A good day for Ghost Planet

171 days until launch. Today was a very good day!

Last year when my agent received the offer from Tor, a good friend of mine put me in touch with a friend of his who is a multi-published author, thinking I might be interested in chatting with a pro about the very big step I was about to take.

It turned out the author was Kat Richardson (bestselling author of the Greywalker paranormal detective series). I knew who she was, because a few years ago when I toured the Seattle Underground in hopes of using that setting as a sort of sanctuary for the homeless in my second novel (ECHO 8), I found that Kat had already done something similar. (I decided to use a creepy old boat instead. Kat's forthcoming release SEAWITCH is set on . . . a creepy old boat. But no homeless people!)

I found Kat a generous person full of good advice. We even have a similar marketing challenge, with our books having two distinct audiences. Since our first email exchange, I have consulted her another time or two, and have joined her local write-in group.

When the time came for blurbs, I immediately thought it would be AWESOME to get Kat. But I was nervous. She was a friend of a friend, and had been kind, and I didn't want to put her in an awkward position. Finally I worked up the nerve to ask, assuring her I would completely understand if (A) she didn't have time, or (B) she decided to read the book but didn't like it.

She graciously agreed to read it, and I heard from her today. Her email was titled "GHOST PLANET," which is of course what it would be titled, but it took me back to my days of querying, and staring at those responses, afraid to open them.

Kat is part imp. You can tell by reading her posts on social media. This is how she started the email:

I've been having a hard time figuring out how to say this, so I guess I'll just blurt it out and get it over with:

Heart drops through stomach. And chair. And floor. And center of the earth.

I was already working on my internal pep talk by the time I absorbed the rest of the email, which took a few passes. Here is an excerpt from her feedback, which included an endorsement she posted on Facebook, Google+, and her personal blog.

OH MY GOD! Finally a Science Fiction novel where the Relationship is as important as the Science and the won't-let-you-go story literally will not work without BOTH! Perfect balance! The pace was great and the story hooked me right up front and kept on twisting and turning all the way to the satisfying end...A novel about complex relationships, dependence, independence, and identity that's also about ecology, science, and coexistence...Fantastic! Congratulations on a wonderful read!

And really, there's nothing else to say about that except THANK YOU, KAT! And everyone go out and buy Seawitch. (Note: GP also received an awesome endorsement from award-winning author Linnea Sinclair, which you can read about here.)

Playlist & Pinterest

As if that wasn't enough excitement for one day, I had even more fun with promotion. I finally got the iTunes playlist for GHOST PLANET updated and linked from my web site. And I spent far too much time fooling around with Pinterest, so there's now a GHOST PLANET board.

I'll give the links below. If you click the one for the playlist, you'll be asked if it's okay to launch iTunes. If you'd rather skip that, you can also just search the iTunes store for "Ghost Planet playlist."

- Ghost Planet Playlist
- Ghost Planet Pinterest Board

Do you guys do playlists? Pinterest boards? Would love to see them!