Guys, Band Geek Love officially comes out TOMORROW! How did this happen so quickly? I had over a year to prepare for this day and it still feels like it jumped out at me from behind a shrubbery!
I have some sort of cool plans for tomorrow…plans that I am slightly nervous about for various reasons that will soon become clear and that will involve pictures that I will post. And because I just told all of you that, it means I HAVE to go through with the plans because everyone knows that once things are on the internet they cannot be taken back ever.
Anyway, assuming I survive the pub day plans (and no, my dear parents who are reading this, the plans do not involve jumping out of a plane…that’s for the NEXT book), I will be back tomorrow evening with a full report.
Yay, Band Geek Love !!
End/Beginning
Date: Thursday June 26, 2008Posted in: Band Geek Love!, Band Geeked Out!, Real Writer
Band Geek Love is officially coming out next Tuesday, and I’m sort of in a distracted daze about it. I’ve been thinking about how strange and a little sad it is to come to the end of this process (not too sad, since I’m shoulder-deep in the sequel right now!) but my first book represents a lot to me both professionally and personally.
I started writing the book in June of 2006, and since then, my life has changed enormously. Mostly in good ways - I try to view all change as positive - but to the point that where I am now is wildly different from where I was in June ‘06. And through it all, one thing that remained reliably consistent was Band Geek Love . I’ll miss it…the anticipation.
(Thus ends the melancholy.)
Fortunately, I am just at the beginning of the Band Geeked Out process, which is going suspiciously well. And there’s my next book, which is always murmuring in my head like a movie that you have playing in the background while you’re doing other things. I’ve also really been enjoying writing and acting in plays (I adore dialogue, so this works well).
There is always something new and interesting to be immersed in…the end of one chapter is just the beginning of another.
Dudes, Band Geek Love is already shipping from Amazon! This is very exciting (has any step of this process not been exciting? Well…maybe not wrestling with the final rounds of revisions. That was less exciting and more just grimly satisfying. But I’ll take both.) I’m just happy to know that Ellie Snow is out there in the world, messing up trumpet solos and making out with cute guys.
Anyway, if you are inclined, you can order a copy of Band Geek Love and Amazon will send it to you because that’s what they do!
I’ve already been asked to sign a few copies, which has been a strange experience. It was eerily like signing a high school yearbook, and I found myself scribbling in little messages to my mom or my friend or whomever I was signing the book for because just writing my name seemed weird. At least I stopped short of writing in a purple sparkly pen You were a kick ass lab partner! Stay cool! along with my phone number and a request to Call me this summer and we’ll chill! That would have been kind of an odd thing to say to my grandparents.
Have you seen/read J.K. Rowling’s commencement address to the 2008 Harvard grads? If not, I highly recommend it…her words actually made me a little teary and inspired to go out and do Good Things, and I haven’t graduated from anything in years.
My favorite part is when she talked about failure, and how hitting bottom and ending up in a dark place you never wanted or expected to be can end up a blessing in disguise:
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
I would add to the above that, from my own experience, failing (spectacularly at times) and the things I learned from said failures have resulted in the writing that I feel is more true and engaging than anything I’ve come up with from the heights of (boring) contentment. I’d bet that is the case for a lot of writers, and artists in general (and definitely for songwriters)…disappointment and heartbreak and misfortune can be the best material.
Which, you know, kind of sucks sometimes.
Band Geek Love got another cool review, this one from Confessions of a Bibliovore . I especially liked this part, since it was something I thought a lot about as I was writing the book:
In a lot of ways, this is a risky book. For one thing, band members are not exactly the most revered creatures in any high school. (Trust me; I went to a school with a nationally honored marching band and they were still considered the ragingest geeks to walk the halls.) Bloss not only brings us intimately into this world, she feels no need to normalize it. This is not a book where the band geek becomes accepted by the popular crowd. It takes place wholly within the world of marching band.
I received another review, but this one isn’t on the internets because it came by phone call from one of my best friends from college, Kelly. She and I met while we were waiting in line to check out our euphoniums for college marching band (both of us were switching to euph from other instruments, her: trombone, me: trumpet, and were kind of nervous about it), and have been close ever since. Since Kelly is a former band geek (high school drum major, no less) who now works as an English and film teacher at a high school in Chicago, her opinion is especially meaningful.
"It was so good! And the descriptions of marching band totally took me back," she said. "I’d get all caught up in the story and be excited about what happens next and then I’d really, ‘wait, Josie wrote this!’ Can I lend it out to some of my students?"
Um, YEAH .
In other news, the sequel, Band Geeked Out , is going really well. My editor recently showed me the cover which got me all excited about a new plot line and I’ve generally been a writing machine for the past week or so. Sometimes inspiration comes from the most unexpected places! I’ll be talking more about the Big New Plot Line as I develop it. I’m hopeful that it might allow me to follow in the footsteps of my personal writerly heroes…and get me banned!
