I am Elyce Wakerman, a writer and teacher, a wife and mother, a neighbor and friend, and deeply engaged citizen, and as anyone who knows me will attest, someone who came to technology kicking and screaming. In a nice way, of course. I don’t like to make a fuss or call attention to myself. Which is precisely what a blog is intended to do – call attention to oneself, so you can see that this was not something I came to naturally.
But, and I am thrilled to tell you this, my debut novel, A Tale of Two Citizens, is being published in February 2015, and I was actually contractually obligated to establish an online presence: to broaden my profile, and mingle in social media. Now, I do of course love writing, or we wouldn’t be here, so stepping into the world wide web was just a matter of trying to dream up an approach that involved writing. Which led to the idea of a blog. And just as I was thinking about all of this, I came to realize that within a period of time – nine months as it turned out – my book would be going out into the world, leaving the security of my tending for the broader population to make of it what it would. My book would be born. And that’s how my blog, “Birth of a Book,” began. Kind of with a twinkle in my eye.
In keeping with the theme of the blog, I post once a month, checking in at the same pace as a pregnant woman goes for a check up. I have found that I can quite readily draw parallels between the successive phases of pregnancy and the steps leading up to publication. For instance, in my upcoming post, Month #4, I will be talking about galleys as the last opportunity to check for errors while pointing out that it is during this very month that many mothers choose to go for an amniocintesis when defects can be detected. I am not drawing an equivalency between a human life and a book – just trying to illustrate for the reader how very personal and privileged and a little bit scary it is to nurture and cultivate a written work and then send it out into the world.
So what can readers expect to find in each blog post?
1) behind-the-scenes of book publishing from copyright to cover to preparing for delivery – and how these steps coincide with pregnancy and giving birth;
2) insights into the plight of immigrants, then and now, for the protagonist of my novel is what many today would call an “illegal alien.” He crosses our borders in 1929, a dreamer, and, owing to a lie he is forced by circumstances to tell in order to gain entry, he becomes the target of immigration officials who want to deport him;
And readers can also expect a personal anecdote or vignette as it comes to mind. And someone who would like to hear from them, as well.
Visit Birth of a Book here: http://ewakerman-birthofabook.tumblr.com/
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