If you look on the right, you’ll see a list of my favorite blogs, and I thought I’d introduce you to these people who I like.  

Nathan Bransford http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/ is a literary agent with the San Francisco office of Curtis Brown, which is a very well-known agency. I’ve never met him (and he is not my agent), but I feel like I know him from reading his blog. He answers all sorts of nuts and bolts questions, such as how to write a query letter, how to format a manuscript, or how to go about finding an agent. Plus he just seems very pleasant. If I didn’t love my agent, I would apply to him.  

Tess Gerritsen http://tessgerritsen.com/blog/ has been a best-selling author for a number of years now, so she knows what she’s talking about, but she’s also very frank and informative. She can tell you about the issues you’ve always dreamed of worrying about, like what it’s like to go out to lunch with your editor and hammer out a provocative title for your best-selling book.  

Kristin Nelson http://pubrants.blogspot.com/ is another literary agent, but she has her own agency in Colorado. She too posts lots of good information for writers. For example, her most recent post is about what to look for in an agency agreement. She is very detailed and it’s quite useful, and even if you don’t need the information just yet, it’s fun to read about. 

Lisa Romeo http://www.lisaromeo.blogspot.com/ is a mother, a writer, and a student at the Stonecoast MFA program. I don’t have an MFA myself, which is probably the subject of another blog, but I’m intrigued by how they work and I’ve always been interested in Stonecoast because it is low-residency, has interesting teachers (among them Ann Hood and Elizabeth Searle), and looks beautiful. (It’s in Maine, on the coast.)   

Jennifer Weiner http://jenniferweiner.blogspot.com/ is the most honest person I have ever read in my life. She is not afraid to say anything, whether she is taking on The New York Times Book Review or certain people who are very important in the book club world that I won’t even mention because God forbid I get someone mad at me before I’ve even started. But I get a vicarious thrill out of reading her blog, plus which she is quite often right.  

Patricia Wood http://pkwood.blogspot.com/ is the author of Lottery, which has just been published. She is a very enthusiastic person, and I don’t say that lightly because I consider myself exceedingly enthusiastic. But her novel is doing very well and she writes about what it is like to be a success somewhat late in life—another bloomer! Plus it’s just hard not to share her joy because she is so happy. 

Writer Beware http://www.accrispin.blogspot.com/ is written by Victoria Strauss and A.C. Crispin and they devote themselves to uncovering scams that may suck in unwary new writers. Every time a new contest is posted they look into it, and you can save yourself a lot of aggravation by checking out their posts. There are some bad people out there, unfortunately, and writers are vulnerable because we are all desperate.  

So, that’s who is on my blog roll. I’ve probably missed a lot. What are your favorite blogs?

Last week, amazon listed my book The Fiction Class on its web site. There’s no picture yet and the book is not actually on sale (though you can preorder it), but still. It’s a watershed moment. There am I, right on top of Walter Breen who wrote a book about U.S. coins. Or so far I’m on top of him. 

As soon as I was listed, my husband called to inform me that I was ranked 174,236 on the amazon list. I thought that was pretty good, given that it was the first day, but I told him that I really didn’t want to start worrying about the ranks. I’m way too anxious to start thinking about things like that, I have a ton of other work to do and I can’t do it if I’m sitting here worrying about my ranking on amazon.com.  

“This way madness lies,” I said.  

“You’re absolutely right,” my husband replied. 

One hour later he called to inform me that I had “plummeted” to 196,452. 

For those who wonder, the amazon rankings show where your book is compared to all the other books amazon is selling, but it ranks them on an hour by hour basis depending on how many books you’ve sold that hour. Which, if I am understanding it right, means that if you sold 1,000 books in one hour and none the next, your ranking would go down. (J.K. Rowling is at the top of the list, as you might imagine, and is likely to stay there for a long time.) And yes, I do wonder if I placed an order for 10,000 of my books, would that push me to the top of the best seller list. And could I then cancel the order? 

I am trying really hard to be zen about this. I truly am so delighted to have a book on its way to publication that I cannot get too stressed about my rank. But it’s hard. On some level I’m still back in elementary school, waiting to be chosen for the volleyball team, and I’m not even sure that that’s relevant.  

So I have promised myself that I will only check amazon five times a day. And that I will not be too excited that my rank is now, as my husband says, “hovering” around 30,000. And I will keep in mind that there will be bad reviews and that some people will hate my book and some people won’t buy it, and it’s all fine (as long as those people aren’t my editor and agent). 

What about you? Anyone else have a rank?

One day last summer I was standing on line at the deli counter at Stop & Shop, waiting to order half a pound of roast beef. My cell phone rang, I found it, and it was my agent, Alex Glass, calling to tell me that Trident had had just sold the British rights to my novel and was that all right? I said it was more than all right, particularly because I didn’t even know they were trying to sell the British rights to my novel. (Perhaps I should ask my agent more questions, but my feeling is that the more I know, the crazier I get.) 

The next day I got a lovely e mail from my British editor, who is a novelist herself, and is the most enthusiastic person I have ever met in my life, and I don’t say that lightly, because I’m fairly enthusiastic myself. But next to Charlotte, I’m Scrooge. Anything you’ve heard about British reserve is a lie. 

What I found intriguing, and didn’t realize until all this happened, was that the British company publishing my novel had absolutely nothing to do with the American company. I’d assumed that if a division of Penguin was publishing my book in the U.S., then it would be a division of Penguin publishing in the UK. But not so.  

All of which is to say that the cover of the British version of the book is very different than theU.S. cover, as you can see (below).   

Completely different tone, right? The American one seems somewhat thoughtful and literary to me and the UK one seems more fun. Each one is true to the book, but they both pick up on different sides of it.  

Which one do I like best? 

That reminds of how my kids always used to ask me which one of them I liked best. I’d always answer that I didn’t like any of them (which isn’t true in either context).  

So, what do you think? Apple or squiggles?