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Writer's pictureChris OBrien

Long Overdue Newsletter - April 2023

Updated: Apr 27, 2023


 

Quote of the Month

"You always get a special kick on opening day, no matter how many you go through. You look forward to it like a birthday party when you're a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen."

- Joe DiMaggio

 

Congrats to Annie Leue -

Book Designer at University of Chicago Press!!!

Our Senior Creative Director, Annie Leue, has landed a major, MAJOR job as a book designer for the University of Chicago Press! I don't think I can overstate how big of a deal/achievement this is. The University of Chicago Press is the largest, one of the most prestigious, and might be the oldest university press in the country. Such a well-deserved role. Way to go, Annie!!

To all who have worked with Annie, you can now proudly say the designer of your book works at The University of Chicago Press. That's really cool. I'm extremely thankful for Annie's vision, high artistic standards, and commitment to professional quality for the interior and exterior designs of our books. I have so much pride whenever I get to display our growing library of published books. And each one was designed by Annie.

What this means for our authors and book design going forward - Even before the new gig, Annie's title had already moved from Book Designer to Creative Director (and then Sr. Creative Director). As Long Overdue grew and took on new projects, the vision was for Annie to oversee all of the projects and build a design team. I'm happy (and lucky) to say this is still the plan.


We've brought on an excellent new designer named Heather, who is already hopping in on a few projects. Talk about a busy few weeks, Annie is either completing projects (Little Green Frond, Hyper Focus) or collaborating with Heather to help move projects get across the finish line (Before You Sign, Ahmet's Cookbook). Long Overdue will continue to have a best-in-class, professional design department, and I hope to have many more of these announcements over the years of our designers and editors landing major publishing jobs.

 

Set a Timer

Major League Baseball made a few rule changes this offseason. The most significant:

In an effort to create a quicker pace of play, a 30-second timer between batters will be implemented in 2023. Between pitches, a 15-second timer will be in place with the bases empty and a 20-second timer with runners on base.

I've got mixed feelings about this. For TV, I think it's great. Speeds things up. But if I'm at the ballpark, especially on a nice summer day at Wrigley Field, I don't want things to go faster. If anything, I want another hour!


But it did make me think, there's a lot of value in implementing a "writing clock." Especially in the first draft phase of a book. A writing clock (just another way of saying deadlines) moves your project forward and serves as a great antidote to perfectionism. Here are three ways you can do it.

 

Safe Landing 1-Year Anniversary: Events Schedule

Hard to believe, but it's almost been 1 year since we published Safe Landing: A Family's Journey Following the Crash of American Airlines Flight 191 by Melody Smith, Kim Jockl, and Jim Borchers.


What a ride it's been! From the book release parties at First Draft and Barrel, to radio show interviews, podcast interviews, appearances at libraries, book clubs, other speaking engagements, and of course the pop-up bookstore a couple months ago (also at First Draft). Here's a look at some of the exciting events ahead. We'll continue to update this page as new events are scheduled surrounding the 1-year anniversary of their book.

 

Writing a Great Scene without Dialogue


Including this clip from Frasier as an example of a great scene that doesn't have any dialogue or internal monologue going on inside a character's head. It's all built on the Niles' hilarious interactions with his environment.


Writing applications - Find a scene with just one character and write down what they're doing. Do they scratch? Fidget? Can they sit in one spot for hours or are they always up and moving around? Are their hands at their side? On their phone? You don't have to use all of this, but try to really capture the movements of a physical person in a physical space.


Little bit harder - Find a dialogue scene in your writing and see if you can communicate the same interaction without words. What can they be doing in their space? What are they picking up? Are they leaving clothes on the floor? Squeezing the last bit of toothpaste?

 

"Yeah, I liked the old rules.

The longer the baseball game, the longer my nap.


- Crash, Team Dog

 

Keeping up with Long Overdue

Best place to keep up with all things Long Overdue (including our authors' events like the one above) is a tie between our monthly newsletter and our Instagram page. If you enjoy this newsletter and know someone who might enjoy it as well, let us know, we'll make sure to add them to our subscriber list. We also got back on Facebook recently, you can follow us here.


And check out our website - Long Overdue Books. Long Overdue Books is a community for creating books. It's a place for authors (and soon-to-be-authors), readers, editors, artists, and designers to come together and move their stories from ideas to finished books.


Also, if you have any questions, ideas, stories to tell, you can reach Cal the Librarian at - library@longoverduestories.com

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