Plot Monkeys

First, please forgive me if you’ve seen this blog elsewhere on the net. I posted it yesterday at AccessRomance, where my Readmarisela.com website is hosted. It’s important to me–I’m trying to spread the word, so don’t be surprised if you see this message again.

As they say in the French Quarter, “Let the Good Times Roll!”

Only, it’s hard for the good times to roll in New Orleans anymore, thanks to a hurricane named Katrina.

You remember her, right? Talk about a bitch. But over time, we tend to forget the devastation and destruction that is still raw and fresh in a certain city a lot of us love. Many friends of mine just returned from the city where they went for a conference. It’s not the same. The rebuilding is not getting done…at least, not at the pace most of us would expect. It breaks my heart.

No, I don’t live in New Orleans. But I set a lot of my books there. So do a lot of authors and frankly, I personally know of two authors who had to scramble after Katrina in order to rewrite books because the city they were portraying no longer existed. I, too, was affected–not with an original work, but with a reprint collection of two of my previous books (PURE CHANCE and INSATIABLE) that is being re-released this month under the title, NEW ORLEANS NIGHTS.

When I realized the unforunate timing might affect my sales–I was pretty bummed. And not just for obvious reasons. It hurt that this amazing city wasn’t going to be enjoyed by readers for a while. I knew there was nothing I could do to delay publication, so I decided instead to make the publication count.

The search for a charity to take a donation based on my personal earnings from this re-release wasn’t easy. The first VERY well-known charity didn’t want anything to do with my book because–gasp!–it had sex in it. The second equally well-known charity not only balked because of the sex, but they wanted a guarantee of a $20K donation. Well, hate to break it to you guys, but category romance writers do NOT make that kind of money…especially not on reprints!

I was incredibly discouraged–on many levels. (I was betting that if Stephen King wanted to donate proceeds, neither charity would have objected to the VIOLENCE in his books, but that wasn’t the point.) I had one last shot. I did some Googling and found a charity that was grass-roots. I emailed with the director, asked him point-blank about the sexual content, and when he said it didn’t bother him, I knew I’d found my group.

Now, let me say that the whole journey wasn’t over there. There was a lot of legalities to work through and I commend both Mike Latino of Renew New Orleans and Harlequin for supporting my need to give a little back. I wrote a letter to be included in the book that explained my choices and convinced Harlequin to even put a “Help rebuild New Orleans, See inside” logo on the cover. (And anyone who has dealt with Harlequin knows that this alone is no easy feat–not that they aren’t generous, but production there is a huge machine and any change from the norm requires Herculean efforts.)

And clearly, my efforts didn’t quite measure up to Olympian standards. You see, everything was in place. Contracts signed. Covers done. Books delivered…and the letter was somehow left out.

:: sigh ::

So that’s why I’m writing this in my blog. Not to complain about production gaffes that happen time to time, but to bring you the message that was supposed to be printed in the front of my book and the one readers will undoubtedly look for when they see the “Help Rebuild New Orleans…see inside” message on the front cover.

So here’s the letter, as it was supposed to appear. If you see the books in the store and you haven’t read the stories (or want to revisit them in the new format, which also includes my New Orleans set short story, ROCK AND ROLLING, never before in print), know that picking up a copy will result in a donation to this very worthy organization.

I will warn you that my home page still does not have the information promised below up. That’s because I wasn’t sure what was going to happen once the letter was left out of the book. It will be up by the end of the week, hopefully, and I’ll announce it on my Marisela blog.

Here’s the letter:

Dear Reader,

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez!
(Let the Good Times Roll!)

Email Julie at julie@julieleto.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006 at 6:06 am and is filed under Julie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.