Dreaming Creek: TITLE INFORMATION FORM

Working on final edits (the final, final edits (finally)) of my novel, which are due to the publisher this Sunday. They also just sent me a form called the TITLE INFORMATION FORM. As I was filling it out, it occurred to me that a) I haven't posted on my blog in a long time, and b) this would be a really good way to 1)get double duty out of a bit of writing, and 2) tell folks a little bit more about my upcoming novel. So, since any good writer will get as many uses as possible out of a single piece of work, here, for your education and entertainment, is a portion of my TITLE INFORMATION FORM for Dreaming Creek...

1. (Internal use to be filled out by staff)

Publication Date:

Genre:

Sub-Genre:

ISBN (E):

ISBN (P):

Editor:

Copy Editor:

Cover Artist:

Rating: (I don't know what this means, but it makes me nervous... (Edmund))

2. (This section is to be filled out by the author and then reviewed by the assigned editor once edits are underway.)

Book Info:

Title: Dreaming Creek

Author: Edmund R. Schubert

Pen Name to appear on cover (if desired):

Spelling preferred (CDN, US, UK): US

Author Info:

Website (if any): www.edmundschubert.com

Author Biography:

Edmund R. Schubert is the award-winning author of over thirty short stories, having been published in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. In addition to writing, Schubert has held a range of editorial positions, including serving as fiction editor of the online magazine, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show. An anthology of IGMS stories, co-edited by Schubert and Card, was published by Tor (August, 2008). Dreaming Creek (LBF Books, October 2008) is his first novel.

Dedication/Acknowledgements:

One of the most important things I have learned since I first began writing Dreaming Creek is that a novel is not created by one individual. The author may be the engine that drives the vehicle, but there are a lot of other parts, without whom there is no book.

My unending thanks for material aid and support in the writing of this book to:

Terry Schubert, Katrina and Alexa Schubert, L. McKenna Donovan, Alethea Kontis, James Maxey, Gray Rinehart, Ada Brown, Oliver Dale, Allen Moore, Cindy Hutchins, Dena Harris, Laine Cunningham, Rudy Clark, Tom Barker, Daniel Shirley, Marti & Duane Abbott, Craig Parent, Mike Griffin, Orson Scott Card, Dawn Mitchell, Jacqueline Druga-Marchetti, Carole Spencer & Jodi Lee

Back Cover Blurb:

(This should be a maximum of 150 words.)

High school teacher Danny Wakeman has spent sixteen years believing that his childhood friend, Marcus Gaines, saved his life after an accident. But Danny's perspective on the world gets turned inside-out when he and the woman he wants to marry, Sara McBride, drink from the mystical waters of Dreaming Creek, trade bodies, and get stuck that way...

Trapped in each others' bodies, struggling to fit in to each others' lives, Danny and Sara will have to pull together to overcome a perplexing lawsuit, a plot to defraud Danny out of his recently deceased parent's farm, and an attempted rape—all of which ultimately prove to bear Marcus's sinister fingerprints. And before it's over, Danny will discover that this pattern of treachery and violence goes all the way back to his supposed accident, which Marcus designed to cover up an even blacker secret...

Excerpt to be used for promo:

(This is a sample chapter or if the chapter is too long, then use a sample scene.)

Danny watched Sara wink as she said, “I’ve been wondering all day what this would be like. I was beginning to worry that your bladder had gone missing along with this finger.”

“Oh,” Danny said, finally understanding. “Have fun.”

As Sara walked toward the restroom, Danny watched his old body lumber across the room, wondering if he really moved that ungracefully, or if Sara just wasn’t used to moving around in his body. Normally she seemed to glide everywhere she went — not that normal was a word that could be applied to this situation. But he had always appreciated the effortless elegance of her movements before.

As soon as Sara went into the men’s room, a voice startled Danny from behind. It was their waiter, Karl.

“Miss, is everything all right?” he asked.

Danny noticed Karl used a much more casual tone than he had used earlier. “Yes,” he replied, puzzled. The food wasn’t even out yet. “Why?”

The waiter crouched down so he and Danny would be at the same level, gazing into his eyes and putting his fingertips on the back of Danny’s hand.

“Things seemed a bit tense between you and your…” the waiter glanced at Danny’s hand, looking pointedly where a ring would have been if Danny and Sara had been married, “…boyfriend. I wondered if I could be of assistance somehow. Help a beautiful lady in distress?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Danny yanked his hand out from beneath the waiter’s.

“Please,” Karl said, smiling innocently. “I meant no offense. I was only trying to help.”

“You were trying to help yourself to some free monkey business with someone else’s girlfriend,” said Danny. “What kind of creep are you?”

“I offer my aid and you insult me,” Karl said, snapping upright and resuming his waiter persona again. “If you’ll excuse me, I have other customers to attend to.”

Danny immediately wondered if he had misunderstood. The waiter seemed genuinely wounded, and he and Sara’s earlier game of one-upsmanship could have been misconstrued as having tones of hostility. Was he over-reacting?

After a few minutes he looked back across the room to see if he could spot the waiter, and instead noticed a familiar head — his own — poking cautiously out of the men’s room door. It was Sara, but whatever she was looking out for, she didn’t seem to find. She slipped through the door and walked as quickly as possible back to the table.

* * *

“That wasn’t any fun at all,” Sara said, sitting down heavily. She was starting to have second thoughts about this little body-swapping experiment.

“What does it mean when a guy puts his hand on yours?” Danny asked.

Sara looked at him and raised her eyebrows. “It usually means he’s interested.”

“In…?”

“In touching more than just your hand,” she said.

“Even if he knows you’re with someone else?”

Sara brought her hands together in front of her, making a steeple with her pinkies. “What happened here while I was away?” She already had a pretty good idea, but she wanted to hear it from Danny.

“Our waiter.”

Sara feigned shock. “Really?”

“Yes, really. It’s not funny. He all but offered to take me home with him.”

“What did you tell him?”

“What do you think I told him?” Danny said. “I called him a creep and told him to get lost.”

He was clearly getting annoyed, but Sara wasn’t sure if it was with the event or with her amusement about it. She decided to ease up on him. This was new territory for both of them.

“Did he?”

“What do you mean, did he? Of course he did. What kind of loser hits on a woman and won’t even back off when you tell him no?”

“There are all kinds of creeps out there,” Sara said matter-of-factly.

Clearly understanding what she meant, Danny said softly, “This has happened to you?”

Sara shrugged. “Not often. More than I’d prefer.”

“What do you do?”

Marcus immediately came to Sara’s mind. “I guess it depends on the situation.”

Danny said, “Well if it ever happens while I’m around, you let me know.” He made his tiny new hand into a fist. “I’ll take care of it.”

Sara paused, pondering the wisdom of stating her next thought aloud. She made it anyway.

“I did, once. You didn’t believe me.”

“When was that?” Danny’s eyes drifted up and to the right as he searched his memory. After a few seconds he said, “I don’t remember anything.”

Sara nodded. “Marcus’s cousin’s wedding.”

Danny perked up. “That? Oh, come on, Sara, I told you, it was a joke. He was kidding.”

“He groped me when I made the mistake of dancing with him. It was bad enough when he kept spinning me and brushing his hands across my breasts, but at the end he didn’t even try to be subtle, he just grabbed me.”

“Marcus is my best friend,” Danny said. “He wouldn’t do that except maybe, maybe, as a gag. Come on, he’s my oldest friend. He saved my life —”

“You know what,” Sara interrupted. “I talked with your dad about that right before he died. He said that everyone else’s memories are based on what Marcus said, and he sounded like he wasn’t so sure he believed it. I mean, come on. In the end, all we have is Marcus’s word for what happened.”

Danny’s little hands curled up into rock-hard fists around his silverware. “Marcus has looked out for me for as long as I’ve known him. Yeah, he teases me sometimes. He teases everybody, that’s just his way. But when the shit gets deep, he’s always been there for me.”

Sara leaned across the table. “And how many times was Marcus the one who pushed you into the shit in the first place?"

“You don’t know him like I do. What he’s been through,” Danny said.

“Actually, I think I know him better than you do. At least I’m not blinded by an event I can’t even remember.”

Danny stared with disbelief. “That was a long time ago.”

“Yes,” said Sara, crossing her arms. “It was.”

After that neither of them said another word, staring right through each other’s eyes when they bothered looking at each other at all.

When dinner arrived, they ate in silence, a silence that was made even more awkward by the invasive and inescapable din of forty other conversations taking place around them. The food the waiter served them could have been excellent or atrocious, they couldn’t tell, and the champagne sat open and untouched, going as flat as the evening.

* * *

When Karl finally brought the check, Sara gave him a credit card, and when he returned for the signature she discovered another thing that was a tremendous challenge to do when missing a finger: writing. The stub wasn’t big enough to hold the pen, but it was big enough to get in the way. She figured there had to be a way, Danny managed it all the time, but she had never really paid attention to him when he wrote. Why would she?

However, as much as she struggled forging Danny’s name, she also made a flamboyant show of writing a large zero in the space designated for their waiter’s tip.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said when she handed him the credit card slip. “I… I think you may have made an error here.” He pointed out the lack of gratuity.

“No,” said Sara, standing up. She straightened the collar of her shirt and said loudly enough for everyone around them to hear, “The error is yours if you think you’re going to hit on my girlfriend and get paid for it. Here’s your tip: keep your paws to yourself.”