Emma Scott's Blog, page 2

All In (Full Tilt #2) now available for preorder!

Reeling from her loss, Kacey Dawson is grieving and heartbroken, her addictive demons hauling her back into the alcohol-soaked abyss she worked so hard to crawl out of. Kacey teeters on the edge of oblivion, and must fight her way through the pain, to build a new life for herself with her music, and somehow fulfill the promise she made to Jonah…one she feels is impossible to keep.

Theo Fletcher has a secret burning in his heart, one that he holds close, while he struggles to keep strong for his family that is falling apart. His mother’s health is fragile and his father’s disapproval is breaking him down. Theo is afraid if he follows his heart, he’ll fail, and not just himself, but his brother who believed in him when no one else did. 

Drawn together by their pain, Theo and Kacey slowly build a friendship, re-forge old ties, help each other to heal, and give one another the courage to reach for their dreams. Together, from the depths of grief and guilt, they learn to laugh again, to trust again, and quite possibly find something beautiful and lasting amid the shattered pieces of their broken hearts. 



Part II of the two-part Full Tilt duet, coming Oct 2016

PLEASE NOTE, this novel is NOT a standalone. It is highly recommended one read Full Tilt first to get the entire arc of the story and to avoid spoilers.http://amzn.to/2c8tJ4E

(¯`•.•´¯) (¯`•.•´¯)*`•.¸(¯`•.•´¯)¸.•´ ♥☆ ♥&nbsp...

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☆ ♥ `•.¸.•´ ♥ º ☆.¸¸.•´¯`♥ All In cover reveal! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥Goodreads TBR link: http://bit.ly/1sKupoNPLEASE BE ADVISED, the synopsis below contains potential SPOILERS for those of you who have not yet read Full Tilt.Synopsis:Reeling from her loss, Kacey Dawson is grieving and heartbroken, and her addictive demons have hauled her back into the alcohol-soaked abyss she worked so hard to crawl out of. Kacey teeters on the edge of oblivion, and must fight her way through the pain, to build a new life for herself with her music, and somehow fulfill the promise she made to Jonah…one that she feels is impossible to keep.Theo Fletcher has a secret burning in his heart, one that he holds close, while he struggles to keep strong for his family that is falling apart. His mother’s health is fragile and his father’s disapproval is breaking him down. Theo is afraid if he follows his heart, he’ll fail, and not just himself, but his brother who believed in him when no one else did.Drawn together by their pain, Theo and Kacey slowly build a friendship, re-forge old ties, help each other to heal, and give one another the courage to reach for their dreams. Together, from the depths of grief and guilt, they learn to laugh again, to trust again, and quite possibly find something beautiful and lasting amid the shattered pieces of their broken hearts.

Conditions of the Heart, or why we have to tell THAT story...

Note: This isn't entirely, 100% a post about books or writing, but more about highly personal stuff that is related to writing, so if you'd rather just read about book news n' stuff, (and that's totally understandable) quit reading now. To my subscribers, I'm sorry; I don't know how to make this post-only.


I was debating whether to write this or not and found out that I really can't get any writing done on All In until I do. It's just on my mind, this topic, and won't get out until I purge the only way I know how.

***SPOILER FOR FULL TILT***

Full Tilt is a book about a guy with a very serious heart condition, one that eventually proves fatal. As stated elsewhere, this story wasn't on the agenda. I had other books lined up, but FT was stubborn and muscled its way in and so I wrote it. The upshot or "message" I sought to convey was one of hope and resilience in the face of death, and the enduring power of love that everyone deserves no matter what stage of life they are in.

The bones and structure of FT are extensive research on heart conditions and transplant rejection, while the blood and guts of it is the message to live life fully, and love completely. Full tilt, no stops.

I hit publish, and began work on the sequel, in which the message here is that love, in infinite quantities, lives in all of us, and should be celebrated, not tucked away or neglected because one has loved and lost before. And this was all well and good, and all safely contained in a fictional Las Vegas, and soon to be fictional New Orleans.

Then five nights ago, my 8 year old daughter complained of a rapid heart rate. I could see it, jumping in the hollow of her throat, and feel it in the pounding beneath my hand when I touched her chest.

We had just moved across town, and Stanford Lucille Packard Children's Hospital was now a two minute drive away. I frantically drove her to the ER while the hubs stayed home with our 5 yo. My eldest was rushed in, set up, monitors attached, and the screen showed a heart rate that was in the 220-230 beats per minute (bpm), with no signs of slowing. All the while, she was a trooper; a little scared, a little light-headed, but still able to walk, talk, etc.

The AMAZING doctors and nursing staff at Stanford tried all kinds of tricks to stimulate the vagal nerve and bring her pulse down: having her blow into a tube, cold icepacks on the face, etc, and nothing worked. That left the only option of taking a medicine via IV that 'restarts' the heart rhythm. As a precaution, defibrillators were attached to her chest and back, and a cardiac crash team gathered around the bed in the event that the medicine did more than just slow her heart rate, if you catch my meaning.

Fortunately, the medicine did what it needed to do, and her pulse came down to the 120 area, which is normal for a child her age and size. The cardiologist took a look at her readings and confirmed my daughter has a rare heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome.

WPW  <---link about the syndrome for the curious

This condition is not as dangerous as others but it comes with its own set of complications, risks, and issues. We were released that night around 3 am with a prescription for beta blockers and and appt. with docs on Monday to assess the best course of action going forward.

So here I am, having written about a guy with a heart condition in the blithely detached manner by which we can write about all kinds of issues that we have no personal experience with. Because that's what we do. We make shit up. But maybe, just maybe, certain topics--topics that feel like we have no say in writing about--feel that way because deep down we needed to hear the lessons of those stories out loud.

I think I did.

If there is some driving force or that "everything happens for a reason" then I guess I can say it was meant to be that I wrote FT because its message is no longer merely an ideal I held close and believed in, but now my waking reality.

I treat everyday with my daughter as something special. She slept in our bed for the first two nights after the hospital, and we fell asleep holding hands, with me listening to her breathe. We're closer now. I don't get frustrated or impatient over little things anymore. I flow affection toward her in waves, I tell her--and her little sister, and my husband--that I love them whenever the urge to say it comes to mind. (And that's a lot.) We don't live every day in fear--she's under the best care and not in immediate danger anyway--we strive to live in joy.

We moved, a week prior to all this, from a small apartment in a crappy part of town with a train in the backyard, to a beautiful, big condo on gorgeous grounds filled with greenery and flowers, and a pool. For the first two days, I walked around our new place thinking I'd take post pics of our new dining room (something I'd never had before) or the view outside every window, or a shot of my very own office that I'm sitting in right now.

Now, while I'm still appreciative of where we are now, and how hard we worked to get here, it pales in comparison to my daughter's health. What the hell is a new dining room table to that?

They say that art imitates life. In my case, life imitated art. But I'm not sure I believe in coincidences. I think writers (and all other artists) are speaking with more than just brain synapses and keyboard strokes. The universe told me to put my money where my mouth is. So I did. I will.

Love,
ES

What's up with that hashtag?

Several people have wondered/asked about/were annoyed or confused with the #nocancer hashtag I have affixed to the synopsis of Full Tilt. No, I'm not going to take it down, as I put it there for a specific reason but I will explain that reason to hopefully clear up any of the above confusion or upset.

Firstly, a (hopefully unnecessary) disclaimer: It's not a knock on other "cancer books". There are many powerful books written where one (or more) of the main protagonists are stricken with the disease. I have read the first three that probably come to mind if you're a romance/YA reader, and have loved all three. I didn't put the #nocancer in there to thumb my nose at any other book that might tackle such a subject. That should go without saying but I'm saying it anyway.

That's NOT why that hashtag is there.
Here's why it IS there.

Cancer is an epidemic. It may not sweep through cities like a plague but it's prolific enough that most of us know at least one person who has been touched by it, directly or indirectly, up close and personal or anecdotally, a family member or friend, or friend of a friend... It's fucking awful. It takes many insidious shapes and forms, and the warriors who battle it are brave and heroic, and numerous. Because it is so endemic, I didn't want to write about it. I wrote Full Tilt as an homage to the people who love and are loved until their last breath, and I hoped that because Jonah's illness is something a little more rare, a little more removed from the norm, it would help to give a cushion for readers who might already be dealing with life and death scenarios. My intent was to tell a love story that says, "Any one of us, no matter where (or when) we are in life, deserve love" and to do it honestly. To not shy away from grief or the terrible reality that sometimes the illness cannot be defeated, but to at the very least make that illness a sort of a stranger instead of the common phantom cancer seems to be.

There's another hashtag in my synopsis: #tearjerker

This is there to dispel the notion that because this book has #nocancer it is does not deal with death. It does. It is both a book that has no cancer, but is also a tearjerker and I had hoped--maybe naively--that this would indicate to readers what kind of a story they were getting in to. Maybe it didn't work. Maybe adding #nocancer somehow negated the effects of #tearjerker? I don't know, but I do know the number of people who have told me they were glad this book was cancer-free despite the ending outnumbers those who are upset about the hashtag. However, as I'd prefer that NO ONE be upset over a hashtag, I'm offering this explanation.

And lastly, I did not set out to write a book where someone dies specifically NOT from cancer. It was not premeditated; the hashtag and everything you just read was born out of the fact that Jonah had--and had always had--a heart condition. The story comes first. The ramifications come second. So while everything I just explained about why #nocancer is true, it also comes AFTER the fact. The story comes first. I'm always going to tell the story I need to tell. The hashtags were my effort to NOT dupe the reader into embarking on a journey that might be too difficult straight out the gate. Maybe the message failed some people but my intentions were good, I promise.

Xoxo
ES

Full Tilt is now live!

Amazon: http://amzn.to/1t5AzQ7
Amazon AU: http://amzn.to/28XWofm
Amazon Universal: myBook.to/FullTiltEmmaScott
BN: http://bit.ly/FullTiltBN
iBooks: http://apple.co/28VZV99
Smashwords: http://bit.ly/298Fl8z
Kobo: http://bit.ly/298ENiT

Full Tilt...a trust exercise with myself

Here we are again, on the eve of another book release. And once again, it's NOT Beside You in the Moonlight. Or "the Paris book." Or the "That Which is Perpetually On Hold."

Poor thing.

I have 25K words written and it even has a cover! But something shifted for me when I wrote How to Save a Life. That book scared the crap out of me (more so than usual when it comes to the prospect of putting one's babies out into the world.) At the time, it felt so weird and different, and I was plagued with insecurity and nerves.



But no risk, no reward and such. I persevered with the help of my intrepid editor (more on her later) and HTSAL was ultimately well-worth the stress. But it also made a lasting impression on me as a writer. Like some kind of junkie, I wanted that stress again. That two-in-the-morning, tired AF, living off coffee and text messages from aforementioned editor, and wallowing in OMG WHAT WILL THEY THINK? kind of stress.




The Paris book just felt too safe. It's not a bad story, and might get written some day but after HTSAL was not that day. I wanted to be scared shitless again...but with better time management.




RUSH was born of an 'overheard conversation I had while on a run. HTSAL came from an image of a bruised guy in a pool and a goth girl asking him who did that to him. Full Tilt was born of a combination of image and dialogue. I saw a guy in hospital bed telling a girl that she was a universe. There was more to it than that, but for spoiler reasons, I'm not going to elaborate. Suffice to say, the resulting storyline didn't exactly scream 'romance.' But it sure was scary for a fresh variety of reasons, and therefore...


I love writing about artists. Every single character in every single book I've written has had an artist for either one or both MCs. (The only deviation being Unbreakable but in that instance, Cory works in construction, building things with his sexy man-hands so that totally counts)  I knew FT was going to be set in Vegas and as soon as I had that locked in, I knew what Jonah's art would be. The ceiling of the Bellagio is a very real example of the glass art of Dale Chihuly. I saw it for the first time several years ago on a trip to Vegas and it stayed with me ever since. A piece of exquisite art in a city better know for ostentation than delicacy.



To an artist living in Las Vegas, I felt that art would have the most impact on someone like Jonah, and so his craft was born.

At the other end of the spectrum from delicate glass, I thought, was loud rock n' roll. Kacey's art is the polar opposite of Jonah's as these characters themselves are polar opposites. (On the surface anyway.)  Bringing these two together was all the anxiety I could handle (and apparently craved) but not for the reasons one might suspect.

In the case of FT, the getting-to-know you bits was a ton more headache than anything that came at the end. (that was heartache, but not stress). Plotting the progression of two people falling in love is the hardest part, imho, and I credit the amazing author L.B. Simmons for walking me back from that ledge, thank you very much. When you read the same conversation eight million times, it not only loses its spark, it starts to look (and smell) like a dead fish, and I was quite certain that every reader would feel the same way.



I must've spent at least two solid weeks on the first 20% of the book. That was the first half of stress. The ending was the second half. Not the actual writing of it; that flowed somewhat smoothly (though I avoided That Scene until literally every other scene--including the epilogue--had been written). But what it would mean to certain readers who are going through very serious situations. I felt that if I was going to tackle this subject, it would have to be done with dignity and authenticity. And I was also concerned whether my ultimate message was going to come through or not.

Writers come in all shapes and sizes, and each have their own angst, neuroses, fears, blocks, etc. Mine is a case of picking difficult shit to write and then complaining that it's difficult.



Just ask my editor. Suanne Laqueur edits, cleans up messes, lures out moments from their hiding places ("This is a thing!") fixes the bits that have too many damn words, all the while acting as a personal psychologist. Being (a supremely talented) writer herself, she understands the angst which is a bizarre mix of 'I can't write this, they're going to hate it' and 'if I don't write this, I'll die.' It's a constant battle, ego vs self-doubt, Veruca Salt-level need for approval vs. "there is nothing I'd rather do on this earth, even if no one ever read a word."



I love my editor to the stars and back. She is a universe. She is not afraid to tear up my MS to shreds because she knows I have my Big Girl Panties on and can take it. Moreover, I want it. I want to improve and learn and become a smarter writer. My chapters go out neat and come back looking like this:



Because they should. I don't take every suggestion, or accept every change, but I do leave most of my darlings dead on the floor* where she left them. Every writer should be so lucky to have an editor as merciless and compassionate as mine. But not her.  She's mine. MINE, I tell you!



Also MINE with a capital M is Melissa Panio-Petersen. My PA though she's more like the artistic director for my books. Not only has she done a zillion gorgeous teasers and graphics, but she also designed the cover. Which I am thoroughly in love with. Something about the book and her artistic sensibilities just clicked, and she created such beautiful work that fit the novel to a T. She's also designed the cover for All In and I'm counting the days to that cover reveal, it's so damn beautiful. Love you. MPP.  Obviously.





Where was I? Or yes. Process. Mine that is nutso. But there's a method to my madness, in that I feel if an idea doesn't challenge me, I can't get as fired up about it. Hence, the Paris book languishing. The challenge of FT was bringing these people together in a slow, believable manner, and then resolving the end in an uplifting manner despite the circumstances.

How to do that was the stress, but the reason for doing it was quite easy. I firmly believe that every single person deserves to love and be loved, no matter where they are in their life--beginning, middle, end. We write a lot about the Early Middle Ages--people in their 20's--40's, but tragedy, poor health, or accidents can strike any time, and do. All too often. When the idea for Full Tilt came to mind, it wasn't just to write a tearjerker. It had to be married to the idea that loving someone--no matter what stage of life--is worth it. To he that is loved, and to she that loves, and vice-versa. That the pain is worth it, and because that is life. 

Does it have an HEA? Absolutely. At least half of one, even if I can't bill it that way. FT was scary to write but I have learned to trust myself that the stories that are hardest to write offer the most emotional rewards. The messages from readers--private and otherwise--and the reviews have shown me that. Not high ratings (I'm not crazy/stupid enough to think I've written something everyone is going to love) but the highly personal nature of the feedback so far has been so special to me. No matter what happens, after tomorrow, this was the best of what I've written--to me--in every way.



And All In, the sequel, poses its own set of challenges. How to take a broken heart. mend it, and possibly love again with just as much power as before. I'm scared to write that but I will, and I won't publish it until I've accomplished my goals set forth therein.

And I won't try to rush it. My first inclination was to get it out as soon as possible to complete the Full Tilt story, but A. I don't want to put out some rushed hack-job, and B. (and this will sound really weird) but out of respect for Jonah, there needs some time passage for me, for the fictional characters who live in my heart, and for the readers too.

Speaking of readers, I love you guys. I am so incredibly fucking blessed to be doing this with the love and support of My People. The bloggers, readers, friends...I do a lot of giveaways on my page because I can't think of how else I can possibly show my gratitude to you. As Jonah might say, I can try, but I never will. You guys are my universe, and I will NEVER stop telling you that. After all, you put up with my particular brand of Crazy Writer Person...





 ...and you make every second worth it. <3

ES




* “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”--Stephen King, from On Writing

Full Tilt now available for preorder!

Amazon: http://amzn.to/1t5AzQ7

Full Tilt, (Full Tilt #1) Cover reveal!

✯✯Cover Reveal + Giveaway✯✯

Full Tilt by Emma Scott


I would love you forever, if I only had the chance...

Kacey Dawson has always lived life on the edge--impulsively, sometimes recklessly. And now, as lead guitarist for a hot up-and-coming band, she is poised at the brink of fame and fortune. But she is torn between wanting to be a serious musician, and the demons that lure her down the glittering, but alcohol-soaked path of rock stardom. A wrecked concert in Las Vegas threatens to ruin her career entirely. She wakes up with the hangover from hell and no memory of the night before, or how she ended up on her limo driver’s couch...

Jonah Fletcher has four months to live, give or take. He’d take more but knows his situation is hopeless, and that it’s better to try to make the most of whatever time he has left. His plans include seeing the opening of his glass installation at a prestigious art gallery…they do not include falling in love with a wild, tempestuous rock musician who wound up passed out on his couch.

Jonah sees that Kacey is on a path to self-destruction. He lets her crash with him for a few days to dry out and get her head on straight. But neither of them expected the deep connection they felt, or how that connection could grow so fast from friendship into something more. Something deep and pure and life-changing…something as fragile as glass, that they both know will shatter in the end no matter how hard they try to hold on to it.

Full Tilt is a story about what it means to love with your whole heart, to sacrifice, to experience terrible grief and soaring joy. To live life with all its beauty, and all its pain, and in the end to be able to smile through tears and know you wouldn’t have changed a thing.

$25 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway:
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/8ba816c016/

Add to Goodreads: http://bit.ly/1SWnOC9

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How to Save a Life, on sale now for 99 cents thru May 2!

Amazon US: http://amzn.to/23UWRCr
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/26vOrTB

Grab a copy now! :)

How to Save a Life...3 signed copies!

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Goodreads Book Giveaway How to Save a Life by Emma Scott Giveaway ends March 20, 2016.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter Giveaway