretically, a publisher loves and promotes every acquisition; otherwise, they wouldn’t waste their time and money.

So maybe it’s always been this way for all authors–though I kind of think not.  There once was a time of the author-as-celeb (Charles Dickens and Truman Capote knew a thing or two about this), when people actually turned out to meet writers, hear authors speak.  But that’s rarer these days.  Not only are the available venues drying up as independents struggle, people have other things to do for entertainment.  Sure, they’ll flock to Stephen King, Patterson, the other big names . . . but I think that the days of people turning out to listen to a relative unknown just-because or as a way to pass a nice evening . . . they’re gone.

What’s left is what we’re trying to do: make noise and stay afloat in a vast sea of other writers, all of whom struggle with the same problem.

Gosh, I think this is worth a Twitter chat; I really do.