Brilliance Audio has posted info about the audiobook for Soul Enchilada. It will be available on CD and MP3 for a variety of markets.

audio on-sale date
4/7/2009 

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Soul Enchilada
by David Macinnis Gill Read by (to be announced)

Brilliance Audio on CD Unabridged Lib Ed
978-1-4233-8225-6

7 Compact Discs - 8 hours  (unabridged)

MSRP $87.97
Quantity:

Not yet available for shipment.

The exclusive right to sell anywhere in the world in the English language only

1 MP3-CD - 8 hours  (unabridged)

MSRP $39.97
Quantity:

Not yet available for shipment.

The exclusive right to sell anywhere in the world in the English language only

Publication Date: 4/7/2009

YOUNG ADULT:  Eunice “Bug” Smoot was thirteen years old when her grandfather put her soul up as collateral on his dream car — a classic 1958 Cadillac Biarritz. Now, five years later, Papa C is dead and buried, and Bug is trying to make it on her own by delivering pizzas and staying one step ahead of her landlord. And then the repo man arrives. Only Mr. Beals — stinking to high heaven of rotten eggs and sporting leathery wings — is not just any repo man…just as Pesto, Bug’s longtime unrequited crush, is not just any car wash attendant. Set in El Paso, Texas, this debut novel is peppered with car chases, basketball, a séance, true love, immigrant agents of a totally different sort, and, oh yeah, the Devil himself. Mostly, though, it features an irrepressible, memorable, wisecracking, absolutely fearless main character who will stop at nothing to win her freedom and protect her free will.

Amulet Books

From PW: “Aidan Chambers’s Dance Sequence, six novels with shared themes (though not characters) debuted 30 years ago with the publication of Breaktime. This month, Amulet Books is releasing paperback reissues of this young adult novel, as well as the second installment, Dance on My Grave. The publisher will reissue the third and fourth books, Now I Know and The Toll Bridge, in spring 2009.”

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6609797.html?nid=2788

Chambers’ early work was the topic of my dissertation. I’m thrilled to
see those books come back into print in the US. Dance on My Grave and Breaktime remain my favorites.  Get your hands on these, folks. The Dance sequence may be the finest series of novels ever written for young adults.

They say that every book has a story. If that is so, then the story behind the making of Soul Enchilada will start and end with the design–and the evolution of the design–of the cover. The folks at Greenwillow have worked on this puppy for months. In July, my editor said that they had gone through a hundred of ideas, and I bet in the meantime, they went through that many versions once again. Lucky me, all I had to do was smile, because every version they showed me was terrific, and I knew if they were putting that much effort into one cover, I was one very lucky debut author.

I love the typography (dig the horns), the flames, and the tagline, the devils is in the details. The way the purple bug is framed by the tridents makes me laugh, and it brings a touch of humor to what could be a scary cover.

I knew it was bound to happen. A Google alert let clued me into an Ebay merchant selling a copy of an ARC of Soul Enchilada. ARCs are provided free by publishers as review copies for bookstores, reviewers, and other gatekeepers. They aren’t meant to be sold. In fact, most of them are clearly labeled that the book is not for sale. It is also not the final version of the text. Soul Enchilada has been edited twice since galleys went out, so if anyone buys it, they will have less perfected version. 

I have no problem with readers sharing galleys by passing them around, swapping them, giving them to a dental assistant (which is what I did with Graham Salisbury’s latest). In fact, I hope that has happened with Soul Enchilada because it’s the best way I know for a book to find its audience early on.

Selling ARCs on Ebay is a different story. I tagged the item, but I doubt that Ebay will do anything about it. They seem to look the other way in cases like this.

Da-ta-Da! Da-ta-Da! Da-ta-Da!

I’m proud to share the news that Jody Feldman and fellow Greenwillow author’s The Gollywhopper Games was named honor book for the 2008 Midwest Booksellers Association Choice Awards for Children’s Literature. Congrats to Jody for receiving recognition for this terrific book. She’ll be accepting the award and saying a few words Thursday at the Midwest Booksellers Association meeting. This is a really cool, smart book for MG. Click on the link and find out more. go ahead. I dare ya. I double-dog dare ya.

Today’s pair of time-sensitive links for writer:

From Fusenews: Rights, Radicals, and Rex, T. Nominations begin in September for the Thurber House writer-in-residence program. For more information, contact Patricia Shannon, Director of Children’s Programming, at pshannon [at] thurberhouse [dot] org.

Registration for Kindling Words East and West opens September 6, 2008. The East writers strand will feature Nancy Werlin. The West writers strand features Kathi Appelt.

I’ve been blog hopping, and these caught my eye:

• Harry Keeps on Slipping, Slipping, Slipping, Into the Future - A Fuse #8 Production - Blog on School Library Journal
• mediabistro.com: GalleyCat: Isobelle Jade, the self-published model scored a deal with HC UK, sends info about “how to pitch your book when you’re broke….”
• EA disses science fiction: Editorial Anonymous
• At Brooklyn Arden, Cheryl Klein lists her favorite books on writing (I own three of them).
• Two sites for folks who like books: childrensbookreviews wiki and
  Bookscreening - Book Trailers, which, strangely, lacks the book trailer that this blogger called funny, upbeat, and promises an excellent read.

Coming soon to a Publishers Marketplace near you:

Audio Rights: David Macinnis Gill’s SOUL ENCHILADA to Tim Ditlow at Brilliance Audio, at auction by Rosemary Stimola at Stimola Literary Studio.

After I sold SOUL ENCHILADA, the one thing I hoped for, thought would be totally, completely, awesomely awesome would be to hear the voice of my characters coming through the earbuds of my iPod.

And now…

Awhile ago, another blogger posted a question about the habit of posting word counters on our blogs. Why do we need/use them? I didn’t answer then. I will now. The counters keep me honest. It’s easy to stop a new project when no one knows I’ve started. Easy to spin my wheels on mid-draft revision and never climb higher on the narrative arc. Easy to…you get the point.

When I was drafting Soul Enchilada and revising Soul Enchilada and revising Soul Enchilada some more before the official revisions of Soul Enchilada, the word counters served has both my private anchor and my public nag. As I begin the early writing of the draft of what could turn out to be the second novel, I’m eschewing the word counter. I don’t have the luxury of starting something I won’t finish, and there is an editor out there to keep me accountable.

I’ve met my daily goal of at least 1k words for four straight days.

The working title of what may become the second book is Human Identification. It will change. They always do. I won’t know if I have something for awhile, and I’m scheduled to take ideas with AEV soon, so it’s premature to call this a book, much less the second book. Let’s face it, though, this is not my second novel. If I finish, it will be my eighth.

Next week, first galleys copyedits will be in my greedy little hands. A few blurbs have come in, and they are more delightful than I deserve. I’ll share when I can.

The last of the manuscript arrived at 6:06 PM, a day and half later than expected.This bothered my wonderful publisher friends more than it did me because they have deadlines to meet, marketing to do, etc. Me, all I have to do is accept some spot-on line edits and do a little seeding here and there.Plus, here’s a dark secret I’ve never shared: As I did the third revision, I kept thinking, “I’m never sending the manuscript back! Bwahaha! Well, maybe for copyediting, but not after that.”

I enjoyed working on the manuscript too much, and if I gave it up, I’d be expected to start a new book. And we all known that I am a fraud who somehow convinced a group of very smart, able people that I can write a novel.

At 6:20 PM, after letting the manuscript ferment for all of 14 minutes, I opened the envelope then started sorting.Edited pages to the left, unmarked pages to the discard pile. Over 80% of the pages required some sort of edit.I’ll pause here to add that only once in the process of revisions did I stet one of AEV’s suggestions. It was a one-liner that was mildly humorous by itself, but I had referencedit at least twice more in the novel and used it to set up a reveal later (a free Tupperware bowl to the first astute reader who can guess the stet’ed line).

Generally, I used he same process before—cull, reword, and then rewrite. The last three chapters required some cutting, which is easier than writing new pieces. I was satisfied that the last chapter had the new touches AEV asked for (better opening line, more humor, less sap), I let Microsoft Sam read key sequences and the final chapters to me.I found at least six typos in the last chapter, even after proofing it three times. Best of all, I didn’t fall asleep once, and I made my deadline to the minute.

I said in the last post that this was the most difficult revision. So what made it so hard? Not the actual line edits, because although they were numerous, they were minor. Not the cutting because it made the story tighter and saved me time having to recast a few clunky passages. No, it was the finality of it. I knew that when the manuscript went to copyediting, it would no longer be the story that AEV and I had made. It would become a book that was shared with others, and despite the fact that I’ll have to respond to copyedits, my writing would be done: the story that revision 3 created would be the novel Soul Enchilada.