by R.S. Mellette

January 17^th was my 60^th birthday. All I wanted as a gift was a cover for my book.

I didn’t get it.

But I did get the reviews from Kirkus and Foreword.

My attitude toward reviews is that they can be favorable or unfavorable, good or bad. You get to choose one from each category. The Kirkus review was both favorable and good. In fact, it was excellent. The critic is not credited, otherwise I’d be singing their praises—not because I got a favorable review, but because it’s so well-written. The summary is accurate without dragging with opinions shared throughout. As an extra special bonus, the critic handed us—me, my publisher, and publicist—fantastic pull quotes.

Stirring and deft curtain raiser to a mayhem-filled, girl-powered YA/SF saga that doesn’t talk down to readers.

Mellette keeps pages flying and nimbly sidesteps most pitfalls of YA fantasy.

– Kirkus Reviews

Now that’s what I call a birthday present!

The Foreword review, on the other hand, is positive (4 out of 5 stars—can’t complain about that), but there isn’t a single quote to pull. Jenn, my publicist, sent me an advanced proof saying I could make notes about factual content that needed correcting, and it’s a good thing I had that chance. Locations were wrong. Destinations were wrong. Kiya, who literally says twice in the first chapter, “I’m no bounty hunter” was described as just that, a bounty hunter. Worst of all, he got Kiya’s gender wrong. Who does that with any book, much less one described as “Xena: Warrior Princess in space”?!

I know when critics don’t like something they are careful not to hand the creators anything favorable that might be used as a positive quote. I’m good with that, but when a critic gives a work 4 out of 5 stars—throw us a bone!

Meanwhile, the end of January came up and still no cover. Jenn reached out to say she’s done all she can do with a PDF file that doesn’t have art and no physical copies. She suggested to me, and copied Matt the publisher, that we push back the publication date and suspend promotion until physical books are available.

I would put in writing my feelings at the time by quoting Yosemite Sam, but I don’t know how to spell his favorite expletives.

They always say in war movies, “we must make our weaknesses our strengths.” Elephant’s Bookshelf Press is small. I have more input there than I would at a major house. I asked Jenn how much time she would need once physical copies arrived at her office. 

“Two months,” she said.

After discussing it with Matt, our release date now resembles the Rapture/End of the World. It will happen 2 months after the arrival of the books–and that could happen at any time!

Importantly, this hold wouldn’t cost me any money. Jenn explained that as long as the campaign is suspended, I wouldn’t be charged. That makes perfect sense and is clearly the right way to handle it—which shocked me. I’m not used to people acting with such decency, much less a PR company. Regardless of how the campaign turns out, I will always share this story with anyone asking for a recommendation of Books Forward.

During this forced hiatus, I tried to avoid a nervous breakdown by finishing the other money pit side of this production—the audio book. As a reminder, I hired a friend who narrates books for a living to record Kiya And The Morian Treasure. I was going to hire a dialogue editor she’s worked with, but he pulled out of the project. I’ve seen dialogue editing done before. Having dabbled in filmmaking, I also have the software—Sony Vegas for those in the know—so I figured I’d do it myself.

Eight finished hours of nothing but dialogue by one person playing several different roles with no movie tricks to hide mistakes, feels like taking the Bar Exam without ever having studied law. I hope audiophiles and my filmmaker friends will be kind to my finished work. 

I should point out that Merritt recorded this during Covid lockdown. She has a booth and software at home, which is typical these days—but she also did her own recording without a director, engineer, or even the author for guidance. That’s extraordinary. The raw recordings she supplied were fantastic.

But the first lesson in sound is, the work starts when the recording is finished. With headphones on, you hear every plosive p, d, t, etc. Breaths, mouth clicks, punch-in edit clicks, so many clicks! Some dialogue needs to be tightened up. Pauses need to be added. Some noises are so mixed in with the words that they can’t be fixed and must be re-recorded. Each character has their own EQ. Each track has to have volume maximized and/or compressed before the mix down, and again after. 

The lesson I hope self-publishers learn is that, yes, you can record yourself reading your book but that’s just the beginning of a process that’s long and hard for people who’ve done it before. If you haven’t, pay someone to do it for you. I know I will next time.

Having taken only half of my own advice, the audio book is finally ready—except, of course, it needs a resen-fressin’ dog garnant, high foluntin’ low down good for nothing COVER!

Stay tooned…

Part 4 of this series will come next month!

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R.S. Mellette is on the board of the LA Region of SCBWI as the PAL Liaison.

Images provided by the author.