Category: Books

Lo! a website makeover

~ M. L. Rio

As some of you may have noticed, the whole website got treated to a facelift today. The primary reason for that is that things are picking up in Camp IWWV. Here’s a brief update:

  • Reviews! We have some advance praise for Villains, which I am so excited and so humbled to share with you. If you want to hear what some amazing early readers had to say, you can check out the shiny new If We Were Villains page.
  • PRE-ORDERING! That’s right! You can now pre-order If We Were Villains from a variety of retailers and have it on your doorstep the day it comes out. I would love you if you did. To do that, click here.
  • Cover art. Not to tease you, but it’s coming. Soon.
  • Chatter. If you want to chat about the book, you can send me any question you like on Tumblr.

In the meantime, if you want to get all possible information as soon as I have it, you can track my movements on social media. Just browse that handy new sidebar to the right of this post. Please like and share with abandon! Every little click helps.

–M

Books Show Off 5 (Recap)

~ M. L. Rio

I can only speak for me, but I had a great time last night at Books Show Off 5, which was graciously hosted by the Waterstones on Tottenham Court Road. People spoke on an eclectic range of topics, including Tolkien, Harold and Maude, elegiac dog poetry, inappropriate Latin, and sculptures that look like they’re having sex with angels. Nothing I said was that nearly that interesting, but I did manage to talk about Star Trek, porn stars, and Ernest Hemingway all in under nine minutes. Obviously what I was really talking about was writing.

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Photo by Steven Cross

Specifically, what I talked about were all the steps involved in getting a book published–and the fact that there are so many more than you think there are until you’ve actually done it. But this was a nice reminder that we’re getting much closer to the finish line with Villains. We still have to figure out cover art and what goes on the dust jacket and a lot of other stuff that falls under the category of “How do we market this thing?” But in T-minus six months, it should be facing out on a shelf in a bookstore somewhere near you. And that will be an exciting day indeed (for me at least).

M

First pass proof!

~ M. L. Rio

This fat stack of paper arrived from the folks at Flatiron Books today. Now’s when we go through the whole MS with a fine-tooth comb, looking for every last little fix and adjusting the formatting where needed. But this is pretty much what the inside of the hardcover will look like, and that’s exciting.

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I’ll be hard at work on this for the next week or so. I’ve gone through Act I already this morning and it’s a bit like an out-of-body experience, because it’s been a while since I read through the whole text–long enough that I can almost pretend I didn’t write it, and read it as a reader.

Getting closer all the time.

RBM

~ M. L. Rio

My wonderful editor Christine Kopprasch just sent me a photo of If We Were Villains in its newest incarnation as an RBM–no cover art yet, but I am beyond excited to see this. It’s starting to look like a real book!

rbm

Complicity

~ M. L. Rio

A bit of Shakespearean wisdom from Sir Ian McKellen at the Oxford Literary Festival today: the purpose of a soliloquy is to make you, the audience, complicit.