Lisa Roecker's Blog, page 4

Freeview Friday

Since we're too busy writing Third Lie's the Charm to be much use in the blogosphere we figured it was only fair to give you a sneak peek, so here's a little, completely unedited snippet for you:

Bradley Farrow was broken and somehow looking at him felt like looking in a mirror. His face had been rearranged by grief. He was still beautiful, but now he was more Picasso than Rembrandt and I wanted nothing more than to slide his features back into place. To change him back into the Bradley he was before....


Eek! Aren't you just dying to know what has gorgeous Bradley all torn up? All will be revealed...next year. Sorry, this was kind of mean. In happier news, we've seen the final cover for the third and final book in The Liar Society series and holy BALLS, you guys, it's awesome. Stay tuned for a cover reveal soonest.

Happy Friday!

Tell the Truth Tuesday

1. I got in a fight with some jackhole on Twitter about Suri's Burnbook. Nobody messes with Suri on my watch.

2. I just sent Laura an email that said, "Follow the outline or die." Yup, you guessed it. We're in the midst of drafting Third Lie's the Charm. Get excited. This book is going to be epic. As long as Laura follows the damn outline.

3. Jack got in trouble with the principal at his school (who just happens to be a 70-year-old nun) for throwing seeds at recess (Yes, really. It's so random.) and now he has to eat lunch with her tomorrow. You'd think he was being sent to be interrogated by Abu Nazir. I seriously had to bite my lip to stop from laughing when he was sobbing on my lap about Sister Linda and eating lunch with her and how she was so scary. Jack: 0 Irrational Catholic fear: 1. I will bet you $100 that I get a call from the school nurse tomorrow saying that Jack isn't feeling well. Good times.

4. I'm in a mood this week. A MOOD. Don't email me or talk to me or send me anything important because I'm feeling super crotchety. Just ask Laura.

5. You guys should bid on this. Good cause, awesome books. Make it happen.

What's your truth this Tuesday? SPILL because I'm in the kind of mood where I'll cut you if you don't.

Tell The Truth Tuesday

1. Every day this week I've put on work out clothes fully intending to actually work out. Sadly, the most athletic thing I end up doing all day is shoveling leftover pumpkin pie into my mouth. So basically, I've been walking around looking like someone who lives in her car and smells of sweaty socks and pumpkin. Sexy.

2. In semi-related news, I purchased two maternity shirts at Target. I'm not pregnant.

3. We've gotten a little bit of a hint about the cover for our SohoTeen book due out in July and HOLY CRAP. It's kind of amazing. We can't wait to be able to share it with you guys.

4. I believe in ghosts.

5. I stopped watching the Vampire Diaries. I just got kind of bored with the whole thing. Elana as a vampire was kind of lame and I seriously can't fathom why she stays with Stephan. Boo.

What's your truth this Tuesday? Spill it in the comments!

On Winnning Publishing

I'm a type-A personality.

"Whoa, I'm totally shocked," said no one who has ever met me.

Although techinically I think I'm more of an A-minus personality in that I only like to compete at things I know I can win. This has led to many problems and unfortunate events in my life. In my twisted little mind, it was better to make a joke out of tennis than it was to take it super seriously and lose. And math. No matter how hard I worked at math, I knew I'd never win so I ended up slacking my way through trig and calculus. (Sidenote: This is actually a really bad example because I've come to the conclusion that math is stupid. I mean honestly, this is the 21st century. We have calculators on our iPhones!) English Lit was a different story because I knew I could win. I loved reading and writing and debating and discussing books. I was always the first one to raise my hand. The nerd in the front row waxing poetic on my hatered for Daisy Buchanan.

When I work hard and take something seriously, I like to know that my efforts will be rewarded. It's easy for me to take my day job seriously because I'm good at it. When I work hard I'm almost always rewarded. It's a game I know I can win.

And publishing kills me because no matter how hard I work, how much I learn, or read or market, I will never win publishing. It might be a zero sum game. Or maybe not. Honestly, I didn't really pay much attention in Econ 101 because after I saw A Beautiful Mind I was pretty confident I'd never be able to beat John Nash. And every time we lose I try to convince myself that I don't really care. I try to convince Laura that we should just give up. I pretend that our writing career was just a long drawn out joke.

But the thing about publishing is that we keep changing the game. At first I thought getting an agent = WINNING.

And then we got an agent and it was really hard for her to sell our book to publishers.

And then I thought that getting our book published = WINNING.

And then our book was published and it didn't get a starred review or get nominated for any awards or really do much of anything aside from hang out on bookshelves occasionally getting purchased by bored 11-year-old girls who subsequently wrote us emails about how The Liar Society was their third favorite book.

Third favorite book? Funny? Not. Winning.

Oh, but I wasn't worried because we had The Lies That Bind and our amazing publisher was sending us out on a huge tour and surely this time around we'd WIN PUBLISHING.

But you know what? It's slow going. If anything, the second book feels harder than the first book. We only have one Amazon review and no professional reviews and sometimes I feel like instead of just NOT WINNING we're actually LOSING.

And the type-A-minus in me wants to just give up altogether. To pretend that I didn't really work hard on our books at all. To pretend that I don't care about Kate and Seth and Pemberly Brown. That we never really expected anyone to buy them in the first place.

But I can't ever convince myself, because it's simply not true.

I love Kate. I love Pemberly Brown and I especially love Seth. When we wrote these books I was sure that EVERYONE would want to read them. I thought they'd be international best sellers. I was positive that Kate would be this generation's Nancy Drew.

Yeah, I realize now that that's probably not in the cards for us. Not for this series. Not for these books. But lately I've been starting to think that my definition of winning is all wrong.

Maybe winning isn't about sales and awards, maybe it's about following our dreams and seeing our books on shelves. Maybe it's about finally overcoming my stupid A-minus personality disorder and growing up enough to realize that I'm not always going to win everything. That I'll never be the best. Maybe it's finally time to feel good, no GREAT, about being one 11-year-old girl's third favorite book.

Tell The Truth Tuesday

1. I'm still tired from our epic tour. It was the most amazing, exhausting, exciting 10 days of my life so far. We are so grateful to Sourcebooks for sending us out and for Miranda Kenneally and Janet Gurtler for putting up with LiLa uncensored. We'd love to make them honorary Roeckers but after experiencing our crazy first hand, they might not want to join up.

2. We sold our house! YAY! But I have to admit to being a total sap about the whole thing. When it comes down to it, this is the place where we brought our babies home. The place where I decided to become a writer. It's our first home and yes we've outgrown it, but I'm still going to miss it.

3. Our deadline for Third Lie's The Charm scares me a little. Laura isn't worried, so I guess I shouldn't be either. But still. Worried.

4. I spent two hours creating fake Twitter accounts and staging a fake DM conversation between characters today. This may or may not explain my concerns outlined in #3.

5. I keep forgetting Thanksgiving is this week. I'm in holi-denial. As usual.

6. Since we're probably never going to get around to a proper tour wrap up post, I'm going to add our favorite pics from the tour below. We met the coolest people EVER. It makes me happy just looking at these. Prepare to be photo bombed...
























Whew. So much awesome in one place. Whenever I'm having a bad day I'm going to just click on this post and look at these pictures. So. Much. Happy. If you have any pics of the #getreal tour that you'd like to share, send 'em our way and we'll add them to this post for a nice little collage. We can't tell you how happy we were to meet so many of our friends and readers. We are lucky, lucky girls.

THANK YOU to everyone who made this tour possible. Especially our parents, in-laws and husbands who wrangled our kids for 10-days. As the Regulator says, "It takes a village to send LiLa on tour." Truer words have never been spoken.

So, what's your truth this Tuesday? You don't have to post it in the comments, just think it really hard in the general direction of Cleveland and we'll totally commiserate with you.

GET REAL in Cleveland!

HELLO! STOP. WE ARE ALIVE. STOP. ON CRAZY ASS BOOK TOUR. STOP. DELIRIOUSLY TIRED SO THIS SEEMED LIKE AN ENTERTAINING WAY TO TELL YOU ABOUT OUR LAUNCH PARTY FOR THE LIES THAT BIND. STOP.





*In case you're curious this is what we look like when we're on planes. Yes. Really. We have matching neck pillows and sleep masks purchased especially for this trip. That's just how we roll.


Ok, wow. That was awful. We are on the mother of all book tours and have so many hilarious adventures and stories to tell you when we're finally back on our couches in yoga pants.

But for now you'll have to settle for a quick informative post about our mega Cleveland Get Real Tour stop! If you live in Cleveland or really, anywhere in Ohio, you should come. Mostly because by the time we get there we'll be so tired that we'll spill all of our dirty tour secrets. You won't want to miss it. Seriously.

So here are the deets:

The Get Real Tour (including the amazing Janet Gurtler and Miranda Kenneally) will stop at The Lake Forest Country Club in Hudson, Ohio hosted by our very favorite independent bookseller, The Learned Owl.

WHEN: November 8th from 7 PM - 9 PM

WHERE: 100 Lake Forest Dr. Hudson, Ohio

COST: Free! And as a bonus we'll be giving away Twizzlers and bookmarks and spilling our guts.

Hope to see you there!

Happy Birthday, Lisa and You're Welcome...

10 Things You Need to Know About My Dear Sister on Her Birthday...

10. She is insane a very hard worker. Lisa works 2 official jobs, 3 if you count being a full-time mom to 3 crazy kids and 4 if you count Twitter. I have no idea how much sleep she gets—I fear none—and have absolutely no earthly idea how she balances everything. I can barely get out the door in the morning without spontaneously combusting. It’s shocking.

9. She is very passionate. Lisa has many opinions. Lisa talks with her hands. Lisa has many opinions that she expresses with her hands. Whether it’s politics or publishing or being a mom or being a friend/sister/daughter/woman, Lisa is never afraid to speak up and voice her opinion. We’ll have briefdetailed 9-hour-long conversations about some random issue and she’ll encourage me to “blog about it” as I slowly back away with my hands up. But she’s never afraid to put it out there. It’s pretty cool.

8. She’ll get on board with any diet, exercise plan, lifestyle change, hairstyle transformation, etc. that one may propose. I love people like this. All I have to do is call and say, “I saw this diet complete with a meal plan, want to try it? And before I’m even at “meal plan” she’s IN and driving to the grocery store to buy beets and a kettle bell. Then we’ll do something for 8 or so days and go back to eating ice cream from the container at 11 PM. It’s awesome.

7. She’s incredibly sarcastic—but you probably knew that already. She scares the hell out of my daughter Lydia and banks on the fact that she’ll be the favorite aunt by the time Lydia’s able to understand sarcasm. Let’s just hope Lydia forgets about all the times I forced Lisa to run upstairs and yell at her for waking up too early from a nap. I have no idea why we thought this was a good idea. Fail.

6. She makes me cry at least once per day. I have no clue if anyone else would find what we find funny as hilarious, but she cracks me up. The more random and inappropriate the better, which confirms the fact that I have a very sick and twisted mind. The bonus is that as I’m eating ice cream at 11 PM at night I can reflect on the fact that during one of our brief detailed9-hour-long conversations, I got an ab workout in at the same time. Score.

5. She’s the brains behind this operation (and do not let her tell you any different). Our editors can pose some sort of issue with the plot of our book and she’ll pause for a second (while I hem and haw) and spew out some genius solution that simultaneously fixes fourteen other broken areas of the manuscript. It’s an art.

4. If you walk into a library or bookstore with Lisa, she will have read almost every single book in stock. I’ve accused her of skimming, which didn’t go over well, and/or lying, but her retention is convincing. When we were little, the amount of books she’d read baffled me. In addition, if you press “Guide” on your television remote, she will have watched at least one episode and often entire seasons of any given television series. The same goes for movies. “All I have to say is, don’t see Contagion.” “How are you not watching Gallery Girls?” “Be sure to DVR Underemployed!” Review number 10 on my list and your mind will officially be blown. There’s no way she sleeps.

3. She washes her floors every night. And asks me if I think this is crazy. I usually don’t say anything. Refer back to number 10 and 4.

2. Lisa doesn’t take herself (or really anyone) too seriously. If you accidentally take yourself too seriously, she will totally call you out on it and you’ll feel ashamed. This is a good thing. Nothing good ever comes from taking one’s self too seriously. Nothing.

1.  She’s my best friend. But you already knew that. When I was ten (with a very unfortunate overbite and some heavy duty orthodontia), I never would have dreamed that I’d grow up to love my sisters. I couldn’t see past, “Mo-om she’s looking at me!” spat across the dinner table. And now the three of us actually hang out…for fun and force our kids to like each other. Love.

 Happy Birthday, Lisa. Take the day off, you over-achiever.

The Mommy Brag

Lately I've been seeing lots of posts about two year olds who are doing amazing things. These kids are are doing some crazy shit like counting to twenty, identifying shapes and colors, and speaking in full sentances. To be totally honest, I've been feeling a little jealous of these baby geniuses. Lucky for me today Ben did something that totally blows those baby Einsteins out of the water. He learned how to get dressed in his own pajamas!


We are so proud.

Tell The Truth Tuesday - Dear Teen Me

We have a mega truth this Tuesday and we're telling all to our teen selves over at DearTeenMe.com. Click for the awkward pictures, stay for the random advice!

HUGE thanks fellow Sourcebooks author, Miranda Kenneally (Have you read her books yet? No? Buy them immediately. Seriously. You will not be disappointed.) for including us!

Balance and the Mommy Writer by guest author Natalie Bahm

Every so often we have extra bad days. Maybe the kids are being difficult or our husbands are cranky or we went to bed too late and are over-tired. We might complain in a two hour long phone conversation, write a nasty email or even cry in the shower. And then all of a sudden, we get an email from a fellow author whose heart was touched by a little boy she'd never met. And whoosh. All of the sudden, everything is put back into perspective. Thank you, Natalie, for bringing us back to reality. You are truly an inspiration.
  Hi, my name is Natalie and I’m a writer and a mom.  When I first started writing I thought I was doing something sort of unique—raising three kids and writing a book on the side.  Then I started blogging and realized there are SO MANY mommy writers out there. All of us are trying to balance caring for our children and chasing our dreams.
I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t always balance those two things well.
Three years ago I was immersed in writing and networking and trying to make this dream come true.  I was so totally focused on it that I let other things in my life slide.  And then I had a MAJOR reality check.
I was pregnant with my fourth baby and I got really sick.  Then I had my baby boy and he was terribly sick.  He spent two weeks in the NICU learning how to breathe and eat on his own.
Suddenly all of the writing and publishing stuff that I’d been stressing about for months didn’t matter at all.  The only thing I cared about was getting my baby healthy.
I gradually got back into writing as he grew and got stronger, but I tried to do it in a much more balanced way (“tried” is the operative word here, I definitely mess up some days). 
 I set aside certain hours (usually naptime) to do all of my writing and blogging. This doesn’t give me much time—usually just an hour or two a day. I write slowly and I’m not nearly as good a blogger as I was before I had my baby.  But I feel better about the way I spend my time.  My little guy is two-years-old now.  He’s more work than an incontinent puppy with a chewing problem, but everyday I remember how grateful I am to have him.
 He’s the only one of my kids who is home all day and I really want to enjoy this time. When he heads off to school I know I’ll have way more time to write, but I’ll also miss his sweet baby kisses and exclamations of “I lub you, mommy.” I constantly remind myself that publishing is not a race or a popularity contest and I need to make it work in a balanced way.
 My first book, THE SECRET UNDERGROUND came out last Friday.  It’s a very special project that me and my agent, Sara Megibow, put together as a fundraiser for a little boy named Jayden who’s been in the hospital on and off since birth.  You can learn more about the book and the project HERE.
 Every penny of the profits will go to help Jayden and his family.  You can buy a copy through any major eBook retailer.  HERE are some links.
 Thank you, Lisa and Laura for letting me visit today!