I'm excited for tomorrow night's Dark Days of Winter Tour at Anderson's Books (who just won Bookstore of the Year from Publisher's Weekly), which features four Young Adult fiction authors. They are: Kim Derting, Claudia, Gray, Courtney Moulton, Ellen Schrieber.
This is the first time I've been to an author event where I haven't read any of the books, so that will be different. I'm familiar with many of the titles, which are new releases being reviewed on YA Fiction blogs, and I already have Kim Dertring's book on my To-Read list. I'm hoping that a four-author panel will give a good perspective on the genre and the industry in general. These authors all write paranormal fiction, so I'm thinking they will have some overlapping views on this niche. I have a friend joining me tomorrow, so it should be fun.
Plus, it's free!
I have to give Anderson's credit for the authors they bring in. They support writers from a first novel on to the Big Time (like Twilight's Stephenie Meyer), and they regularly bring in Jodi Picoult, Neil Gaiman and some well known younger children's book authors. I'm making a point to go to more author events this year, especially for those whose work I'm interested in but may not have read. I figure this is the objective for book signings: to get their work out there and read. What a great chance to hear from the person behind the book.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Blogging Pays Off!
I won three books from two different blog contests this week. Good times!
The first book is YA fiction title Goth Girl Rising by Barry Lyga. It looks like a sequel so I'll need to see whether reading the first will be beneficial. I usually prefer to do this. I won the book by commenting on the Guide to Literary Agents blog. The author's other books look like they have interesting and rather complex sounding storylines. I'm intrigued.
The other two I won came from a major freebie giveaway on the Beyond Her Book blog linked with Publisher's Weekly. They were giving away e-readers and tons of books by various authors in different genres. I won an advanced copy of the YA book Invincible (Chronicles of Nick) by Sherrilyn Kenyon which is the second in a series.
Lastly, I will get an ebook version of Trail of the Tudor Blue by Gwen Roman, which is romance fiction. I'm not a regular romance reader, and even the cover looks different than pretty much everything I read, but I will give this a shot. I like to branch out and will give any book a fair chance. Since I don't have an e-reader yet, I'm going to download it to the Kindle app on my phone.
Yup, the To Read list just got longer. This is fine by me! I just need to keep up the dedication to keeping up with it.
The first book is YA fiction title Goth Girl Rising by Barry Lyga. It looks like a sequel so I'll need to see whether reading the first will be beneficial. I usually prefer to do this. I won the book by commenting on the Guide to Literary Agents blog. The author's other books look like they have interesting and rather complex sounding storylines. I'm intrigued.
The other two I won came from a major freebie giveaway on the Beyond Her Book blog linked with Publisher's Weekly. They were giving away e-readers and tons of books by various authors in different genres. I won an advanced copy of the YA book Invincible (Chronicles of Nick) by Sherrilyn Kenyon which is the second in a series.
Lastly, I will get an ebook version of Trail of the Tudor Blue by Gwen Roman, which is romance fiction. I'm not a regular romance reader, and even the cover looks different than pretty much everything I read, but I will give this a shot. I like to branch out and will give any book a fair chance. Since I don't have an e-reader yet, I'm going to download it to the Kindle app on my phone.
Yup, the To Read list just got longer. This is fine by me! I just need to keep up the dedication to keeping up with it.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Possible Breakthrough?
Regarding my own work-in-progress (WIP), I've spent several weeks internally agonizing over how to structure my story. There are so many pieces I know are good, so many concepts I know will work, and characters I really like and can't wait to share. But putting all of this together, and getting over the fear, or perhaps, humility, of editing, has been a new challenge.
I spent the better part of two weekends in January revising my draft, adding depth and detail to characters, developing scenes, adding in transitions. So much of that work is now scrapped. That's a little hard to take at first. BUT, I know that work is helping me get to where I want the story to be.
The problem was, I spent far too much time giving backstory on a secondary character, and it took too long to get to the fun part of the story. It's just that I had this great opening line, and a few scenes I could vividly imagine, and I didn't want to lose it. Losing it is what I did though, and finally yesterday I constructed the first 4-5 pages to be more of what I originally envisioned for the story.
Reading author and agent blogs has helped tremendously. I cannot overstate how helpful people are in their blogs to those of us who are so green to publishing we literally look up phrases on google as we're reading them (like "upmarket women's fiction"). Anyway, I know that when querying a book (publishing-speak for shopping around for an agent), agents often ask for the first chapter or the first 5-10 pages of a manuscript along with the formal letter. I want those first pages to show my favorite characters getting into all the trouble they need to in order to set up the book. I don't want to waste this space on stuff that I can weave into the story later.
So, I think I have that part set a little better. I have so far to go, but I'm excited to have a little piece of this come together. Some days I feel like it's impossible and wonder why I am putting all the effort into a book when there is such a narrow window for what gets published. Each time I get a small achievement, it reminds me.
I spent the better part of two weekends in January revising my draft, adding depth and detail to characters, developing scenes, adding in transitions. So much of that work is now scrapped. That's a little hard to take at first. BUT, I know that work is helping me get to where I want the story to be.
The problem was, I spent far too much time giving backstory on a secondary character, and it took too long to get to the fun part of the story. It's just that I had this great opening line, and a few scenes I could vividly imagine, and I didn't want to lose it. Losing it is what I did though, and finally yesterday I constructed the first 4-5 pages to be more of what I originally envisioned for the story.
Reading author and agent blogs has helped tremendously. I cannot overstate how helpful people are in their blogs to those of us who are so green to publishing we literally look up phrases on google as we're reading them (like "upmarket women's fiction"). Anyway, I know that when querying a book (publishing-speak for shopping around for an agent), agents often ask for the first chapter or the first 5-10 pages of a manuscript along with the formal letter. I want those first pages to show my favorite characters getting into all the trouble they need to in order to set up the book. I don't want to waste this space on stuff that I can weave into the story later.
So, I think I have that part set a little better. I have so far to go, but I'm excited to have a little piece of this come together. Some days I feel like it's impossible and wonder why I am putting all the effort into a book when there is such a narrow window for what gets published. Each time I get a small achievement, it reminds me.
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