I spent last night at the Lawrence watch event for Paul Davis/Jill Docking's Kansas governor's run. I've known Paul since he married my best friend, and their daughter is my girl's unofficial little sister. So of course I wanted him to win. Beyond that, Paul's politics mirror my own almost exactly, only he is calm under pressure and I am not. He would've been a great governor. Kansas, I'm sorry. You're missing out.

I probably offended a room full of people when I said after the call had been made and the speech presented that I felt like I did when the Royals lost the World Series last month. That I would compare baseball to politics is probably uncool, but what I meant is this: Both were underdogs, both had worked very hard for years to get to the big stage, the nation was focused on both events, and I had spent months emotionally engaged in the events that unfolded before the big event. And in both scenarios, it was really close. There was no blowout. It got called late.

As I drove back to my hotel, I felt shell-shocked, amazed that he could've possibly lost. This morning, though, I spent the hour-long drive back home thinking about how dangerous and how satisfying it is to care, to hope.

I know what it's like to come really close with something and have it denied you. THE OBVIOUS GAME came thisclose to being picked up by a big publisher. In the immediate aftermath, it felt so awful I asked myself over and over why I was doing it to myself. Why bother trying to make a mark, share yourself in some way other than a Facebook status update? Why try when so many people live happy, productive, meaningful lives without putting themselves through such capacity for rejection? Why work so hard when there is absolutely no guarantee it will pay off?

Why do I start over every time I finish a book? Why do I get back on that horse that keeps bucking me off?

For the same reason I'm really glad I was at that event last night and for the same reason I'm glad I chewed my knuckles until the very last run of game seven of the 2014 World Series. Because it's good to care. It's good to have things you really believe in. Caring about things other than yourself make life worth living, force us to connect with other humans, be proud of who we are and with whom we align ourselves. 

Caring puts you at a much greater risk of heartache, but it's worth it, every time. 

I'm in the writing valley right now, shopping some projects to agents, wondering what will happen next. I've been in this place of a different sort of work for about a month now, grinding along, sending out queries, sticking my nose weekly into my color-coded Google doc of victory and rejection. I haven't been writing at all except very sporadically here and of course for my day job. I've been reading and training for a half-marathon and watching the World Series and lying in my hammock soaking up the last rays of this unseasonably warm October. 

A few nights ago, I had one of those television dreams accompanied by smell and sound and touch. When I woke up, I had the seed of a new story. I wrote the elevator pitch in my writing notebook. I write ideas for books in there all the time, but this time was different. This wasn't just a phrase or a scene -- it was a story.

I haven't done any plotting yet. I haven't written down anything but those three sentences. I'm not ready. My head is still in the projects I'm querying.

When my agent was shopping THE OBVIOUS GAME, I forced myself to start THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES to distract myself from the waiting and watching and panic attacks, not because I really knew where I was going with it. PARKER CLEAVES started as a feeling I wanted to capture, and I hope my story wove around the feeling well enough to do its job as a vehicle. THE OBVIOUS GAME started as a series of stand-alone scenes I wanted to link together in a meaningful way to shed light on anorexia and bring hope for recovery. My process felt sort of Rubiksonian each time.

This story idea ... this is new. 

Since it happened, I've walked around remembering that I have something to be excited about the way I did when I first got engaged, first got pregnant. 

I have a story in my head! Will this keep happening? This is AWESOME.

Hello Everyone! It's that time again. We have less than two weeks until the YA Scavenger Hunt begins. I hope you reserved plenty of time for this one because there isn't just one team or two or even three. This time we have 6, that's right, I said 6 YASH teams which means more prizes, news, and fun for all you readers out there! So let's get started!

TEAM RED INCLUDES:

 

TEAM GOLD INCLUDES:

 

TEAM GREEN INCLUDES:

 

TEAM ORANGE INCLUDES:

 

TEAM INDIE INCLUDES:

 

TEAM BLUE INCLUDES:

  There are so many books here I don't even know where I would begin. I hope you all are as excited as I am! The YA Scavenger Hunt begins at noon pacific time on Thursday, October 2nd and runs through Sunday, October 5th. That means to get through the entire hunt you'll need to go through 1.5 teams per day!

Are you going to play? 

Thanks to Grace Hwang Lynch of HapaMama for inviting me to talk shop. Check out her post here!

 

On Writing

I recently did a Skype author interview with my niece's English class. They asked when I started writing, and I realized I was younger than their 14-year-old selves when my fingers started itching. I began with poetry heavily influenced by Shel Silverstein and progressed to thinly veiled plagiarism short stories in the style of Ray Bradbury. After being published in a chapbook that I think probably published anyone who sent anything in, I had the bug bad, and it really never left. So let's talk about writing. 

 

What am I working on/writing?

 

Right now, I am not writing anything. A few weeks ago, I sent my contemporary new adult novel, THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES, to my agent. He said he would read it. I was happy, though I felt none of the excitement that I felt when people asked to read THE OBVIOUS GAME, because now I know not to drink the water until it's been filtered, or some other terrible metaphor for becoming jaded by the publishing beast. I have a few ideas for my next novel, but for now, I wait to see if my agent will represent PARKER CLEAVES or if I need to go to Plan B. (I do not know what Plan B is yet.)

 

How does my writing/work differ from others in its genre?

 

Well, for one thing, it's in my voice. I know that sounds silly, but it's true. If I find a writer I like, I'll read anything that person writes. I fangirl easily. It's my dream that people will like my voice and then want to read anything I write, and I realize that is totally vain. But it's the truth. So I work hard to make my voice sound different than other people's voices. THE OBVIOUS GAME was turned down by some major publishers because "they already had an anorexia book on their lists." That was frustrating for me, because that makes it sound like the book is all subject and no voice. I get it from a business/catalog perspective, but it also made me want to scream. I think it's clear the same person wrote THE OBVIOUS GAME and THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES even though the subject matter is vastly different. All of my writing tends to be less action/more character development than other books in my genres. I also try to portray strong parent/child relationships, because it seems like every young adult or new adult book I read has a crappy mother in it.

 

Why do I write what I do?

 

Someone super famous but apparently not easily googled once said, "Write the book only you can write." So that's what I try to do. My writing is influenced by my life experiences, my observations of people and events, my politics, my anxiety disorder, my sense of humor. It does no good to try to follow trends, because it takes so long for most of us to get a book published, the trends will change by then. When I'm planning a book, I start with a takeaway I want the reader to have, and I build a story around that. It's kind of like building an outfit around a belt.

 

How does my writing process work?

 

When I wrote THE OBVIOUS GAME, I just wrote in a linear fashion. Then I ended up having all these structural problems and rewrote and moved and rewrote four or five times over two years, and that was really painful. When I started THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES, I used StoryMill software and outlined scenes in three acts. I figured out who all the characters were and when they would appear. I figured out the climax and most of the major events. And THEN I wrote, one scene at a time instead of one chapter at a time like THE OBVIOUS GAME. This time, too, I used my beta readers differently. I wrote a very loose and short rough draft and gave it to beta readers. Then I incorporated their feedback into the second draft and gave it to different beta readers. Finally, I incorporated that feedback and came up with a third draft, which I gave to yet again different beta readers. Then I shined it up and sent it to my agent. It'll probably change again, but I'd reached the point when I hated the whole thing, which is typically a good sign that you're done revising for a bit.

 

Next week, you can read about my friend Kyran Pittman's writing process. She's the author of PLANTING DANDELIONS, which is a really good book that I enjoyed muchly. 

I pull out of the school drop-off line and listen to the creak of the motor pulling the top down off my car. I read somewhere exposing yourself to natural light first thing in the morning is the best way to wake up, and I didn't want to wake up this, her last day of fourth grade.

I woke only begrudgingly, soaked in sweat for the second time last night, my first tshirt and shorts lying in a still-damp heap at the foot of the bed. I wasn't drenched from a nightmare; I'd been having dreams all night of college, back when I could wave an arm at a group of near-strangers and invite them on an adventure or to play a game, and they would come with me. Back when I could walk into a room of people and start conversations halfway through with people I'd never met before.

The soaking comes from getting older, from the prelude to the change. The dreams come from writing about that time in life when anything seems possible: age nineteen.

I should've stayed up when I rose first to change my clothes, when I woke shivering to find myself damp and cold but also hot in that confusing way that seems to be my new normal. I should've stayed up, because when I did finally rise, it was hard from the middle of a deep sleep, and being ripped from that lovely dream where I was at a party and everyone was smiling at me and we didn't have anywhere to be or anything to do the next morning because finals were over and we were floating in the knowledge that we'd secured our spot at college for another year, that we didn't have to be real adults yet.

Instead I pulled on the third tshirt of the night/morning and laced up my running shoes and made sure my daughter was wearing sunscreen and deoderant and fixed the broken garage door and drove to school. 

And then, as I pulled away, I dropped the convertible's top to let in the early summer sunshine and drove home, remembering the dream.

The other day on the radio I heard that song from Pretty in Pink. You know the one. 

I touch you once.

I touch you twice.

And the kill shot: You always said we'd meet again, someday.

I'm back to revising THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES and nineteen years old again in my head, and that line might summarize eighteen, nineteen, twenty and twenty-one for me. A series of leavings. Wondering if we'd stay friends, stay in love, stay in fucking touch. 

Watching people on whom we hung the future smile and wave and wander off until the phone calls and letters became memories and "do you remember" conversations and awkward introductions of people who were now our new everything. 

And feeling -- or at least I felt -- so betrayed by others and my own self that feelings that were once so intense could flame out so quickly without daily fuel. Surely there must be something wrong with her or him or them or me that we could have nothing left to share but the past? Something that maybe should be punished?

You always said we'd meet again, someday.

But after the first leaving of high school and the second, third, fourth and fifth leavings of each successive college class graduating and then all the leavings of friends picking up their bags and loading up their cars and moving on with their lives in different cities or states or countries, after the stay-at-home leavings of friends getting married, getting divorced, having children, changing jobs and moving away, after all of these leavings, each one gets less personal. 

I learned to say "goodbye" without having to say "see you again soon." Sometimes it's just "goodbye," and that's okay. It doesn't mean there was a betrayal.

Maybe that's why when I hear that one song from Pretty in Pink, I'm nineteen years old and hurt again by those words that I no longer attach to any one person but maybe all of them, all of those  people who left, even me.

You always said we'd meet again, someday.

The words have been coming hard lately. I reach for them, and they just blow away.

Sometimes there's no "there" there.

Stories need tension and conflict to survive. Good sentences aren't enough to carry a novel. Strength isn't enough to win a wrestling match.

It's all about the execution.

I practice and practice these sentences, pulling out the equivalent of four sweaters' worth of sentence threads in frustration. I just can't get it right, and that's such an exquisite pain.

I could scream, but everyone would ask why.

I don't know how to explain the pain of havin gna idea but not the talent to get it just right.

I listen to music and wonder how the songwriter knew when to stop.

Of all the things I am, "writer" is such a small part. It barely makes a dent in our financial landscape, at least the extracurricular part. I'm not sure how such a small bit of what the world sees can be such a huge part of my struggle to be here on this planet. The messy paragraphs going nowhere sometimes wake me up at night. Entire plots for stories play out in my dreams, and I wake up thinking how I should write them down, but I don't, because I'm still fighting with the book that is in my now. I have no energy left over for the book that might be in a few years. When I'm fifty. When I'm sixty. When I'm nearly dead.

I know, in my heart of hearts, that more than a quarter million books are published each year. I know I will not be read by even the number of people who buy off-brand milk in one week.

If I were realistic, then, I would not torture myself about getting these sentences right.

But that's not how it works.

If we went through life looking at reality, no one would ever create anything new.

I was born, and I will die, and in the middle of it, I'll write some stuff. I don't have a good reason for that. At the age of forty, I get that now.

But I do it anyway, because it feels fucking good.

My girl and two of her besties are trying out for the school talent show tonight. They're singing Let It Go from Frozen -- the anthem of tween girls everywhere. They sound really good, and their routine rocks. I have no doubt they'll get in.

That doesn't mean there's no stage fright.

This morning, she asked me if I ever have stage fright. I told her of course, and we talked about the wonders of deep breathing.

After she got on the bus, I realized my worst stage fright these days no longer involves a physical stage. I really don't get on physical stages much any more. Every once in a while, I'll speak at a conference, but that's not really a performance, at least not in the way acting or singing or playing an instrument is.

My stage is a page, and I get nervous every time I work on a novel. Last night, I found myself in the grips of intense page fright while typing up my handwritten draft three revisions for PARKER CLEAVES. Sometimes the deep breathing works and sometimes it doesn't, and the anxiety threatens to spill over. Or it does, and I have to do my own deep breathing and I wait to feel better. Last night I had to walk away from the revisions because it was just too much.

And the thing about stage fright? No one can get rid of it for you. It's as intensely personal as the performance itself.

Good luck tonight, baby duck.

Welcome back to my journey through book marketing. THE OBVIOUS GAME is coming up on its one-year birthday, which prompted me to show it a bit of financial love as it blazes onto a backlist and I dive into my second group of beta readers' suggestions for THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES.

I've learned a lot this year. THE OBVIOUS GAME was a different marketing game than SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK because the publishing landscape has changed so much from 2008 to 2013.

If only I had a bunch more money. I know now where I would spend it -- marketing to librarians and booksellers and consumers. I would absolutely make sure I had ARCs six months before the book came out to get a better chance at reviews in industry publications, because (I of course did not know this) many will only accept a book for review at a set amount of time before it is published. THE OBVIOUS GAME went to publication so quickly that I didn't even have a contract that soon before my pub date, let alone an ARC. Which meant I missed out on that chance. It exists one time for each book, and one time only. 

As it stands, I don't have a bunch of money. My efforts initially were focused on getting reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Anything I do now is focused on getting THE OBVIOUS GAME in front of the consumer, particularly the warm-lead, YA-e-reading consumer. (There are several reasons for this, but the two most important are 1) more services exist to promote ebooks for a reasonable amount of money and 2) I make a much higher percentage from ebooks than I do from print books due to margin issues.)

In case you're curious, here are the screenshots from my BookGorilla campaign over the holiday and my Riffle Select campaign that is going on right this minute (in other words, the book is $1.99 again today). Both campaigns involved me negotiating with my publisher to drop the price of THE OBVIOUS GAME ebook to $1.99 from $4.99 for about a two-day period of time to make sure it was that price when the email went out from either service. Both services were fine to work with. Big Five publishers had books on there next to mine. BookGorilla had a Joyce Carol Oates title the day my campaign went out, and today's Riffle Select had THE OBVIOUS GAME right next to John Green's THE FAULT IN OUR STARS. (yay)

Here's what the BookGorilla one looked like:

And here's what Riffle Select looked like:

Finally, I've had a Goodreads ad that I change up every once in a while since January 2013. I ran seven giveaways on Goodreads in 2013, one roughly every two months. You can only run them the year before your publication date and the year of your publication date. When I could, I tied my Goodreads ad to a giveaway. The giveaways were great for getting people to put THE OBVIOUS GAME on their to-read lists on Goodreads. I have no idea if they read it or if they bought it or if they asked their librarian for it -- but I know they at least showed interest in it, which is good. Now that the giveaways are done, my ad looks like this.

Feel free to ask questions. There really isn't enough information out there, in my opinion.