Today is the day that Offbeat Bride is contractually due to my publisher, Seal Press. I FTPed the completed draft (all 60,000 words of it) last night. It was sort of anti-climactic. I had a few last minute tweaks to do before mailing it in, but they ended up taking all of about half an hour, and then I just sat there clicking around at various chapters trying to resist the urge to rewrite things. It’s fine, I kept reminding myself. It’s in good shape.

Still, after I sent it off I had a moment of standing in the living room and jumping up and down and waving my fists around and hollering “YAYAYAYAYAYAY!”

There were some questions after my last book post where I included a screenshot of the infamous Chapter Map about my process for how I wrote the book. If this kind of thing interests you, keep reading. If it makes your eyes roll back in your head, go look at some photos or something. I don’t mind.

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(… Oh! That pun! It kills!)

Even as I try to focus on finishing my book, I’m also in the early stages of pre-dev on my plans for the partner website. I am, after all, a web geek first and foremost … “author” is a new title compared to “blogger” and “total nerd.” I’ve got big plans, but for now here it is: OffbeatBride.com. Your future home of all things wedded, weird, and wonderful.

My book contract, originally uploaded by .Ariel.
… now all I have to do is finish writing the book! I’m a little over one third of the way through.

After 18 months of incubation and hard work on various permutations of proposals, I just sold my first book! Seal Press will release my trade paperback debut, a memoir/handbook chimera with a working title of And the Bride Wore A Hula Hoop, in January 2007. Hurrah!

I’m working away on my weird weddings book, and I find that now is the time to involve (get this!) other people’s stories. Did you have an untraditional wedding or commitment ceremony (gay or straight)? It doesn’t even have to have been wildly weird, but if you had a wedding where things were a little bit different, I’d love to ask you some questions about how you crafted your ceremony, what wedding traditions you scrapped, and which you kept around. Leave a comment if you’re interested in being quizzed by me for my never ending book project.

PS: For those interested, here’s our untraditional wedding ceremony.