Goodies General Notes and Table of Contents (read this first!)

Cover

The cover of this book is a trainwreck: there is a ton going on--lots of interesting things to talk about--and none of it is any good.

First, I hate the artwork. It's garish and bright, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the book. Yes, it has something to do with the title, in a symbolic, tangential sort of way, but it has nothing to do with the story. If you're looking for a main character with a suit, you're not going to find one. If you're looking for characters to be in the desert, you're not going to find any. Yes, someone has a briefcase, and I think someone wears a suit, but that's as good as it gets.

Second, my name is enormous. This is something that publishers do when an author's name is a big selling point. If I were to release a book now, after having three out and being involved in the LDS book community, that might work. But at the time, I'd only had one book out and no one knew who I was.

Third, the subtitle says "A hilarious new adventure from the author of On Second Thought." This brings up a general problem with this book: it was marketed horribly. And I don't mean to imply that it was the publisher's fault--a lot of it was mine. When I wrote it I still had no idea what genre I was writing, and I was generally comfortable with saying my writing was "humor". (Actually, I generally described it as "a little bit of everything".) It was a terrible strategy. Humor, as a genre for novels, doesn't really sell that well. If this had all been packaged as a suspense novel--that just happened to be funny--it probably would have sold double what it did.

Fourth, the covers to both this book AND On Second Thought feature a guy in a suit, in the desert, with a briefcase, and his face is concealed. Why is that? Who knows?

Title

As I've mentioned before, I don't like to come up with titles. "Wake Me When It's Over" was a creation of my publisher's marketing department, and I didn't have much to do with it.

I'd envisioned the book much more as a political adventure than a comedy, and I'd used the epigram:

“Wherefore, the Lord commandeth you, when ye shall see these things come among you that ye shall awake to a sense of your awful situation, because of this secret combination which shall be among you...” Ether 8:24

Consequently, my title proposal--which is admittedly lousy--was "Awake". While I don't think that that would have been a better title, you can tell that the overall tone of "Awake" versus that of "Wake Me When It's Over" are very different.

Man, this book was a marketing mess. I love the book, but I had no idea what I was doing when I proposed it to the publisher.

Dedication

Big Dog is my dad. There's not really a story behind that--I can't even remember when I started calling him that.

The Champ is my mom. You know how adults talk to babies, and ask them "Who's cute? Who's cute?" and the baby says "Me!"? Well, when I was a teenager, I started doing this to my mom--I'd ask her "Who's the Champ? Who's the Champ?" and keep pestering her until she'd say "me". It was rather awesome.

Acknowledgments

I write books solely so I can write acknowledgements. I think it's all kinds of fun.

The reference to Angela, my editor, as "mysterious and elusive" comes from the fact that I quoted her once on this website (without asking her permission) and she made me take it off. If you'll notice, in the links page on this site I refer to her as "She Who Must Not Be Named".

When I first wrote these acknowledgements, Angela questioned me about the third acknowledgement. Was it an honest thanks to my high school English teachers? Was it sarcastic? My answer to her, which is the same answer I'll give to you, is: it's intentionally ambiguous.

Ben olsen, as I mentioned in the goodies section of The Counterfeit, was my brother's roommate in college, and he's appeared in every single one of my books. He's a computer guy, which is why I consulted him about this book. He actually came up with the Gopher idea (and, three days after the book went to press, he retracted everything and told me that it wouldn't actually work).

And for the big list:

The Official Time-Waster's Guide is a website run by my brother which reviews games and books and movies. Back in the day I used to be the tabletop games editor.

Cameron and Birgitte Ruesch have been mentioned on this site several times. At the time this book was released, we'd been housesitting for them (hence the landlord reference).

Weyerhaeuser was my employer at the time.

Originally, this book was dedicated to Frosted Mini-Wheats. Later, it was dedicated to Pope Gregory the Ninth.

Brendan, Carrie, and Tami were employees at Seagull Book during my very first book signing. I believe they're all listed in the links section of this site.

Dan is my brother, and he gives excellent, terrible advice. He tells me when my books are lousy, and when my ideas stink. He's almost always right, but it almost always hurts.

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