Laura Markowitz's Blog

When you publish a book, obviously you want lots of people to read it. Reaching those potential readers is made easier by the kindness of bloggers like Gaele, who this week is featuring BOOK OF THE SKY GOD on her blog, I AM, INDEED. I’m honored that she took the time to read and review my book, especially because her blog has directed me to many great reads since I started following her. You can check it out here:

http://iamindeed.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/indies-rock-review-book-of-the-sky-god-by-laura-markowitz/

I woke up on December 21, 2012, wondering if the world was going to be any different. In one way, it was: there was a gift in my email box that made my world happier! It was a very positive review from KirkusIndie, which reviews new books. You can read it here. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/laura-markowitz/book-sky-god-re-review/#review.

My favorite line of the review: “A page-turning adventure navigated by a winning team of teens.”

The nice people at KirkusIndie were very kind to give my book a fair reading and I’m grateful to them and to everyone who has so far reviewed my book on Amazon.com, Goodreads.com, Barnes & Noble and elsewhere. Thank you! (If you like any of these reviews, please click LIKE.)

When I decided to center the BOOK OF THE SKY GOD’s plot around the Mayan prophecy that the world was going to end on December 21, 2012, I read a lot about it. I was relieved to learn that there was absolutely no scientific evidence to support the idea that we’re going be wiped out tomorrow. (Of course, if you’ve read the book you know that we actually have three more years to figure out how to save humanity.)

Even if there aren’t gods/Higher Beings who will come back to Earth to judge us, I believe we should judge ourselves. It’s important to think about our impact on our planet and all the other beings who share it with us.

Some people believe that December 21, 2012, is the beginning of a new age for humanity. They believe it marks a shift in our species from being selfish to being kind and compassionate. I definitely hope they’re right.

In BOOK OF THE SKY GOD, numinous consciousness is my idea of what it would be like if humans really could develop the ability to be consciously aware of our interconnection. I love this quote from the Buddha: “If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.” Laila Rajathani would definitely agree!

Enjoy your end-of-the-world parties, and let me know if you wake up on December 22nd with numinous senses!

Laura

I was thrilled when Kathy Kozak, YA book reviewer and blogger, offered to review BOOK OF THE SKY GOD and invited me to be interviewed for her blog. You can read the interview here. http://ordinarygirlzbookreviews.blog.com/2012/12/06/author-interview-with-laura-markowitz/

I loved her questions, especially the one about my writing habits. I’m always fascinated by when and how other writers find their muses. As you’ll read, mine usually talks to me late at night. It’s inconvenient if I have to get up early, but I love the deep quiet of night. It helps me clear my mind of everything except the story.

Along with writing novels, I’m a journalist, which means I’m the one who asks the questions. So it was a rare and interesting experience last Sunday to be interviewed about BOOK OF THE SKY GOD on the Fred and Jeff Show, which airs on 104.1 FM in Tucson. You can hear the interview segments at 12:15, 27:58 and 40:16.

Fred and Jeff Ronstadt are brothers (and cousins of famous singer Linda Ronstadt) and how they describe their show is: “Fred and Jeff talk with local heroes making Tucson and Southern Arizona one of the best places in the world!!!”

I don’t feel like a local (s)hero, but I sure had fun being on their radio show.

This was my first big interview about BOOK OF THE SKY GOD and I discovered that it’s harder than it sounds to talk about a book without giving away all the surprises and at the same time making it sound intriguing enough to want to read.

I hope to get more practice with more interviews. Big thanks to Fred and Jeff for giving me this first opportunity!

Laura

I admit it: I judge a book by its cover!

Because I love to read Young Adult fiction, I can usually tell by the cover illustration if it’s the kind of book I will enjoy. This method is not 100 percent reliable, of course, but awesome book covers are what I look for when I’m scanning titles for what next to read.

The cover of BOOK OF THE SKY GOD was illustrated by my dear friend and favorite artist, To-Ree-Nee Wolf.

To-Ree-Nee Wolf, illustrator

To-Ree-Nee is the most creative person I’ve ever met. She paints

and she creates giant mosaics

and sculptural works, and acts, sings, dances and writes. I’m quite sure she and Leonardo da Vinci would have been best friends.

“One of my dreams as a little artist-child was to grow up and illustrate book covers, so this was a really exciting project for me,” says To-Ree-Nee. “I was a big fan of BOOK OF THE SKY GOD long before I thought there was a possibility that I would illustrate the cover. It’s a damn good read! When I was approached to do the book cover I looked at samples of other YA book covers and I thought, ‘Okay, I can do that!’ ”

To-Ree-Nee attended the Philadelphia College of Art, but she hadn’t done illustrations in many years. So for the first few weeks, she practiced drawing hands. Then she did online research and studied the architecture of Mayan temples so she could get the angles and perspective just right. She also had to read up on iguanas.

“I had no idea there was such a thing as a blue iguana,” she recalls. “I noticed how certain folds in the skin and scale patterns denote ‘iguanas’ as opposed to other kinds of lizards.”

The iguana on the BOOK OF THE SKY GOD cover has a more human-looking eye. “I wanted to pull the reader into the book,” she explains, “so I drew the iguana looking at you.”

What I like best about To-Ree-Nee’s artwork are the vibrant colors she uses.

“I was always drawn to colorful things,” she says. “When I was a girl and drew in coloring books, I made all of my people blue. I had a teacher who said, ‘You need to draw them in real colors,’ so I drew them brown because I’m brown. The teacher pulled out the peach-pink crayon and said, ‘This is the color people are.’ But I knew people who came in all sorts of colors, and nature is full of bright colors. Some people think earth tones means brown, but look at a hummingbird!”

You can see more of To-Ree-Nee’s artwork on her website, www.toreenee.com

Greetings! Thanks for visiting the BOOK OF THE SKY GOD website and checking out my new blog. I thought I’d kick it off by telling you how I came up with the idea for the book and how I came to publish it. Are you a writer or aspiring writer? If so, I’ll be offering writing tips and advice for e-book publishing in future postings.

The idea for BOOK OF THE SKY GOD first came to me during a visit with a friend who had an interesting round stone carving on her wall. She explained that it was a replica of an ancient Mayan calendar, and that it counted ten thousand years! Then she added that the count ended on the winter solstice (December 21) in the year 2012. I was startled. Was that date significant, or was it utterly random?

It was more fun to imagine that it wasn’t random. What if the ancient Maya had advanced information about what would happen ten thousand years in the future, and their calendar was a kind of count-down device to the big moment? And…what if later humans mistranslated it and got the date wrong?

I pondered this possibility on my daily hikes in the Tucson Mountains with my dog, Lucy (a very energetic golden retriever, and, may I add, a Canine Good Citizen).

For most of a year, I wrote four days a week at my local Borders bookstore, sitting at a corner table in the cafe with my laptop. Borders is now out of business (more on that tragedy in a minute), but back then it was the perfect place to write a book.  I drank way too many iced beverages and probably created some bad karma by glowering at other customers when they poached “my” table.  When I needed inspiration and blood flow to the brain, I would stroll through aisles of books and feel happy. Books!

I finally finished BOTSG and sent it off to my agent, who is awesome. What I like about her is she’s honest. She doesn’t just say, “Dahling, this is fabulous!” She says, “I like it. It’s good.” She made me cut about a third of the story (“Laura, don’t worry. It will be your Prequel!”) and then she began sending it out to publishers. In December 2010, she called with good news: she was negotiating a contract with Macmillan! I did the happy dance.

But then came bad news. Borders had just announced it was going out of business, and as a result Macmillan was “suspending all new acquisitions.” No contract.  I decided not to worry about it (okay, easier said than done, but eventually I felt that way) and began the process of publishing BOTSG as an e-book. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted on the cover and to commission an artist to create it (see my next Blog post about that). Then I hired a teenager to edit the final version (she took out words like “bummer” and “wasted” and substituted “tragic” and “trashed”).  She found and plugged a few pesky plot holes and we sent it out to a proofreader. At last, the book was ready. Ta da!

More in my next installment… THANKS FOR READING!

Laura