{"id":241,"date":"2016-03-16T08:34:40","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T12:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/?p=241"},"modified":"2017-05-20T14:01:57","modified_gmt":"2017-05-20T18:01:57","slug":"open-acknowledgments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/?p=241","title":{"rendered":"Open acknowledgments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/?page_id=438\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-242\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-242\" src=\"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/HalfWolf-Final-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"Half Wolf\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/HalfWolf-Final-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/HalfWolf-Final-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/HalfWolf-Final-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/HalfWolf-Final-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/HalfWolf-Final-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/HalfWolf-Final-scaled.jpg 1707w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a>I generally don&#8217;t include an acknowledgements section in my books because I figure the average reader doesn&#8217;t particularly care how well my husband manages my pre-release meltdowns (&#8220;Everyone&#8217;s going to hate my baby! The sky is falling!&#8221;) and how ably my father hides his disdain of genre fiction when he picks apart plot holes in my second drafts (&#8220;That&#8217;s why you got an MA in English. Right?&#8221;). But I figured a blog post on the topic wouldn&#8217;t hurt &#8212; that way if you&#8217;re bored, you can skip it.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to my ever-supportive friends and family, <a href=\"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/?page_id=438\">Half Wolf<\/a> had an astonishing number of both enthusiastic volunteers and professionals helping turn my buggy manuscript into the (hopefully) polished product\u00a0you might have downloaded to your e-reader this past weekend. First and foremost,\u00a0I want to thank all of my early readers&#8230;and specifically Mel who found a typo that all of the professionals missed. Second, the enthusiasm and kindness of everyone who tried a copy of my book, told their friends, or left a review really helped me see that the sky\u00a0<em>wasn&#8217;t<\/em> falling after all.<\/p>\n<p>Next on my list &#8212; the blurb. Blurb-writing is an art that I&#8217;ve been practicing, but it still took several writing buddies and about a week to polish those all-important 160 words. Specifically, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/David-J-Normoyle\/e\/B004OXPGD0\/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;qid=1457622652&amp;sr=8-2&amp;tag=thewaleff-20&amp;linkId=V647HWIFUH4CHGAV&quot;&gt;Name Your Link&lt;\/a&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=thewaleff-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\">David J. Normoyle<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Sylvia-Frost\/e\/B00O27NLDA\/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;qid=1457623929&amp;sr=8-2-ent&amp;tag=thewaleff-20&amp;linkId=QR4OGRXAMIZDAMGI&quot;&gt;Name Your Link&lt;\/a&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=thewaleff-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\">Sylvia Frost<\/a>&#8216;s sentences actually ended up on the Amazon page, while <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/s\/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;field-author=Lindsey%20Loucks&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;search-alias=digital-text&amp;sort=relevancerank&amp;tag=thewaleff-20&amp;text=Lindsey%20Loucks&amp;linkId=EHGA2V46F64K34DV&quot;&gt;Name Your Link&lt;\/a&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=thewaleff-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\">Lindsay Loucks<\/a> asked just the question I needed to make the blurb (finally!) veer off in the right direction. Everyone else&#8217;s feedback was<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-243\" src=\"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/covers-282x300.jpg\" alt=\"Rebecca Frank's covers\" width=\"282\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/covers-282x300.jpg 282w, https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/covers.jpg 429w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 282px) 100vw, 282px\" \/>helpful too! (Yes, I did really have more writers that I can easily name in a single blog post look over those four short paragraphs.)<\/p>\n<p>Finally, I&#8217;d be remiss if I didn&#8217;t thank the pros who turned my homemade story into a polished product. Chereese at <a href=\"http:\/\/grammar-rulesatoz.blogspot.com\/\">Grammar Rules A to Z<\/a> is always willing to slide my manuscript in at a moment&#8217;s notice for a thorough polish and <a href=\"http:\/\/rebeccafrank.design\/\">Rebecca Frank<\/a> is definitely the world&#8217;s best cover artist. If you&#8217;re a writer in need of some professional assistance, I can&#8217;t recommend these two ladies highly enough.<\/p>\n<p>Still here? Then I want to thank\u00a0<em>you<\/em> as well for reading all the way to the end and giving me the impetus I need to open up my laptop every day. You are why I write.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I generally don&#8217;t include an acknowledgements section in my books because I figure the average reader doesn&#8217;t particularly care how well my husband manages my pre-release meltdowns (&#8220;Everyone&#8217;s going to hate my baby! The sky is falling!&#8221;) and how ably my father hides his disdain of genre fiction when he picks apart plot holes in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alpha-underground-series","category-the-growth-of-an-author","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":834,"href":"https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}