Janette Rallison's Blog, page 19

AZ peeps, Yallapalooza is Sat 23 at 4pm

Want a way to make your Saturday cooler? Look no further.

4pm on Saturday, January 23, Changing Hands Bookstore presents YAllapalooza 2016, a literary extravaganza for tween and teen readers. Here’s your chance to mix and mingle with your favorite YA authors, get signed books, enjoy pizza, and more!

Attending Authors: Arwen Elys Dayton, Gavriel Savit, Jaleigh Johnson, Amy K. Nichols, Austin Aslan, Shannon Messenger, Amy Fellner Dominy, Janette Rallison, Shonna Slayton, Tom Leveen, and Janni Lee Simner

I’ll be there signing Son of War, Daughter of Chaos and My Fairly Dangerous Godmother.  Hope to see you!

Kindle Scout is publishing The Girl Who Heard Demons

So the good news is that I don’t have to hunt down everyone who nominated the book and send them a file of the story. Yay for that afternoon that just freed up!

The bad news is that in Kindle Scout’s instructions they told me to read through the story again and make sure all of the T’s are crossed and I’s are dotted.

This is not a surprise. I have to reread and revise a manuscript a dozen times before it’s published. But I am horrible at catching grammar mistakes. (I already had a copy editor go over the book, but one copy editor can’t catch everything, and besides, I always make changes to the manuscript after the copy editor’s revisions.) Also, I’ve already read through the story enough times that I never want to read through it again. (I always get to this point with a book, and it usually happens when there are about two more passes to go.)

Sigh. I’m rereading through Slayers 3 right now and am at page 145 out of about 300 and hoping I’ll be done soon so I can send it off to beta readers.

Forget buying a vowel, Vanna. Where can I buy some more time?

Slayers 3 update

So, the book is nearing 600 pages, so I decided to break it up into two books. This is both good news and bad news. The good news is that instead of waiting for the entire book to be edited, polished, and revised, you’re only going to have to wait for the first 300 pages to be all that, and then the second part will be out a couple of months afterwards.

And actually, I’m debating putting up a chapter or two a week on wattpad (or here) while I’m getting it edited. That way I could get more reader feedback.

What are your thoughts on that? Would you rather have the whole finished 300 pages, or would you rather read the rougher draft and give input?

Free ebooks

And if you haven’t voted for The Girl Who Heard Demons, and would like to read it for free, you can nominate the book at this link: The Girl Who Heard Demons

To access the free ebooks on Amazon, follow these links–and please review them!

A Longtime (and at one point illegal) Crush

Son of War, Daughter of Chaos

My Fairly Dangerous Godmother

Masquerade  (will be free on the 9th and 10th. I’m not sure why it didn’t work for the 8th.)

My Double Life

Blue Eyes and Other Teenage Hazards

All I really need to know, I learned from movies

As I walked out of the movie theater last week, I thought about all the important life facts movies teach us, and wanted to share a few of them.

1)  Important people frequently fall to their death.

I’m not sure why this happens. At first I thought it was simply a convenient way for villains to die without heros having to kill them (Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Enchanted,) but after watching a particular movie–which I will not name, lest I spoil it for someone–I realized falling is a popular way for anyone who is important to die. Your take away from this lesson should be: if you are an important person, you should not stand on high surfaces.

2) Sometimes people come back from the dead.

You wouldn’t think this would happen very often, but Hollywood begs to differ. And it’s not just the villains who are resurrected in sequels to wreck havoc again. No, heroes are almost as likely to cheat death. Examples include Baloo from The Jungle Book, Jack Sparrow in At World’s End, Gandolf in Lord of the Rings, Sherlock in the TV BBC series (Hey, I only faked my death–really convincingly, and for no apparent reason didn’t tell Watson.) Spock in Star Trek III, and maybe Kirk in the last Star Trek movie . . . did he quasi die? I can’t actually remember, because the plot device is used so often it’s sometimes hard to keep track of the undead. Anyway, I’m actually hoping that the directors of the sequel to the movie I just watched un-kill someone. I mean, some characters should be immortal. Period.

3) Villains are ugly.

I think the logic behind this plot device is that when villains are ugly, it’s even easier to dislike them. A few examples off the top of my head are: Voldermort, Peter Lorre, Cruella De Vil, Captain Hook, Davy Jones, (The one from Pirates of the Caribbean, not to be confused with Davy Jones from the Monkees, who was adorable.) the wicked witch of the west, Gollum, Jafar, and all of Batman’s creepy looking nemeses.

Here’s the thing, you’ve got to feel sorry for ugly people for constantly being cast as evil bad guys. If movies always cast overweight people, or short people, or people of a certain race or gender as villains–there would be a public outcry.

Sorry, ugly people, you have no voice. No one cares if your feelings are hurt.

Do ugly people really even have a choice but to turn villainous? I think not.

4) Heroes and heroines are hot.

Do I even have to make a list for this one? Just pick a movie and look at the leads. I mean, I’m not complaining. I don’t mind watching Chris Hemsworth, or Harrison Ford, or any of the actors who played Superman. (I would mention attractive actresses here, but my mind is stuck on Chris Hemsworth . . .)

5) Heroes’ bodies are almost indestructible.

A hero can plunge over a waterfall with nothing to help him survive the fall except his plucky attitude and an inhaler, and he’ll walk away just fine. If I sleep wrong on my bed, I’ll favor my shoulder all day, but you could shoot a hero several times, and he’d still have the energy to jump through a roof and knock out several bad guys.

6) People can kill without experiencing any emotional trauma.

In fact, the really good heroes can kill people and carry on conversations filled with witty banter. I can barely use the speech to text function on my phone without freezing up, muttering the wrong thing, and in general sounding inebriated, but heroes have the where-with-all to make light of death. This may be because they know that sometimes people come back from the dead.

7) Bad guys will frequently try to kill you in the least logical manner.

This often involves a villain leaving you for dead before you’ve actually died–one can only assume in order to give you a chance to escape. Or just as frequently–even though the villain has a gun and presumably knows how to use it–he will come close enough to you to engage in a hand to hand fight.

8) Villains will tell you all about their evil plots before they try to kill you.

You wouldn’t think bad guys would feel the need for a lot of explanatory chit chat. I can barely get my sons to tell me how their day was, but villains will tell you everything, smugly delaying your final demise. Despite what your English told you about hubris, it turns out that gloating is the fatal flaw that does in most characters.

9) Happily ever after only lasts until the next movie.

You thought your favorite characters were fine, happy, living fulfilling lives. Nope. Not if there’s money to be made in a sequel. Then they’ll come on screen and show you their sadly broken lives.

Not that I’m talking about a particular movie or anything.

(But I’m hoping the next movie will return those characters to their previously happy, shining state. And that there was one of those switched at birth things going on and (Spoiler alert!) Poe and Rey are actually Han and Leia’s children instead of Kylo Ren. Hey, these are the writers that bring people back from the dead. It could happen.)

Just One Wish ebook .99

While I’m promoting the audiobook for the next few days, I’m putting the ebook on sale, so if you haven’t picked up a copy of Just One Wish, here’s your opportunity. It’s the only book I’ve written that made me cry every time I did a draft. Every time. I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing, but I can tell you I don’t want to write another cancer book.

You can buy it here: Just One Wish Sale . 99

Read The Girl Who Heard Demons for free!

I’m trying out Kindle Scout for my next book, The Girl Who Heard Demons. What this means is that I uploaded the book to this link: vote here

They put up the first fifty pages or so, and people vote for the three books they like best (in a thirty day time period.) If a book you nominate “wins” and Amazon gives the book a publishing contract, then everyone who nominated the book gets a free ebook sent to them.

But I’ll do one better; if you nominate the book (and tell me so in the comments) and it doesn’t win, I’ll send you a pdf anyway (and maybe a mobi if I can ever get my husband to convert my files.)

Here’s the teaser:

Adelle is determined that the people at her new high school won’t learn her secret–she can hear demons. But when she overhears some celebrating the school quarterback’s upcoming death, she knows she has to do something to prevent it from happening. Handsome, popular Levi doesn’t appreciate her self-appointed role of guardian angel. And while she’s keeping him safe, she has to try and keep her heart safe too.

 

win a free audiobook

I’m attempting to run an audio book giveaway using rafflecopter. I’m not sure how it will turn out as I suspect rafflecopter may in fact be an evil entity. Every time I tried to make it do something, it quoted me an expensive monthly price. Sooo we’ll just see if the free version works. Subscribe to my newsletter and leave me a comment. That way even if rafflecopter doesn’t work, I’ll still be able to choose a winner. Oh, also the audio book comes from audible so you either need to have an account, or be willing to sign up for one to get the book. (It’s free and you can always quit afterwards, although they give you a free book for signing up, so hey, you would get two free books which means you could get one of my other audio books too. And anyone who has actually read this far–if you don’t have an audible account, you can always sign up and get this book free regardless if you win or not.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Just One Wish audio book now available!

If you’re like me and only have limited time to read (but still have to do things like drive, do housework, and exercise–or just get ready in the morning) audio books are your best friend. And now Just One Wish is available as an audio book on Amazon and Audible.

Here’s the link: http://www.amazon.com/Just-One-Wish/dp/B0191WTCZG/ref=sr_1_1_twi_audd_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449806038&sr=1-1&keywords=just+one+wish

Enjoy!

Still Almost There

I’m still holding the throttle of my little ship while the Death Star tries to shoot me out of the sky. Okay, not really. It’s just 4:45 in the morning and I’ve almost finished a round of revisions and words are no longer making sense.

So here’s the update. Just One Wish (read by the very talented Heather Masters) is done and I’m waiting for Audible to review it and put it up for sale. Should be up before Christmas. I’m going through the recording of My Fairly Dangerous Godmother for the second time to check for problems and it should be up in January.

I need to read over The Girl Who Heard Demons one last time and I’m looking into putting it up with Kindle Scout–which would mean people would get to read it for free for the first 30 days, which seems cool. Keep tuned for info.

My editor is sending me galleys (the last round to check for typos before a book comes out) of The Wrong Side of Magic, and then–finally–I will finish writing the climax scene of Slayers three.

Yeah, part of me doesn’t believe it will ever happen either. But, you know, that’s the plan anyway.