The Next Big Author?

Johanna's book signing was last night. Over 150 people showed up. It was awesome. I'm just so darn impressed with her and how she's done so well. Also, I got to see tons of people I haven't seen in a couple of years -- Candy and Bob, Matt Presson, Christy, David Arant ... the list goes on. Good times.

I did learn something from Johanna about the publishing process: You can't always trust what you read in the books. She thought it was going to take six months to hear back from agents, so she wrote three chapters of her book and started sending out queries. (Incidentally, her e-mail queries were much more successful than her mail queries -- she didn't hear back from any of the agents she queried through U.S. Mail.) Within 24 hours, she'd heard back from the agent of her dreams ... and she didn't have a book written. So she threw it together in two weeks. TWO WEEKS. I can't tell you how little I've accomplished in the last two weeks ... but suffice to say, I haven't come close to writing a book. A month after that, she'd sold the book for nearly $200,000. And now they're shopping the movie rights. Oh, and the annoying thing: Her 27th birthday was last week. She was 25 when all this went down. I've got a lot to accomplish in the next year, I guess. :-)

The book is called The Next Big Thing. Johanna Edwards is the author. The book costs $13. Buy it already, OK?

Anywho, last week in her blog, Johanna posted a "10 things" question that's making the rounds with bloggers. Figured in honor of the release of her book, I'd take a stab at it. Of course, it won't be nearly as interesting as hers!

(now moved to its own post for easy meme lovin')