Laurel Garver's Blog, page 39

Leaving fear, grasping hope

Once I made the decision to self-publish Never Gone, a funny thing happened. I became completely paralyzed by the sheer volume of what I needed to do.

When I think back to my life in high school, I can't believe how I juggled band, choir, art club, school newspaper, honors classes, a part-time job, and scribbling stories every spare moment. College wasn't much different, though theater, music ministry, and literary magazine were my passions of choice. I never pulled an all-nighter in college...

Visiting and being visited

I'm over at Laura Pauling's blog today, talking about "Attraction, Repulsion, Connection: Romance is More than Hotness" and a little about Never Gone's romantic subplot. It's my first blog ramble visit, so please come say hello. Or debate my viewpoint about what makes truly memorable romantic plots (hint: it's not great hair).

Meanwhile, I've signed up for a blog hop for the first time in, er... a pretty darned long time. And because of that I've lost some great opportunities to meet amazing...

The Hobbit Second Breakfast Celebration

It's the 75th anniversary of the publication of this book:


Houghton Mifflin Harcourt just released this special anniversary edition hardcover edition with Tolkien's originial cover. You've gotta love this product description:

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure....

Coming tomorrow--a very Hobbit celebration

When I heard about The Hobbit Second Breakfast from my blogging pal Deniz, I knew I had to be all in. You might remember that I refer to my daughter as "Hobbit Girl" because she has curly hair, loves to build dens for herself and, of course, eat all day long. One of her first words was "Frodo" (she toddled in after a nap while we were watching one of the LoTR DVDs). I can't count how many times she has watched The Two Towers in particular. She adores Gimli, and is super excited about meeting...

Weathering a crisis of faith

Today I'm talking with Sophia Stone, author of The Mormon Diaries. Stone's story fascinated me because a couple of my favorite books, Searching for God Knows What (Donald Miller) and Traveling Mercies (Anne Lamott) are in the same genre--spiritual memoir.

I expected, in a story of growing up in--and away from--Mormonism to be a bit more like a 20/20 expose. Because that's how our culture tends to treat organizations like the LDS church. I certainly didn't expect to get such an intimate, p...

Book trailer tips

I'm not here today, I'm over at Rabble Writers, sharing tips on making book trailers.

Come on over to learn what goes into planning, how to avoid "bait and switch" marketing, where to find low-cost or free images and music, how to avoid getting sued for copyright infringement, and much more.

Host a rambler
If you're interested in hosting a stop in my blog ramble for Never Gone, please use the form HERE I'll make ebooks available for giveaways and provide content unique for your blog if you...

Presenting the book trailer for NEVER GONE

For your viewing pleasure, the book trailer for Never Gone.

In a future post, I'll share a bit about how I built it from the script up, and explain some of the technical aspects of how this was created.

HUGE thanks go to my husband, who was able to take my rather static concept and make it sing!

Let me know what you think. Did this pique your interest in the book?

Ramble versus whirlwind tour

image source: morguefile.comThe past five days have been wonderfully, horridly busy. I at last had in hand all the requisite files to produce ebook versions of my novel.  There was no reason to not barrel ahead and get my book on sales channels. And then a funny thing happened.

I started thinking like a traditionally published writer. Having total panic attacks that I hadn't built buzz properly, that I'd put my book out into the world when only one of my early reviewers had even finished...

It's here! (part 1)

The Kindle edition of NEVER GONE is now available from Amazon US and Amazon UK and through Amazon's other EU sites as well. Woot!

Nook will be coming soon. The official release date for the paperback is 9/27.

Would you like to help me spread the word? Click on the form below and let me know how you'd like to participate.

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In other news, I at last got the share buttons functioning on this blog, so my posts are tweetable etc. right from this site. Apparently the CSS needed a bit of tweak...

Cover reveal - NEVER GONE

So here it is, my lovely cover.

This is very much a group effort. The concept is mine. I wanted a clean, minimalist look with custom art that reflected my protagonist's two great loves--pencil drawing and her dad--yet hinted at the grief-oriented content.

Thankfully I have a very talented husband who was able to create this wonderful sketch of my protagonist's father, Graham the photographer. From there, the sketch went to an actual photographer, my friend's cousin, Whitney Levin. She had a lau...