Fantastic news: My YA historical romance, Artemis Rising, will shortly be pub­lished! I have just signed on with SpireHouse Books and the book will launch in the fall of 2011.

To give you some con­text for this par­tic­u­lar snip­pet of news, let me give you a short history:

1. 1978: Cheri pops out, eyes incred­u­lous, into the world.
2. 1987: Cheri gets the brilliant—idiotic?—idea that she is going to write a novel before she kicks the bucket.
3. 1987–1996: Cheri makes many (mul­ti­tudes, more like) fool­hardy attempts at writ­ing a novel and (luck­ily) fails each time.
4. 1997: The light­bulb turns on: the Azores Islands (wherein Cheri had just spent two infor­ma­tive and idyl­lic years) becomes the new set­ting for the novel.
5. 2000: Another light­bulb turns on. Well, two actu­ally. The light­bulbs are called 1) The myth of Alpheus and Arethusa. 2) The leg­end of Tristan and Isolde. (These sto­ries are, of course, stuck in a blender and squished uncer­e­mo­ni­ously into the book.)
6. 2000–2010: Cheri “fin­ishes” her novel ... lots of times. *awk­ward pause*
7. 2010: Cheri decides to self-​​publish but doesn’t. She promptly signs on with an agent and makes the rounds of the NYC pub­lish­ing houses.
8. 2010: Cheri decides to self-​​publish but doesn’t. She promptly signs on with SpireHouse Books, an e-​​publisher. (YAY!)

Ah, now we are up to the present. *checks for glassy gazes of bore­dom in the audi­ence mem­bers who remain*

Those are the cold, hard facts, but there is—as you can imagine—a great deal more to the story of how this novel stum­bled ungrace­fully into existence.

Artemis Rising is a story of serendip­ity: I am a free­lance fic­tion edi­tor who occa­sion­ally takes on an intern from the PSU grad­u­ate pub­lish­ing pro­gram. My last one was a fel­low by the name of Lucas Beechinor. He was extremely hard­work­ing, com­mu­nica­tive, qui­etly ambi­tious, and hon­est. In short, it was a sin­cere plea­sure work­ing with him. He revamped my whole web­site and copy­edited Artemis Rising. Well, funny thing. He just hap­pened to be intern­ing for an agent at the same time, Bernadette Baker-​​Baughman. He enjoyed my novel enough to make an intro­duc­tion between Bernadette and myself.

Book launch date com­ing soon!

A short time later, I signed on with her and the book made the New York rounds with her excel­lent help and guid­ance. We had some pre­lim­i­nary suc­cess, but Artemis isn’t a sure­fire, fit-​​the-​​mold sort of book. So at a cer­tain point, I decided I wanted to try self-​​publishing, as I was feel­ing com­fort­able with my abil­ity to design the book and pub­lish on the var­i­ous e-​​retailer sites. But Lucas got in touch with me out of the blue. He was start­ing an e-​​publishing house and wanted to know if I’d like to join him with his launch. I gave the idea some seri­ous thought.

Eventually, I decided that it would be much more fun work­ing with Lucas than going it alone. This book was an exper­i­ment from the begin­ning. Why shouldn’t the mar­ket­ing of it be also? I like the idea of attempt­ing mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion ideas that are inno­v­a­tive, out­side the prover­bial box, or just plain crazy. This is an excit­ing time to be a writer out­side of the tra­di­tional realm. We have enough flex­i­bil­ity to fly or fail on our own merit and intel­li­gence. I’d be happy to fail and then pick the book back up and try again. And since we’re doing an e-​​book only, we can keep try­ing. Working with SpireHouse Books will allow me the time and flex­i­bil­ity to exper­i­ment with mar­ket­ing ideas, so I’m thrilled to be work­ing with Lucas Beechinor once again.

You might be won­der­ing: why an e-​​book? If you’ve spo­ken to me recently, you know I’m obsessed with e-​​books. That might actu­ally be an under­state­ment. When I could afford it, I bought a Kindle 2 and never went back. I love every­thing about e-​​books:

• the search function
• the voice function
• the abil­ity to orga­nize my book collection
• the abil­ity to read out­side in the sun
• the text size adjuster
• the lower price of e-​​books and e-​​readers
• (I’ll stop there before I really get going…)

My par­ents both own a Kindle now. That’s say­ing some­thing, con­sid­er­ing they are the most tech­no­log­i­cally averse peo­ple in the world. If my par­ents love read­ing on an e-​​reader, then there is no way the e-​​book rev­o­lu­tion won’t flour­ish in this new age! As for me, I’m embrac­ing the future now with open arms. I’m secretly proud to be a techno-​​dweep!

And e-​​books have some­thing a paper­back hasn’t had in decades: inno­va­tion in deliv­ery. When was the last time your paper­back let you click on a but­ton and go straight to the author’s web­site? And can you watch the novel’s book trailer from inside a paper book? What about hyper­linked words in the glos­sary? No? E-​​book tech­nol­ogy and inno­va­tion are just beg­ging to be explored.

I may end up doing a paper­back ver­sion at some point in the future. I may not. Who knows. But right now, I’ve never been more excited about pub­lish­ing this novel than I am right now. The world beck­ons and it’s time to let Artemis rise at last.