Sara J. Henry's Blog, page 26

One of the Reasons Amy King Rocks: She Points at the Elephant in the Room

Amy (A.S.) King has just won a Printz honor for her novel PLEASE IGNORE VERA DIETZ (a book I have raved about so much I've likely bored you), and on her blog she says:

A huge thank you to everyone who has ever supported me and to my good friends who understand that I am, like Vera Dietz, the kind of person who points to the elephant in the room and says, "Hey! look at that big honkin' elephant!"

Note: You likely won't find this book at your local Barnes & Noble or Border's - the chain...

More Things Not to do in Query Letters

From SlushPile Hell:

Not that I would compare myself to Hemingway, but if you read my novel, you'll see that it's as brilliantly simple as The Old Man and the Sea, as poetic as The Sun Also Rises, and as epic as For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Well, at least you didn't compare yourself to Hemingway.

Wherein My Friend Teresa Encounters a Vacuum Cleaner

My friend Teresa - over at The Dog Lived (and so will I) - managed to reach the age of mumble mumble without ever having used a vacuum cleaner - she says:

I am so proud to tell you I tried them all, attaching them one by one to the suction tube thingamagig that seemed to be a really important aspect of the whole vacuuming experience. And by god, they worked!! I vacuumed, brushed, angled, and suctioned for over an hour--in just the bed area! Seamus howled and barked and threatened the...

Dear Teenage Boy Who Rear-Ended Me:

The traffic suddenly slowed; I stopped, you didn't. Not until you thunked into my rear bumper.



You pulled over. You apologized. You and your friend inspected my bumper and told me it didn't look damaged, although the front grille of your truck was crumpled. Fine, I say, but we have to exchange information.



You have no pen or paper. I give you some. You tell me it is your truck. You write your name, and after some coaching, your address and driver's license number, and after some prodding, y...

My Novel's up for Grabs at Goodreads!

Just learned that the giveaway for fifty advance copies of my novel Learning to Swim has started at  Goodreads. All you have to do is go click the Enter to Win button, and you're in the running. (What are you waiting for? Go!)



As abhorrent as it seems to suggest that people "like" me, to keep up with my news and events, you can "like" my Facebook page.

Seeking Hosts for My Book Blog Tour

Suddenly my publication date for my novel LEARNING TO SWIM is just around the corner, and I'm setting up my book blog tour. For several weeks before the Feb. 22 publication date and several weeks after, I'll be "visiting" blogs - I can do a Q&A or guest post, or you can review the book and/or offer a signed advance copy in a contest. Some of you are already on the list or should know that you are (that means you, Teresa!) - but if you'd like to be included just shoot me off an email or leave ...

Climbing That Mountain Toward the End of Your Novel

Over at the Mulholland Books blog, Michael Robotham discusses "The Questions Authors Fear Most."

The idea isn't the hard bit. It's a very small component of the whole. Creating memorable characters that live and breathe in a reader's imagination—that's much harder. Simply sitting down at a desk, day after day, putting one word after another, one sentence after the next…climbing a mountain when you're clinging to the rockface and you don't know how far you've come and how far it is to...

My Friends Do Have Real Names. Really.

A bunch of my closest friends, I met on the internet. (I know that sounds slightly kinky or vaguely pathetic, but I'm a writer who works at home and spends much of her time in a very small town.) Sometimes these friends have online names or use code names for their nearest and dearest, as I do for my friend Pinecone, so nicknamed because of her hair style. But knowing people from their online names can become somewhat problematic.



VodkaMom, I will likely always think of as nothing but Vodka,...

This is Somewhat Rude But I Cannot Resist

Because it is clever, and because I love the concept of using a Venn diagram to describe the market for a book by the woman named Snooki from a reality television show called Jersey Shore.





By way of a Tweet from my friend Jamie, referring to a blog called Writer, Not.



(For the non-nerds among us, in a Venn diagram the intersection of the circles shows how the two groups overlap or connect. The key word here is intersect.)

I'm a "February Hot Title"!

Over at Lesa's Book Critiques, my upcoming novel LEARNING TO SWIM is listed as a hot February release (thanks, Lesa!) - slight spoiler alert:

In Sara J. Henry's Learning to Swim, Troy Chance jumped in to save a boy she  saw thrown into Lake Champlain from the rear of a ferry.  Then she learned he had been kidnapped, and was part of a bizarre, bloody plot.

I know this is the official description that is showing up in library catalogs, but the thing is - I can't remember any blood flowing...