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11582685-three-old-black-hockey-puck-isolated-on-white-backgroundIt’s been an exciting couple of months since Hat Trick was picked up by Queerteen Press, the YA imprint for JMS Books, for release this September. The current schedule calls for the e-book to be available September 1 with the paperback following September 30.

Here’s the work that’s been happening to get ready for publication:

Manuscript Edits: After I signed the contract, I worked on the manuscript for a couple additional weeks. One of the immediate pieces of feedback concerned the length, which was around 96,000 words. From a pricing standpoint, having the manuscript be under 90,000 was desirable so I went to work to trim at least 6,000 words, which I did over the course of about three weeks.

Memorial Day weekend was major excitement because I got the manuscript back from the editor that’s working on it. Kimberley offered some great insights and I spent last week going through her feedback and making some changes based on it. I’ll review it at least one more time, and more if necessary.

Blurb: I dread blurb writing and most writers do to some extent. It’s not easy digesting thousands of words into a few hundred. Did you say enough? Did you say too much? Did you say the right thing to make someone buy the book? I finally sent a blurb I’m happy with to the publisher. I look forward to seeing what the feedback is on it.

Photos: The most exciting thing about the past few weeks was doing a photo shoot to get some images for marketing. Over Memorial Day weekend I threw a fund raising scrimmage for Cycle for the Cause and before and after the scrimmage some friends helped get some great images. The images will get used on this website and in other promotional material.

Roman and Igor made great models and Kendall shot some stunning pictures! It gave me goosebumps to see Simon and Alex momentarily come to life before my eyes. Here’s a look at the first images in use on a postcard that will get distributed in a couple weeks…

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What’s Next? Other than finishing up the manuscript editing, the next major thing will be seeing the cover. I’ve sent over my suggestions to the publisher and I can’t wait to see what it’s going to look like. I’ve also got some ideas for the website pages to support the book and I’ll work on those so they’ll be ready for the book’s release.