It's like making sausage...

I was looking this page, thinking, "This thing needs a title." People say, "I read it on The Huffington Post," or "I read it on Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind." They ain't gonna say, "I read it on Mary Anna Evans' blog."

It needs a title and it needs a theme. I was thinking of blogging intensively about the business aspects of my new enterprise--publishing ebooks, but that's of limited interest to the general public.  And there are a squillion authors out there blogging about, "Hey! I wrote a new book!"  As far as I'm concerned, that ain't news, so I ain't gonna do that, either.

I've decided that the purpose of this blog will be to share the stuff that most people who love to read don't know about publishing.  Where do the covers come from?  (I have a hair-raising cover-development story that involves NASA's website, a flaming dagger, and the mistaken identity of a well-known celestial object, so stay tuned.)  And how does a writer work with an editor to develop a plot for a new book.  (My editor once rejected my book idea by saying that a major American city had "been done."  What?  Does this mean that no one can ever write another book set in New York or Los Angeles because they've been done?  Fortunately, my editor is a reasonable person and we resolved this problem, but still...)

The publishing industry is a whole lot like the sausage-making industry.  The end product can be mildly serviceable or it can be awful or it can be sublime, but you really don't want to know how that product is made.  Because I have a mildly quixotic streak, I'm going to show you the sausage- book-making process, whether you want to know or not.

Happy reading, and enjoy those tender succulent sausage patties books while you can--
Mary Anna