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.

Kirkus, Blurbs, and Free Stuff - heck yeah!

I’ve been sitting on some pretty exciting news for the last couple of weeks, and I finally get to share it!

Reclaimed got its first journal review! From Kirkus! They said its “nature-inspired metaphors add depth” and called it "intriguing." You can read the full review here, but let's just say I am thrilled that they liked it. And still a little in shock. But mostly thrilled.

Blurbs are a nerve-wracking experience. You know someone is reading your book and you pray that they like it and you pray even harder that they like it enough to say so. RECLAIMED was fortunate enough to get blurbs from two AMAZING authors whom I admire and respect.

 

Packed with atmosphere and surprises, Reclaimed is one of those rare books that kept me guessing throughout and inspired an immediate reread.

-Mindi Scott, author of Freefall and Live Through This

RECLAIMED broke my heart, changed my mind, and I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.
-Tiffany Schmidt, author of Send Me A Sign

 

So in honor of this exciting news, I’m giving away a copy of Freefall by Mindi Scott and Send me a Sign by Tiffany Schmidt. (Believe me, you want these books. They are both incredible.) I’m also giving away two annotated ARCS of Reclaimed. If you aren’t sure what I mean by annotated, it means I will leave you notes in the margins giving you insider information. It’s sort of like pop-up video for books. (And I just showed my age.)

Prize #1

Prize #2

 

The contest ends at 12:01 AM EST on August 8, 2013, and is open internationally.

 

Use the rafflecopter below to enter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Sticker Drafting

I had a conversation on Twitter the other day about motivation and rewards, namely my use of stickers. Everyone seemed interested in this, so I thought I’d blog about it. Jessica Spotswood posted one a few months back. You can read hers here.

I started using stickers several years ago for marathon training. When I train, I always type up my mileage schedule on a calendar so I know what I will be running every day until race day. I have to do this, as I have to mentally prepare myself for twenty milers. I’m not a spontaneous person. I can’t just go out and run twenty miles. Physcially, yes. But running long distance is extremely mental, and I have to know in advance that I will be running it so I can think about it and form my plan.

Anyone who runs marathons knows the taper is the most horrible, nerve-wracking time in a runner’s life. For those who don’t know, the taper is the time period (usually 2-3 weeks) before a marathon where you decrease your mileage in order to rest your body so that it will be able to run the marathon you’ve been training for. The taper messes with your mind. I have a tendency to get a cold during this time. I worry that I am resting too much. I get antsy, I check the weather channel hourly, I worry that I won’t be able to hit the time I’ve been training for.

So I started using stickers on my training calendar. I give myself a sticker every time I do the run as it is scheduled. The great part about this is that nothing looks so wonderful as a month filled with stickers. Then, when I get nervous and full of doubt during the taper, I can look back at the calendar and know that I have done my part. I have trained properly. I am ready for this race.

When I started writing consistently several years ago, I wrote 1k a day. I didn’t need any gimmicks to do this, as it was something mentally I knew I would do. Running taught me discipline, and I was pretty good at hitting my word count. Some days I wrote more. Some days I wrote less. But I always aimed for 1k, and books were written and revised just fine.

But this spring I needed to draft a book pretty quickly. I wrote the first book in a planned trilogy last year, and a lovely friend suggested it become book two and I write a new book one. She also gently suggested I get it finished by May. It was March.

I teach high school English, which means that when I get home after a long day’s work, I’m tired. Very tired. I write every day, but I was going to have to write more every day if I was going to get this book finished. I needed to hit 2k every day, and since I had trained myself to do 1k, I knew I was going to need more motivation. In the form of stickers.

They worked. I earned a sticker when I hit 2k for the day. There were days where I wrote 1500 and didn’t think it would be possible to get 500 more. But the thought of having a hole in my calendar kept me writing. On the days when I began to doubt, when I began to hate the draft with the fire of a thousand suns, I looked at my row of stickers and felt better. I could fix anything that wasn’t working later. I just had to write something to fix first. And I didn’t want to break my streak.

I’m not always a fan of fast drafts. I believe that great art takes time. But my drafts are always rough, whether it takes me five months or five weeks. My stories come out in the re-writing.

I spent five weeks using stickers to motivate me to hit my word count, and at the end of five weeks, I had 84,000 words and a finished draft.

Whether marathon training or drafting, the stickers help me log consecutive days of work and are reminders of the preparation I've put in, enabling me to toe the starting line on race day. Because in the end, writing a book is a marathon, not a sprint, and those weeks of drafting get me ready for the real race – revisions.

Now if I could just get someone to man my aid station of revision refueling essentials: coffee and Twizzlers.

BEA in Pictures

I know this BEA post is late, but that's because it took me a week to recover! New York City was amazing, but I came home exhausted. And excited. And already making plans for next year.

 

 

This is me on Wednesday. See how happy I am? That's because I am holding an ARC of RECLAIMED for the first time. It was surreal. And it made me forget the honking, screaming, f-bomb screeching experience of trying to catch a cab at La Guardia.

 

So I didn't take a lot of pictures, but most of the ones I took are of buildings. Being married to a builder does that. This is the Jefferson Market Library, where the Teen Author Carnival was held. It is a gorgeous place, and I really enjoyed the panels.

 

 

 

The lovely Dahlia took me for my first ever macaron. It was glorious.

 

 

 

 

On Thursday night I had dinner with all my Twitter friends, who are even better in real life.

 

 

I did my first ever author signing on Friday. I was a little nervous as the time neared, but once it started, I was too busy to remember nerves. I signed gorgeous posters of RECLAIMED, and two lucky winners received ARCS. I also got to meet the lovely Virginia, Steph, and Trisha Leigh, among others. Chatting with my Twitter friends was seriously the highlight of my trip.

 

 

This is the post office. Seriously. I had to mail all of the books I picked up at BEA, and I was looking for a little blue sign, hoping I didn't walk past it. Yeah, this building isn't exactly subtle.

 

This is my fabulous editor Danielle. She is the reason RECLAIMED will be out in October, after having found it during WriteonCon. She is even more amazing in person. There were lots of hugs.

 

 

And giggles. I probably laughed more on this trip than I do in a normal month. Megan kept me in stitches and high fives the entire time, and the adventurous Kelsey flew in for 24 hours. Seriously. She is that awesome.

Saturday night was spent in the company of amazing friends and show tunes. The lovely Jessica took us to a bar where we sang (well, they sang, I croaked) songs from Les Mis, My Fair Lady (Megan's cockney accent is sublime), and Sound of Music. If you ever want to feel inadequate, sit between Kelsey and Jessica while they are singing. Seriously.

 

 

 

 

 

I spent my last day in Brooklyn, eating pumpkin pancakes and enjoying Prospect Park.

 

And the books. I wish I could curl up in my office and not come out until school starts in August.

 

 

 

But more than the places I saw or the books I grabbed, BEA was a wonderful trip because of all the people I met, laughed with, and hugged.

And the macarons. The macarons were pretty great.  

 

 



 

 

BEA 2013 Schedule

BEA is this month, and I couldn't be more excited. I've never been to BEA or NYC before, so there will be a lot of firsts. The first time meeting my editors and writing friends in real life. My first macaroon. And my first signing.

On Friday from 3:30-4:30 PM, I'll be signing Reclaimed posters at the Spencer Hill booth (#2567), and I may have an ARC to give away. (Which means in a couple of weeks I will be able to hold Reclaimed in my hands!)

I need a moment.


Whew. Okay. Here's the full Spencer Hill schedule. If you're going to be at BEA, swing by the booth on Friday, snag a Reclaimed poster, and maybe, just maybe, be one of the first to get an ARC. If you can pry the precious from my fingers.

Write What You Love

We’ve all heard the saying “you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” And we all know it to be true. But sometimes, as writers, it seems we try.

We want people to love our stories – of course we do. So maybe we add this element because it will grab this type of reader. And then maybe we tone this down because there are some readers who don’t like that. And an editor might call that into question later on, so better take that out now.

I’m not talking about revising – I’m talking about writing a story in order to please others. I hate to break it to you, but it won’t matter what you do. If you have done your job well, there will be some who love your story and others who don’t. That’s art.

Sometimes there will be an element in your story that some readers don’t like. It won’t matter if your plot is meticulously constructed, your world real and believable, and your language beautiful enough to make Shakespeare weep. Some readers won’t like it because of that one thing. Don’t write to those readers.

Sometimes there will be something about your story that calls to certain readers. Maybe it’s a relatable character, maybe it’s a swoon-worthy romance. And it won’t matter if your plot has a few holes and your writing needs polishing – those readers are too mesmerized by the other to care. Don’t write to those readers either.

You have to write a story you care about. You have to write the one you have to tell, not the one you think will be popular. You are the one who will spend the most time with this book. You will draft it, revise it, revise it, send it to CPs, revise it, and then, once you have an agent and/or editor, revise, edit, copy edit, copy edit – you get my point. You better love this book. And once it’s on shelves, and readers have decided whether or not they love it too, they will move on. Maybe it will always be one of their favorites. Maybe they will re-read it again years later. Hopefully they will recommend it. But no matter what, they will find other books to love or hate, and your name will still be on this one.

Reclaimed was a story that I had to write. At first I told myself it would be too hard. There are three distinct points-of-view, and I told myself I wasn’t talented enough yet to pull that off. But I had to try anyway. This book is about the complexity of relationships. It’s less a love triangle and more about three people who come together as their lives are unraveling. They each need something different from their relationship, and they are all connected to each other in different ways. It’s the story I had to write, because I care about the characters and they wouldn’t let me walk away without telling their story.

That’s the story you need to be telling. We can’t write stories that please everyone. But I can write a story I love in the hopes that others will love it too. And you can write a story that you love in the hopes that others will love it too. And if we all write with passion, then between us, there will be stories that resonate with everyone, that give each varied, wonderful person a literary world where they feel safe, or challenged, or happy, or alive.

Write what you love, and don’t ever apologize for it.

To Wait and Wait Some More

Writers sort of live in perpetual Groundhog’s Day. We wake up, we wait, we go to sleep, and then it starts all over again.

If you want to be published, then you’d better get used to waiting. If you can’t make peace with the waiting, it may very well drive you insane. Well, more than you already are. And if you’re a writer, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

We wait to hear back from CPs. To hear back from agents. We wait while on submission. Once the manuscript sells, we wait months to finally be able to tell the world that all our dreams have come true. That’s a tough one, not renting out a billboard and announcing it to the world. But we have to wait.

Then we wait for edits. We wait to see if our editor likes our edits. We wait for more edits, and copy edits, and blurbs.

We wait for arcs and reviews. (But we definitely don’t read them.)

We wait for release day, and reader feedback, and accolades and contentment and peace. Sometimes we wait a long time.

 

 

So if you are in the perpetual cycle of wait, what do you do in the meantime? You write something new, take a walk, enjoy someone else’s words for a while.

You don’t refresh your email fifteen times in an hour. (I have never, ever done that.)

You don’t let the waiting take over your life.

You can’t be afraid to move forward. It’s what you have to do.

So give yourself a break – you deserve it. Then write another book. And then the waiting begins all over again.