Lisa Roecker's Blog, page 26

THIS is Why We Write...

Some authors start writing to win awards.

Some authors start writing to get famous. (HA!)

Some authors start writing to get rich. (Double HA!)

But THIS is why we started writing.

We are so grateful for supportive friends like Steph and for 4th graders everywhere who just haven't found the right book yet.

XOXO,
L&L

Your Weekly Dose of Celebrity Commentary

 I'm putting Selena Gomez on Weekend at Bernie's Alert. Poor girl collapsed, spent like 12 hours in rehab and then they have her on stage again. We're like two weeks away from seeing her in sunglasses with the Jonas Brothers propping her up.











Has anyone tested R. Patz for anemia? He needs a neck to suck stat.



I'm scared of Kirstie Allie. Also I have no idea how to spell her name and I'm way too lazy to look it up, but I'm 99% sure she's thinking about eating someone's face in this picture.





I'm not gonna lie, for a second I thought Drew Barrymore was dating Prince Charles and I thought to myself. "Holy crap. That is so random. But kind of awesome she'll be Kate Middleton's stepmom," because let's be honest, Drew would be a killer stepmom. There's a Disney movie in here somewhere. They've probably already attached poor Selena Gomez.







































No snark here. Just pure happiness. I love Pacey. I'm so happy that he's happy. Also...HOT.



















Happy Friday everyone!

A Thursday made of random...

1. We are in the process of planning WriteOnCon 2011 and we're so excited about it. It's going to be epic, EPIC and we can't wait for all the big reveals!

2. If you were the kid in elementary/middle school who brought soup in a plastic thermos (preferably the ones that matched the hard, plastic lunchbox) as a part of your lunch, I wanted to be you. I would stare longingly as you slurped up your hot deliciousness. That's all.

3. I just ruthlessly purged my closet of 3/4 of its contents. I'm thinking I'll never shrink back small enough to make what has become a crop top not a crop top anymore.

4. I was doing said purging when I was supposed to be involved in a chat. I always miss things. Especially when they're scheduled after 8 PM at night. All bets are off when the sun goes down.

5. I apologize that our blog posts are written primarily in list form (and tend to morph into Tell the Truth EVERYDAY when we're finished with them). It's as though we use up all of our paragraph-forming abilities in our books and can't bring ourselves to write ONE more for the blog. Lists are also universally satisfying, no?

What's your random today?

Shameless Agent Love

We are represented by Catherine Drayton of InkWell Management.

She is 10 flavors of awesome.

So awesome that sometimes we want to walk around wearing t-shirts that say "Team Drayton."

Our road to publication was a little bumpy, but she NEVER ever gave up on us. Even when we wanted to give up on ourselves.

Last night she took the time to hang out with the WriteOnCon Team and answer questions with the equally amazing Becca Fitzpatrick.

There's lots and lots of great publishing advice in this chat.

If you are a writer, you should probably read it.

And then you'll probably want to wear a "Team Drayton" t-shirt too.

That is all.

Tell The Truth Tuesday

1. This review almost made me cry. I think it's partly because we're really excited to read Wildefire and partly because we've had a soft spot for Karsten ever since he christened us Team Gemini.

2. Lisa criticized my presentation of raspberries and chocolate from last month's bookclub saying they were just "thrown together" and hypothesized that perhaps that's why they "didn't go." I got shiny eyes.

3. I'm pretty sure that I'm the only person watching Love Bites, but it's absolutely adorable.

4. Turns out I'm still really good at writing human resource proposals. I like to think that my proposals are more suspenseful and written in a more compelling voice than the average benefits outsourcing RFP.

5. I have another Lisa vs. the Universe story, but I'm scared to write the blog post because it seems a little absurd that all this crazy crap keeps happening to one person.

6. On the flight home yesterday, Lydia and I were stuck in the pit of the plane--ie, last seat, in front of bathrooms. There was no window and all the people around me had their windows closed giving me absolutely no frame of reference for take off or landing. I felt like I was going to vomit the whole time and unfairly wanted to take it out on the old woman sitting in front of me. I let Lydia kick her seat. 
7. My only consolation on the plane was that no one was sitting beside me so we were able to eat our bean and cheese quesadilla in peace. Yes, we're those people.
8. The AMAZING Catherine Drayton and uber talented, best selling author  Becca Fitzpatrick are going to be chatting about the agent/author relationship at WriteOnCon at 9 EST tonight and I'm praying that everything goes as planned because holy crap it's CATHERINE DRAYTON AND BECCA FITZPATRICK! They are rock stars. Please come. Even if everything goes down in flames it's bound to be entertaining.

What's your truth this Tuesday? Bare it all in the comments.

I Should Be Writing....

But instead, I've....
Eaten dark chocolate with sea salt.Researched diet pills.Watched 60 Minutes.Filled up my water bottle.Reviewed the past two weeks of US Weekly pics.Clicked on a feature story marketed as "celebrities without makeup" only to be disappointed by the fact that most of them were wearing makeup.Read the entire #whitegirlproblems Twitter stream.Refreshed my email more times than I can count.Checked Twitter to see if @Scott_Tracey is still wearing Tinkerbell lip gloss.Looked up the number of text messages I've sent this month.Verified our checking account balance.Purchased sports bras.Talked to The Regulator about our plans for the 4th of July.Wrote this blog post.I suck. 
Happy Monday!

PS: Don't forget to join us for tomorrow night's WriteOnCon chat featuring author Becca Fitzpatrick and her agent Catherine Drayton. Come armed with questions at 9 PM EST!

CONGRATULATIONS POSSESSION Spread the Word Winners!

Congratulations go out to the following five winners!

Kira B


Laura

Perla M.
minhchieu tran
donnas

You all should have emails waiting in your inbox.

Thanks to EVERYONE for helping us spread the word about the awesome that is POSSESSION. For the rest of you who entered? No worries. Just click and buy to join in the fun! Easy-peasy.

It's POSSESSION Saturday!

Don't forget, this is day six of the Elana Johnson POSSESSION Launch Festival of Awesome! Today, go to Ali Cross's site and comment to enter to win a signed copy of POSSESSION and learn the secret time that you need to use the Twitter hashtag #taggedPOSSESSION to win another signed copy of POSSESSION!
Meanwhile, don't forget: if you spread the word about POSSESSION, you can win one of FIVE signed copies of the book! 
We're giving away 17 signed copies of POSSESSION throughout this week's blog tour--be sure to visit and enter to win! Tomorrow, final winners will be announced!

Happy, happy Friday...

The sisters LiLa are travelling, so just a quickie post today and a bonus quickie tomorrow and Sunday. Not that kind of quickie (get your mind out of the gutter!), just the, um, normal POSSESSION variety. We'll be back on Monday with more randomness!
Have a fab weekend!
L&L
Don't forget, this is day five of the Elana Johnson POSSESSION Launch Festival of Awesome! Today, go to Christine Fonseca's site and comment to enter to win a signed copy of POSSESSION and learn the secret time that you need to use the Twitter hashtag #taggedPOSSESSION to win another signed copy of POSSESSION!
Meanwhile, don't forget: if you spread the word about POSSESSION, you can win one of FIVE signed copies of the book! 
We're giving away 17 signed copies of POSSESSION throughout this week's blog tour--be sure to visit and enter to win! Tomorrow's giveaway will be hosted at Ali Cross's blog!

The Bookanistas: The Summer of the Bear AND bonus celebrations!

Buckle up. This is going to be the longest post on record.
We were sent an ARC of THE SUMMER OF THE BEAR by Bella Pollen and I was instantly intrigued. The title caught my attention and when I did further research, I learned that the story was inspired by Bella's own experience in Scotland's remote Outer Hebrides islands growing up. I'm a total sucker for a true-life-inspired novel and if I know you like I think I know you, you will be too.

What the back cover has to say:

With her fifth novel, critically acclaimed writer and journalist Bella Pollen takes readers into the private dynamics of a family grappling with the loss of father and husband in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, where between elemental beauty and utter bleakness, strange forces are at play.


In 1980 Germany, under Cold War tension, a mole is suspected in the British Embassy. When the clever diplomat Nicky Fleming dies suddenly and suspiciously, it's convenient to brand him the traitor. But was his death an accident, murder, or suicide? As the government digs into Nicky's history, his wife, Letty, relocates with her three children to a remote Scottish island hoping to salvage their family. But the isolated shores of her childhood retreat only intensify their distance, and it is Letty's brilliant and peculiar youngest child, Jamie, who alone holds on to the one thing he's sure of: his father has promised to return and he was a man who never broke a promise.

Exploring the island, Jamie and his teenaged sisters discover that a domesticated brown bear has been marooned on shore, hiding somewhere among the seaside caves. Jamie feels that the bear may have a strange connection to his father, and as he seeks the truth, his father's story surfaces in unexpected ways. Bella Pollen has an uncanny ability to capture the unnoticeable moments in which families grow quiet. A novel about the corrosive effects of secrets and the extraordinary imagination of youth, The Summer of the Bear is Pollen's most ambitious and affecting book yet.

What Lila has to say:I KNOW I've said this about other books, but I'm going to say it again about this one. This book is like nothing I've ever read before. First of all, there's a bear in the main storyline. That is in and of itself unique. But to consider that this novel is based on actual events that occured in the summer of 1980 was really fascinating to me. Bella Pollen tells this story from multiple perspectives, which I have a total soft-spot for. Even better, all of the perspectives are incredibly unique and voiced to a tee--Pollen is basically a character-genius.

Georgie is the eldest daughter and after the sudden/tragic/mysterious death of her father is trying to navigate the aftermath--a new home, a new mother who has shut herself out and a new adult-like perspective. There's also a level of mystery with her storyline because she once traveled to East Germany with her father during the Cold War and the government is investigating this trip closely after his apparent suicide. The reader is left to wonder if Georgie has the missing piece. Then there's Alba, the middle child, who is instantly unlikeable as her evil streak leads her to treat her younger brother with vicious contempt. But you have to sympathize with her because Alba is on the brink of puberty and is left to fend for herself as her mom is basically out of commision as the result of her overwhelming grief. And then there's Jamie, who has special needs but an entirely different, almost genius-level outlook and perspective. The entire family has kept their father's death somewhat of a secret from Jamie to protect him so he's left searching for his lost father as opposed to mourning. We're also offered Letty's perspective as she sifts through the clues surrounding her husband's death and tries to make sense of who her husband really was. AND the bear. Yes, it sounds strange to read snippets from a bear, but it completely works. The bear was raised basically as a human and after its escape, struggled to survive as it never embraced its wild instincts or had forgotten them altogether. Pollen toys with the idea of a hyper-humanized bear and offers the reader snippets into what this could look like. The result is magical and not in the least bit cheesy.
Whew. That's a lot of character. And I didn't even mention the quirky islanders who are peppered into the storyline and add to the mystique of the story. Because they're awesome. And they bring you straight to these remote Scottish islands and plug you right in. Like I said before, character-genius.
 
At its core, this story is a coming-of-age/coming-to-terms novel about the breakdown of communication. The Cold War was famous for this and is in the backdrop, but we see the major effects that a lack of communication has on the family itself. Everyone is struggling to understand what happened to their beloved father/husband. But in the meantime, they've forgotten how to understand one another. It's one of the more intricate books I've read in a while and I thoroughly enjoyed being thrown into this unique setting with these people who wanted nothing more than to grow. Highly recommend!

 
Next...our celebrations.
 



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Don't forget, this is day four of the Elana Johnson POSSESSION Launch Festival of Awesome! Today, go to Jamie Harrington's site and comment to enter to win a signed copy of POSSESSION and learn the secret time that you need to use the Twitter hashtag #taggedPOSSESSION to win another signed copy of POSSESSION!
Meanwhile, don't forget: if you spread the word about POSSESSION, you can win one of FIVE signed copies of the book! 
We're giving away 17 signed copies of POSSESSION throughout this week's blog tour--be sure to visit and enter to win! Tomorrow's giveaway will be hosted at Christine Fonseca's blog!