Ruth the Riveter

Marilyn Delehant (L) and Ruth Johnson (my mom)
Goodyear plant, Havelock, NE 1945

My mom logged hundreds of hours in the B-29 bomber—but not in the way you might think. She was sixteen years old when she went to work in the Goodyear war plant located in Havelock, Nebraska. The year was 1945.

She lived on ‘H’ Street in Lincoln and took a bus to the factory for her 2pm to 10pm shift with her friend and co-worker, Marilyn Delehant. The normal shift ran from 3pm to 11pm, but because they were under the age of eighteen, they weren't allowed to work past 10pm. She remembers that about ninety percent of the workers in her plant were women.

This wasn't your ordinary after-school job for a teenage girl. This particular factory manufactured gas tanks for B-29 bombers—eleven rubberized, self-sealing tanks fitted side-by-side into each wing of the aircraft. The plant paid my mom extra because she was small enough to fit inside the tanks to do maintenance. She brought little fans into the tanks with her so she could keep cool as she worked—sanding rough patches of the layered rubber fabric that comprised the tanks, removing burrs, or affixing patches, as necessary.

She worked in the factory until her 17th birthday, August 14th, which also happened to be VJ Day. When news of the war’s end was announced, the factory workers abruptly stopped what they were doing and everyone flooded into Lincoln to celebrate. Everything shut down—businesses, buses  taxis, everything—and just as in cities across the United States, Lincoln found itself host to an enormous spontaneous block party. What an unbelievable way to celebrate a birthday!

Publishing Timeline: Why so long?

I was offered my first book deal in October 2013—one that will see my debut novel, HOVER, published in June 2015.

October 2013 to June 2015. Twenty months.

I am repeatedly asked, “Don’t you mean June 2014?” It’s a legitimate question. To understand this better—especially in a world where we’re used to instant everything—we must first calibrate our internal calendars to traditional publishing time . . . something akin to geologic time if you’re not familiar with it.

To bring a novel from its electronic form to a hard-covered, printed product takes far longer than one would expect. But a lot has to happen between the shaking of hands on a book deal to seeing a novel on the shelf—editorial revisions, copy edits, production of Advanced Bound Manuscripts (ABMs), hard cover art work, typesetting, production of Galleys, aka Advanced Reading Copies (ARCs), sales team pitches to booksellers, ARCs to reviewers and magazines, and finally, production.

In my specific case, two more factors come into play. The biggest? My publisher wants to market HOVER as a “summer beach read.” Just like the retail industry, there are established “seasons” in publishing. Booksellers make their buying decisions based on the season. Some major retailers buy their stock nine months in advance of the season in which they intend to sell it. At the time of my book deal in October, many retailers had already purchased what they were going to sell in June.

Secondly, I’m a debut author, and this requires a little more lead time. Think of a locomotive in terms of publicity and platform—it takes an enormous amount of time and effort to get the locomotive out of the train house, on the tracks and in motion. But once the train’s at speed, everything is in place for the next novel.  In my case, book two is scheduled for release one year after the first. And, fingers crossed, this will be the pattern for many years to come.

Thanks are in order!

I would like to dedicate this first blog post to three people who are making my author dream a reality.

The first thank-you must go to my literary agent, Barbara Poelle, of the Irene Goodman Literary Agency in New York. For those of you unfamiliar with the publishing world, finding a literary agent to represent you is a major hurdle. You send scores of query letters to various agents pitching your  manuscript, and in turn, receive scores of rejection letters. It’s almost a rite of passage for an author. How long can you hang on until someone takes that leap of faith? But as the rejection letters piled up, I continued to focus on those five little words that every author in search of representation clings to—it only takes one yes. Well, Barbara was my yes and it would take another blog article entirely to describe this indefatigable human bundle of energy to you.

Next, thank you to my editor, Kristin Sevick, at Macmillan – Tor/Forge. We just completed our first round of edits on HOVER, and she is a gem. She has helped me to shape and lift the manuscript to another level entirely. And again, for those of you not familiar with the world of publishing, editors carry insane workloads. In a word, they’re buried.  But for someone who has to juggle so much, Kristin has been nothing short of gracious with her time.

And finally, you wouldn’t be reading about Barbara or Kristin or know anything about me as an author if it wasn’t for Maddee James, the designer of my website. Maddee is first class all the way and a dream to work with. You can find her at www.xuni.com. And for you authors, she specializes in author websites.