When I Came West (Part Nineteen)
In late April, I emailed Chuck that I was ready to send the manuscript but that I had never received the contract. He assured me that they had sent a contract back in March. We discussed the possibility that the contract had gone to the wrong address because my husband and I were in the midst of going back and forth between Texas and Colorado.
OU Press sent out new copies of the contract to me on May 2nd, along with an Author Information Form and a Guidelines for University of Oklahoma Press Authors and a Contracted Manuscript Checklist. I received the contract but there were some small problems with the mis-spelling of my name, the conditions regarding advance and percentage on royalties, and the agreement for discounted author's copies of the book.
I sent these concerns to Chuck via email and he said he would send fresh signature copies of the contract. He asked for xerox copies of the photographs I had and from there he and his staff would choose the ones to be included in the book.
I needed to now move forward on gaining permissions from the original publishers of my essays, reading twenty pages of Author's Guidelines and making certain that my final manuscript was formatted according to the OU Press checklist.
After receiving the permissions I needed and fixing a few more minor glitches with contractual language, I was able to sign the contract on June 20, 2008… three years since I had first pitched my memoir to Chuck Rankin.
Oh, and guess what happened to the first contract sent to me by OU Press in March? It arrived in my Colorado mailbox in charred remnants wrapped in plastic, my address barely visible, with an apology from the USPO stating that a mail truck had been in a serious wreck outside of San Antonio, Texas, and the vehicle had burned. They had salvaged what they could and were sorry for any inconvenience this incident may have caused.
Talk about a "hot" contract!
I did see the humor in it all and forwarded the incinerated remains to Chuck at OU Press so he and his staff would know what had happened.
