Mary E. Pearson's Blog, page 7

Giveaway!

Thank you Readers for your overwhelming positive response to the final book in the Jenna Fox Chronicles trilogy, Fox Forever !  Here are just a few things you've been saying:

*"Gripping and bittersweet." --Publisher's Weekly, starred review
*"A wrenching read." --Shelf Awareness, starred review
*"Thrilling and brilliant conclusion." --School Library Journal, starred review
"Epic science fiction saga . . . Fox Forever is a dramatic and exciting finale to an impressive trilogy." --SciFiChick.com
"Locke's romance with Raine was incredible.  I couldn't put this book down." --Danasquare Reviews
"Brilliant conclusion is a roller coaster . . . ends in the most beautiful and powerful way imaginable." --Alamosa Books
"It’s one of the most satisfying series ends I’ve ever read." --Alice Marvels Reviews
"I cannot recommend this series highly enough. It will blow your mind." --The Valentines Book Rave
You are all made of awesome!  Thank you!

Now with a Pub Date set (details to come soon!) for my next trilogy (!!!), I want to celebrate the one that has been near and dear to my heart for many years.  So, your choice!  Three winners will be chosen randomly.  To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment below, here on this post, saying which book in The Jenna Fox Chronicles that you hope to win:  The Adoration of Jenna Fox, OR, The Fox Inheritance, OR, Fox Forever.

Deadline to enter is midnight PST on October 30, 2013!  Winners will be announced October 31.  Spread the word!

Resting, Nesting, Gore, and Digging in

Now that Book One of YetToBeNamedTrilogy (though I have a strong preference!) is off for copyedits, I have spent the last few weeks:
1. Resting
2. Nesting
3. And just this past week, actually digging in and writing.

But first things first.  The Resting.  I went on a week long road trip through central California with my hubby.  Get away from it all! But when you carry this whole book world you've created in your head you kind of don't want to forget it--the world just keeps whispering ideas to you.  And sometimes your book makes you braver. 
Yep.  On mile 700 down this one lane country road that seemed to go no where but my husband kept insisting had to lead somewhere and I watched our gas tank get lower and our cell phones die, I thought of my character and the far scarier unknown I put her through and tried to see this endless, nameless road as almost sweet in comparison. Ahem. Good wife that I am. It WAS lovely once I resigned myself to the possibility of running out of gas and spending the night in the middle of nowhere.  And hey, we at least had food--nearly a whole bag of goldfish and six bottles of wine we had picked up at a winery.  We wouldn't starve.  Quite. If the local beasts didn't get us first.
Ah, but at last we did reach civilization. I love chickens.  Something about their attitude. 
"Hey!  Yeah, you!  What do you think you're doing here?" 
"You think she's got any food, Gladys?"
"Nah, just a worthless lookie-loo."

(Admit it.  You can see little thought bubbles over their heads too.)

Later, we came upon another very lovely sight:
The very awesome indie store, The Book Loft in Solvang, CA.  They have a wonderful YA section and I bought one of my faves I had already read as an ebook but wanted the hardcopy too.

And they had The Jenna Fox Chronicles, so I signed those too. They didn't even ask for my ID : )

On our little getaway I also got some reading done.  That is part of
My Nesting:

Whenever I start a new book, there is research and "stuff" to get in order before I actually dig in.

My reading included both fiction and nonfiction on ***** (can't tell you subject yet--don't want to spoil it) to see how it might play out in my character's world--or the new one she is heading into.

But another book I can tell you about--not too spoilery.  A History of Weapons by John Bryan.  Yeah, this is the "gore" part.  It is amazing the weapons we have created over the centuries to hurt our fellow humans.  This one on the right is particularly gruesome.  It's called a Mancatcher.  If you don't want to kill the person you're trying to subdue, you just push this around their neck.  If they struggle against you, it ain't very pretty.  Can you imagine? No, you don't want to go there.
Okay, on to less gruesome nesting.  There is the necessary "cleaning."  Yes, take a look now at this clear desk because it won't look this way again for a LONG while.  Though I hate clutter in my life, when I am in the throes of a book it somehow seems a necessity.  Papers on papers and files all over my desk and multiple computers, books, and coffee cups, and somehow, I know where everything is.   But when I start a new book I like everything to at least start with a clean slate.

Part of my nesting is drawing maps, floorplans, cities, lanes, roads, etc. so I have a firm grasp on my character's world.  Of course as the story progresses, these maps are revised to accommodate new twists and turns.  I need a new road?  City? Country?  Voila, it is there! I also look for pictures of characters and setting and pin them to a bulletin board behind my desk.  I love Pinterest for this! Lots of great stuff there.
And finally there is the Digging In. 
Butt in Chair.  Just Write.  Routine.  Get the words down.
That's what I am doing now.  Slow going at first, but writing begets writing and I know I will pick up speed.

Oh, and my nice clean desk is already a mess. But that's okay. Bring it on.

PS  The first and last pictures in this post are ones I took in France a few years ago that are among my writing inspirations for the setting.

Opening Lines

I don’t usually participate in memes but I couldn’t resist this one.  Opening lines! 

There are so many reasons opening lines grab, haunt, shake me, or send a little shiver up my spine so that I’m compelled to keep reading. 

It might be an intriguing premise, or a character I have to know more about,  an incredible voice, or language that is simply irresistible.  Here are some opening lines from both recent and older books that I have loved and made me keep turning the pages.

What are some of your favorites?


I didn’t know how long I had been in the king’s prison.  The days were all the same,
except that as each one passed, I was dirtier than before.  
--The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

Now come the mousies nosing out their hole, thinks Kuhru as he wipes fresh bone marrow from his snout. Three pretty little mousies.  Humans.  Females.  Ripe and soft and full of warm blood.
–Black Hole Sun by David Macinnis Gill.

The circus arrives without warning.  No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. 
It is simply there when yesterday it was not.
–The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

There is a certain kind of girl the goblins crave.  You could walk across a high school campus and point them out: not her, not her, her.
–Goblin Fruit by Laini Taylor

I am dying: it’s a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of a cello: dying.
–Surrender by Sonya Hartnett

The sirens are louder than I anticipated.  Not that I ever in a million years anticipated sirens at the beginning of all this.  Otherwise, obviously, I never would have agreed to it. 
Hindsight.  It’s a bitch.
–My Life Undecided by Jessica Brody

Being dead became fashionable approximately forty-five seconds
after Samantha “the Divine” Devereaux came back from summer break.
–Dead is the New Black by Marlene Perez

The screw through Cinder’s ankle had rusted.
–Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Here’s the thing: I was probably gonna write a book when I got older anyways.  About what it’s like growing up on a levee in Stockton, where every other person you meet has missing teeth or is leaning against a liquor store wall begging for change to buy a beer.
–We Were Here by Matt De La Pena

There was a hand in the darkness and it held a knife.
–The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I have been in love with Titus Oates for quite a while now—which is ridiculous since he’s been dead for ninety years.  But look at it this way. In ninety years I’ll be dead, too,
and then the age difference won’t matter. 
–The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean

Shaking it up

    The last several months have been crazy.  I've spent much of it tucked back in this corner of my yard--yes, even in winter with a blanket wrapped around me--writing on my laptop. 

    Being out there gave me an "away" spot where phones, doorbells, and the internet weren't distractions, but I was still near my research and notes in my upstairs office if I needed to get to it.  I had a tight deadline which meant that I had to write every day and all day.  I not only had to finish the first book in a new trilogy, I had so many details to work out for how this whole new world worked. Details!

    The surprising thing was, I found I loved writing even more when I wrote this way--non stop. There was less agonizing over what came next.  The juices were always churning. Except for a few days around Christmas, I never missed a single day of writing from November through April.  That was almost 6 months of non-stop writing!  And pretty much all day long.

    For me this was a huge leap.  But I definitely had to make some changes in how I approached my writing.  For one thing I increased my daily word count goals to 1200-1500. I know for some writers that is nothing, but for me that is a lot.

    Another thing I did was NOT incessantly revise as I wrote.  I had a habit of spending as much or more time revising each day as I did writing.  That was a hard habit to break.  I like to see things pretty and perfect and my words to sparkle and they definitely weren't doing that.  Also, revising is so much more fun than heading into uncharted territory. But this time, I was writing a true ROUGH draft.  This actually made more sense because why spend hours making something perfect if it might get cut in the revision or totally overhauled?  Still, I love playing with words and getting only the most essential ones down, and getting the emotional tone fine-tuned, so I had to get tough and turn a blind eye to the crappiness.  The carrot I held out to myself was that when I was finished I could revise to my heart's delight--my favorite part of the process. (But my poor editor and beta-readers had to deal with abundant yards of burlap, purple, and knotted prose.)

    As I wrote I looked for writing inspiration from time to time, perusing again my writing library, or looking for new tidbits, and I came across this from Laini Taylor: "Be an unstoppable force.  Write with an imaginary machete strapped to your thigh."  All of her writing advice was great but this really hit me because I already had this sort image lurking in my brain along with the order, "Be fearless!"  If I expected my characters to forge ahead, I could expect nothing less from myself. That became my daily motto--along with a scary me waving a machete.

    I also came across this from Rachel Aaron .  I especially found the "Knowledge" advice so completely helpful.  The thing was, I was already doing something similar but in a less effective way.  Each day when I finished writing, I used to jot down a few words or sentences of where I thought I wanted to go the next day.  I reversed that and started keeping a notebook, a daily log where I spent 10-20 minutes writing out scenes, interactions, key points I thought should happen, all in much more thoughtful detail than I used to, each day just before I began writing. It set the tone and my writing goals.  Did it all happen or go the way I thought?  Never.  At least not exactly, but it gave me something to work with, or diverge from--not just empty white space to get lost in. And if I did feel lost, I would look back at this log and revise my plan!
I've always kept daily word counts for my books--it helps me "see" in a concrete way the progress I have made. (I'm also a list maker because I love to cross things off!) but this time my emphasis was on the DAILY part.  This is a picture of my log for my newest book which will be out next year. I loved seeing the words add up and be able to go back and see a week's worth of progress. It also helped me predict how much I was capable of writing in a month, because I really wasn't sure before.  I'm just about ready to dig into Book 2 which means it's time to print out a fresh sheet and start filling in those rectangles.

With each book I've written, I've tackled it a little differently, but this time I tackled it a lot differently.  I think it's good for a writer (well, at least for me) to shake it up now and then and get out of their comfort zone.  You learn new things about yourself and maybe add a new tool to your writing chest.

In the midst of all this writing, I did have other things going on, including the publication of the last book (!) in The Jenna Fox Chronicles, Fox Forever --and all that went along with that, including some fun travels (Thank you Houston, Rochester, and Fort Worth!)  These travels included a first for me--presenting in a church on the altar no less--with stained glass saints looking on!  It somehow felt scandalous. (Jessica Brody, Marissa Meyer, and Lauren DeStefano, I'm looking at you.)

Other book news is simmering that I hope I can share soon.  In the meantime, I'm getting ready to revise the above mentioned book (3rd round) which is still untitled and I'm quite eager to jump into Book 2.  I've fallen in love with my characters over these past months.  I want to see what happens next!  I'm sure more months of craziness lie ahead.

But if you're in the middle of it now . . .

Teen Book Festival!

Saturday May 18th!
9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.!

Don't miss
The 8th Annual Greater Rochester Teen Book Festival!

AND IT'S FREE!  You heard right!  Plus there will be a gazillion YA authors there!  Click here for the full list of authors .  Come talk about books with us!  (And with that many authors set free from their writing caves, you can be sure there will be some nuttiness too.)

See you on Saturday!

Houston Teen Book Con!

It's almost here!  And admission is FREE! 

I hope I see you at the awesomely delicious Houston Teen Book Con !  I'll be doing lots of fangirling myself.  I just wish I was two people so I could sit in on their panels too. Look at these authors who will be there!  All in one place:
Leigh Bardugo
Jessica Brody
Bethany Frenette
Claudia Gray
Dan Krokos
Lisa McMann
Lenore Appelhans
Tera Lynn Childs
A. G. Howard
Sophie Jordan
Stacey Kade
Shannon Messenger
Cinda Williams Chima
Alaya Dawn Johnson
Jennifer Nielsen
Caragh O'Brien
Mary Pearson
Morgan Rhodes
Justina Chen Stacey Jay
Mary Lindsey
Jennifer E. Smith
Tamara Ireland Stone
Kate Brian
Sharon Draper
Maureen Johnson
Barry Lyga
Robin Wasserman
Jen Calonita
Chris Crutcher
Kay Honeyman
Amy McNamara
Lauren Morrill
Francisco X. Stork
Faith Erin Hicks
Mark Nasso
MK Reed
Bruce Small Hope to see you there!

Fox Forever is out tomorrow!

Here's what a few folks are saying about the
finale to The Jenna Fox Chronicles :

"This colorful, high-stakes finale is a speedy thriller . . . a crucial, memorable conclusion for readers." -Kirkus Reviews

"The Jenna Fox Chronicles distinguish themselves among the many dystopian novels because of their unique combination of genre appeal and literary merit."  --Horn Book Review

"I couldn’t imagine a better end to their story than the one we’re given in Fox Forever. It’s one of the most satisfying series ends I’ve ever read." --Alice Marvels Reviews

You can order it now from your local bookseller or at one of these online retailers:

Barnes and Noble
Indiebound
iBooks
Amazon

Thank you for all of your support and enthusiasm!
~Mary

Fox Forever is out in SIX days!

Countdown!

Just six days until Fox Forever is out! 

I would be thrilled, over-the-top giddy, and ever so grateful if you preordered it from your local bookseller or at one of these online retailers:

Barnes and Noble
Indiebound
iBooks
Amazon

Kirkus Reviews calls it "A speedy thriller" and "A crucial, memorable conclusion for readers."

I hope you agree!

Gratefully and excitedly yours,
                                      ~Mary

Fox Forever Blog Tour!

The Fox Forever Blog Tour starts on Monday!

I will be visiting a different blog each day, counting down to Pub Day of the final book in The Jenna Fox Chronicles Trilogy !

Here are the fabulous bloggers who will be hosting the tour:



Fox Forever Blog Tour Schedule

Monday 3/4
Sparkles and Lightning

Tuesday 3/5
I Read Banned Books

Wednesday 3/6
Squeaky Books

Thursday 3/7
Crazy Red Pen

Friday 3/8
Icey Books

Saturday 3/9
One Minute Books

Sunday 3/10
Oh! Paper Pages

Monday 3/11
Danasquare

Tuesday 3/12
MacTeenBooks Blog

Wednesday 3/13
Book Addict’s Guide

Thursday 3/14
The Paper Reader

Friday 3/15
Alice Marvels

Saturday 3/16
Gone Pecan

Sunday 3/17
Rachel Reads

Monday 3/18
Short and Sweet Reviews

PUB DAY! Tuesday 3/19
YA Bibliophile

Writing for Teens

I was recently asked for advice on writing for young adults, a question I’ve been asked many times, and I usually try to offer some nuts and bolts advice on writing and publishing, but this time this question hit me differently.  It didn't seem to come from a place of drive or desire, so I tried to think about what drives me to write for teens way down deep on a gut level because I think that is far more important than the nuts and bolts. I brainstormed quick snips about what I believe about writing for teens and these snips are pasted below.  I think this needs to be the starting place:

Find the humanity in your writing
The essence of what matters to all of us
Believe in the teen that you are writing about
Believe in teens period
Not that they have lessons to learn
Not that they need to be taught in just such a way
Believe that their stories are important enough
Life-changing enough
Heart-wrenching enough
That their story needs to be read by everyone
Be a teen yourself
Be an idealist
Believe in justice
Those are some of the best traits of being a teen that I hope never to give up
Reach deep and care
Care like it’s the first time you’ve cared about anything
Care so much that it matters not just to you but to others as well
Believe in the wisdom of teens
Believe in their faults
Believe in everything in between
Don’t give them a mass label of “teenager” and think that is enough
Teens are no more alike than adults are
Each one has their own story
A story that will change the world
Because someone will recognize it as their own
And realize they are not alone
That is the power of your story
Believe in it
And I will too.