My very first non-fiction book has been published!!!

Bundle Up! is about creating and promoting story and book collections. This includes anthologies, ebook bundles, boxed sets, and so on.

The section for authors goes over what to expect when you participate in this kind of project. I also added a chapter on things to consider when evaluating a project and the curator so authors can decide whether or not to participate in a collection. It can be difficult to turn down the opportunity to be a part of this kind of project, but sometimes that’s actually the right thing to do. I’ve turned down a few invitations so far, and each time it’s been hard to say no—but I have to make sure I’m putting my time and energy toward the projects that are right for me, and not overcommit. (Although I am very good at overcommitting! :))

I also have a section for curators which includes things like how to select authors and stories, the steps that you need to do to put everything together, and how to plan ahead so you can either prevent problems or be better able to handle them when they occur. A big chunk of the book is about multi-author collections, but a lot of the information—like the section on promotion—could apply if a single author was creating a collection of their own work.

My book is currently only available through the NaNoWriMo Writing Tools bundle, a collection of twelve books on writing put together by Kevin J. Anderson for National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). This bundle will be for sale through the end of November 2018. A portion of the proceeds goes directly to benefit the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, a non-profit group created by the families of the crew of the Challenger shuttle.

I’m SO EXCITED to be a part of this project! I’m also very happy to be done writing the book. 🙂 It was a lot of fun, but I hadn’t written non-fiction like this before, and I naively assumed it would be super easy because this is a topic I know very well. Ha! For a while it felt like the manuscript was a random collection of notes—which, of course, is exactly what it was for quite some time. 🙂 That makes sense now, but was immensely disconcerting because I had a very hard deadline. Now that the book is done, I have a much better understanding of how to write this type of non-fiction. I’ve actually started on a second book! But this time I’m setting a much more realistic schedule. My plan is to hand off the manuscript to my editor by June 1st, 2019, and to publish the book in the fall. That will give us enough time to iterate over edits.

Here’s an update on new things I’ve learned and experienced in the past week!

Learnings

I’ve learned—or, more correctly, re-learned—that checklists are more reliable than my memory. We went on a short vacation with the dogs, and while I printed out my checklist like I always do, I was busy and distracted and didn’t actually check things off. The list of things we forgot to bring on our trip was long, and included a few pretty important things—like dog leashes and dog food. Ack!!!

I’m usually really, really good about using a checklist when I travel, and I’m also a big know-it-all if my husband forgets something (since he doesn’t use a checklist). So this turned out to be a little embarrassing, and super funny—once we stopped and bought dog food and the other things we’d forgotten. 🙂

Experiencings

We normally take the dogs on a hiking vacation in the mountains in September, but skipped last year—which seemed like a good idea at the time, but in retrospect not so much. This year we rented a house just outside of Marble, Colorado, and took Rosie and Jasper. Unfortunately we managed to find a chilly week, with both rain and snow, but we’ve had fun nonetheless. The house we rented is roomy in a cozy way, so it’s been quite pleasant to hang out inside. We’ve also gone hiking, although our hikes have been abbreviated. The first day it rained most of the day, so we drove into Marble and walked the dogs around the Marble Mill Site Park, where the largest stone mill in United States history used to be until it closed in 1941. Our other hikes have mostly been on four-wheel-drive roads, with a little hiking on muddy dirt trails. Even with the cool (and wet!) weather, this has been really fun. Rosie and Jasper are enjoying their vacation!