September | 2011 | Liz Jasper

For those of you don’t recognize the latter name right off, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai was “Broken Sword” in the movie Hero and now plays Mr. Lee in Lust, Caution. I fell in crush with him when I saw him in Hero. He’s just gorgeous. He’s got the long hair going on and enough quiet charisma to set a screen on fire. Very dangerous, given all the rapturous sighing going on in the audience. (Though if the conflagration were to set the multiplex on fire, the fire department would come, and I’m sure the audience would be happy to transfer their affection from hot actor to hot firefighters. But I digress.)

I’ve had a crush on Tony Leung Chiu-Wai for years now. I didn’t realize how unusual it was for me to keep an actor in my theoretical “Five people you get to cheat with” list (Oh, come on. Everyone has a list.) until this morning when I saw an ad in the paper for Jake Gyllenhaal’s Rendition. Instead of going “Jake Gyllenhaal! He’s so dreamy,” as would have back when Brokeback was still on people’s tongues, I shrugged and flipped the page to Doonesbury.

The sort of falling out of crush happens a lot to me, and I wondered why. The simple answer is “over exposure.” But that’s a little facile. I think the answer is that I don’t ever really have a crush on the actor, but the character he is playing. When I see an actor outside a movie, in an interview where he’s deliberately holding back personal information (for good reason), the actor goes from 3-D, surround-sound Technicolor to cardboard facsimile. And though crushes are two-dimensional in nature, I can’t be sustained by a piece of cardboard for long.

But Tony Leung Chiu-Wai lives in China, and while I’m sure he does the usual cardboard cutout interviews there, I never see them. So he is always Broken Sword. (Or some other rich, gorgeous character like Mr. Lee he’s now playing in Lust, Caution. But I haven’t seen it, so, he’s still Broken Sword in my heart.) Broken Sword. Shuddery indrawn breath. Flutter of lashes. Sigh.

Last December, my publisher changed their focus away from mainstream fiction. I got the rights back to my novels just as the self-publishing world took off.

The re-pub process has taken a bit longer than I’d anticipated. And I have to admit I needed a shove from one of my author buddies to go down this path. And a few long phone calls with another author friend who had gotten the rights back to his backlists. (He’s now a bestseller! He reports he doesn’t have groupies–bummer–but that he did have a woman come up and kiss him at Bouchercon. Yes, it’s those moments that sustain writers, even if it didn’t happen to them (and in their head they change “women” to “hunky guy”. Though I’m holding out for groupies.) More phone calls to other authors to see if they had a read on the market. Hard to believe at this point that all this back and forth was needed, but we were trying to figure it out as we went. The book market has changed tremendously in 2011.

On the plus side of all this, I have book covers that I love. And I can set the price for my books and decide whether to offer them in print. (Yes, they will be available in print. I still like to snuggle up on the couch with a print book and I know others do, too.) On the downside, all this is a lot of work. There’s a lot more involved in getting books out than I’d expected. Here’s a partial list of what I’ve done in the past months:

* Moved my website here and completely overhauled it. It took 8 calls to yahoo and many discussions with my genius social marketing friend about why I kept loosing my email. But it eventually got done. By me trying different things and finally discovering what worked.

* Taken professional author photos (At the behest of VV who said, “Liz. Really. You NEED to have a decent photo up.” And my sister who said, “Liz, you know all those photos I have of you in the ugly hiking hat? The ones we took of with my phone where you have the double chin thing going on and sunscreen dripping from your left ear? If you don’t put up a decent photo, I’m posting one of those.”)

* Sat in on a talk with Mark Coker, head honcho of Smashwords. (Nice guy, not CEO-ey or sales-y at all. For my virtual writerly backyard bbq, he and his family are totally invited.)

* Eaten chocolate. Lots of it. Got the cat and I addicted to Trader Joe’s Cheese Crunchies.

* Taken another course on marketing and promo. Not my fav. thing, marketing and promo. I really like doing booksignings and panel talks, but M&P isn’t all chatting with readers. If it were, I’d like it a lot more, because who doesn’t like that? I talk about books with my family and friends a lot. Always have. My mom sister and I will go ten rounds arguing about a book we’ve all just read.

* Made my (then) pregnant friend help me redo the back cover copy for both books. It’s amazing what you can get pregnant friends to do for chocolate and air conditioning.

* Started the next Underdead book.

* Had a fabulous cover done by the talented husband (Bob McAndrews) of one of my writer buddies. Having a cover that suggested mystery/vampire/humor/fun was a huge plus. Kimberly Van Meter did a great job with the next cover. As ever, thanks Ida Mary Walker, aka mizzd-stock for being the cover model.

* Admitted that I had better things to do than learn how to perfectly format a manuscript. Admitted that, as I am not a detail person by nature, perhaps that is one thing I can farm out. Really, really enjoyed making that decision. Steven James Price of Generation Next Publications formatted the print book layouts, the print covers and the ebooks. Great decision to have hired him.

That’s a partial list of all the stuff that goes into getting your books back out after you’ve gotten the rights back from your publisher. Now. I have to go check my print book proofs on Amazon. Keep tuned for the official release. No, this wasn’t official. Well, official whining, perhaps.