Rena Rocford's Blog, page 15

Entertaining bits on the Hugos

Right, so I’ve been in a friendly vote war on a list with my writer buddy @Michelle4Laughs over a list on Listopia keeping track of books eligible to the Hugo awards in 2016. And I’ve received a number of questions about the Hugos and the list, and no, being on it in no way guarantees a nomination. In fact, the likelihood of my book getting nominated is exceptionally slim―but as with all fun things on the internet―there is a slim possibility.
So, the Hugos
Entertainingly, the Hugos are currently a popularity contest where one can BUY the right to vote for not only the nominations, but also the award. In fact, it’s such a scattergun system, that last year, a very small group of people all threw their votes one way and got a whole slate of stories nominated for Hugos, stories that might not have otherwise made it.
This is interesting for a couple of reasons, it literally means that a couple dozen people voting in concert could change the fate of the whole Hugos one of the biggest awards in science fiction and fantasy. In short, it’s slim that a nomination is coming my way, but a concerted effort could, in fact, make it a reality―unlikely as it may be, as happened last year.
I said currently because the Hugos, of all the awards, is a rapidly changing target. It takes two years to change how the voting will be done, and after last year’s debacle―and last year was a debacle―voting is likely to change next year. Another entertaining fact: you have until January 31st to become a voting member of the Hugos! 
So what does this list mean?
Nothing. It means nothing. It’s a voting member’s list modeled after another list, and it does more to collect books than it does to help people connect to them.
That being said, I’m still trying to beat out Michelle Hauck’s Grudging on this list, because, you know, competitive streak!
For the curious, you can find the list here. As of this writing, I’m number 68, so all first page.And again, if you want to buy a vote and nominate my book for the Hugos (voting member is the supporting membership), I wouldn't stop you there either.


      VS. 

On the road again: Part IV of the road to publishing

This is part IV of All Roads Lead to Publishing (maybe). Part I, Part II, and Part III

There I was, part of the blog hop that felt like winning the lottery just to get on the ticket. Everyone was twitterpated about the contest, and by that I mean all the judges were on twitter. I joined twitter on the spot, following their every tweet, but that wasn’t enough to quell my obsession of Who Was Going To Be Picked. I read through every tweet hint, then I read through them all again. Then I read every entry on the whole list, all 200 of them.

When people tell me they have a hard time with writing queries, I tell them to go read as many query contest entries as possible. It definitely helps you get a feel for query writing. The good ones are clear and have a sort of pep to them. The bad ones are awkward and hard to read. I only mention this as part of my road to publishing because this moment, more than any other, was a major marker in my writing. I learned so much just by reading through all the other queries.

But, as had always happened to me, up until that point, other people were getting picked. I quietly sat on the sidelines encouraging my friends, but it was looking pretty grim. I made peace with not getting picked: I had already won because I'd learned so much, and I knew there was a ton of work left on my novel.

Then the unthinkable happened: my story was picked as an alternate by Monica!

I jumped and did the happy dance and laughed because someone else finally said they had seen something in my writing, something that was worthwhile. It was amazing to hear that from someone who wasn't my mother. As part of the contest, she edited my first page and it was a miracle. It was amazing. I'd already learned so much from that contest, and now I had personalized feedback on my writing. Hint: good editing makes you sound more like you. Bad editing makes you sound more like your editor. In the case of Monica, she was a great editor. Her suggestions helped me get the writing out of the way of the story, a gift of craft I have carried through every novel since.

Things went live, and... crickets. I did get a lonely partial request, but nothing like the other amazing writers who were making everything look flawless and amazing. (bonus hint: Don’t compare your journey to anyone else’s; your journey is as unique as you are so don’t get caught up in the “I GOT AN AGENT IN TWO DAYS” hype).

So I started querying the old fashioned way. I got requests here and there, more than previously, but they all ended in no. Sorry, but no. Your writing is great, but it’s me. The story isn’t quite what’s selling now, or my personal favorite “Your pages made me laugh a couple times, but ultimately the story didn’t grab me.” I took all of those rejections and I gave them a home in my heart next to where this novel lived, and―sad to be sure―I moved on to the next story, because I’m a writer and that’s what you do. It’s not about one book. It’s about all the books. It’s the next book. It’s the book after that, and if this wasn’t going to be The One, then I was going to put my best foot forward with my next book.

That’s right, I gave up on this novel not once but twice. On the other hand, I still had a lot to learn. And I’ll be talking about that next time.

Aren't you a little old for insecurities?

It's time for another installment of Insecure Writer's Support Group. If you're so inclined visit the linky page here, and say hi to Ninja Captain Alex (tell him The Doctor sent you). This month's co-hosts are L.G. Keltner, Denise Covey, Sheri Larsen, J.Q. Rose, Chemist Ken, and Michelle Wallace!



I’d like to think that at some point along the journey of my life, I would have outgrown insecurities. It’s not that I ever made it my goal, but when I was a kid, all the adults seemed to have it together. None of them seemed like the world was eating them from the inside out with everything from “will they like my book” to “Oh, god, I hope no one figures out I’m a complete fraud.”
Because of that, I sort of assumed there must be something wrong with me since I continued to feel the insecurities. I thought they were something we would outgrow with age. I’d hoped that at some point I’d “get there,” and I wouldn’t still wonder how long it would take before people realized I was just a sheep in wolf’s clothing. I remember buying my first house and wondering when the people were going to show up and say “Nope, sorry ma’am, only grownups get to do that.”
It’s because I’ve never felt the way my mom looked when I was a kid. She was always so confident and in charge of everything.
Turns out it was all a big fake.
My mom confessed to me how worried she was all the time when we were kids. She told me about how she felt judged by people, how she could never seem to get things right, how she decided that having clean butts was better than having clean clothes on more than one occasion. She worried that she’d be fired from her job. She worried that everything she did would turn out for nothing. She worried about the bills.
And all that time, she swung through life like a wrecking ball, obliterating obstacles dumb enough to get in her way. To give you an example: she once chain-sawed a house in half, loaded it onto two flatbeds, drove it forty miles, poured a foundation around it and rented it out for years and years.
Yeah, she poured the foundation when I was still in a playpen. That’s not the kind of woman you expect to be haggard by self doubt. And yet, she was.
So yeah, I’d hoped to outgrow this self doubt, but the real key is to keep going. You’re the only one who sees the insecurities. The people around you see how you sawed that house in half and put it back together. (And to be honest, sometimes, they're worried you might be looking for something else to cut in half and load onto a truck to get it the heck out of your way)

All Roads might lead to publishing: part III

This is the third installment of All Roads Lead to Publishing, you can check in with Part I and Part II.


After putting away the book that would become Acne, Asthma, And Other Signs You Might Be Half Dragon, I started writing another book. I wrote the book I wanted. It was to purge my demons. It was everything a book isn't supposed to be. It was superheroes and space and aliens and science. It was the "Well, if publishing is going to spit out my book without even reading it because someone else's book sold poorly, then I'm gonna write whatever I want!"

And I wrote the letters out of that book. I loved it. I rewrote parts of it while in the middle of writing it, and it was, beyond a doubt, a revelation. I wrote without thinking about publishing because publishing had already shown me that it wasn't just about my book. It was about the rest of the market. Publishing is a business. Writing is an art. At that moment in my life, I needed the art (hint, I ALWAYS need the art, the business side and I are only default partners, more on that on another day). That book changed my voice. It showed me what writing could be for me.

But as I was finishing my first draft, I heard about an awesome new writing contest modeled after a singing competition: The Writer's Voice, 2012.

The only problem was, a rough draft is a terrible thing to send out into the world of editors and agents. They can normally smell that stuff from a mile away, so I couldn't enter the contest with my most recent manuscript. So I did what any sane writer would do, I dusted off my previous manuscript--after all, I'd only queried two people with it--and I cleaned it up with my new knowledge of my voice. With shaky fingers I entered the widget for the blog hop portion of the contest and crossed my fingers.



to be continued...

Getting what we wished for

Ah, here we are, the holidays**! It’s the time for wishing and hoping and dreaming. And I know what a ton of writers are wishing for: you want to have your books sell like *insert famous author here.* And sometimes we aren’t very good at paying attention to what that wish means.

I’ll admit, this is something I’ve wished for. More than once―okay, I’m human, I wish for this just about every time I pay the bills. But there’s something else that comes with it that is completely glossed over when it comes to writing success. With every person who loves the book, there’s someone else who hates it, and possibly vocally.
There’s a surprising amount of hate in the world of book reviews, and I toggle back and forth about whether it’s a good thing or not, and now we will talk about Twilight. I know about half of you just rolled your eyes. Twilight is a perfect example of a divisive book series. Either you love Twilight, or you hate it. Oddly, I suspect that most of the people who hate it actually hate other things about it than the book itself, but it has, for whatever reason, spawned a large pile of hatred aimed at the book. These come in the guise of book reviews and newspaper articles. These come as ed op pieces decrying the downfall of teenage girls. This hate trickles down and we all sort of shrug and say that it’s normal for a book to have its detractors.
After reading some of the reviews, I wish I could give Stephanie Myers a hug. People are vicious. And when it’s someone big like Twilight, everyone says rude things like “it doesn’t matter because she gets to cry into her bags of money when she goes to sleep at night.”
It’s like people feel it’s okay to be mean and rude because of her success. And this happens to all books.
When you put a book out into the world, you lose a certain ownership of it. You give it to the world with a big bow that basically says “Go ahead world, send me your worst―I dare you.” And the world sends back a smorgasbord of responses. Worst? Yup. Best? Present and accounted for. In the middle? Sure you can have that too. And if you’re the writer, all of it is right in your face. Good, bad, ugly. And the only response you can have is to grin and bear it. Sit back, thank the world in general, and pretend the mean reviews didn’t hurt your feelings. It’s nothing personal. Welcome to publishing! Everyone gets bad reviews.
So, maybe you’re sitting at home, wishing your books could be published, or maybe you’re wishing your books could sell like Stephen King, or Nora Roberts, or Stephanie Myers. Just keep in mind that you should always be careful of what you wish for. Also, get back out there and write! Your next book isn’t going to magically write itself!
Oh, and enjoy the holidays!
**Wait, is this an attack on Christmas? Nope! I know there's more than one super important holiday right about now and it takes too long to list all of them at the beginning of a post! Happy Kwanzaa, Merry Christmas, Blessed Yule, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Years, Merry Krishna! And that's not even close to representative of all the holidays people celebrate this time of year (that doesn't even cover the sampling from the readers of this blog alone), which is so amazing! Feel free to send me whichever holiday greetings are appropriate for the holiday you celebrate!

All roads lead to publishing… sort of (part II)

This is the second installment of how my book got published, and specifically about how I took a pretty circuitous approach to seeing my novel into a book. You can read part I here.
So there I was with my third novel dead in the water (and of course, its two sequels, because if you’re gonna make a rookie mistake, be sure it’s to the tune of 350,000 words!), and no real start on my next project. I had some ideas, but nothing seemed to be sticking. And writing had been SO easy before (turns out, that was just the clichés talking), so I decided that it would be good for me to sit down with one of these elusive, not sticking ideas, and pound out a story.
I told myself this would be “good practice.”
Before anyone gets any thoughts about how this novel was “just for practice,” I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I struggled for the words―the right words―they would come in fits and spurts and then I’d go back through and erase entire chapters for not living up to my expectations. I maybe cried a lot as I wrote this book.
When I finished, I was briefly triumphant, then instantly certain that pretty much all of it had to be rewritten. And that’s when the real work started, but hey, I thought: It’ll be good practice seeing this novel through from start to finish.
So I started in on revising. I rewrote most of the ending. Then, I rewrote most of the beginning. Then I changed most of the words in the middle, polished it up and sent it to an agent who was having a query contest.
I’ve talked before about what she told me during that contest. She told me that my writing was fine, good even, but the problem was that there was another story that was similar enough in concept that had done very poorly in the market place. She said that because another book had done poorly, she wasn’t even interested in mine. I might as well have written a vampire novel.
And so, with a heavy heart and after wasting most of a year on a book that was still not the one, I trunked my novel without sending it out into the world.
Stay tuned for part III

Blitz for Diverging Cadence

Deceptive Cadence (Cadence #1)
by Katie Hamstead
Release Date: June 2015
REUTS Publications

Summary from Goodreads:

Cadence Anderson has the perfect definition of happily ever after . . .

Until she doesn't. A freak earthquake shatters her life as surely as her home, taking away everything she holds dear. She wakes in a hospital to find that her beloved husband and infant daughter have been killed, crushed by the earthquake's wrath. Disoriented, injured, and alone, Cadence refuses to accept the loss. So when a man claiming to be her guardian angel appears and offers her a chance to go back in time to save her family, she doesn't need to give it a second thought. She accepts.

Thrust back eleven years, she now faces the ordeal of high school all over again. But this time, she's armed with all the knowledge of her adult life and the determination to do everything better, from preventing the loss of her best friend to avoiding her original, drama-inducing boyfriends. She's focused solely on Austin, her future husband, and is content to bide her time until she meets him again.

But then James Gordon crosses her path. Cadence wants to remain single, but James has his sights set. He is determined to win her over, and he's very hard to resist. As Cadence starts to develop unwanted feelings for him, she realizes he threatens to disrupt everything, changing the future and distracting her from her original goal. Now, Cadence must choose: deny the unpredictable and exciting path James offers her, or stay true to the life she had and is trying desperately to resurrect. Second chances are more complicated than they seem.

Deceptive Cadence combines the soaring emotion of a heartfelt romance with the innovative storytelling of magical realism, crafting a uniquely moving, intricate tale about love and loss that asks: what would you do if given the chance to right all your wrongs?




Buy Links:Amazon│Barnes & Noble
Diverging Cadence (Cadence #2)by Katie HamsteadRelease Date: August 25th 2015REUTS Publications
Summary from Goodreads:
When Cadence Anderson woke to find her husband and infant daughter had been killed, she thought her life was over. Instead, she was offered a second chance and sent back in time to do it all again. 
She’s made the most of this opportunity, repairing her relationship with the best friend she lost the first time, avoiding the romantic mistakes she made originally, and even bringing her family closer together. But she’s also done something she wasn’t planning on—she’s fallen in love with someone other than her future husband.

Stepping onto a plane and flying across country to attend university is the hardest decision she’s had to make. But unless she follows through with it, her future with Austin might never happen. And what becomes of her beautiful baby if she stays with James, the man she was never supposed to love?

The only thing she knows for certain is that she has to see Austin again, and she’s intent on reliving that part of her previous life exactly like she did the first time. Even if that means she has to lie to James to do it. Because, deep down, she can’t quite bring herself to let him go. 

Now, past and future are about to collide, and Cadence has to make her final choice—follow the uncertain path of a life with James, or the one she came back to save . . . with Austin. 

In this emotional conclusion to the story that began in Deceptive Cadence, relationships will be tested, identities revealed, and the past will overshadow the future, putting the finishing touches on an unforgettable tale of courage, sacrifice, and, above all, love.


Buy Links:Amazon│Barnes & Noble
Book Trailer:


About the Author
Born and raised in Australia, Katie's early years of day dreaming in the "bush", and having her father tell her wild bedtime stories, inspired her passion for writing.
After graduating High School, she became a foreign exchange student where she met a young man who several years later she married. Now she lives in Arizona with her husband, daughter and their dog.
She has a diploma in travel and tourism which helps inspire her writing.
When her debut novel, Kiya: Hope of the Pharaoh, climbed into bestselling status, she believed she was onto something, and now has a slew of novels now available, and is published through Curiosity Quills Press, Soul Mate Publishing, and REUTS Publishing.
Katie loves to out sing her friends and family, play sports, and be a good wife and mother. She now works as an Acquisitions Editor to help support her family. She loves to write, and takes the few spare moments in her day to work on her novels.
Author Links:      

GIVEAWAY:a Rafflecopter giveaway

Insecure just talking about myself

It's that time again, so close the circle and join with the ninja captain, Alex and his cohosts, Sandra Hoover, Mark Koopmans, Doreen McGettigan, Megan Morgan, and Melodie Campbell as we take another journey through the lands of insecurity and writing:

 
One thing about self promotion: you talk about yourself a lot. Which sometimes is good, and sometimes, well, it gets uncomfortable. It’s not that I don’t want people to go out and buy the book. It’s not that I don’t think the book is worth talking about or not worth getting attention. But if it’s not the book, then what is it?
Which sort of led me to a startling realization:
It’s me. I’m the one I don’t think is really worthy of being talked about. The whole insecurity around my self-promotion is that I feel like I shouldn’t be hogging all that cyber space and that I might really need to keep my mouth shut and listen to other people. What gives me the right to take up all that time and space with something “Oh look at me, I wrote a book and published it! Aren’t I a super special snowflake?”
Of course, it is hard to write. Publishing is a major milestone in any writer’s life, so why am I sort of hesitant to take up that lime light and pour it over myself? I’ve never had a hard time taking up all the space in any room I was in, but I’ve never asked people to pay for something either. I’ve never really worked retail or marketing. I’ve always been the person with the zingers or the funny story. I’ve never been the person who stands up front and says “This is awesome and you should all buy it. I can tell you that it’s awesome because I wrote, so I am completely unbiased.” Despite living my whole social media career as a wallflower I’ve been tweeting, facebooking, and generally sending spam into the world in the hopes that someone will see it and connect with my book.
This makes my tummy turn, this marketing, and it makes me doubt myself and my ability. So yup, that’s what I’m insecure about. How do you handle the unhappy feels that come with not just being in the spot light but gobbling up all of it (and hoping people buy your book)?

w00t! Black Friday from home, shopping I can get behind!

Check it out! Acne, Asthma, And Other Signs You Might B e Half Dragon is on sale for 99 cents today!

It's here!

This is one of those posts that writers dream about writing:
My book published today.
Like Holy Cow, didn’t someone know they were supposed to shut the door before I got out?
Well, it’s too late. My book is out, and you can buy it here!
Need a little more convincing? How about this awesome cover?


Oh yeah, that’s amazing! (Thanks again to Amalia, her stuff is Ah-Maz-ING!)
And here’s the back cover for those still in need of convincing!


Allyson fights acne, not trolls. As an inhaler-carrying member of the asthma society, she just wants to meet the father who turned her mother into a paranoid, move-across-the-nation freak. Now she’s trying to fit in at yet another school, but for the first time in her life, she has a best friend, Beth. When Allyson accidentally spits fire at kidnappers in the mall, she realizes why her father isn’t in the picture: she’s half dragon. Her acne? Emerging scales. Her asthma? The side effects of her dragon’s fire breath. Instead of freaking out, unflappable Beth reveals her own troll heritage and explains how things work with the supernatural creatures hiding within the modern world of smartphones and skyscrapers.
When trolls kidnap a unicorn, Beth gets blamed. Allyson is determined to prove Beth’s innocence and keep her friend off the unicorn chopping block. When they start looking for the kidnappers, they get a call from the last person they expect: Allyson’s father. He tries to warn them off, but he’s been put under a spell by the kidnappers to keep the victims from escaping. Nothing short of death can stop him. Now Allyson must choose between killing the father she’s always dreamed of, or letting her best friend die for a crime she didn’t commit.


I'll be having a Facebook party here later today (between 1 and 5 Pacific time).  Stop by and say "Hi!"