Jennifer Echols's Blog, page 5

Keep writing!

I love to hear from readers, and one very kind thing they tend to tell me is, "Keep writing!" Or they ask me, "Do you have another book coming out? Are you writing a new book now?"

A year ago today, and any time before that, I would have answered these questions with no sarcasm. I might have said yes, I have another book coming out in about a year, and I am working on the revision. I might have said no, I do not have another book scheduled, but I am writing anyway, and the book I am working on might or might not sell. (Since the time I first sold a book in 2005, I have completed two manuscripts and countless partial manuscripts that didn't sell.) I spent many years mainly working as a copyeditor and writing books on the side, because I hadn't sold enough books to make a living or fill my workday.

But now when people ask me these questions, my first instinct is to laugh and say WELL YEAH in the tone of voice I would use if I had just totaled my car and you asked me if I was having engine trouble. My critique partner Victoria Dahl recently wrote four books in a year. My friend Christy Reece , who lives here in Birmingham, regularly has three books out in three consecutive months. Both authors have despaired to me about their schedules, because they are sometimes required to write one book while simultaneously revising a second and proofing a third. It may sound like hell, but I always wanted a schedule like that.

And finally, here I am. I'm expecting finished copies of The One That I Want to land on my doorstep any second so I can package them up and send them to book bloggers. The copyedit of Such a Rush was supposed to arrive last Wednesday, so I am suffering the sort of fatigue you feel when you have been poised and ready for something for forty-eight hours without it happening. I need to be writing my adult romance, Star Crossed, which I started during NaNoWriMo , and which is due to my editor on March 1.

And yet I'm writing a proposal for Simon Pulse instead, hoping to sell them some more romantic comedies. This idea is really adorable, y'all, but there are a couple of problems. One is that I can't figure out the deal with the heroine's current boyfriend, which is germane to the whole plot. (I am in a constant state of despair over one detail or another of a book; ask me at lunch and will have figured out the boyfriend and forgotten that he was ever an issue but there will be a new plot crisis looming. That is how I roll.) The other problem is that my proposals reek. I honestly don't know where a book is going until I get there, so my proposals sound like I am phoning them in. My son is a huge reader, and I often ask him if the book he's reading is good. He always says, "I don't know, because I haven't finished." I feel that way about writing.

So I am in a state of despair, confusion, and anticipation today. I am thrilled about all of it. And as a little homage to the jobs I held before this one, copyediting and writing articles on subjects that didn't particularly interest me, I leave you with a link to a hilarious 14-minute Moth story (I waxed poetic about the glory of The Moth last week here ) by New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell that sums up my love for and frustration with those jobs: "Perverse and Often Baffling."

 

The Girlfriends' Cyber Circuit presents Lucienne Diver!

The Girlfriends' Cyber Circuit is a web ring of YA authors. Check these posts for the latest releases!

FANGTASTIC
by Lucienne Diver

What do you wear to face down a cadre of killer kids?

Gina Covello would rather be working on her manicure than missions for the Feds' paranormal unit to which she's been recruited. That changes when a group of killer kids takes out a family in the sunshine state and disappearances begin to plague the lifestylers who only play at the kind of existence our fanged fashionista leads. She and her crew are sent undercover into the vampire clubs…which turn out to be run by real vampires. While Gina's BFF Marcy hangs with the steampunk-styled Burgess Brigade that seems to have spawned the killer kids, Gina herself is supposed to get in good with the fanged fiends behind the scenes, even to the point of playing double-agent, offering to hand over her powerful boyfriend Bobby. Her playacting threatens to become a bit too real when she discovers things about her spy handlers that make her wonder whether she's truly on the right side of the battle between Feds and fangs.

Jenn: What's your favorite gizmo advertising your book?

Lucienne: My Vamped series music video! Also, I've made the MP3 available for fans to download free on my website.

Jenn: How does this book fit in with your others? Is it part of a series, unrelated but the same sort of book, or a real departure?

Lucienne: This is the third book in the Vamped series, but each of the books can be read as a stand-alone, because each takes my fanged fashionista and her friends to another place and another mystery or undercover assignment. For instance, the first novel, Vamped, was set in the made-up town of Mozulla, Ohio. The second, Revamped, takes place in my old hometown of Wappingers Falls, New York and features a cameo from the haunted mansion where my husband and I met. Fangtastic takes place in the sunshine state, a singularly unhealthy place for the undead.

Jenn: What's the weirdest thing you were doing or the weirdest place you were when you came up with part of this book?

Lucienne: Wow, I'd have to think about that. I get a lot of my ideas in the shower or while driving in the car, two places where I'm ill equipped to write anything down, of course! Mostly, though, I was inspired by the eclectic people in the club on which I based The Tower, which in Fangtastic is run by true-vamps to take the money of the lifestylers who call it home.

Jenn: What good books have you read lately?

Lucienne: In young adult, I'm a huge fan of the Morganville Vampires series by Rachel Caine; the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins; the Dark Elite series by Chloe Neill; anything by Rosemary Clement-Moore--

Jenn, interrupting: WOO-HOO YAY ROSEMARY CLEMENT-MOORE!

Lucienne: --Legacy, a debut YA novel by Molly Cochran; Subject Seven by James A. Moore, the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. I could go on practically forever....

Jenn: What's next for you?

Lucienne: Thanks for asking! The fourth book in the series, Fangtabulous, will be out in January 2013. In the meantime, I've got an adult series of urban fantasy novels, the Latter-Day Olympians, begun. The first novel, Bad Blood, is out in digital and will be out in print from Samhain on May 1st. Long and Short Reviews called it "a clever mix of Janet Evanovich and Rick Riordan," which has to be my favorite pull quote ever, since these are two of my favorite authors. I'm two-thirds of the way through writing the sequel, Crazy in the Blood, which will be out later in the year.

Thanks Lucienne! Everyone be sure to visit Lucienne's blog for a chance to win a Kindle!

How to run for four hours without really noticing

I've blogged a lot over the years about writing and running. I started running seriously to train for my first 10K at the end of 2005, exactly the time I was writing Going Too Far--yes, that's why Meg is a runner, and yes, the park where I ran was decorated in tiles with the handprints of schoolchildren who were no longer children.

Running, even with music, makes me think. I'm so grateful that many of the plot twists and characters I've invented over the years came to me on a run. But eventually, if I run long enough, running is just running, and then I start to have disturbing metathoughts about my writing career, which makes me want to stop running and walk. Selling a novel is almost impossible. Maintaining a career as a novelist is harder still, if you think about it.

So I try not to think about it and just run. Writing a hundred novels, selling them all, and pleasing everyone may be impossible, but all I have to do right this second is write a proposal for Simon Pulse. Running a long way may be impossible, but all I have to do right now is put one foot in front of the other. A career in writing, even constructing a single worthy novel, isn't a sprint but a marathon. Something about that metaphor has kept me writing and running for another six years.

And now, in 2012, I have two and a half novels to write and a marathon to run. After finishing my first three half marathons last year, I have signed up for the Mercedes Marathon on February 12. It is hard. It's going to take me more than five hours, but I am going to make it.

Here's how. Thoughts of my books can get me through a three-mile run. Depressing metathoughts about my career can take me to eight. But last Sunday, faced with a 19-mile run, and having completely depleted the new alt-rock available on iTunes, I turned to The Moth .

I have blogged about The Moth before, too. It's a storytelling show originally based in New York, but now in many cities. My best friend from high school in a small town in Alabama, Catherine Burns, is the artistic director. She's helped them improve and expand to the point that they now have a radio show on NPR, The Moth Radio Hour, for which they won a Peabody Award recently. For Christmas Catherine gave me volumes 11 through 20 of The Moth Greatest Hits. For my 19-mile, 4-hour run, I listened to story after wonderful story. I always love hearing The Moth--better yet, the one time I was able to see it in person--but 4 hours of it is better still. The underlying theme is the vast variety of human experience, even humans who are all living in New York at the moment, and the empathy and kindness at their core.

If you're interested, here's Edgar Oliver, a legendary New York playwright who is a recurring character on the show Oddities on the Science Channel (and, after hearing him tell this story at a Moth traveling show in Atlanta, I met him again at Catherine's wedding, which makes him the most famous person I know):



Here is Neil Gaiman, in case you wanted some Neil Gaiman--and another thing that struck me about listening to a lot of Moth stories at once is how many of them have their background or are actually set when the storytellers are teenagers. As adults we discount the teenage years as frivolous and meaningless. As storytellers we know how formative and important they are.



Here's one of my favorites, which I've fawned over before, Steve from Blue's Clues.



A woman with cerebral palsy recounts her first romantic encounter.



This one starts slowly and ends with a bang.



The Moth's founder, George Dawes Green, tells the story of his family's antebellum mansion.



I was very affected by this story about parenting a 12-year-old in the age of texting, because my own son is 10.



Now, for this one, I did stop running because I was choking to death laughing so hard, and people around me thought I was in distress.



I'm posting this info as an aide to you if you're stuck at home or in the car or running 19 miles and need some great entertainment. You can order CDs from The Moth and download lots of these stories as podcasts from iTunes etc.

But I also wanted to say publicly how proud I am of my brilliant friend Catherine, who had the strength and courage it takes to pursue a career in the creative arts. It ain't easy. It's a marathon.

My big week!

My week started with a big family gathering, where I took the opportunity to tell my dad and my brother, both pilots, about how I had crashed an airplane in Such a Rush, just to make sure I'd gotten my facts straight, and they both said, "You can't do that." My dad proceeded to look up exactly why I couldn't do that and show it to me. My brother, on the other hand, said, "Here is what you could do instead." My dad wants to help, but my brother is someone I can always count on not just to give me information for writing a book but to help me get where I need to go in a book. I can say, "The crash needs to last longer than that," and my dad will say, "Sorry, but the crash won't last that long," and my brother will say, "Here is what could happen that would make it longer." The difference, plain and simple, is that my brother has always been a voracious reader of fiction, and my dad does not read fiction because it's not real and is therefore a waste of time.

They are still helping me work out the details. However, I can tell my brother is way overdue for writing his own book. First he was trying to get me to crash the plane by having the advertising banner towed by one plane wrap around the engine of another. I told him THIS IS NOT A ROMANTIC COMEDY and we are trying to crash the plane in a dramatic way. I really work hard to keep the comedy quirkiness out of my dramas so they don't lapse into silliness, ruining the tension. I learned this lesson when I reluctantly took all the llamas out of Forget You. I thought my brother understood me on this point, but then he tried to get me to crash the plane into an alligator farm that houses the world's longest alligator in captivity. I just smiled because he had been helping me a few minutes before, but I wanted to tell him that he was on crack.

After the family visit, my husband and I got away for a few days in Puerto Rico! The island was beautiful, the culture was fascinating, and the people were nothing but nice. There is definitely a return trip and a novel set in Puerto Rico at some point in my future.

While I was gone, Winter's Kiss appeared in stores, and Smitten With Reading posted a very kind review. I am still tired from my whirlwind mailing of copies to book bloggers, but I'm trying to get my second wind, because I expect copies of The One That I Want any day now in advance of the publication of the paperback on February 7. Stuck in YA Books has published a lovely review of the e-book version.

I got back to work yesterday and hit the ground running. I'm writing a proposal, I'm taking over as webmistress for Southern Magic from the lovely and brilliant Carla Swafford , and I had a conference call with my editor and the art director about the cover of Such a Rush. This is my hardcover debut on July 10 and it's a huge honking book, so we are trying to get the cover exactly right. It's going to be beautiful. I will be able to show you soon. And in the next few days, I'll be concentrating on the copyedit of the book, changing the Grumman to a Stearman that hits a tree instead of power line (I think), and very purposefully avoiding all mentions of alligators.

 

The Girlfriends' Cyber Circuit presents Eileen Cook!

The Girlfriends' Cyber Circuit is a web ring of YA authors. Check these posts for the latest releases!

Unraveling Isobel

Isobel's life is falling apart. Her mom just married some guy she met on the internet only three months before, and is moving them to his sprawling, gothic mansion off the coast of nowhere. Goodbye, best friend. Goodbye, social life. Hello, icky new stepfather, crunchy granola town, and unbelievably good-looking, officially off-limits stepbrother.

But on her first night in her new home, Isobel starts to fear that it isn't only her life that's unraveling—her sanity might be giving way too. Because either Isobel is losing her mind, just like her artist father did before her, or she's seeing ghosts. Either way, Isobel's fast on her way to being the talk of the town for all the wrong reasons.

Jenn: How does this book fit in with your others? Is it part of a series, unrelated but the same sort of book, or a real departure?

Eileen: Unraveling Isobel is a stand alone book. I love series, but I also like stand alones. There is something very satisfying about reading a book and having it come to an end versus having to wait to read the next.

Jenn: AMEN SISTER. Oh...did I say that out loud? I beg your pardon.

Eileen: (Patience is not my virtue.)

Jenn: (Mine neither.)

Eileen: The biggest change for me with this book is that it has paranormal elements. Isobel isn't sure if she is seeing a ghost, if she's going crazy, or if her new step dad is trying to make everyone think she's crazy so he can get rid of her. I didn't set out to write a paranormal book, the story came to me this way. I've always loved gothic type novels with creepy houses, family secrets and the potential for a ghost.

Jenn: What's the weirdest thing you were doing or the weirdest place you were when you came up with part of this book?

Eileen: When I'm writing it seems like I'm thinking about the book all the time. I might be anywhere from a hockey game, to the bathtub, to a restaurant and some corner of my brain is still thinking about the story. I can clearly remember being on a car trip with my husband and talking about the book. He mentioned that he had a dream once where he saw someone reflected in a mirror behind him, but when he turned around the no one was there, but the image was burned into the silver backing of the mirror. I used that idea in part of the book because it struck me as so creepy.

Jenn: What good books have you read lately?

Eileen: I loved The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson and Don't Breathe a Word by Jennifer McMahon.

Jenn: What's next for you?

Eileen: I am working on a book that we're currently calling Shady Sadie (stay tuned I suspect the title will change!). It's the story of Sadie, who is a teenage con artist. When she realizes that she looks like an age enhanced photo of a missing child she decides to pull the ultimate con… until she begins to suspect she may actually be the missing child.

Thanks for visiting with us, Eileen! For the latest on Eileen's books, check out her web site at eileencook.com.

Hey, look what I got!

Winter's Kiss will be in stores on January 3, but I had no idea Simon & Schuster was going to send me a big honking box of them. Clearly I have not been reading my contract.

I'm going to send one to everybody who signed up for the drawing when I thought I had only 1 copy to give away. After that, I will send them to other book bloggers until I run out. If you want one, e-mail me at echolsjenn at yahoo dot com with your blog addy and your mailing addy.

But listen, you have to do this now. First come, first serve, AND my brother is coming down. I am not messing with work stuff after tomorrow. I am serious this time.

To recap: Winter's Kiss is an anthology that contains two previously published Simon Pulse Romantic Comedies: The Twelve Dates of Christmas by Cathy Hapka and The Ex Games by moi. A synopsis of The Ex Games and all the ordering info for Winter's Kiss are here . If you'd rather have The Ex Games by itself, you can still order it that way here .

Updated to add: All the copies are now spoken for. Thanks, you guys, for your kind requests. You're still welcome to e-mail me about copies of The One That I Want or ARCs of Such a Rush, and I'll put you on those lists.

Some lovely holiday surprises...

As you know, The One That I Want won't be out in paperback until February 7, but it's already available as an e-book. I wasn't given advance copies to send out, but several more book bloggers have posted very kind reviews. Read Sam, Read! says "the resolution to the plot was awesomeawesomeawesome--everything happened just the way I wanted it to, plus there were a ton of moments where I had to book down to squeal." Squealing is good. And the chicks at Rather Be Reading have declared this "Jennifer Echols week." I thought I was the only one who did that. You must check out their adorable review of The One That I Want with Estelle's majorette pictures, and their review of Going Too Far says Magan "never wanted the book to end!" Warms my heart.

I've also posted a little review of my own. Over on Kiss and Tell YA , I've written a guest blog about the magical book that made me want to be a writer.

As for my other book coming out in 2012, Such a Rush...well, that's what I'm revising. Today! And tomorrow! And Christmas! And Monday! It's due on Tuesday morning, and since I have it on the brain and several of you have asked me for a description, I thought I'd post the synopsis.

* * *

Such a Rush

A sexy and poignant romantic tale of a young daredevil pilot caught between two brothers.

High school senior Leah Jones loves nothing more than flying. While she's in the air, it's easy to forget life with her absentee mother at the low-rent end of a South Carolina beach town. When her flight instructor, Mr. Hall, hires her to fly for his banner advertising business, she sees it as her ticket out of the trailer park. And when he dies suddenly, she's afraid her flying career is gone forever.

But Mr. Hall's teenage sons, golden boy Alec and adrenaline junkie Grayson, are determined to keep the banner planes flying. Though Leah has crushed on Grayson for years, she's leery of getting involved in what now seems like a doomed business--until Grayson betrays her by digging up her most damning secret. Holding it over her head, he forces her to fly for secret reasons of his own, reasons involving Alec. Now Leah finds herself drawn into a battle between brothers--and the consequences could be deadly.

* * *

That's the synopsis I wrote, anyway. The publisher always takes what I write and gussies it up for the back of the book. We'll know soon, because they're re-shooting the cover photo in the next few weeks. The copyedits and review copies will come soon after that, and the ball will be rolling.

Have a wonderful holiday, everyone, and think of me sneaking a few pages of revision between courses of homemade Thai food for Christmas dinner.

The Girlfriends' Cyber Circuit presents Laurie Stolarz!

The Girlfriends' Cyber Circuit is a web ring of YA authors. Check these posts for the latest releases!

DEADLY LITTLE VOICES

Camelia Hammond thought her powers of psychometry gave her only the ability to sense the future through touch. But now she's started to hear voices. Cruel voices. Berating her, telling her how ugly she is, that she has no talent, and that she'd be better off dead. Camelia is terrified for her mental stability, especially since her deranged aunt with a suicidal history, has just moved into the house. As if all of that weren't torturing enough, Camelia's ex-boyfriend, Ben, for whom she still harbors feelings and who has similar psychometric abilities, has started seeing someone else. Even her closest friends, Kimmie and Wes, are unsure how to handle her erratic behavior.

With the line between reality and dream consistently blurred, Camelia turns to pottery to get a grip on her emotions. She begins sculpting a figure skater, only to receive frightening premonitions that someone's in danger. But who is the intended victim? And how can Camelia help that person when she's on the brink of losing her own sanity?

Jenn: What's your favorite gizmo advertising your book?

Laurie: I love book trailers. Here are a few from this series:

DEADLY LITTLE SECRET

DEADLY LITTLE LIES

DEADLY LITTLE GAMES

Jenn: How does this book fit in with your others? Is it part of a series, unrelated but the same sort of book, or a real departure?

Laurie: This is the fourth book in the Touch series.

Jenn: What's the weirdest thing you were doing or the weirdest place you were when you came up with part of this book?

Laurie: Sitting in the dentist's chair, getting my tooth drilled.

Jenn: What good books have you read lately?

Laurie: I just read Still Missing by Chevy Stevens. I couldn't put it down.

Jenn: What's next for you?

Laurie: Deadly Little Lessons, the fifth and final book in the Touch series, will be out next fall. I'm currently working on the edits.

Thanks Laurie! For the latest on Laurie's books, check out her web site at www.lauriestolarz.com/.

Christmas comes early!

On Friday I unexpectedly received a copy of Winter's Kiss in the mail from my publisher, Simon Pulse ! This volume will be in stores on January 3, and it contains reprints of my novel The Ex Games, first published in 2009, and Cathy Hapka's novel The Twelve Dates of Christmas. You can still buy The Ex Games separately, and you can find that information here . But Simon Pulse has been repackaging some of the older YA romantic comedies with beautiful new covers so you can buy two or three books for the price of one.

Seriously, y'all, there is a beautiful cover and then there is a beautiful cover. Simon Pulse is doing such a great job with this series.

And did you see the back? The background is SWEATER! I may faint from an overload of adorable.

Only one question remains. Who can I send this to? I would love to send it to every book blogger for review, but I have only one copy.

How about this: if you are a book blogger and you have not reviewed The Ex Games before, please leave a comment here (you need a LiveJournal account) or a comment on my guestbook here or send me an e-mail at echolsjenn at yahoo dot com by Thursday, December 22, along with the web address of your book blog, and I will pick a winner at random on the 23rd. This is open to U.S. addresses only because other countries have different laws about drawings.

You know what else is coming up? The paperback version of The One That I Want will be in stores on February 7! Writers Write, Write? has already posted a very kind five-star review of the e-book version, which is available now. I know a lot of people would rather have the print version, though. I will be receiving my author copies of the paperback in early January, and I want book bloggers to have them. If you would like a copy for review, please send me an e-mail at echolsjenn at yahoo dot com with the web address of your book blog and your mailing address. This is open to everyone. I will send you my copies until I run out.

The One That I Want had a great first week of sales, and that is due in large part to your enthusiasm. As always, thank you.

Public Shame Writing Challenge: the end!

I'm revising SUCH A RUSH, my YA romantic drama that will be published by MTV Books on July 10. I said I would revise the first half of the book over the weekend. I did not. However, I did do a lot of writing for the first half, and also a lot of writing for the second half. This revision is all about more more more. So, even though I didn't do exactly what I said I would do, I think shame and I are going to call this one a draw.

I'm going to try to write 6000 more words today. The revision is due on Friday right after lunch, at the beginning of the Simon & Schuster Christmas party, at which point my editor will begin her vacation and I will go to Golden Corral and stick my head under the chocolate fountain.

After that, I still have a proposal to write this month. Luckily, I love writing, and I find December a desolate and beautiful and romantic time in Alabama to do that. I think a lot of you are finding the holidays encroaching on your writing time, and that's fine. Just remember that writing is like inertia. What's in motion tends to stay in motion, and what's at rest tends to stay at rest. It's so hard to get started on a project. Once you get going, though, the project can start to write itself. So even if you can keep going at 250 words a day, I think you will feel a lot better on January 1 than if you stopped writing altogether.

Your turn:

1. Who you are
2. What sort of book you're writing
3. THE MOST IMPORTANT PART, because this is a writing community: cheers and well wishes for the person who posted right above you
4. How many words you said you would write on days 9, 10, and 11
5. How many words you actually wrote on days 9, 10, and 11 (NO EXCUSES--you did or you didn't)
6. How you're feeling about your Public Shame output and your NaNo output if you did that too. Don't forget to congratulate YOURSELF on what you're accomplished!