The Speed Bumps

There’s always a problem.. with any project in any industry or at any job… there’s always a problem. It happens, it’s unavoidable, and all you can do is sit back with your fingers crossed and pray that it’s not too bad.

There were some pretty good ones with Who Needs Christmas? I mean, yeah, like crawl in a ball in the corner with some Jack Daniels… then again since I live in fantasy world I tend to be a little over dramatic. But then again, considering it’s a twelve book series and hundreds of hours, months of work put into it… I feel justified for having a few meltdowns.

The first problem was months ago, when I was doing 4.5 or 5 books a month trying to have current releases and stock pile elves… long before anyone knew about the series. Sure, I’d talked to my publisher, a few of my friends about it, bouncing around ideas, etc.

So the phone rings and I groan because it’s the owner of Siren… Now, I want to be perfectly clear, I ADORE her and the inside staff at Siren. They’re great to work with and the owner I actually consider a friend I could turn to if I needed something and would do just about anything for. But she is the Boss, with a capital B. The great part of being an author is I can do what I want, but at times, yeah, she’s totally the boss of me. And she’s also crazy busy, so she doesn’t normally call to say hi and ask how my weekend was. It means I screwed up. Kinda like getting sent to the principal’s office.

Hell, I answer the phone, “I didn’t do it,” most of the time when she calls. Partially because it always makes her laugh. So we’re talking and she says the dreaded words no author wants to here, we have a problem. Originally, I was titling the books On The First Day, On The Second Day, etc because well, it went with Christmas, it was easy (I find coming up with titles to be very hard), and I thought it was cute. Then she informs me that the 12 days of Christmas start on Christmas and are the days following. And since we were doing the days before Christmas it didn’t really fit.

Yeah, I can’t even remember what combo of cuss words came out of my mouth but luckily she’s cool enough to realize I wasn’t swearing at her, but just, kinda in her direction. I hung up with her and stared at the wall. I was already on book four, had everything all outlined, and wow didn’t need a wrench thrown in my plans. My wonderful intern, Andi was here that day in my office, and I didn’t want to scare her by screaming in frustration. That left calling Gabrielle Evans and whining until I was a little annoyed with myself. But in true Gabrielle style, she stayed calm and simply said, “okay, then we come up with 12 new titles.”

Now, being an author, a lot of times you feel like you’re on your own little island so first off, I’d never been more grateful for a we. We were going to fix this and it wasn’t all on my shoulders. I raced up to my office, put her on speaker and with Andi’s help, we came up with 12 new titles. Gabrielle came up with the first one, Screw Santa, and I just went, “I can’t name a book that!”

“Why not?” Gabrielle asked me with a laugh. And I had no reason really besides my ma might smack me but damn it was a funny title. We went from there, coming up with the craziest, most innuendo laced titles I think I’ve ever seen. And I didn’t have to do it alone, so crisis averted.

The other main bump in the road came right after the New Orleans conference. I got another call from the publisher, this time at like 7 in the morning so there was the I’m so not up yet factor as well. She tells me we can’t call the series the Grinch Elves because Grinch is a registered trademark. Well fuuuuuuck. I’d already given out promo materials with it, had a banner designed, trailer on the way, poor Jinger had all the covers done. Yeah, huge cluster mess. So we hang up and I’m online checking… technically we could have, the trademark is for calling a character The Grinch but really, that sounded like I might just be asking for trouble.

Who do I call? Yeah, you guessed it. I called Gabrielle after my ma and bawling in her ear. Actually, it wasn’t us that fixed it this time… it was the staff at Siren, namely the EIC and Chief Imprint Editor. I sent them some ideas and they had already been thinking of some of their own. When I saw Who Needs Christmas? I called Gabrielle back and went, they got it. They got the new series name. She agreed and I wanted to drive to TX (Siren’s headquarters) and inappropriately kiss both of them for saving my ass.

Then it was just a matter of damage control. Reese Dante, who’s my goddess of all things pretty, changed the banner and trailer. Jinger, my lady of gorgeous covers, immediately jumped on getting me new ones with the right series name, and Andi and I changed the site and everything else. Yes, it was days of racing around to fix things, but it could have been a lot worse and again, I had help.

Lots of drama on this series? Hell yes, but I think it just gave the stories that much more character and a journey I won’t ever forget.

Today’s Contest Question: I actually have a book cover where there is a road on it… Which is it? (Hint: Think wolves)

Read these directions because only the people who do it right get entered!

If you’d like to enter please email Andi, my intern at joyee_intern@yahoo.com. Put the title of the blog in the subject line so she can keep them all straight. In the email, put your answer, full name and address.

The prize for this contest is a L or XL Who Needs Christmas? T-Shirt so please make sure to include which size you’d like!! *Contest ends Dec 14^th at noon MST.

Good luck and today is the release of the first of the series, Screw Santa, the title that always makes me laugh because only Gabrielle would have come up with that one!

-Joyee