Then I found a wifi cafe (through the convenient Yahoo! maps function that I utilized this morning) where I spent two hours revising the last chapter of the novel and sending it out. Whew! It still has all kinds of things wrong with it, but less so than in the last draft, which I suppose is at least a minimum acceptable result. Slowly, we progress. I'll be happy to not revise it for a month and a half, though, which is the plan. Bob should get me his comments before I leave for Sri Lanka -- Marjorie will send hers around the time I get back. Dawn, of course, will get me hers any minute now...
I can't believe the draft is done. Haven't really taken it in yet.
Then Bob took me to lunch, very yummy and I ate too much. Good talking book stuff with him. I'm excited to start work on the nonfiction book in Sri Lanka; I don't know how easy it'll be for him to sell, but it's worth a shot, I think. It'd be interesting to work on, at any rate. We took a cab uptown to HarperCollins, which took forever because the weather here is appalling. Not just rain, which was what I expected, but spitting nastiness from the sky. Yuck. My jeans are soaked almost to the knee, and I've been downing hot caffeinated drinks to keep myself going. So we were late to our meeting, but that's okay, because everyone else was too. I didn't just meet Michael my publicist either -- I also met the online marketing person Suzie and the general marketing person Christine. They all seemed lovely, and they all liked my book. Yay! And they had a surprise for me -- the Kirkus Review of BiM! It's not stellar, or starred -- it's most summary, actually. But there's nothing negative in it, which is good; apparently Kirkus can be quite harsh. I'm not going to type in the whole thing right now, but here are the first and last lines -- there's just a lot of plot summary in between of several stories:
"Twenty stories span most of the 20th century and several Sri Lankan families, emphasizing the pangs of exile and the wrench of breaking with tradition....Intricately interwoven stories featuring sensual language and surprising sexual twists." -- Kirkus ReviewsDecent, eh? Could've been much worse.
After that meeting, I took Leah out for a shared coffee cake and some chatting; turns out my editor's assistant is a poet and a trained journalist, and is currently working on a nonfiction book. Cool. Also turns out, as I have long suspected, that one really can't get by on a publishing assistant's salary in New York, especially when you're expected to take all your work reading home at the end of the day. Poor munchkin.
Now I'm stealing fifteen minutes of rest and wireless in the Waldorf Hotel (hooray for free hotel wireless) before heading out into the brutal weather again to attend Abha Dawesar's reading in Soho. Then I think dinner with Priya -- sadly, Anand had to go out of town for work, and it's unclear whether Peter will be able to meet us either. But it'll be good to meet Priya anyway. And then home to David's to crash.
I’d be curious to hear whether Google Maps would provide better or worse results for your wifi cafe search. For example, I searched for wifi cafe in New York City; is that a useful set of results?
Hey! You left a cliffhanger at Part IV. Of course I read the last part of lunch today. Silly girl. 😉 Fuller review coming, once I take time to breath rather than just consume the novel.
I will be getting comments to you soon as well. Really. I promise.
And congrats on the early reviews! They definitely could have been worse.
Jed, it’s hard to compare that way. I plugged in the specfic address where I’d be, which is very helpful since everything it shows you is essentially within a 2 mile radius. I’d try that to compare.