Jill Murray

My first book, Break on Through, about a badass teenage b-girl struggling to make it in the suburbs, is available for pre-order!

There’s no cover image or catalogue copy avaiable yet, because it’s too early for that, but it will be released on or around February 12, 2008, it will have 240 pages, and retail at a suggested price of $14.95 CD!

I discovered this during a routine Googling of myself (Cue Lyndee of the Calgary Lyndees laughing at me), and let me tell you, if there is one reason to Google yourself, other than weeding out mean things people might have said about you (none so far, knock on wood), or dumb comments you wrote yourself on other people’s blogs, that make you look like an idiot now (nothing too idiotic yet), or just making sure you’re still the top you in youville (I’m #1, I’m #1!), this is it.

I don’t know if this is true for everyone, but I suspect I’m not alone in this: while you’re writing your first book, you think to yourself that if it ever gets published, the day you sign that contract will be the happiest day ever: just full of glee and confetti and the bursting of joy that scatters it everywhere.

But the process of writing that book and then getting it published is such an enourmously long, draining, complex project that by the time you get around to negotiating any kind of contract, you are so tired, and practiced and skeptical that pretty much the only thing on your mind is business, protecting your investment, making sure you understand the fine print, and that it all adds up to something you can work with.

Sounds romantic, right? You are grateful, maybe pleased, possibly content, but the “whee!” is subdued, postponed, worried even. Barely is the ink dry and the envelope sealed, and you are already thinking: what if it gets published and no one likes it? What if I have problems writing the next one? What if, what’s next, what am I trying to do with my life here, exactly?

But this: this moment of Googling yourself and finding a link to your name on the internet that you did not put there yourself, that is there because your book, which is not even all the way through copy editing is already on sale?. That moment is a nice surprise. That moment is all “whee.”