Currently…Friday

Currently…

1. Thinking about how weird it is to be all alone in my house. My husband took this kids to grandma's for the weekend. I've never had the house to myself like this. It feels like I'm breaking a law and at the same time it feels freeing. I can do anything or nothing at all. Scary.

2. Enjoying: THE THICKETY by J. A. White. My 10 yo son recommended it to me. He said, "Mom, even you would love this one." My smart son has me figured out. I won't read a lot of his MG favorites, but this one is right up my alley. 

From Goodreads: When Kara Westfall was six years old, her mother was convicted of the worst of all crimes: witchcraft. 

The villagers live in fear of the Thickety and the terrible creatures that live there. But when an unusual bird lures Kara into the forbidden forest, she discovers a strange book with unspeakable powers. A book that might have belonged to her mother.

And that is just the beginning of the story.

The Thickety: A Path Begins is the start of a thrilling and spellbinding tale about a girl, the Thickety, and the power of magic.

3. Feeling: Sleepy, but then it is 9:41pm and I'm an early riser.

4. Wearing: Yoga clothes from the class I taught tonight. I should be honest though, even if I hadn't taught tonight I'd probably be in yoga pants. They're my favorite even when I'm not pregnant.

5. Needing: To finish revisions on my WIP, dang it, and get it out to some betas. Anybody willing to swap MSs?

6.Wanting: This house, horses included.

7. Listening: To silence. It's so rare. I mean I can here the katydids outside. I should really stay up later than my kids every once and a while so I can experience this phenomena more often.

8. Making: A baby and this blog post

9. Eating: A Mini Reeses Peanut Butter Cup

10: Drinking: Red Raspberry Pregnancy Tea. Mix in some honey and it's pure heaven. (recipe here in case you're interested)

Want to list your own Currently? Let me know in the comments or add a link to your post and I'll check it out. 

COVER REVEAL: Will the Real Prince Charming Please Stand Up?

My lovely and talented agent sister, writing as Ella Martin, has the most gorgeous cover for her modern fairy tale retelling with a twist. And you don't have to wait long for this beauty to be available because
Will The Real Prince Charming Please Stand UP? is coming July 1st from Astrea Press

The Blurb: If only fairy tales warned “happily ever after” only happens with the right guy...

15-year-old Bianca learns the hard way when she falls for Dante, the hottest guy in her class, who turns out to be anything but charming. And it doesn’t help that Tim, a long-time crush and her brother’s best friend, still makes her head fuzzy. Bianca has to ask: WILL THE REAL PRINCE CHARMING PLEASE STAND UP?

The Cover:

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And now all the pretty. I am in love with Bianca's yellow dress. Now if only I could convince my prince charming to play dress up with me. Do they have proms for thirty something year olds?

GIVEAWAY TIME: Because WTRPCPSU is being released as on ebook, one winner will have the choice of receiving a new Kindle 6" ereader or a new Kobo Touch! Now that's a giveaway I can get behind.

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Ella Martin is a prep school survivor and a Southern California native. She writes books about spunky teenagers who are way cooler than she ever was, and she totally believes in love and happy endings. She likes sunny places and is terrified of snowy winters, so she now lives in Florida with her husband and son.

Blog: www.ella-martin.com

Twitter: @westgateprep

Facebook: www. facebook.com/AuthorEllaMartin

Tumblr: www.westgateprep.tumblr.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/westgateprep

Day in the Life

This was me, two days ago.

I got to bed early the night before and crossed my fingers I'll wake before 6 am (alarms stress me out)
5:49 am rolled out of bed
5:50-5:59 am checked email, fb, and pintrest on my phone
6:00 am sat on my bean bag to write
7:49 am freak out because I lost track of time. Wake sleeping husband and all three kiddos. School starts at 8:30.
It's a cold cereal breakfast, but they were fed, dressed, with teeth and hair mostly brushed, and lunches ready by 8:18.
8:20 am waved to kids and husband
8:21 am hit the shower
8:49 am 2 yo woke up
8:50 am get him breakfast while responding to emails for two blogs I contribute to
9:30 am wrote a few notes about a new story idea
9:40 am start the wheat grinder and put in a movie for 2 yo
10:00 am to 12:00 pm sanded picnic benches, took frequent breaks to make bread, check on my little guy, and hydrate. Boy was it it hot and humid already.
12:01 pm lunch (leftovers for me, yogurt, granola, and half a sandwich for my boy)
12:30 while bread rose, I made a pan of monkey bread and started a load of wash
1:00 pm put 2 yo to bed and started this post.

After that it was picking kids up from school, horseback riding lessons for the 6yo, feeding the crowd, Webelos for my 10yo and me helping the girls at my church (YW 12-18) to make candy grams for the dad's for Father's Day. Yup, life just keeps on coming.

And writing is one of the things that helps me get through it all.

All my days are a little bit different, but this is a pretty good representation. Today I woke up before 5 and joined #5amwritersclub on twitter for the first time in months. I've missed these guys. If you're an early riser I recommend joining them.

Are your days like mine? How do you find time to write?

Happy happenings in my writing world:

I fell in love with a new blog, The YA Club and begged them to let me be a part. (not kidding, either) I join their writing team next month, but you can check them out and swoon over their blog design and incredible posts already up in the first 12 days here.

My agent sister, Gail Nall, revealed her super cute cover for her MG, Breaking the Ice. See it here.

Sporty Girl Books is celebrating being ONE with a big giveaway. You can enter below or check out our year in review and giveaways here (on site) or rafflecopter below.
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As I revise VOICES, my current WIP, I am using Susan Dennard's revising method. You can check out her super helpful posts here. It's not quite as magic as the handy edit button below, but almost.

THE EIGHTH DAY Giveaway

Edited to add: We have a  winner. Thanks for all who entered!

You have eight days to enter the rafflecopter below to win a copy of Dianne K. Salerni's THE EIGHTH DAY, out today from Harper Collins.

I've read all of Dianne's previous works, but this is the first for her in middle grade. Not only that, but her first time delving into fantasy. This is a wild ride into a boy and a heritage that, once he turns thirteen, allows him to be one of the few people not frozen on Grundsday, a twenty-four-hour period between Wednesday and Thursday. But it's not just good guys like Jax and his questionable guardian who live this extra day, this is a the only day when great evil, locked away by Merlin himself, can live. But the bad guys want to eliminate the seven-day world--meaning our world!-- and Jax's mysterious neighbor is the key to their plan. That's a lot for a thirteen-year-old to take on.

THE EIGHTH DAY is a face-paced ride I thoroughly enjoyed with the Arthurian legend a great bonus. I'm always looking for great MG novels with strong male protagonist now that my son devours books. This one has less potty humor than some of his favorites (The Janitor series, for instance), but all the page-turning adventure that he needs. Jax's world was well developed and even the secondary characters walked off the pages. The world traveling a definite bonus. I'm looking forward to the next book in the series.

Thank you Harper Collins for the ARC and Dianne for writing another great story. I'm not surprised it sold so quickly, and in a pre-empt at that. Read this book. You won't regret it…and your kids will be clamoring to read it next.

Now to finish packing. My flight to Utah for LDStorymakers leaves in just over two hours!

Author of THE EIGHTH DAY (a MG fantasy series releasing in April 2014 from HarperCollins) and YA historical novels THE CAGED GRAVES (Clarion/Harcourt) and WE HEAR THE DEAD (Sourcebooks). I am represented by Sara Crowe of Harvey Klinger, Inc. She's also a fifth grade teacher and a skier. She runs First Impressions on her blog along with Marcy Hatch. You can find Dianne here and THE EIGHTH DAY here.

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My Writing Process

I was tagged by the incredible Ilima K Todd, author of the REMAKE series coming out this fall from Shadow Mountain. You can check out her post here.

What am I working on?

Growing baby number five! Release date: September 20th, 2014 

Yes, folks, this is an announcement--and the reason I'm so absent online right now. 
I am thankfully into my second trimester, so I hope to be writing and maybe even blogging again soon. We'll see.

If I wasn't in preggo H-E-double hockey sticks, I'd be:

*Revising my first draft of VOICES, my 2013 NaNo project, so I can get it out to first readers

*Rewriting (for the millionth time) GUTTER GIRL based on latest beta reads.

*Researching for my super secret project

*Playing with the voice of  twelve-year-old Ruby, from LIFE IS A TONGUE TWISTER

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

All of my books, whether YA or MG have contemporary settings and tons of humor. About half of my books are in the magical realism genre. All my (YA) MC's are athletes. Sports is a huge part of my life, so it's no surprise that it trickles over to my stories. Another way I differ? Don't expect lots of kissing. I'm much more likely to write an awkward scene with an almost kiss, burp, instead of a make-out session. Again, probably because that was my HS life. Plenty of yearning, but enough awkward nervousness to keep me from getting much action. 

Why do I write what I do?

Because I have so much fun answering the question "what if." What if a girl could smell real love? What if a girl started hearing voices when she kissed boys? What if an introverted, stuttering twelve-year-old lost the protection of her mother and had to start speaking for herself? 

How does my writing process work?

One of those "what if" questions knocks me over and doesn't go away. I'm a pantser, so depending on where I am in other projects, sometimes I just jump in and try her out for a test drive--1 or 2K and see if I like what I'm creating. Sometimes, like with VOICES, the story percolates on the back burner for a year and I know more than the beginning and the ending point. These draft up faster and still give me plenty of discovery/surprises along the way. 

Unfortunately I'm an extremely messy first drafter. I word vomit all over the place and have to do a ton of clean up and sometimes complete rewrites before my stories are ready for any eyes. Then it goes out to one or two readers and based on their feedback I revise. That means I do a decent amount of rewriting, flush out parts that need more attention, combine secondary characters, and change my many characters names starting with the letter M. Once the MS goes through enough revisions and betas to be as good as I can get it, I send it to my agent. She sends me feedback and I revise like crazy all over again. 


I'm tagging the lovely Katy White. You can find her post next Monday and learn about her writing process.

Best of luck to everyone doing the A to Z challenge starting tomorrow. I'm using the month as an excuse to not blog, except for my review and giveaway of THE EIGHTH DAY by Dianne K. Salerni (spoiler: it's brilliant and I LOVE the "what if" that inspired the book.)

How do you like my new look?

As a prize for a contest on David P. King's blog, Darren Hansen redesigned my blog. Didn't he do an incredible job? I love the interactive header with it's moving bits and the classic look.

From Darren: By day I'm  a website designer and by night I like to write science fiction and fantasy. I have a special place in my heart for writers and would be happy to help with quick questions about blog design for free.
As for rates on professional work, I would charge about $200 for a professional interactive header like the one I made for you. Non-interactive headers would be much less, like $50. It really depends on the project, but those are good ballpark figures.

His website is found at www.darrenhansen.com.

You can contact him at darren@darrenhansen.com
Darren is also the creator of Ink Pageant where writers can share their blog posts with each other and lift each other. Check it out here.

Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to stare at my header some more (and get to work on final edits for my Publication Primer submission for LDStorymakers due today.)

Jolene Perry, THE SUMMER I FOUND YOU, & Research

This beauty released into the world yesterday. Not only is it my favorite cover of 2014, but on of my favorite 2014 reads as well. I was able to get an ARC through NetGalley. You can see my gushing review here. Since reading THE SUMMER I FOUND YOU, I've become a read-everything-Jolene-writes person. She was kind enough to come of the blog for her release week.

Take it away, Jolene:

RESEARCH!!

When I started out writing The Summer I Found You, it was titled Used To Be - a pretty weak title, but it was my jumping off point.

Who did my characters used to be, who were they during the story, and who were they at the end of the story. All very, VERY, different people.

The idea of writing a returned soldier was intriguing, so the book really began with Aidan, but I needed someone who would understand him... And I found Kate.

Suddenly my sweet love story had turned into a mess of ideas involving a one-armed veteran and a girl with diabetes.

I have two arms.

I do not have diabetes.

So.

I needed to research.

I know a LOT of people who went overseas in the military including cousins, my husband, high school friends, and kids I used to babysit. I wasn't starting from scratch--even though it felt like it a lot of the time.

One of my good high school friends learned she was diabetic after passing out in an assembly - that was my beginning point for Kate. I also used a writer friend of mine with diabetes, and she was SO SO helpful. 

But knowing a few people doesn't make enough research for a book.

I learned SO much more than one would ever guess after reading The Summer I Found You, and that's a good thing. Probably 95% of what I read didn't end up in the book in any way that a person would recognize. I think this is a good thing.

I spent hours on The Wounded Warrior Project. Found programs soldiers used. Read story after story after story of men and women who came home from war with missing limbs. What programs were out there to help them. Blogs of soldiers talking about what it was like to come home. Listened to my husband again on what it felt like to be home again. How he felt disjointed, out of place...

And Kate. that stubborn, stubborn girl. I knew how she would react to diabetes long before I learned anything about the disease. But I pretended I'd just been diagnosed when I researched. I poured over websites - American Diabetes Association. The Mayo Clinic. Support groups for family members and for people with new diagnosis.

For a while I woke up every morning glad I wasn't giving myself insulin shots. Glad I had both arms. That my husband came home safe.

But after all that research - my characters still did what they wanted to do - it's that I had enough information to put them in positions that were true to their situations.

Never. Ever. Underestimate the power of learning about the world you're placing your people into. It gave me ideas for plot points, which added tension, which increased Kate's understanding of Aidan, and his understanding of her, and things much bigger than both of them.

But - I'm a learner and a teacher at heart. Always will be. Hopefully as other people write, they'll find excitement and a new appreciation for their life as they research. And I know that when I read fiction dealing with things I don't understand well, it's a really, really fun way to learn...

Do you enjoy novels about situations outside of things you understand?

Just curious.

And if yes, I'd LOVE to hear what you all have been reading - especially if it gained you some greater appreciation of what you have.

Thanks so much for turning over your blog to me!!!

~ Jolene

www.jolenebperry.com

AMAZON

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