Waiting on the Debut

I wanted to do a post on waiting on a debut because I myself am waiting on my debut and wanted both commiseration and consolation. For me, now at about twenty days away, there are times when it still doesn’t feel real. I wanted to know how others were dealing with the wait and how others have survived the wait. (Check back later this week for advice from those who survived their debuts.) I’m so grateful that two lovely and incredible writers, Dahlia Adler and Jaye Robin Brown, agreed to let us in on just how they are surviving that wait.

 

When did it feel real?

Dahlia: This is horrible to say, but the thing that really made it hit home for me was seeing it on Goodreads and realizing I was now open to bad reviews. Like, the offer and seeing it on Publisher’s Marketplace and signing the contract and all of that was amazing, but the real gut Oh my God, this is happening came with the bad review realization.

Jaye Robin: Honestly? It still feels surreal. But I suppose all the official things —signing a contract, getting an advance check, programming a Harper Collins’ editor’s phone number into my cell phone—all work towards making it feel like it will eventually happen. I’m supposed to receive cover art in the next month or so, now that will be a milestone!

 

What are you most afraid of?

Dahlia: Oh, God, everything, pretty much. Mostly of letting people inside my head, I think. Not strangers—strangers are welcome!—but family, close friends… anyone who’s ever watched me kinda space out, writing in my head, or say no to plans because I have deadlines to make. I want them to read it and go “Ooookay, now I get it,” not, “Really? This is why she bailed on my party?” Writing is this thing everyone who loves me just assumes I’m good at, because I love it. But while passion and skill are both important, they aren’t the same thing. Having something out in the world will allow people to decide whether I only possess the former. It’s unnerving to think about. I’m trying not to!

Jaye Robin: Readers not connecting with my book.

 

What is the one thing you’re most excited about?

Dahlia: Just seeing the thing. On a shelf. Preferably not my own. I imagine it’s miraculous.

Jaye Robin: Readers connecting with Amber and her dreams!

 

What would tell your “before the book deal” self?

Dahlia: A lot of the “after” stuff is going to be like the “before”—a ton of hard work, and a ton of waiting. Only now, you have the pressure of having people invested in you, financially and otherwise. Appreciate this period right now when you’re only accountable to yourself.

Jaye Robin: Practice patience. And keep in mind that, to your editor, the manuscript you sweated and toiled over and had multiple beta readers and agent eyes on, is only a first draft. You’re starting from go again in many ways. Embrace it.

 

What advice would you give those who are in the middle of the querying/submission process?

Dahlia: Take the time to know what you really want, and to learn how things work. If you don’t understand why a bad agent is worse than no agent, or a bad contract worse than no contract, you are probably not ready to do this professionally yet. And that’s okay. You don’t automatically become ready to sign on the dotted line somewhere just because you finished writing a book. Research is part of the process. Don’t let anyone pressure you into going at a pace you’re not comfortable with, or a path you’re not comfortable with. It’s even okay to write for fun, I promise J

That said, if you do want to get published, don’t give up. It may be annoying to hear “Write something new!” or heartbreaking to realize it’s time to put that manuscript you love on a shelf, but the reality is, writing something new is always going to be part of being an author. Knowing when something doesn’t work right now? Always going to be part of being an author. And rejection? Always going to be part of being an author. So yeah, it pays to get accustomed to that early, and just keep going!

Jaye Robin: Work on other projects. Get invested in a new story. That way, if things don’t work out ideally, you’re not standing empty-handed! Always, always keep writing.

 

 

Dahlia Adler's Behind the Scenes will be released June 24, 2014, by Spencer Hill Contemporary. You should also follow her on Twitter because she's awesome, wears many hats (including a tiara), and dispenses wise advice.

Jaye Robin Brown's No Place To Fall will be out Fall 2014 with Harper Teen. You should follow her on Twitter because she is phenomenal, loves dogs (just look at that face), and is up early with the 5 AM writers' club!

Don't Turn out the Light



Artwork courtesy of the
American Library Association.

It’s that time of year again: Banned Books Week, the one week out of the year that we throw a harsh light on those who would try to keep others in darkness. Those who want to project their prejudices and fears onto others. Those who want to hide the books.

Last year I wrote about how we should celebrate our right to read. This year I want to talk a bit about how my students are doing just that.

I teach sophomore English, and for the past few years, I’ve assigned Fahrenheit 451. I read the book myself when I was a sophomore in high school, and it had a profound effect on me. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. I recommend it to everyone. It’s a scary picture of what might happen if the book banners win, if books are indeed outlawed because of our fear of offending someone. It’s also a reminder that it is up to us to keep literature alive. In Bradbury’s world, books were not initially outlawed. It’s just that people stopped reading. They spent too much time getting offended and not nearly enough time listening.

The world is a scary place, and I understand that many parents want to protect their children from it. I get the need to shield children from the ugliness that life sometimes brings. But in doing so, we are also shielding them from its beauty. And while it is the parents’ prerogative to stand between their child and the world, it is not their job to monitor the morals of everyone else.

When we ban books, what we are doing is telling those who received comfort from those books that they are wrong. They are wrong to find beauty in something ugly. They should be ashamed of their feelings, their desires, their connection to something others view as sinful or shameful. We teach them to be silent. And when we do this, it is we who are wrong.

It is admiral for adults to want to stand between children and the world and become a shield against the darkness. But if I’ve learned anything about the dark, it’s that it creeps around our strongest fortifications, crawls into the gaps, finds a way through the keyhole.

Light is the only thing that chases away darkness. Literature is that light to many people. It’s that light to me.

It girds readers against ignorance and oppression. It comforts us and shows us we aren’t alone. Above all, it teaches hope.

Because in the end, we can’t protect those we love from the world. We can only make sure we’ve helped them to find their strength and to discover that hope.

One of the questions I asked my students after they’d read Fahrenheit 451 is which book they would memorize. If, like Montag, they were the one source of survival for a book, which one would they want to save at all costs? In looking at the books some of my students chose to memorize, to keep alive when all others may have been lost, you’ll see that each one holds a mirror up to life and reveals its ugliness, its darkest places. But in the end, each one gives us hope.

And hope is the strongest of shields.

 

Here are just a few of the books my students named:

The Bible (This was the most common response. The Bible is full of violence and war, of humans being at their worst, but in the end, there is hope.)

A history textbook (This was mentioned a couple of times. Students wanted to memorize the truth in order to gird themselves against lies.)

A Tale of Two Cities (Plenty of death here, but also love and sacrifice.)

The Fault in our Stars (Beautiful but harsh, am I right?)

The Hunger Games (Children killing each other for entertainment – not exactly Dick and Jane, is it? And yet it speaks to so many.)

Fahrenheit 451 (Just when hope seems buried, it rises from the ashes like a phoenix.)

1984 (This is the only one in the list that doesn’t end with hope. But that makes it the scariest of them all. The student wanted to memorize it as a warning – what would happen if we lost our hope altogether. The thought is chilling.)

To learn more about Banned Books Week and how you can celebrate your right to read, visit the American LibraryAssociation.

Sneak Peek of RECLAIMED!

Read the first four chapters of RECLAIMED now!

RECLAIMED Pre-Order Giveaway!

 

Reclaimed releases in just over a month, and while that thought often induces flailing and random hand flapping, more often than not, it just makes me really excited.

I know many of you have already pre-ordered the book. THANK YOU SO MUCH! It means a lot that people are excited and ready for Reclaimed to be released. If you haven’t yet pre-ordered, it’s not too late. Reclaimed is available in both paperback and e-book. The buy links will be at the bottom of this post.

We have some amazing prizes for those of you who pre-order the book. Just send an email confirmation of your pre-order to shcpreorder@gmail.com. This can simply be a screen shot of your receipt (minus your credit card info).

The first prize we're giving away is a signed poster of Reclaimed! We will choose 25 random winners from the email confirmations. And as more pre-orders come in, we’ll be giving away even more amazing prizes. (While I can’t divulge the secrets yet, trust me, you’re going to want to get in on this giveaway.) 

Once new levels of prizes are unlocked, you remain eligible as winners will be picked using a random generator.

Update:

Thanks to everyone who has already sent in their preorder confirmation. Signed swag will be sent your way soon! (Say that three times really fast.) It’s time to announce the other prizes up for grabs. Unfortunately, this contest is open to US residents only, as two of the prizes are heavy and I can’t afford to take out a loan for shipping. If, however, you live outside the US and you preorder the book, please send in your email confirmation and I will send you signed swag!

The first prize we are giving away is a gift basket filled with reclaimed items, including a painting of the lake from RECLAIMED on a piece of reclaimed cypress, a journal with recycled newspaper cover, and a candle holder made from a wooden yarn spool, as well as signed swag. (The winner is Paige! Your prize has been sent!)

The second prize we’re giving away is a handmade box. It is also made from reclaimed cypress (crafted by my amazing husband) and is a replica of the one mentioned in the book. (Just wait until you read the book. Trust me, you want this box.) It will also have a surprise in it! (The winner is Diane! Congrats! I'll be emailing you shortly.)

The final prize we are giving away is a $100 gift card to a bookstore of your choice. Enough said.

The contest ends October 21st. Use the rafflecopter to tweet about and post links to the contest, and don’t forget to send in your release-week order confirmation (which is worth 10 entries)!

Good luck!

Amazon         Barnes and Noble        IndieBound

a Rafflecopter giveaway

*If you already sent in your pre-order confirmation, you are still entered to win the last remaining giveaway - the giftcard. Continue to tweet about the giveaway for entries. For extra entries, buy RECLAIMED during release week. (Oct. 15-20) Thanks!

RECLAIMED Playlist + Blog Tour

RECLAIMED comes out next month and I couldn't be more excited! (I typed that in Chandler's voice, by the way.) This book has been my heart since I started writing it in 2010, and I can't believe that I finally get to share it with the world.

Last month I was part of the Authors are Rockstars tour with the awesome Katelyn over at Kate's Tales of Books and Bands, where she featured the RECLAIMED playlist. Check it out now, then tell me what you think!

Also, I believe there are still a couple of spots left for the RECLAIMED blog tour if you are interested. There are no ARCS left, so unless you already have one, the review portion of the tour is out. Fill out the form if you want to participate!


EDIT: That link is broken. Try this one! 

A Life of Passion

My creative writing class
from last year.

I’m very fortunate that I get to spend my life pursuing my two passions: teaching and writing.

They are similar pursuits. They're both stressful. Both sometimes require patience and occasionally a little outside help in the form of an adult beverage. And both require a person to pour in love and hard work and then let go and see what happens.

 

See, no matter how hard I work on lessons, the results are up to my students. How much they learn, how well they perform, have only a small amount to do with me. If I do my job correctly, they won’t need me eventually.

But it’s delayed gratification, because I don’t truly get to see the results until years later.

This is writing. Writers pour their hearts and souls into a manuscript, but it will be years until they see those results. And once they have let the book out into the world, it’s out of their hands. It’s up to the readers then, who will hopefully see the detail, feel the nuances, climb inside the world and inhabit, just for a moment, a world that was born out of passion.

Teaching and writing can be frustrating. There are times when you aren’t sure if what you are doing is worth is. But those moments are brief. It is in the action that I am truly satisfied. It is when I’m discussing literature with students that I am the happiest. It is when I am cuddled up with coffee and revisions that I am most content. It isn’t the accolades or recognition or milestones that do it for me – it is simply the doing.

It is this life that I want for my students.

I want to teach my students to think, to examine, to create. I want my students to spend their lives seeking knowledge, whatever that may look like. I hope to teach my students to want more out of life, not to simply exist, but to live, and to live in the way that they choose.

Above all, that’s why I teach - because I want my students to have choices. I want whatever they do in life to be a result of a choice, not a lack of options. If they want to dig ditches, I think that’s great, as long as they have chosen that rather than been forced to do that. That makes all the difference. I teach so that none of my students will look back and realize they couldn’t pursue their passion, whatever it was, because they lacked the skills. I give my students the tools to succeed in college so that if they don’t go, it will be because their passion lay in another field, not because they couldn’t get in. I want my students to find their passion and chase it down. I want their lives to be full of the things they love. I want them to wake up each and every day and feel just as happy, just as lucky, as I do, because they aren’t existing, they are living.

Above all, I teach and write because not doing so isn’t really an option. Because I love learning new things and lighting a fire in others. Because sometimes my skin can’t hold the words in any longer. Because my passion drives me to do so.

May yours do the same.

Giveaway winners!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the giveaway as well as those who helped spread the word. The winners are:

Vivien and Becky!

They've already been contacted, and the books will be headed their way shortly. If you didn't win, know that Send me a Sign by Tiffany Schmidt and both Freefall and Live Through This by Mindi Scott are available now. You should probably go get them right now. I'll wait.

Also, though Reclaimed doesn't release until October 15th, you can pre-order from BARNES AND NOBLE, AMAZON, and INDIEBOUND.