How you know your new publisher rocks

In case you've ever wondered, here's how you know if your new publisher rocks so hard they'd make Popeye seasick.

You walk out to your mailbox on a gloomy Monday afternoon expecting the usual assortment of bills, pizza coupons, and sex toy catalogs church bulletins.

Instead, you find this:

Yes, Coliloquy – the folks publishing my new "active fiction" title later this week – sent me a new Kindle loaded with all their launch titles. Holymotherofcrap, isn't that cool?

As you know, I've had to be pretty secretive about the nature of this project. There are still a few things I'm not allowed to reveal until release day, but I asked permission to answer some of the questions you guys posed in the comments yesterday.

The Sprouting Acorn asked:
I'd still like to know what the cat photo had to do with the clues in Friday's post.

That's an easy one! When I sat down to write Getting Dumped, I decided JJ needed a pet. I looked to my own four-legged brood to assess who'd make the best character in a romantic caper. It didn't take long for me to settle on Blue Cat:

I acquired Blue Cat by accident several years ago when I wandered into Petco for aquarium plants. They had a section of cages filled with death row cats who'd been at the animal shelter for too long, and Blue Cat caught my eye because he was huge and mostly bald.

"Someone adopted him for a month and then brought him back so matted they had to shave him," the attendant explained.

His tag said he'd been at the shelter for more than a year and that he was 13 years old. "No one's going to adopt an elderly, bald, 300 pound cat who's probably crazy after being incarcerated for a year," I said. "I'll take him."

On his first visit to the vet, he threw such a snarling, howling conniption fit, the vet tech tried to send us home. But the vet came in and wrestled him to the ground so she could peer at his teeth. "This cat isn't 13 years old," she said. "He's maybe 3 or 4."

Despite his occasional surly disposition (usually tempered by spending an hour chasing the dog around the house) Blue Cat is the most loving of my three feline companions. The sheer size of him means he puts my legs to sleep when he sits on me, but whenever I feel glum, I can count on Blue Cat to magically appear and offer his lap-warming services. He chases large dogs out of the yard, and the neighbors have dubbed him "Battle Cat" for his tough-guy walk and fearless nature.

That's Blue Cat in a nutshell, and you'll be seeing quite a bit of him in Getting Dumped.

Now for the next blog reader comment:

Steph Schmidt wrote:
I signed up for Coliloquy but after reading that blurb I'm impatient as all hell for it to launch (never mind I lack an e-reader, mere details at this point).

Thanks for your eagerness! For the initial launch, Kindle will be the only format for Getting Dumped. There are super-techy reasons for that, but I'm not allowed to go into details just yet. Consider it a good reason to add a Kindle to your holiday wish list, or stay tuned for details about other formats and platforms.

Sierra Godfrey wrote:
Very interesting! I look forward to seeing how this works. Any chance you can outline what exactly actively interacting with you entails? Er...we ARE reading, right?

We're getting into top-secret territory here, but I promise I'll be able to share more details later this week. For now, here's the official marketing lingo I'm allowed to post:

"Active fiction" is a new type of e-reading experience that allows the reader and the author to interact with each other and the text in new and different ways.

In Getting Dumped, Tawna gives you one very simple choice point: Which guy should JJ call? Depending on your choice, you’ll get to know one of the guys a bit more intimately. Don’t be afraid to read all three versions–it’s for JJ’s own good, after all! And of course, feel free to re-read YOUR favorite over and over again. Tawna still isn't sure who JJ should end up with, so she's eager to see who her readers prefer. She sees the aggregate statistics on who gets picked the most, so the more you read, the more you influence what she writes.

If it sounds fun to read, I can tell you it's been 10-times as fun to write. The authors among you will all be familiar with how much second guessing goes into every decision you make when plotting a book. It's been amazing to be able to sit back and say, "here are a few ways this can go, let's have readers pick!"

I'll share more info as soon as I can, and I promise to post Amazon links and other goodies once I have the go-ahead.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go play with what came in the mail.

The Kindle, you perverts. The Kindle.