It's nearly time again for the Young Adult Scavenger Hunt. (woot)

We have nine outstanding teams this season. I am going to be a part of #TeamRed. The Scavenger Hunt runs from March 29 through April 3 beginning and ending at noon Pacific Time on those days.

If you've never been a part of the hunt before, you should give it a try. It runs like a giant blog hop, introducing you to new YA authors and books along the way. There are tons of prizes including a grand prize for each team.

If you win one of the grand prizes you will get a book from each author on that team! For more information and to make sure you get hunt updates, sign up for news on the #YASH website.

You don't want to miss out on this fabulous and fun event, but play fast because the hunt is only live for three days.

I hope you are all as excited as I am!

THE HUNT BEGINS 3/29/2016!

Sometimes the setting in a book becomes a character, and that's something I tried very hard to do with my fictional small town of Snowden, Iowa, in my young adult novel THE OBVIOUS GAME. Recently I received an advanced copy of Keija Parssinen's THE UNRAVELING OF MERCY LOUIS, which is set in the tiny Southern oil town of Port Sabine, Texas. Even though it was below zero when I read this book, I could feel the thick, reeking air of this refinery town on the back of my neck.

There is so much going on in this novel: the thrill of competition (basketball), a coach's place in a teen's life, first love, the complexity of lifelong friendships, difficult mother/daughter relationships, religion, Y2K fear, environmental and financial distress, fear of the community outlier, teenage sexuality and pregnancy and health complications so unusual I had to look them up because I didn't believe they existed, but guess what: They do.

Every time I thought I knew what would happen next, I was wrong. It was that good. I'm actually still thinking about it a few days later and have recommended it to four people since I read it.

So if you like thinky-but-thrilling books, you should read this one. I haven't read Keija's first novel yet, but as I'm the sort of person who falls in love with authors more than books, I'm going to put it on my to-be-read list.

Here's a picture of Keija, who has absolutely nothing going for her except diplomas from Princeton and the Iowa Writers' Workshop (where she was a Truman Capote fellow) and a Michener-Copernicus Award. So I am totally not the only person who thinks her writing is very much worth your copious free time.

I know, and she's cute. Try not to hate her.

The novel's official release is March 10th, but you can pre-order a copy here and purchase Keija’s first novel,  THE RUINS OF US, here.

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This post is part of a blog tour! I know, you're shocked I would do that! And I am not the only person giving away books. Check out my partners in literary crime below.

Andrea Casarsa - Maybe It's Just Me

Greta Funk - GFunkified

Julie Gardner - Julie C. Gardner

Saturday, March 6: Alexandra - Good Day, Regular People

Monday, March 9: Tracy Morrison - Sellabit Mum and Nicole Leigh Shaw - Ninja Mom

Tuesday, March 10: Ann Imig - Ann's Rants and Tarja Parssinen - The Flying Chalupa

Wednesday, March 11: Alison Lee - Writing, Wishing

Friday, March 13: Nancy Davis Kho - Midlife Mixtape

And now I'm going to do one of my favorite things: Give away a book. Follow the Rafflecopter instructions below. I will leave the giveaway open for one week and close it next Friday. Enter as much as you want.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be testing some book marketing services for THE OBVIOUS GAME. It came out in February, and I'm reaching the end of the period when I can do Goodsreads giveaways, which I found were great for boosting the number of people who added my book to their "to read" lists, but it's impossible to tell if it had an impact on sales as there is no direct clickthrough information. 

I'm going to be pretty transparent about my marketing methods, because it's tough out there for a gangsta with a small traditional publisher. So far, I've spent hundreds of dollars buying and mailing my books to book bloggers and reviewers, which resulted in 25 authentic reviews on Amazon and 32 reviews and 68 ratings on Goodreads. In 2013, I attended ALA Midwinter to meet librarians and tell them about my book and RT Booklovers when it came to Kansas City. I also went to the Less Than Three conference in St. Louis. I met readers there, handed out signed bookplates and business cards and met other young adult authors. Meeting the other authors was my favorite part of any of the conferences. I've always found other authors to be approachable and supportive, even Veronica Roth, whose DIVERGENT series took off like a Dauntless train right from the get-go.

I noticed that many of the books that made this year's best-of lists were both well written and well marketed. I started seeing the covers in my industry newsletters over and over and over, to the extent that even though I don't read vampire books, I know THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLD TOWN's cover on sight. That marketing is huge -- I wish I had it. I'd be lying if I said it doesn't make me jealous. But I don't, at least for this book, so I'm doing what I can to break out of the echo chamber of people who know me/of me and into the world of people who just like to read young adult novels. I'm hoping some of the email marketing services I'm trying will help with that. That's the positive thing about jealousy -- you can use it to get the energy you need to get off your ass and do something about it. And also to get you to write your next book, because everything might be easier with the next book. You just never know.

My first experiment with paid online book marketing is BookGorilla. My book will be included in their newsletter on Sunday, December 29, 2013 (in two days). On that day, the price of THE OBVIOUS GAME's ebook will drop from $4.99 to $1.99 for 24 hours everywhere it is sold to coordinate with the deal. You can already get the ebook version for $1.99 if you've bought the paperback version on Amazon as part of their matching service. 

Buying advertising isn't cheap for the average jane like me, an author who is just a normal person with a day job and a mortgage and a kid who needed Christmas presents and still needs new jeans that fit. Since it isn't affordable or easy, it's important to figure out if this advertising is worth it or not. With thousands of books coming out every single day, breaking through the noise and out of your own echo chamber is harder than ever. We'll see if this helps. I've seen a lot of other authors offering a prize if you buy their books, but that doesn't feel right for me, at least not with this book. 

Next month, I'll be doing a similar paid advertising deal with Riffle Select.

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In other news, you have to check out what my sister gave me for Christmas. It's devine. I'll have pics of Esther the llama in her new series here on Surrender, Dorothy as soon as the little angel and I figure out what to call it.

If you are currently participating in the YA Scavenger Hunt, my page is located here.

In a few weeks, I'm going to be participating in my first ever YA scavenger hunt with sixty other young adult authors. Each of us is offering a book, so you could essentially win an entire young adult library doing this thing. Here's the explanation from the organizer, author Colleen Houck:

I'm very exited to reveal to you the 60, count 'em 60 authors that will be featured on the Fall 2013 YA Scavenger Hunt! That means that not only do you get access to exclusive bonus material from each one, and a chance to enter so many contests that it will blow your mind, but there is also an opportunity to win an entire library shelf full of books because each author will be giving away one featured book as a prize. - 

Here's the line-up:

THE BLUE TEAM

ANN AGUIRRE

AMBER ARGYLE

ANNA CAREY

SHELLEY CORIELL

KIMBERLY DERTING

TARA FULLER

CLAUDIA GRAY

TERI HARMAN

KAY HONEYMAN

AMALIE HOWARD

SOPHIE JORDAN

ALEX LONDON

DAWN METCALF

ELIZABETH NORRIS

KATHLEEN PEACOCK

KIM BACCELLIA 

CARRIE RYAN

JESSICA SHIRVINGTON

APRIL GENEVIEVE TUCHOLKE

JILL WILLIAMSON

_______________________________

THE RED TEAM

GENNIFER ALBIN

GWENDA BOND

RACHEL CARTER

JULIE CROSS

DEBRA DRIZA

MICHELLE GAGNON

SHAUNTA GRIMES

RACHEL HARRIS

P.J. HOOVER

TARA HUDSON

JESSICA KHOURY

KATHERINE LONGSHORE

PAGE MORGAN

AMY CHRISTINE PARKER

AMY PLUM

C. J. REDWINE

OLIVIA SAMMS

J. A. SOUDERS

CORINA VACCO

SUSANNE WINNACKER

_______________________________

GOLD TEAM

RITA ARENS

JESSICA BRODY

TERA LYNN CHILDS

TRACY DEEBS

SARAH BETH DURST

COLE GIBSEN

CYNTHIA HAND

LEANNA RENEE HIEBER

COLLEEN HOUCK

MICHELE JAFFE

SUZANNE LAZEAR

MINDY MCGINNIS

LEA NOLAN

FIONA PAUL

LISSA PRICE

GINA ROSATI

VICTORIA SCOTT

ELIZA TILTON

MELISSA WEST

TRISHA WOLFE

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I'm still familiarizing myself with how this works, but it's going to be really cool. It runs from October 3-6. I'll be preparing some bonus material for THE OBVIOUS GAME, as will the other authors, and I'll run a giveaway here as well as the main one. Lots of fun! I can't wait to read some of these other books, too.

I'll use this URL and update this post and push it up to the top when more info is available, so if you want to participate, you can bookmark this page. More soon!

DJ Nibbles loves YA.

This week I'm finishing up my shitty rough draft of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES to send to my beta readers, and I'm pretty sure it sucks and they will think less of me for reading it. Yesterday, I tried to list THE OBVIOUS GAME on a discount site, but it wasn't accepted. I suspect it's a little heavy for their genre-heavy readership, which I totally get, but it was disappointing because I could use the boost in visibility on Amazon. This year I've watched other blogger anthologies rising to heights SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK never saw when it came out. I realized a long time ago I don't have the personal following it takes to nudge my books over the echo chamber wall of who I know into the mainstream world of who I don't. It would take marketing dollars to get there, marketing dollars my publishers don't spend and I can't spend. I understand the business behind the business, but the art/business marriage keeps separate apartments. 

When I get low, Beloved always says, "But you got published." 

To which I retort, "But I didn't take off."

To which he responds with a frustrated stare, because he is never able to convince his ambitious and bullheaded wife that her goals are too lofty for her circumstance and abilities. Which is basically the premise of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES. It's something I have struggled with for years -- when my overgrown ambition does battle with my talent and financial support.

This week, BlogHer syndicated a post by Kyran Pittman, which discussed why creative people compare themselves to the superstars of their fields when accountants and bus drivers don't. She writes:

The actors who don’t get Oscar nominations, the authors whose books don’t make the bestseller lists, the songwriters who don’t go platinum, the cellists who aren’t Yo-Yo Ma -– they aren’t underachievers.

Oh, the metrics available in this world, how bone-crushing they can be. I've stopped looking at metrics more than once a week for anything -- my blog, my books, my weight. There are too many ways to measure yourself with indisputable numbers in 2013. I'm the type of person who prefers problems with no one answer. Am I a success? The numbers don't lie. But subjectively, am I a success? It depends on your perspective.

I fight every day to push away the feeling that everything I do artistically is the adult equivalent of chalk drawings on the driveway before a rainstorm. 

But Kyran's right. The point isn't to matter to everybody, it's to matter to somebody, and it's my job to beat back the emails telling me I'm not doing enough to market my work and the emails trumpeting who won this or that award or made this or that bestseller list. I can't really manufacture that any more than I can force a stock to go up or down on Wall Street. 

Who and how many notice the art can't be more important than the existence of art. The existence of the art has to be the point.

And so a new day starts, and I remind myself this again. 

Hey, there. I'm leaving tomorrow for BlogHer '13. If you are there, I'm speaking on Friday and Saturday on turning your blog post into publishable essays -- if you come to either session, please come up and say hi and be patient with me if I look at you all glassy-eyed because presenting takes a lot out of me but I really like to meet people. Also, I may have met you thirty-five times before but will still ask you your name or your blog because I have the recall of a tree frog.

If you're not there (or you are there and seriously have time to read blogs) and you want to enter for a chance to win a copy of THE OBVIOUS GAME, my latest Goodreads giveaway has another two-ish weeks on it.

And my daughter has pneumonia and I have to leave her, so send good vibes toward Kansas City, okay? And also me, because I went to test the thermometer by taking my own temperature and either there is something wrong with the thermometer or I have a low-grade fever, too. I bought three bottles of Purell yesterday and will not touch anyone without disinfecting them afterward.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Obvious Game

by Rita Arens

Giveaway ends August 06, 2013.

See the giveaway detailsat Goodreads.

Enter to win

Next week, the girl (who will hopefully be better) and I are headed to Iowa to hang out with my original nuclear, so posting may be light. I'll try to get some fun pictures from BlogHer for those who can't make it -- it's always a little surreal.

More soon!

Last week, I attended the RT Booklover's conference in Kansas City. I wasn't sure what to expect, as it's primarily a conference for romance novelists, and I quit Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star, because there was too much sex. I'm not much of a romance reader. But, wow, there are a lot of romance readers, and they read a lot of books, so all hail anyone who's supporting authors, right?

This guy? Is a romance novel cover model (Band Name of the Day) and Mr. RT 2009, or so he reported when I insisted he flex while hugging fellow author Jen from People I'd Like to Punch in the Throat. At the welcome party, I noticed a bunch of very fit-looking men walking around with tshirts that said Men of Romance. I asked around only to find a) people like Fabio really exist and b) they are super into being cover models. And some of them are actually 6'3" Adonis-types in real life, too. CRAZY! I always thought, I guess, that those people were drawings.

Examples of cover models. Never wearing shirts. Never, never, never wearing shirts.

At Club RT, a venue in which authors were supposed to sit so readers could find them (I never did see one reader and would not recommend participating -- I sat with plenty of better-known-and-actual-correct-genre authors and they didn't get many readers, either), I met new adult author Lynne Tolles, who packed her own blood in werewolf, vampire, zombie and demon varieties. She was really nice despite having so much blood on her person. I brought bookplates. Que horor.

For some reason, the "A" authors were separated from the rest of the expo by a chasm of shiny cement. It is not at all intimidating to be sitting around with 299 other authors hoping someone will buy your book. Despite having a sad teenager book in a swath of steamy cowboy and werewolf romance novels, I did manage to sell a few -- and I AM DAMN PROUD.

The next day found me at a hotel in the Plaza sitting next to the author of steamy Navy SEALS romance novels. Her son, as she told me, is a Navy SEAL. She also told others. Nobody but me seemed to find that connection disturbing. Very nice lady, though.

When not awkwardly avoiding beefy cover models with waist-length blond hair or watching E.L. James pop out of the woodwork and deny ever self-publishing in the new adult panel (true story -- I was there), I attended most panels in the young adult and new adult tracks, and they were excellent. I met authors whose books I'd read and whose books I'm eager to read and got so much excellent advice about marketing and the writing process and keeping my head up that it made the experience worth it.

But it was still cuh-razy. 

Today I have a post up over at She Writes, which is a great community site for authors and writers. Here's an excerpt:

I am a writer who doesn't write every day.

There are very few of us, the writers who will admit publicly to notvaluing daily writing. Not just not doing it or scheduling it, but notseeing the point at all.

Let me back up. I know plenty of successful writers who are much moredisciplined than I am. They get up early or stay up late or tap awaywhile their kids leap around them. They have word counts and timelimits, and they produce good books -- even if they have day jobs-- at afairly consistent pace.

I won't do it.

Read the rest at She Writes!

Hi everyone-

There are a few giveaways running right now for THE OBVIOUS GAME. I thought I should tell you about them before they expire! I will most likely do another giveaway on Goodreads in a month or so.

• 1 copy on Want Not (ends February 1, 2013)
• 1 copy on Rancid Raves (ends January 31, 2013)
• 3 copies on LibraryThing (ends February 27, 2013)
• 3 copies on Goodreads (ends February 5, 2013)

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Obvious Game

by Rita Arens

Giveaway ends February 05, 2013.

See the giveaway detailsat Goodreads.

Enter to win