Lets Go Wrimo

This is going to take a little bit of explanation so please slip on your werefur and bear with me.

Back in November, aka the Lost Month, I once again took a crack at National Novel Writing Month. As often happens, a few companies teamed up with NaNo to advertise their products, get all that lucrative writer lunch money and what not.

One of the deals was through Lulu dubbed LetsGoWrimo, one of the old vanity presses from before Amazon and ebooks became the Nom de Plume of everyone without a publishing contract. They had a contest of sorts where everyone who entered also got a Myers-Briggs type assessment of their manuscript (Mine was hilarious and about as off as calling me an extrovert) and a free hardback cover.

I entered for the free hardback because, damn it, I am proud of my YA tale and I wanted it in fancy print. It's also over 600 pages, and I'm kinda afraid the paperback version wouldn't get the proper gnome smashing dimensions down.

Pretty, right? I was happy, I took some pictures, I put it on a table and forgot as I struggle through the Dwarves in Space debacles.

But I still got a few e-mails from LetsGoWrimo telling me they were still slogging through over 3,000 entries to pick 10 winners. I even got a mass e-mail telling me "So sad, you were not chosen, but keep trying." The same boilerplate every publisher and literary agent uses across the centuries. "I do not want your book, but keep trying" is probably etched into Mayan temples and Sumerian pottery.

Then, a very funny thing happened on Friday. I get a simple e-mail addressed to Wrimos. As it'd been a week since I'd wadded up the contest and tossed it in my mental trashbin at first I assumed this was about Winos and a really weird spam, then I opened it.

Addressed to me and 9 others was an explanation of what was expected of us to get our books into shape for the Book Expo in New York at the end of May.

MP3 Scratch

What? What?! WHAT?!

Swear to cheese, my first thought was this has to be a scam. I checked over the e-mail address it was sent from, that seemed to be legit with very few numbers in the name, then I scoured the tweeters asking if anyone else entered this contest. I was still is disbelief until the others from the contest started e-mailing back, trying to get to know everyone, asking info, and then starting up a facebook group so we could freak out together.

Okay...maybe this isn't a trick after all.

My best guess is that one of the original ten winners dropped out, and I was slotted in place bumping up from number 11 to 10. This happens surprisingly often in my life, one away from one arbitrary cutoff so I'm back to the dregs with everyone else. It still would have been a little nice to have a pretend "we totally meant to include you in the list, oops, ha ha ha."

So since I'm one of the winners of this contest maybe I should probably figure out what it all entails.

Yep, still just as confused as I started, but it looks really impressive.


What it means for now is that I have to get my 200K work manuscript, that 600+ page monster, into not only edited for human consumption but also formatted and covered in pretty art and professional looking in a month.

I am so screwed.

I've opened up my manuscript twice now, stared at it in disbelief and closed the file (while cursing a storm up at Word and threatening to destroy its children). There is still a map I started that I have to finish, book art I half assed for my copy that I have to get serious about, and font choices. Oh how I hate font choices.

So, this is maybe a congratulations? Possibly a "get the hell out of my way, my head's on fire and there are electric eels down my pants legs." Either way, it shall be interesting.