Jessica A. Scott's Blog, page 7

Chase and Charlie Cover Reveal

It has been a busy few weeks for me!

As of yesterday, there is exactly one month left before Chase and Charlie is released, and I have been doing a lot of last-minute preparations to get it ready for publication. With the line edits and book cover approvals I have been making, I have had the chance to see what my first book will really look like when it is published, and I must say that it has been a very exciting experience! Things are all starting to seem “real” to me now, and maybe, with this image of the completed book cover, they will seem real to you too.

Cover art by Sarah Hance

(Click on the image to see it in a larger size)

Let me know what you think!

Chase and Charlie Back Blurb

It has been a while since I have posted anything to my blog, so I thought I should make this week’s post a good one! Here, without any further ado, is the summary that will go on the back cover of my book, Chase and Charlie, when it is published in May. Enjoy!

Charlie loves Chase.

He’s not just her brother, he’s her best friend. He’s her confidant, her moral compass, her partner in quirky movie fandom: he’s everything she wishes she could be…until he gets framed for murder.

When a man is killed and Chase is left holding the murder weapon, he’s deemed “criminally insane” and sent to the ominous Gray’s Institute of Mental Health. Desperate for answers, Charlie infiltrates the asylum with the help of a kind young custodian and soon discovers that nothing—and no one—is as it seems.

Armed with nothing but her wits, her guts, and her unflagging loyalty, Charlie must fight her way through a nightmarish maze of lies and manipulation to expose, not just the truth about her brother, but a much darker, much more sinister truth about the crime he didn’t commit, and the institution that has no right to hold him.

On Editing (and on moving on)

I passed another milestone in the publishing process last week: I turned in the final manuscript for my novel, Chase and Charlie.

The entire editing process was quite nerve-wracking, especially since I did all my own editing (I couldn’t afford a professional editing service, though I do have a background in editing myself). Therefore, it was almost a relief to get the thing off my hands!

However, the passing of the figurative buck did not bring me the inner peace I anticipated. I still worry that I didn’t catch all the typos, or that I made a grammatical mistake or – horror of horrors! – a consistency error. But I suspect that this is normal for writers, even those with more professional editors. No matter how many times you read and reread a manuscript, poring over every word of every line of every page until your eyeballs start to bleed (and probably even after that), you are always going to wonder if you could have done better. You’re proud of your work, sure, but that won’t stop you from wondering if you could have phrased something differently or swapped out a word to make a bigger impact or send a stronger message (or a weaker one, if that was your goal).

After a certain point, though, I assume you just have to let go and move on. If you did make a mistake, it’s not the worst thing in the world. Even bestselling authors have an occasional typo in their books! If it happens to you, just chalk it up to experience and try to do better next time. If you spend all your time focusing on all the errors you might have committed, you’ll forget about all the ones you didn’t make, and about the great story you told. Now THAT would be the real mistake.

So, moving forward, I am going to try to take my own advice and hope for the best. If you’re in the same boat as I am (or are feeling similarly uncertain about something in your own life), I’ll leave you with a quote from Maya Angelou, who made this same point much more clearly and succinctly than I ever could:

“Do the best you can until you know better.

Then, when you know better, do better.”

Good luck! And let me know if I made any mistakes!

Posting and Parachutes (My first blog post)

Choosing a topic for my very first blog post was tough. The whole experience reminded me of being back in school, when sometimes (a lot of times…) the most difficult assignments were the ones that started with the teacher saying, “Choose your own topic.” In other words, “Write about whatever you want, I’m not giving you any guidelines.”

No guidelines? Seriously? None at all??

It sounds freeing, in theory, to have no limits, to be able to do anything you can come up with (within reason). But to me, it always seemed scary. Like I was getting thrown into a lake without any swimming lessons, or jumping out of an airplane without having been taught how to deploy the parachute. I always wanted SOME structure, SOME guidelines, SOME simple, arbitrary rules to follow, just so that I could feel more certain that I was on the right track.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that that’s just how writing is. I write novels; it’s my passion, it’s what I was born to do. But does anyone ever tell me how long my novels should be? Or what they should be about? No. And I don’t need them to. I don’t want them to. The trick is just to trust your gut and let the story (or art piece or song or whatever medium you use to channel your own passion) be your guide. Just do what feels right to you, and don’t compromise yourself or your ideas for anyone else, even if you feel like they might give you a bad grade when you’re finished.

This is a tough lesson to learn. I know, because I am still learning it myself. My first book is going to be published in May by an indie publishing company, so I have had to do most of the editing and planning and promoting all by myself and it scares the bejesus out of me! Not a day goes by where I don’t think to myself “Am I doing this right??”

Maybe I am doing it “right,” maybe I’m not. Only time will tell. The important thing is, though, to JUST DO IT ANYWAY. It’s the only way to learn and the only way to grow, both in literature and in life. You would never get anywhere at all if you always had to have someone there, looking over your shoulder, telling you how to do things step by step so you don’t get it wrong. Maybe you will get it wrong. Maybe you won’t. Either way, at least you tried, and at least you could say that you did it on your own terms, not as per someone else’s instructions.

So, the next time you’re wishing you had some more guidance or some more rules or some more structure, just do the best you can and see if it works. Just jump out of that plane. Chances are, you’ll figure out how to work that parachute long before you reach the ground. In fact, I’d bet on it.

 

So, how did I do? Did I get an A?