Janette Rallison's Blog, page 49

The next manuscript status

I finally finished my next manuscript, Hunters and Hunted. I think this is the only book that has taken me over a year to write. It was my default manuscript—meaning, I wrote on it during those rare times when I was in between revision letters or copy edits from two different publishers. (By the way, I'm now writing for another publisher too. Harper bought Time Riders. More on that in a later blog)

So, while I've been waiting for Harper's revision letter, I finished Hunters and Hunted. This was harder than one might imagine because Hunters and Hunted took a ton of research. My main character spends quite a bit of time in Boston—some of the time being pursued by the antagonist, so I had to plot out a course for her using Google street view. I now love Google street view, as it saved me a trip to Boston. (Oh wait, maybe a trip to Boston would have been fun. Dang!)

I'm a little nervous about how readers will react to Hunters and Hunted . It's quite different from my usual romantic comedies. This book isn't a comedy at all. In fact, people are killed by flesh-eating scarabs. (More on why I wrote it, later.)

Here are the first reviews:

My mom: "It was great! I read it twice!" (Of course, one must take into account, that she is my mother and loves everything I do. She also told me I was the prettiest girl in my school.)

My husband:" It was good. I liked it." This as much enthusiasm as he ever musters for any of my books. He generally only reads nonfiction.

Middle Daughter's review (well, at least the review of the last chapter): "FINALLY one of your characters turned away from a kiss. Usually it's, 'I don't want to kiss you but you make me feel wanted!' mwah mwah mwah." (Those are kissy sounds.)

I was actually surprised by Middle Daughter's review. I wanted to say, "My characters aren't like that." But then I thought about it. Maybe they are. I'm not going to analyze what this means about me though, because it might mean that as a teenager I kissed far too many boys far too quickly. And I'll never admit to that.

Now I'm waiting for my agent's review . . .

A fairy good school visit

I did a lot of book events last year. I spoke at three conferences, a book festival, and the ALAN convention in Orlando. I had a blast at all of it, but there is just something extra fun about doing school visits and getting to meet the students who read my books. Here are some pictures of my last school visit of the year at the awesome Sonrise Christian School in California.

All of you guys out there who want to be writers--this is the payback for all of those long days when you don't have time to shower and the even worse days when you get the revision letters and wonder why on earth you keep doing this to yourself when you clearly would be happier as a truck driver. Not that I think that . . . very often . . .

Look, I'm on the sign:
This is a picture librarian Sandi Lehnhard sent me before the visit. It's always a good sign when kids are reading your books before you come to speak to them.

And here is a group of awesome kids who will go far in life. I know this because they already have impeccable taste in literature.

They made a special Fairy Godmother smoothie in my honor. And it was really yummy. It's probably a good thing I don't have access to more of these, or I wouldn't fit into my school-visit-black-pants come next fall.

I keep this fairy wand on my dresser next to my Beanie Baby stork. But then, my dresser is a subject for a whole nother blog. (And yes, I realize that the phrase 'whole nother' is bad grammar. But I refuse to pay attention to the rules of grammar until they make sense. This will include an apology for putting an 'H' in the word 'which' when the word 'sandwich' doesn't have one. Also someone will need to explain why recipe isn't pronounced re-cipe.)

Anyway, it was a good end to the school year.

More Doll Wrecks

Since it's Fathers Day, I could do something on power tools, but no, I'm going to do a blog on children (They make fathers, after all) well, more specifically fake children. Also known as dolls. Those of you who know me, know that I have a doll thing. I'm especially impressed--and horrified by reborn dolls. They're supposed to look lifelike and at any given time there are hundreds on eBay going for hundreds of dollars. Here are some examples of some good ones so you know what they're supposed to look like:


Amazing, huh? Beautiful, right?

I want to hug and coo over these dolls. So you can see why they can go for a lot of money on auction sites. That said, there are a lot of dolls on eBay that just don't seem to capture what reborn dolls are supposed to be. In the constructive criticism of the Cake Wrecks blog, I want to offer a few words of advice to doll painters.

My words for this one are, "No. No. No." What were we going for? Demon child perhaps? Gollum's offspring?


Another word of advice: Blush is nice, but if you use too much of it people will look at your doll and want to call child protective services.

Yeah, that would be too much of the red stuff.

There seems to be a new trend to have baby dolls open-mouthed and crying. This is another place where the words, "No. No. No." come to mind.


Here's another No:


And here's the baby that ate Detroit:


And here's one for every parent who wants their child to grow up to be a circus clown. Or an elf.

Oh, one last word of advice to doll makers: Lips are not optional. Your doll really should have them. I mean, blankets can only hide so much

Well, I bet at this point you're all thinking how beautiful your children are, because they look nothing like these last dolls. So true. Really, reborn dolls offer society a valuable service.

The Land of Happy Teenagers.

Those of you who have teenagers, or work with teenagers, or ever went to high school--I want you to think for a moment what your average group of teenagers look like when they're hanging out. Got an image in your mind?

I currently have three children of the teenage persuasion. At any particular point in time, one is ignoring me, one is rolling his/her eyes, and one is fighting with the other two. Or sleeping. Sometimes they also eat the left over pizza without saving me any.

I've been looking for pictures of teenagers to use for my book trailer for Slayers. I need pictures of teens who look a little suspicious, maybe even a little dangerous.

Shutterstock has approximately 5 gazillion pictures, many of teens, so I didn't think it would be a problem. Here are the sorts of pictures I found that show teens hanging out.


Yeah, that's the sort of thing my kids and their friends do all of the time.

Oh, and here's a typical day at high school.

Yep, that's what high school was like for me.


Where exactly do I send my children to turn them into these happy people photobanks show teens being?

So then I typed in upset teens. The pictures still don't work for the trailer, but I think these three photos could make a good picture book called, One Day You Will Go To Junior High





Yeah, those last three pretty much sum up the teenage years . . .

Finding the perfect fantasy name

Dave Farland, fantasy author extraordinaire, says that authors should never just choose their fantasy names randomly. They need to have resonance. Therefore, to come up with a good fantasy name for your character/place/animal group/whatever-the-heck-you're-naming you need to have a process. Dave suggests listing words that convey the main idea, and then combining them to come up with a new name.

For example, George Lucas may have used the words: death, dearth, and invader to come up with the name: Darth Vader.

JK Rowling probably did something similar when she came up with name Draco Malfoy. Draco means dragon, the foy sorta of sounds like annoy, and Mal in Spanish means bad (and if I weren't so lazy, I'd check to see if the root is actually Latin--after all, we have words like malevolent, malpractice,and Maleficent. Okay, Maleficent is actually the wicked queen in Disney's Sleeping Beauty, but you can see they totally did the same thing to come up with her name. Mal plus magnificent equals Maleficent.)

I was glad to learn this naming trick since I randomly picked several names when I wrote my science fiction novel, Time Riders. Not long ago, I rewrote the book for the national market (I'll hopefully have news about that next week) and I figured I would do the whole naming thing right this time.

I needed a name for a group of thugs who live outside the city and who kill anyone who isn't well armed. Here's how it worked for me:


Outlaws + Gangsters = Outsters . . . Nope. But the name would work for a cool rock band.

Gangsters + Hoodlums = Ganglums . . . Sounds like a gum disease you get if you don't floss.

Gangsters + Robbers = Ganglers . . . Nah,this one sounds like things that dangle in spiderwebs.

Bandits + Robbers = Bandlers . . . This happens when the clarinet section goes bad.

Bandits + Hoodlums = Bandlums . . . Ditto.

Outlaws + horror = Orrers . . . Either people who row boats or a British person swearing.

Weeds + evil = weevils . . . I get these in my flour sometimes, and they are nasty.

Grief + evil + robbers = Greevers . . . Hmm. Didn't James Dashner use this term for his monsters in Maze Runner? I wonder how he came up with the term.

vikings + robbers = Vikers . . . Success. And I'm not just saying this because every other combination was ridiculous or already in a James Dashner novel. I like Vikers. In fact, I like it so much that I already used it in the original version of Time Riders. It was an insult. So basically, yeah, after this whole exercise, I just ended up stealing from myself.

Authors are totally like that.

AZ peeps--free writing workshop and fundraiser

You know how Just One Wish is about a little boy who has cancer? This is one time when I wish my art didn't mirror real life. Adam is a four-year old who is battling leukemia.

So some local authors are putting on a writing workshop and fundraiser for this darling little boy. We'll be talking about setting, dialogue, and plot

When: Thursday June 2nd, 2011 from 2:00 pm until 4:00 pm.

Where: A+ Book Fairs Warehouse in Gilbert, Arizona on 45 E. Sunway Drive.

$1.00 from each book sold by the authors at this event will be given to the Adam McCain Medical Expense Fund.

•Janette Rallison is the award winning author of 17 novels and has sold over a million books. Her novels have been on many reading and state lists including IRA Young Adults' Choices List. Her latest release is My Unfair Godmother. Janette will teach dialogue with a hands-on writing exercise.

•Angela Morrison is the author of Sing Me to Sleep and the Taken by Storm Trilogy. Her newest release is Cayman Summer. She will teach a fun interactive plot exercise where participants create characters and have them interact with each other.

•Lisa Finder is the author of Black Sand and the founder of White Lions Foundation. She will teach a setting exercise using Popsicle sticks.

There will also be some sort of raffle/drawing for books.

Hope to see you there!

Random things I've learned while researching Hunters and Hunted

The cool thing about writing is that I'm always learning something new--whether I want to or not. This is because my characters have much more interesting lives than I do. They travel around, have talents, hobbies, stuff like that.

I'm working on a really cool book called Hunters and Hunted. In it, my character goes to Antarctica, Boston, Egypt, and England. I was actually planning a trip to Egypt, because I've always wanted to go and this seemed like the perfect excuse.

But yeah, now there's all that social unrest.

So once again it's me and a bunch of books and the internet. But here are some cool things I've learned so far:

Ramesses the Great had red hair. How cool is that? He had something in common with Henry the Eighth--besides the fact that they both had a lot of wives. Ramesses had over a hundred children. Henry had what? Just Elizabeth? (I'm not researching the Middle Ages right now, so I don't know.)Still,

You have to fight a lot of wars to be considered "the Great". Ramesses the Second (Of Moses fame) had the title and so did Alexander. Everybody else is just, you know, So-So.

There are approximately a ka-jillion species of beetles on the earth. Some scarabs will fly for up to ten miles to find their favorite kind of poop to eat. The ancient Egyptians thought that all scarabs were male. Can you blame them? I mean, would you expect girl beetles to eat poop? I bet scarabs also have burping contests and scratch themselves in public.

Paul Revere didn't actually ride through the streets of Boston yelling, "The British are coming!" It would have been very foolish if he had, as most of the people at the time considered themselves to be British.

Things I still need to research:

How long Boston blocks are. I'm not sure if they're really short like New York blocks or really long like Arizona ones.

If there are surveillance cameras in the Oxford libraries.

What the security is like at the Great Pyramids (Oh, that's another way you can be great: be bigger than all the other pyramids)and the Valley of the Kings. Do they have security guards patrolling the area?

If you happen to know any of these facts, please let me know.

More Book Trailer Music

It's time to make a book trailer for the next book in the queue. I've spent two days listening to over a hundred and fifty different sound tracks and have learned one very important thing. When you listen non stop to action/adventure soundtracks you lose all objectivity about them.

At first they all sounded too urgent and too noble. They brought to mind Frodo and Aragorn fleeing on horses in Middle Earth. Then I was thinking, no, these are actually all good. So now I'm turning it over to you, my objective blogg fans, to tell me if any of them work.

Slayers isn't one of my usual romantic comedies. True there are some funny parts and my heroine is often snarky, but it's really an adventure. Here's the script for the book trailer thus far:

17 years ago, a dragon keeper secretly brought a pair of dragon eggs through the DC area.

It was a mistake.

Because the dragons emit a pulse that turns certain children into dragon slayers.

Tori doesn't know why she's always had a fascination with dragons. They're not something a socialite, senator's daughter is supposed to be interested in.

But she finally convinces her parents to let her go to Dragon Camp.

She finds a group of teens who are keeping secrets,

and playing games,

and risking their lives to protect DC.

She has to find her power before the dragon finds her.

Slayers

Here are the background music choices:

http://audiojungle.net/item/movie-tra...

I like this one because it feels more like an actual song then just a building crescendo. (But then, maybe I need a building crescendo?)

http://audiojungle.net/item/cinematic...

Although I'm not a fan of anything heavy metal, and routinelly make my eldest son turn it off and then give him lectures on screechy-devil-music, I sorta like the brief switch to heavy metal in this piece. If it was timed right to come in on the secrets/games/saving DC part it would be a nice emphasis.

http://audiojungle.net/item/cinematic...

This one is actually three songs put together, and it is a tribute to my sudden unobjectivity that I'm like, hmmm, maybe that one would work . . . or that one. Or maybe Trailerbook can just mix and match parts of the music to match the words. I really don't know anymore.

So let me know what you think.

And thank you, thank you, for weighing in.

The Whitney Awards 2011

I'm back from a week of school visits, conference, and the Whitney Awards. All in all, it was great, except that--long story involving a car that rearended me--I had to pack with a concussion. This is not an ideal packing method since your brain is spitting out random neurons like a pinwheel in a windstorm instead of telling your hands what to pack. I forgot several things I needed, including my camera. But awesome photographer, Erin Summerril just posted this loser photo.

After every Whitney Award ceremony, while the winners are off basking in their glory, the losers gather up the extra desserts and pose for their own photo. We are sad. Except for Susan Corpany and Jeff Savage who have clearly just keyed the winners' cars.

But you can see that Sarah Eden, Traci Hunter Abramson, James Dashner and I are all feeling the general amount of excitement you get when you lose a Whitney. I especially love the sneer on James's face.

I will post more pictures of the event, just as soon as I can steal them from Erin. (Love yout, girlfriend!)

Winners, Did You Get Your Book?

Okay, that title somehow seems wrong--like I'm dividing people into winners and losers, when clearly you are all winners in life.

That said, I want to make sure that everyone who was picked in my month long book give-away, actually got their book. Since I was traipsing around DC and New York during part of the time, I'm worried that I may have let somebody fall through the cracks. So, if you sent me your address and you never got a book, please let me know.

And not to worry if you didn't win something, because I will be doing another three weeks of book give-aways in November.