Going it Mostly Alone: the Publishing Path of A Perfect Blindness
While waiting on the response to the lyrics from songs I’d pressed into service, I sifted through the collected lists of every book, movie, music venue, bar and club used or referred to in the book, organizing them by chapter, coding them by how a work was referenced or used, or if a venue, whether a scene is set in it or it functions as set dressing. These venues are as important to the book as the music, in fact, they can’t exist apart from one another, and I had plans for the venues with scenes set in them, especially given that several no longer existed, yet people still speak fondly of them on social media. While the five of the six books directly used are essential to the very conception and structure of the book (The Alexandria Quartet and Armies of the Night), the last of the six has a scene built on a scene from it (The Satyricon), a it’s harder to imagine how to appeal to fans of those books. Doubly so for the two books directly referenced (Lolita and The Brothers Karamazov) and the short story (“The Story of I”). A few were read in the book (by Nabokov and Durrell), and a couple quoted, but for the most part, the uses tend to be subtle and might have to be pointed out versus being easily discovered.
While fun, the film and TV references would probably not be as useful at all for connecting with potential fans as they were not part of the book’s DNA as it were. One, though, does hold a clue to the secret one secondary character keeps, but only serious Fellini fans might get that one.
In any case, all of these are Easter eggs for fans of the bands, books, venues, shows, and movies, and some might be something to help market the book, or so I had been ruminating.
Before I had a chance to start working out how to make these ideas into something real I could use or give away, I got back the now corrected proofs, meaning it was my turn to go through the book, line by line, making all the last changes before approval.
On this step, things went from worse to worst, pitting changes I knew needed to be made versus my Editor’s Choice and Rising Start status.
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