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.

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.

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.

---

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.

I looked down at the manuscript on my lap, shuffled among the multiplication flashcards and the book on surviving any disaster. We'd just read about how to defend oneself against lowland gorillas, which I doubt we'll ever see in Missouri.

"Mama, do you ever feel like you should be doing something that you aren't?" she asked.

I laughed. Isn't that the question of the human condition?

"Yeah. I feel like I should finish this novel."

"Mama? I think when this one is done, you should take a break before starting another."

I paused. I don't have a good reason for writing stories. Except I like to.

"I am struck by the mediocrity of my finest hour," wrote Ani DiFranco. I first heard it when I was barely twenty, and now twenty years later, it still gets to me.

I want to write a sentence like that before I'm done.

This week my friend Pauline Campos approached me about participating in her #BodyThanks Twitter party on Monday night at 8 pm CT and donating a copy of THE OBVIOUS GAME, since Diana struggles mightily with body image and anorexia in my novel. I said yes, and I'm excited for the conversation. 

Later this week, someone passed along to me a post a guy wrote about why you should date a girl with eating disorder. Chief among the reasons: Hot and a cheap date because she doesn't eat much.

You know I wrote something, right?

Here's the beginning: 

[Editor's Note: ED trigger alert]

Last week, the misogynist-troll website Return of Kings published 5 Reasons to Date a Girl with an Eating Disorder, by a writer named Tuthmosis. When I first read the post, I thought surely it was written ironically. (Of course, I also thought that the first time I heard the lyrics to Blurred Lines.) The “reasons” included hot thinness, cheapness to date, and wildness in the sack. Ugh. Understandably, the Internet freaked out. Then the site’s publisher posted a response to the freakout, including this paragraph:

I want to make it clear that we at ROK are not promoting eating disorders. These are devastating illnesses on those whom they afflict, and we wish sufferers are able to receive the treatment they need. It is unfortunate that sufferers continue to be stigmatized by society, so it surprises me that Tuthmosis’ article has been angrily received when it attempts to reduce stigma by encouraging our male readership to give women with anorexia and bulimia an opportunity for real intimacy.

I had boyfriends when I had anorexia. And they may have thought they were benefiting from some of the items on Tuthmosis' list. Yes, I was thin in a fashionable way … before I got thin in a starving-person way. Yes, I was an extremely cheap date – for dinner in high school, of course, but also for drinks in college. Someone who ate six hundred calories all day before going out gets wasted on one cocktail. Sweet, right?

Please to read the rest on BlogHer. When I finished writing it, my hands were shaking with anger. 

All I can do, though, is keep repeating that eating disorders aren't cute, they're not just for white girls and they aren't vain or a cry for attention. Eating disorders are serious psycho-social-biological maladies that can be a matter of life and death. Please join us on Twitter on Monday night with the hashtag #BodyThanks as we move into the week of Thanksgiving -- a week very triggering for some -- being thankful for our families, our friends, our lives and the bodies that carry us through them.

Tomorrow the little angel has a ceremony to go to for school. She has been bugging me to iron the flounces of her skirt to make them stand out prettily, and of course I keep forgetting. This morning, she left me a note on my laptop. Mommy, please iron my skirt. I wrote it down on my work list: Iron skirt.  And I remembered! I ironed it.

I got to the second row of flounces before I started crying.

There I stood in my basement, holding an iron in my hand, thinking about how proud I am of my girl who tries so hard in school. I also thought about the worry list she wrote on her playroom whiteboard, how she's been counting down the days to know if her team won, how the combination of that looming childhood worry combined with a school spelling bee this week has her seriously spinning.

She will be fine, of course. Competition is healthy. She doesn't play sports, so this is her opportunity to learn to be a good winner or loser, to look forward to things, to be rewarded for a job well done, to celebrate or mourn with a team. Sports are great and all, but they aren't the only teams in schools. 

So I stood there, trying to get all the wrinkles out and knowing because of the way the flounces were gathered I would fail, trying to keep Kizzy from burning his little black paws on the steam he so desperately wanted to touch, thinking how fast it is going and it will be like a roller coaster that took forever and only thirty seconds between now and when I'm steaming her high school graduation gown. 

I'm doing all I can do. She was so wound up she had a lot of trouble getting to sleep last night. I know tonight will be worse. We've scheduled some worry time for after ballet (not sure I wrote about how she decided two weeks into September that she can't handle the step-up to two nights during the school week, she still hates ballet, quitting at the end of the semester, and I will be very happy not hear a daily litany of how much she hates ballet after that). I'll work on PARKER CLEAVES while she's in class so I won't be sitting there at bedtime thinking how every minute ticking by is a minute I'm not writing before the 11 pm mental shutdown. I'll be fresh. I'll remind her what a good coper she is. We'll breathe deeply. And tomorrow, win or lose, we'll celebrate, of course after the ceremony and school and my trip to the blonde fairy that has already been rescheduled twice. I'd like to clear my calendar for her, but Beloved is traveling till Thursday and, well, dammit, I need my hair cut.

I'm not writing this for you all, I'm writing this for me, you see that right? I just realized it myself.

I can do this. I can stand by her through this excitement and anxiety all by myself sandwiched between two ballet sessions she hates and amidst taking out the garbage and carpooling and scheduling things ahead for Thanksgiving at work and laundry and cooking and writing. I will not let my own anxiety about managing my job and my kid and the house alone affect my ability to teach her to cope, because the better I cope, the better she will cope. 

Fucking hell, being a good example is SO HARD. 

Thanksgiving posts have taken over the internet, and everywhere I look I am confronted with pictures of food. 

When I was anorexic, Thanksgiving was my least favorite holiday. My extended family got together, and someone always made pie that not only had half the calories of my daily self-imposed limit, but also came attached with happy childhood memories and the knowledge it was made by someone I loved very much.

Holidays can be hard for any number of reasons, but for anorexics and their people, they contain so many potential landmines. If the anorexic has been hiding out under baggy clothes, her condition might not be noticed as much by those who are with her every day, but it will be glaring to someone who hasn't seen her in six months or a year. When an entire holiday is about eating too much, not eating or eating very little makes everyone else sit up and pay attention. Someone not eating can make someone who has overeating problems feel doubly defensive. Plus, family. Just family. It doesn't take much to set people off who have been forced to leave their own houses and spend an afternoon crowded together being thankful.

Then there's being thankful. It's hard to be thankful when you're depressed or in the grips of anxiety or OCD or an eating disorder. My head was extremely crowded in those years, mostly thinking about food I wouldn't let myself eat. 

I'm thankful every day that those painful Thanksgivings are behind me now. This is the first Thanksgiving I've had something to offer besides a blog post for those who are anorexic or those who are going to find themselves sitting across the table from a very thin person and worrying this holiday season. For less than the price of a turkey, I can offer my novel. 

I haven't done a lot of promotion in the past six months here, but I wanted to share the background of my book again for anyone new. 

“Everyone trusted me back then. Good old, dependable Diana. Which is why most people didn’t notice at first.”

"Your shirt is yellow."

"Your eyes are blue."

"You have to stop running away from your problems." 

"You're too skinny."

Fifteen-year-old Diana Keller accidentally begins teaching The Obvious Game to new kid Jesse on his sixteenth birthday. As she buries her shock about her mother's fresh cancer diagnosis in cookbooks, peach schnapps and Buns of Steel workouts, Diana both seduces athlete Jesse and shoves him away under the guise of her carefully constructed sentences. As their relationship deepens, Diana avoids Jesse's past with her own secrets -- which she'll protect at any cost. Will Diana and Jesse's love survive his wrestling obsession and the Keller family's chaos, or will all their important details stay buried beneath a game? 

Praise for The Obvious Game:

"Lovely, evocative, painful and joyful all  in one ... much like high school." --Jenny Lawson, author of LET'S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED 

“I couldn’t put down THE OBVIOUS GAME. Arens perfectly captures the hunger, pain and uncertainty of adolescence.” -- Ann Napolitano, author of A GOOD HARD LOOK and WITHIN ARM'S REACH

"THE OBVIOUS GAME is a fearless, honest, and intense look into the psychology of anorexia. The characters—especially Diana--are so natural and emotionally authentic that you’ll find yourself yelling at the page even as you’re compelled to turn it." -- Coert Voorhees, author of LUCKY FOOLS and THE BROTHERS TORRES

"Let’s be clear about one thing: there’s nothing obvious about THE OBVIOUS GAME. Arens has written a moving, sometimes heart-breaking story about one girl’s attempt to control the uncontrollable. You can’t help but relate to Diana and her struggles as you delve into this gem of a novel." -- Risa Green, author of THE SECRET SOCIETY OF THE PINK CRYSTAL BALL

"THE OBVIOUS GAME explores the chasms between conformity and independence, faith and fear, discoveries and secrets, first times and last chances, hunger and satisfaction. The tortured teenage experience is captured triumphantly within the pages of this unflinching, yet utterly relatable, novel. -Erica Rivera, author of INSATIABLE: A YOUNG MOTHER’S STRUGGLE WITH ANOREXIA 

Book Information:

Publisher: Inkspell Publishing

Release Date: Feb 7th, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-9856562-7-0 (ebook), 978-0-9856562-8-7 (Paperback)

Paperback Price: $13.99

Kindle: $4.99

• THE OBVIOUS GAME on AMAZON
• THE OBVIOUS GAME on BARNES & NOBLE
• THE OBVIOUS GAME on INDIEBOUND

Thanksgiving is a time when things start coming to a head for Diana, who started out "normal." The novel follows her thoughts and feelings into the abyss ... and back out. If you're a family member or friend who wants to throttle their anorexic loved one, this book can help you understand the psychology of suffering from this condition. If you're full-blown anorexic yourself, I'm so sorry. This book contains the sentences that helped me break out of the mind-space that could have killed me. If you just have a weird relationship with food, you might find yourself examining why you initiated your set of rules that determine when you can eat, why, with whom and how much. And if you just like contemporary young adult novels that ask really hard questions about growing up, you might like it as a read.

The next few weeks are going to be really hard for a lot of people who struggle with their relationship with food. For some, it's never "just a doughnut." If you're anorexic, taking one bite more than you planned can feel like bungee jumping off a bridge. I remember wondering why these people who loved me kept asking me to put myself through that. So be kind if you see someone staring in misery at her plate on Thanksgiving. Eating disorders are nobody's fault, and recovery takes a village. Take care of each other.

So yesterday I got up on my high horse and rode about not having word count goals. Today, I finally finished transcribing all the handwritten changes I did to THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES after my first round of beta feedback and thought I'd have buried the 40k mark I was at before.

Two hours ago, I exported to Word. 39,879, bitches.

WHAT THE HELL?

I cut a lot, but I added a lot, too. Well, now I have 39,879 better words, but I'm still about 20k short for new adult. Or maybe it's young adult. It's hard to say, because the protagonist is 18/19 and it's not all sexy-sex -- is there new adult non-romance? We'll see. The jury remains out on genre. 

Regardless, as it stands? It's a novella. I don't want a novella. I want to give my second round of beta readers a NOVEL. I want to get feedback on what is close to the end game, not a second version of a rough draft.

*silently raging*

It appears rather than adding Juliet balconies to the house I've created, I need to add a new wing. Perhaps a subplot. Perhaps fill in some plot holes I haven't really explored. Not sure. I'll tell you, though, I'm glad I didn't know how many words I was cutting and filling back in when I made these changes, because if I'd known, I would've cried.

The book is better now. It needs to be better -- and longer -- yet, but we'll get there, one scene at a time.

*breathes into paper bag*

*prints another draft*

*notes need more ink cartridges*

I'm nearing the end of my first major revision of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES. This time, I gave the shitty rough draft to a group of trusted beta readers to get feedback on the general structure of the thing before I tried to make it any good. They  helped me see what I should add more than what I should take away. Cutting is so easy. Adding, for me, is harder.

I've found despite my Internet publishing job and my years working with software development, in the end, I still write best longhand. I sit in front of a screen all day long, and trying to write at night in front of another glowing screen is very difficult for me. It feels like work. Printing the manuscript out and editing it by hand, referencing different notebooks with extended scenes is just easier. I wish I'd known this while working on THE OBVIOUS GAME, but, well, it's like anything else -- you have to fuck it up a few times before you figure out what works for you.

One of my writing professors told me once revising fiction is like pulling it up from the bottom of a well. At first, you can just see there's something there, then gradually as you haul on the ropes, the details emerge, until at last the water pours off and the thing in its entirety is visible. I can't completely see THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES yet, but this past week I've been working on it hours every night, and I can finally feel its emotional compass. Knowing it's a story that ultimately will matter only to me doesn't feel as maddening as it did before. THE OBVIOUS GAME was a story I had to tell, because I thought it might help the people who email me, desperate to hear what helped me recover from my eating disorder. This novel is different -- it's a story. I'm trying to capture what it feels like to be nineteen and on the cusp of your life starting and not knowing where that will take you. The moment when you realize no one really knows what they are doing and the house of cards on which you hung all you know to be true wobbles. The day you choose whether that knowledge will turn you jaded or ambitious. 

As I transcribed my shaky handwriting from notebook to StoryMill tonight, I felt excited. I felt alive. 

I like remembering what it was like when I spent my days and nights asking myself the big questions, before I got caught up in making sure the leaves didn't kill the grass and whether I've volunteered enough for the PTA. I'm still that girl who corrected the grammar of the school behavior manual during suspension. I haven't forgotten the pain of realizing no one would ultimately look after me but me. I remember the day I realized I had to value myself enough to demand the respect of the men I dated, to not accept careless affection as love.

I wouldn't go back to being fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen for anything. God, it was so hard then. But do you remember how alive you felt when every emotion exploded like fireworks over the ocean? 

I do. I still do.