Band Geeked Out, the sequel to Band Geek Love, is officially up on Amazon for pre-order and I am very excited to share the cover.
BEHOLD:
Hi! I’m Ellie and I am FREAKING OUT.
I think it captures the essence of the story quite well (which is pretty cool, considering it was designed before I had even fully finished it) and, did you notice? It’s the same girl! That’s some awesome continuity, and major props to the fine designers at Flux (who just received a well-deserved shout-out in Publishers Weekly!) Thanks for the lovely cover.
Also, I sort of want that girl’s hair. And her lipstick.
I have returned from the wilds of northern Michigan! It was a great trip, and the fact that my email took at least five minutes to load made it a little easier to concentrate on revising Band Geeked Out (a draft of which I sent it yesterday! Huzzah!).
Things that didn’t make it easier to concentrate on revising included playing Apples to Apples with my extended family, eating pesto, kayaking, singing folk songs, walking out to the lighthouse and…hmm…there was something else. Oh, that’s right -
BEING TERRORIZED BY A BEAR!
Hard to tell from this picture, but the bear was, like, two seconds from eating our faces off.
Well, technically the bear was not much bigger than a large dog. And it was in the water, scared out of its mind. And we were in a sizable boat 15 feet away. But that still counts as being terrorized, right? RIGHT? (The bear was okay, by the way…it swam across the channel and jumped right out of the water and ran into the woods.)
Other than that, though, it was a relaxing vacation. I’m glad to be back to my precious internet and the Olympics and some downtime to read a few books off the top of my reading pile. And, of course, there are always new books to write…
Whew, guys, I have been BUSY. Not only am I finishing up a draft of Band Geeked Out (I like to think that I’m in the “herding cats” stage, trying to tie all these disparate elements together into something that makes sense which sometimes feels as easy as…well…herding cats), but I’m ALSO in a play that’s opening tomorrow night. It’s a hilarious piece (I play a perky telemarketer who loves her job a little too much), and the whole thing has been a ton of fun, but my time management skillz have been put to the test.
Fortunately, on Sunday I’m off to a yearly family reunion in the farthest remote reaches of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where they do not believe in internet or plays or telemarketers. The U.P. is one of my most favorite places on the planet and the area I’m headed looks something like this:
Actually, it looks exactly like this.
I plan to do nothing else but revise, eat pancakes, revise, walk to the lighthouse, revise, canoe around the bay, revise, sing some songs by the campfire, and then revise some more. With perhaps a few breaks to make my family read the Band Geeked Out draft and give me their opinions. And they are good at giving opinions, let me tell you. On just about anything. They are totally up for the job.
I’ll be back soon to report the excellent news that I’ve turned in Band Geeked Out!
Hope you all are having wonderful summers!
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.
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!
