Fox News Latino: Sabrina Vourvoulias releases novel Ink

Thrilled to have Fox News Latino showcase my novel, INK! Read about its immigration theme, its link to Guatemala and my love of magical realism:
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2012/11/01/sabrina-vourvoulias-releases-new-novel-ink/

Win a signed ARC of INK in a Goodreads giveaway

Three signed copies available — for free! Just click this link and sign up for the giveaway: http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/28126-ink

Advanced Reading Copies of INK are in the house

Well, not my house — but at Crossed Genres Publications. I'll get to see my first perfect bound copy at Readercon 23 (where I'll be part of the Crossed Genres reading on Saturday at noon).

Excited doesn't even begin to cover how I feel...

For review copies of INK please contact publicity @ crossedgenres . com  

Format: Paperback (240 pp.) & Ebook
Release date: Monday, October 15, 2012
ISBN: 0615657818 / ISBN-13: 978-0615657813
Cost: $13.95 (print) / $5.99 (ebook)

So your book has a cover ... now what?

I am both the most and least patient of people.

The patient part was the part that wrote my novel. Every night after dinner was done and my family had gone to sleep, I’d sit down at the old laptop and figure out where the characters were taking me, then I’d get lost in words for the next three or four hours. Sometimes I’d write clear through the night until it was time to get my daughter’s lunch packed for school and myself ready for another day of work. Weekends were occasionally writing marathons, with breaks built in for the stuff of living. I didn’t rush — the characters’ lives unfolded at their own pace — and it took me a long time to get to the point where I understood it was time to let them find closure.

I’ve since learned that many writers produce not one but several novels in the time it had taken me to get to this winding down stage.

I think because I’ve worked at newspapers most of my life, this leisured pace — so far removed from hard deadlines and words turned in a few hours to article or editorial — made patience easy.

But it’s also what’s made what has come after the novel was finished so blasted trying.

With newspapers, your articles and editorials are poured onto the page instants after the edit is done, you see how the finished product will look minutes before you load it onto the printer’s ftp site, and the next morning, there it is, hot off the presses. No delayed gratification — just words in column widths on newsprint and someone telling you how much they loved or hated your editorial, thank you very much.

From waiting for my beta-readers to finish reading the manuscript to edits to galleys, this first-novel-in-the-making has been a test of patience. And now, I have a cover. And an ISBN number.

It feels like the novel is almost ready to see the light of day, but of course it isn’t. It doesn’t launch until Oct. 15 and between now and then there are who knows how many steps until I actually arrive at that  “hot off the presses” experience.

I think the level and consistency of my impatience amuses my editor/publisher — at least I hope it amuses more than irritates him. As self-protection against the bite of my impatience, I design book cards, make lists of the people I’ll send reading copies to, plan publicity pieces newspaper editors like me glance at to decide whether we’ll pass the book on to a reviewer or simply add it to the stack of books we’ll never find the time to get to.

And so I wonder how writers with multiple books to their name do it. I’m asking you, like a younger sibling hoping the older will have wisdom to share: How do you live in this in-between time?

In the interim, of course, I’m writing. Weekly columns and editorials, poems and short stories and novellas, but it’s not quite the same thing as a novel. No patience required, you see.

Meet the editor of INK

Want to get the much more readable PDF version of this newsletter? Email me at svourvoulias(at)yahoo(dot)com

Want to get the much more readable PDF version of this newsletter? Email me at svourvoulias(at)yahoo(dot)com

Want to get the much more readable PDF version of this newsletter? Email me at svourvoulias(at)yahoo(dot)com

Good people, good books, good kickstarter

Beta-readers

 

A thank-you for a pretty thankless job. =)

INK: Of butterflies, and my novel's due date

Advance Reading Copies of my novel, INK, set to be released by Crossed Genres Publications on Oct. 15, will be available soon... I know, because I just read through the final before it goes to proof.

In a word: Aieee! Excited and terrified at once.

Despite the photo at the top of this post, INK has nothing to do with butterflies (but certainly started producing that fluttery feeling in my stomach as soon as I saw the ARCs).


Here's a synopsis of the novel:

What happens when rhetoric about immigrants escalates to an institutionalized population control system? The near-future, dark speculative novel, INK, opens as a biometric tattoo is approved for use to mark temporary workers, permanent residents and citizens with recent immigration history — collectively known as inks.

The main characters grapple with ever-changing definitions of power, home and community. Relationships reshape their lives in ways they don’t fully understand. Magic and “the other” breach borders, both personal and public. In this world, the protagonists’ magicks serve and fail, as do all other systems — government, gang, religious organization, news media and Internet — until two things alone stand: love and memory.

Despite its political underpinnings, INK is primarily a story about relationships: ink and non-ink; history and future; stories and life; and the magic that attends all of them.

INK will be published by Crossed Genres Publications Oct. 15, 2012.

Interested in reading for review? Email me at svourvoulias(at)yahoo(dot)com, and let me know.

Launch date for INK is October 15!

So, the official launch date for my novel, INK, is October 15!

I'll post the cover as soon as it's set, and will post any info about a launch party (thinking, thinking).
Also, I'm definitely planning to be at Philcon. (Am also planning to go to Readercon, but only as a participant since my book won't yet be out).

More deets about everything to follow....

Sign up for giveaway of advanced reading copy of Fat Girl in a Strange Land

Crossed Genres Publications is offering three advanced reading copies of the anthology Fat Girl in a Strange Land, which has my story "La Gorda and the City of Silver" in it, to the winners of CGP's giveaway on Goodreads. But you have to be quick because the giveaway closes Jan. 14.

I've signed up for the giveaway, not so much because I'm cheap (though I have been known to exhibit those tendencies every so often) but because early reviews have excited my curiosity about many of other stories in the anthology. (For some idea of the range of stories take a peek at Lillian Cohen-Moore's review of the anthology, which you can read here. A much briefer Publishers Weekly review is here.)

If you are interested in the genesis of the anthology read Bart Leib's blog post about it here. (Along with Kay T. Holt, Leib is editor of the anthology and publisher of CGP). You can also chat with him tonight (Wed., Jan. 11) at the weekly Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Chat on twitter. Use the hashtag #sffwrtcht to participate.

If you are interested in how I came to be included in this anthology, check out my earlier blog post: Unabashed fat.