Happy Thanksgiving!

2013 has been an incredible year, and I have so many things to be thankful for. I have an amazingly supportive family and wonderful friends. I’m healthy and happy. None of the year’s accomplishments can trump that. But this year my childhood dream came true – my debut novel was published.

Failure is not the worst thing that can happen. Never trying, never chasing down that dream – that’s the true tragedy. That’s the most important thing I learned from this process, and I’m so thankful I had to courage to try.

I’m thankful for my critique partners, who went through Reclaimed line-by-line, squealed over my cover, and recommended it to everyone they know. I’m grateful for my editor, Danielle Ellison, who helped make Reclaimed what she knew it could be. I’m so lucky to be able to work with Spencer Hill Contemporary and amazing people like Patricia Riley, Cindy Thomas, Patrice Caldwell, the Reading With Me Team, and everyone else who had a hand in shaping, polishing, and prepping Reclaimed.

And for the first time in my life, I have readers, and for that, I am truly thankful. Thanks for reading. Thanks for the reviews, the notes, the tweets, the excitement. Thanks for standing in line to have your book signed. For begging me to write a sequel. For sharing your favorite lines. Thanks for the support.

More than anything, I want to thank readers for sharing their stories with me. A sixteen-year-old girl wrote me a letter telling me how much she connected with Jenna because how Jenna feels about running is exactly how she feels about ice skating. She wrote about knowing what it’s like to want to escape a small town and how Jenna spoke to her. That meant more than I can express.

Just last week I signed a copy of Reclaimed for a 60+ year old woman who told me she’d already read the first chapter and that it reminded her of when she was a teenager. When she was younger, her father was very sick and in the hospital. When the tension was too much for her to take, she would ride up and down the hospital elevator, trying to catch her breath, trying to escape everything. While she was there, she met a boy. They flirted back and forth often, and after that, she never saw him again. If you’ve read Reclaimed, you know how similar that is to the opening chapter of the book, and I loved hearing her version of a similar tale.

I’m thankful for everyone who had a hand in getting Reclaimed to readers, and to readers who, because you picked up the book, became a part of the story.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Post #4: Writing Websites

I am so thankful for the writing community. Anyone who says agents and editors are trying to keep people from getting published aren't listening to the right people. There are so many awesome industry professionals who work hard to educate and help new writers. If you want to get published, you must do your research. There is an abundance of information on the Internet, and honestly, I have no idea how people learned what they needed to before we had this amazing place to share and gather information. So here are just a few places where I learned more than I ever knew I needed to.

There are so many wonderful agents out there, all offering advice and willing to help new authors, even though they are already busy enough with helping their clients and finding new ones. So thanks to all those agents who are willing to share their advice. Here are three I've found helpful.

Mary Kole  http://kidlit.com/

Janet Reid  http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/

Rachelle Gardner  http://www.rachellegardner.com/

 

The following sites have great information, from finding agents to polishing your query to honing your craft.

Absolute Write  http://absolutewrite.com/forums/index.php

Literary Rambles  http://www.literaryrambles.com/

Query Tracker  http://querytracker.net/

WriteonCon  http://writeoncon.com/

 

I know there are so many I’m leaving out. These are just a few that I’ve been following for a while that I want to thank for helping me to learn and grow and improve. List your favorite writing websites in the comments.

Thanksgiving Post #3: Thankful Thursday

I’m thankful for the simple things in life, like food, fun, and freedom. I'm often happiest when I'm sitting outside watching the sun set over the cane field or reading a good book. Today, I'm just grateful it’s Thursday. Here are my top three reasons:

Reason #1: Today is Thanksgiving Dinner in the school cafeteria, and I’ve been looking forward to it all week. Maybe that seems silly to you, but this is Louisiana, and our school cafeteria makes the best Thanksgiving dinner, complete with rice dressing and sweet potatoes, which are some of my favorite things.

Reason #2: Thursday means Vampire Diaries. I don’t watch much tv, and I never would have fallen in love with this show if not for my friend Leslie. She practically bullied me into watching it a couple of summers ago by inviting me over and cooking me yummy food, which guarantees I will stay a while. She had DVR’d them, and we watched all the episodes. I was hooked. So I’m grateful for Leslie too, for introducing me to Damon. (And aren't you grateful I posted that pic?)

Reason #3: Thursday means I only have one more day until I'm off for an entire week for Thanksgiving vacation. And I need a vacation. I love my job, not only because I get to teach great kids, but because it ensures I will truly appreciate holidays and days off.

Sometimes it’s the little things.

Thanksgiving Post #2: My Support System

In my last post, I wrote about those people in my life who push me and make me better. Today I'd like to say thank you for those who see me at my worst and love me anyway. I'm so thankful for the amazing support system I have - family, friends, students, and Twitter pals. Writing was such a solitary effort for so long, and to now have so many people cheering for me and helping me is something that I hope for each and every one of you.

Aren't my parents adorable?

My parents have always been extremely supportive of me. I talked about Reclaimed with my parents while I was writing it, and when my dad had a dream about it, he called to tell me all about it in case I wanted to use his ideas. And they were pretty good. So I'm grateful for my parents, who always believed I could do absolutely anything.

I'm the one in the dance costume.
My sister is the cool one.

My sister is a pretty amazing person. We are only twenty-two months apart, so we have always been close. She has been one of my greatest cheerleaders. I bounce story ideas off her and she always reads my manuscripts first. I don't know if I could have kept writing if it weren't for her encouragement and honest belief that I would one day be published. We are both teachers as well (as are our mother and grandmother), and I can also call her to vent. We send each other hilarious text messages and giggle like children often. She's my best friend.

Seriously adorable, isn't he?

I met my husband on the beach when I was seventeen years old, and as corny and cheesy as it sounds, I fell in love with him almost immediately. We are very different, but that works for us. He has always been so supportive of me. When he built the bookshelves for my office, and I commented that they made me feel like a real writer, he told me I'd always been a real writer. And he believed it. He never doubted for a minute that I would be published. When I signed my contract with Spencer Hill Press, he told everyone, including his clients. (He's a builder.) He really does believe I will do whatever I say I will, and he does whatever he can so that I will have the opportunity. I am so grateful for him.

Me with my crew at their senior prom

I teach high school English, and I have the best students in the world. Everytime I talked about writing, they asked if any of my books had been published. When I said no, they told me I should get on that. I don't know if it ever crossed their minds that my writing might not be ready for that yet. When I told them the synopsis of my book, they got so excited! So I just want to thank my students, past and present, for begging to read my books and believing they would one day be in a bookstore. And a special shout-out to former student and current friend Emily Tucker, who reads my manuscripts in their early stages and gives great feedback, and Cameron Sarradet, who read the first book I ever wrote and didn't tell me it was horrible. You guys are one of the reasons I kept at it.


And there are so many others out there - my Mama Gayle, my friend Leslie, countless Twitter pals. Thanks, y'all!

Thankful: A blog hop post

Today I’m thankful for people who make me better. I hope all of you have someone, or several someones, in your life who push you to be the very best at whatever you do. I am many things (teacher, runner, daughter, sister, wife, friend), but today I want to thank those people who push me to be a better writer.

1.  My critique partners: I met my two awesome critique partners through the love connection on Maggie Steifvater’s blog. I cannot stress enough how much writers need critique partners. I was very nervous exchanging my work with strangers, but I couldn’t be luckier to have met Kate and Abigail, who took my manuscript and improved it. They told me where it was slow, where it was weak, where I could do better. Yes, they told me the parts that worked as well, but they didn’t only tell me how much they loved the story because that wouldn’t have helped at all. They said things that I knew were true but had been afraid to admit. They helped mold my story into the one I was trying to tell, and they kept me from giving up when things got hard. There was a point when I was pretty sure I was going to have to trunk this novel, but with their encouragement and help, I sold it instead. I am so thankful I listened to them.

2. My editor: I know I lucked out when I landed Danielle Ellison as my editor. She answers my emails almost immediately, Skypes with me whenever I need, and pushes me to make my manuscript what she knows it can be. She loves my stories and characters almost as much as I do, which is such a relief, but she doesn’t allow me to be lazy or sloppy, which is an even bigger relief. But she isn’t just making this book better. She’s making me better, so that the next book and the next and the next will reflect her influence and her drive to make me the artist she knows I can be. It means so much that she believes in me enough to ask me to do hard things. She believes I can do them, so I can. I'm so grateful for that.

So stick around this month to see all the things I'm thankful for, and participate in the Thanksgiving Blog Hop at Brenda Drake's blog.