Musings from the basement...

Eric sings for you

February 28, 2009 0 Comments

A week or so I started another blog meant to be nothing more than an archive of my music. (Follow it on Facebook here.) Last night I posted an album I recorded three years ago. An album with (gasp!) singing. I am a terrible singer. I really ought not try to sing. But here is the album, anyway: X-Sweet One Last Goodbye 1) The New X-Sweet (0:37) 2) Goodbye, My Friend (4:15) 3) Roll It Over (2:53) 4) Purple Rose (2:40) 5) Blue Moon (3:02) 6) Breaking (4:57) 7) Rowhouses (0:50) 8) The Bottom of Things (2:09) 9) Martha Dear (4:35) 10) Holy Roller (4:07) 11) Oh Sister (5:38) 12) One Last Goodbye (1:32) All songs (c) Eric San Juan 2006. Free to distribute, just…
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Music

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How I got published, part 6 – all that other stuff

February 27, 2009 1 Comment

There is a lot of stuff they don’t tell you about getting a book published. You hear about the process of writing, and crafting cover letters, and how to approach agents and publishers, and on and on and on, but what about all the stuff the happens after you secure a deal? No one tells you about that. By this point I had done a pretty good job of educating myself on The Process. Thanks to loads of reading — books, articles, and blogs — I knew what to expect at almost every step of the way. But I had no idea what would come after we had gotten a contract. Well, here’s what happens: You still have a whole helluva lot of work to…
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Works by Eric, Writing

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How I got published, part 5 – Revising and rewriting

February 23, 2009 0 Comments

A Year of Hitchcock

(If you’re joining me in progress, this is the 5th part in a series devoted to outlining how my co-author and I managed to get our book, A Year of Hitchcock, published.) So here’s the part where the joy of getting a contract is smothered in the giant pile of WORK no one tells you about when you first start writing. Because make no mistake, writing is not what you think it is when you daydream about a career as an author. It’s WORK. Never forget that. As noted in my last post, it took a full year from the moment we first made contact with a publisher interested in our work to actually getting a contract. And getting that contract meant agreeing to a…
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Works by Eric, Writing

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How I got published, part 4 – The Waiting Game

February 19, 2009 3 Comments

Welcome to part 4 of a series detailing from start to finish how A Year of Hitchcock went from a neat idea to a published book (Scarecrow Press, 2009). Every step of the way, from writing to pitching to all the work we had to do after it was sold. If you’re an aspiring writer, hopefully this will help give you some insight on the process as my co-author Jim and I experienced it. The query letter was the subject of my last blog post. If you’re not familiar with what a query letter is, go read that post. I’ve even included the text of the letter that helped us grab the eye of a few publishers. So in our first batch of six queries…
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Works by Eric, Writing

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How I got published, part 3 – The Query

February 18, 2009 9 Comments

Yesterday I talked about the process by which Jim and I began writing A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Suspense. Week in and week out we were either in front of the TV watching Hitchcock’s work or, more often than not, in front of our keyboards writing, revising, and writing some more. It was midway through the year when we knew we had something publishable on our hands. By this time we has also developed an inertia that wasn’t going to break down, so we pulled the series offline and continued working on the same schedule we had set for ourselves at the start of the year. Now here’s where we broke ranks with how many nonfiction books are traditionally pitched…
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Writing

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