Denise Grover Swank's Blog, page 28

Guest Post: The Importance of Using a Copy Editor

I wrote a guest post for author Eisley Jacobs about the importance of using a copy editor. My own copy editor, Jim Thomsen, added his own wisdom. Be sure to check it out!

Straddling Offensive

I'm a bit on the sarcastic side.

*waiting for those who know me to stop laughing over the addition of '"a bit"

This trait never fails to get me into trouble and I find myself pushing the limits some days. I'm sarcastic in social media as well, but I find that I have self-imposed boundaries.  Facebook is composed of predominately conservative friends, while Twitter has more liberal followers. I find that Facebook is my censored self. Twitter the more real me.

Nevertheless,  born a people pleaser, it bristles when I realize I've offended someone. This morning I seemed to be on a roll so I Tweeted and Facebooked similar variations of this:

Facebook friends are full of support and encouragement, but Twitter is another kind of playground. @JentheAmazing called me out:

I read her Tweet (as I walked countless times around the walking track at my kids school) and thought. "Huh. She has a point."

I've been thrilled beyond belief with the reaction to Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes. Everyone loves Rose. She's sweet, niave, and full of hope and life.

And she's everything my book Chosen is not.

Soon after my copy editor finished with Twenty-Eight, I sent him the first three chapters of Chosen with the warning: Chosen is the bipolar opposite of Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes.

I worry. Readers who loved Twenty-Eight might be offended by Chosen. There's liberal use of the "F" word. The world is darker. There's some tough scenes. If Twenty-Eight if full of Rose's hope for accomplishing all her wishes, Chosen is full of hopelessness.  Yet,  my two main characters still push on. Because really, what is the alternative?  I love Chosen because of that.  I threw one impossible situation after another at them and they picked themselves up and moved forward, if for no other reason than to simply survive.

This is a darker me than people are used to seeing, and I think that worries me, too. What will people think? But in the end, (and I have no idea why I have to relearn this lesson time and time again) I have to be true to ME. When you write, to create real and believable characters, you have to delve into yourself and discovers things you might not have realized before. Sometimes those things are beautiful. Sometimes those things are ugly. But they are pieces that create the whole you.

Some readers might think it strange that I can write two completely different genres. But the world strives for balance. Good and bad. Black and white. Ying and yang. Without evil, good cannot exist. (This is a concept my friend and crit partner Trisha Leigh and I have been exploring lately in our writing.) My psyche needs the funny AND the dark. They balance each other out. Two parts of me that add to my whole.

Still, I'm prepared, as prepared as I can be, for the backlash. But Jen is right. If I can't handle the possibility offending people, I've chosen the wrong profession.

Cover for CHOSEN

It's hard to believe but in less than a month I'll have another book out! Even though Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes came out first, it was actually the third book I completed.

But my first love was Chosen*. It was the book that  pushed me to write the story in my head, even when I felt completely inadequate.  And even when it scared the crap out of me.

Coming up with a cover for Chosen was hard. The three main characters are Will, Emma, and Emma's son Jake.  To only put Will and Emma on the cover would make it appear like a romance novel. And while there is a romance, there's more to the story than that. Not to mention that it doesn't fit neatly into the romance criteria– nice, neat HEA. (Happily Ever After) I would have loved to have all three, but that proved difficult as well.

Chosen's  blurb:

Everything Emma Thompson owns fits in a suitcase she moves from one roach infested motel to another. She and Jake, her five year old son who can see the future, are running from the men intent on taking him. Emma will do anything to protect him even when it means accepting the help of a stranger named Will. Jake insists she needs Will, but Emma's never needed help before. And even though she's learned to trust her son, it doesn't mean she trusts Will.

 Mercenary Will Davenport lives in the moment. Hauling Emma to South Dakota should have been an easy job, but his employer neglected to tell him about Emma's freaky son and the gunmen hot on her trail. Instinct tells him this job is trouble, but nothing can prepare him for Jake's proclamation that Will is The Chosen One, who must protect Emma from the men hunting her power. A power she doesn't know she has.

 Will protects Emma and Jake on a cross-country chase from the men pursuing them, while struggling with memories from his past, his apprehension of Jake, and his growing attraction to Emma. Will's overwhelming urge to protect Emma surprises him, especially since it has nothing to do with his paycheck and possibly everything to do with the tattoo Jake branded on his arm. Rich and powerful men are desperate to capture Emma, and Will must discover why before it's too late.

 

I was so lucky to have found an awesome cover designer, Laura Morrigan. Laura asked me a million questions, not only about Chosen but also the other two books in the series so we could have a unifying theme for all three books. After several email marathon sessions and a Skype call, Laura came up with the concept for all three covers.

I'm not going to say why right now, but the symbol on the cover has significance and it will be used for all three covers. Each book will highlight a different part. I LOVED this idea and I think that Laura did an excellent job of taking a drawing my son and I had done and turning into something fantastic. I'm thrilled.

So without further ado– MY AWESOME COVER!!!!

Doesn't it make you want to read it? Well you can! When it releases September 20th!

 *Chosen was my second book. The first is chained to a gigabyte on my external hard drive.

The Power of the Written Word

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.

But everyone knows this is a lie. Words can hurt far worse.

Or heal you even more.

Words can make you cry from empathy, make you laugh with joy, make you love. Make you feel alive.

Words have power.

Anyone who's ever journaled knows this. To get the words out of your head and into semi-coherent thought on a page is therapy. When my husband lived in the ICU of the burn unit at Vanderbilt Hospital for five weeks, I journaled. It's raw and it's ugly. It was the one place I felt free to voice my fear and resentment.

When he died, I stopped. For one thing, I didn't have the energy. And for another, it was too dark. Too ugly. I didn't want to go there again.

When you are in the pit of hell, you see no light at the end of the tunnel. You see no way out. The mantle of grief is suffocating. My goal became to wake up just one more day. Take one more breath.

And sometimes that wasn't enough.

I was desperate to know I would survive it yet when I turned to my love, the written word, the only books on young widows either  encouraged women to do anything that made them feel better (like sleeping with married men) or were  fluffy happily-ever-after tales that told the happy ending but glossed over the ugly beginning.

And trust me, it's ugly.

As I began to crawl my way out of hell, sometimes by my fingernails, I realized I wasn't the only one who had gone through this. I wasn't the only one who needed to know what you can't see in the pit.

Hope.

And so two years after Darrell's death, I began my memoir. It was awful. I wasn't skilled enough as a writer to convey the message. I was still too close, the pain still to raw. I didn't know these things. I only knew it sucked. And I moved on.

Instead, I started a blog called Life After Death. I rarely posted on it but when I did, my posts were raw and left me exposed. But I knew there were others who needed to know they could survive this, too.

I was right. In spite of my sporadic postings, I received emails and comments. Fresh in their grief, the commenters clung to the belief they could get through this pain. Some of them had lost their spouse a year ago,others only weeks before. I would cry as I read their notes, wishing I could tell them the one truth I know.

You will survive this.

So many people call me strong. But they are wrong.  Is fighting for the will to go on strong? Isn't it really just survival? Survival in an instinct. The will to live overshadows everything else.  I'm not strong. I did exactly what anyone in my situation would do.

Survive.

I've known I would revisit my experience and record it in some fashion but I'd deep in my novels, with a half a dozen books plotted out  into the future. I didn't have time to devote several months to this project. Nor did I have the strength. To relive that period of my life so deeply  that I could get it onto the page dragged me back into the murky depths.

And then last Sunday, as I got ready for church, I heard the Death Cab for Cutie song, What Sarah Said. The song is about a man who's loved one, Sarah,  is in an ICU and he waits in the waiting room. It never fails to make me think of the countless hours I spent waiting for life. Waiting for death.

Then it hit me. A short snippet of my experience. Not the expanded, detailed scene I originally envisioned, but much shorter. Less than a page. But far more effective.

The opening scene to The Death of Me:

I part the thick plastic fabric they call curtains to view the street below. People scurry to jobs they hate, pretending that it's just another day.

I'm not supposed to be here.

The doctor walks in with his mouth pursed into a grim smile and asks me to sit down. We sit at a table covered in coffee stains and I fold my hands to still my nervous twitch.

"It doesn't look good."

I expect some emotion. Anger. Despair. Mourning. Anything. Instead, I find denial. "I don't believe that."

His eyes soften with pity.

"No, I don't believe he will die. He didn't crash his plane and walk away just to die."

His upper lip rises into an empathic smile then fades. "His burns are quite extensive, third degree covering 60% of his body. He suffered smoke inhalation and his lungs are in bad shape."

My stubbornness kicks in. "God saved him for a reason. I believe he will live."

He shifts in his chair and the vinyl creaks as he moves. "We can't explain everything in medicine. We can't deny that there might be a higher power."

I clutch my belief like a tattered security blanket.

It's all I have. 

****

I thought I finished the story at 4485 words but it didnt' feel right. The final scene, standing at Darrell's grave felt unsettled yet I couldn't figure out why until days later.

It wasn't done yet.

I've spent the last two days adding snippets of my life after he died, those first few months of my living hell. The irony is most people who knew me then, who saw me day to day would be shocked to see this. I hid my pain well.

I've also interspersed small scenes of flashbacks to our relationship. What I have if raw and very real. Almost too real. The depth and power  I have in so few words is frightening. And revealing.  Even though I've tried to be as translucent as possible in my family blog, this goes beyond even those posts. (Alone  and The Garden Hose are good examples) I've asked myself more times than I can count WHY do I do this? Am I that narcissistic? But the answer is I know I'm not the only one. If I feel this way, others before me and even more after will feel this.

Someone needs to stand up and say: You are not alone.

****

My neighbors are concerned about my despondency. They have a barbeque and offer me a drink. As the alcohol seeps into my blood stream, the heavy veil is lifted and I feel, for the first time in two months. I've felt numb for so long I welcome the emotion, even if it's pain.

Anything is better than living as the walking dead.

****

This story isn't done and even when it is, I have no idea what to do with it. I'm scared to reveal so much of me. Maybe this is just one last purge to exorcise the demons of my past. Or maybe it's an altruistic pay-it-forward move.

For now, it sits on my hard drive.

Tour of Secrets: The Secret of Spruce Knoll Book Tour

I'm so excited to share that my friend Heather McCorkle is releasing her first book on August 15! Heather and I made our decisions to publish around the same time and although our journey's have been slightly different (Heather used Abbott Press, a division of Writer's Digest, to publish her book while I used Createspace) we've both faced the same highs and lows, fear and excitement!

Heather's official bio:

I am an author of young adult fantasy, in all its many sub-genres. Helping other writers and supporting fabulous authors is my passion. When I'm not writing or surfing my social networking sites, I can be found on the slopes, the hiking trails, or on horseback. As a native Oregonian, I enjoy the outdoors almost as much as the worlds I create on the pages. No need to travel to the Great Northwest though, you can find me here, on my blog four days a week, and Monday night's on Twitter where I co-moderate the #WritersRoad chat with my good friend TS Tate.

Heather's  debut novel is a young adult fantasy novel titled The Secret of Spruce Knoll.



Following the tragic death of her parents, Eren Donovan moves to Spruce Knoll to live with her aunt. Little does Eren know the entire town of Spruce Knoll is filled with "channelers"~a magical group of people who immigrated to the small Colorado town when they were driven out of their own lands.

Channelers are tied to the fate of the world. As the world slowly dies, so do

they~and they alone have the power to stop the destruction of Earth. Now, Eren learns she not only lives among them, but she is one. When she meets local boy Aiden, his charm convinces her that being a channeler may not be all bad.

Doesn't that sound intriguing? I can't wait to read it!!! But all this talk about secrets makes wonder what kind of secrets are really going on in Spruce Knoll so I cornered Heather and asked:

A dying world, that sounds so mysterious. What's the secret, why is the world dying and how are your characters tied to it?

Heather tried to weasel her way out of the question until I threatened to leave her alone with all six of my children. Then she couldn't spill fast enough:

Not unlike our own, the earth in my novel is in peril because of harmful practices with waste, fuel, and overpopulation. In the novel, each bit of earth that is swallowed by cities causes fewer and fewer channelers to be born each year. They need to live among nature because they are closer to it than most humans. But, as the forests, jungles, and plains disappear, channelers are in danger of disappearing as well. Eren must face not only what she is, but the fact that her kind are going extinct. 

Now I really want to read it! And I bet you do, too! So run over to Amazon and preorder your copy right now!

 But wait!

Heather's hosting a fabulous giveaway to celebrate her release! And it ends August 31.

1st place: 
*$50 gift certificate to B&N (or the Book Depository if you're over seas).
*Autographed copy of The Secret Of Spruce Knoll
*Special swag bag
2nd place: 
*Swag bag filled with:
*Autographed copy of The Secret Of Spruce Knoll
*Spoiled by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan
*Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan 
*Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick 
*A Need So Beautiful by Suzanne Young 
3rd place: 
*Autographed copy of The Secret Of Spruce Knoll
*Swag bag

What are you waiting for? Head over to Heather's blog to enter to win!!!

 

Conceived in Fear, Born of Hope

Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes book birthday isn't even one month old yet, but I'm hard at work preparing my next book Chosen  for release in September.

Each of my books are like my children. While I love them all, they each have something different that tugs on my heart. With Twenty-Eight it was Rose. What's not to love about Rose?  When I think about Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes it fills me with hope and happiness.

Chosen was conceived and gestated in fear.

When I wrote my NaNoWriMo book that kick-started my writing career, it was a fairly easy going romantic suspense (full on love scene and all– it took more than a few glasses of wine to write that one) until I got to the end. Then the last two chapters were this dark gritty scene that came out no where.  I'll be honest and admit it scared me. What made my mind wander that direction?

As I waited to edit the previous mess, a new book idea came to me, innocently enough.  One night I was cooking dinner and my son's girl friend told me she'd been counting with my then four-year-old son Ryan. If Ryan touched her fingers, he could count, but if he didn't touch her he wouldn't say the numbers. I said, "huh, maybe he's psychic and he touches you and sees the numbers in your head."

Then my mouth dropped open and I nearly dropped the spatula out of my hand. There was my book.

But I needed more than a psychic boy (who later changed to seeing the future.) I would write a story about a mother trying to protect her son.

I could see from the beginning that this story could be big, but I could also see it would be very dark and edgy.

And that scared the shit out of me.

But my friend Dave loved the idea and encouraged me to at least try to write it. So the week before Christmas, I began the first chapter of Chosen. (Unlike most of my books, I knew the title before I started.) It had a car chase scene, which I really didn't know much about, so I consulted with my then eighteen-year-old son who helped me work out the "choreography" and  come up the the idea to get  the main character Emma*out of the situation.  I wrote and polished, and added and deleted and a week later I had my completed chapter which I sent to Dave and Brandy, my dedicated alpha reader. They both read it and emailed back immediately.

Keep going!

So I started the second chapter, my stomach a knotted mass of terror. And a full week later I sent it off to Dave and Brandy.

This is good. Keep going.

With each new chapter, my anxiety billowed until I could hardly eat, I had trouble sleeping. This book was too big. The characters lives so unfamiliar to my own I couldn't do them justice, yet I slugged on, my alpha readers giving me encouragement and reassurance.

And then I wrote and sent off chapter ten, which contains a huge surprise that hits you out of no where, picking my fingernails down to the beds.  Dave wrote back:

OMG. How are you going to top that?

My pit of fear and anxiety split open swallowed me whole. How WOULD I top that? Finally I sat down with myself and said "You're doing this. You've gotten this far. What's the worst that can happen? It sucks and you either let it go or fix it."

I'd love to tell you that I saw the reason in this and I finished the book in a more peaceful state. What I can tell you is I saw the reason in this and it became my mantra. I felt completely out of my element the entire time I wrote the book, but I gave myself more slack for the fear.

Still, these characters caught me by surprise and grabbed my heart and wouldn't let go. I felt Emma's fear and guilt over the life she provided for her son. I felt Will's own guilt and inner struggle– the biggest surprise of the entire book. Will was supposed to be secondary character who became a main character and threatened to overshadow Emma. Will's an overpowering alpha male that I continually had to reign in, but he had a incredibly interesting back story and his personal struggle ripped me to pieces at times. My characters' pain became my own and the week I wrote one particular scene was one of the hardest of my life (Note: I ended up cutting most of it later. Kill your darlings.)

While Chosen isn't a fun and lighthearted story like Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes, it's a child of my heart. Chosen is my first baby I was ready to send into the world. But more importantly, it's the book that made me conquer my fear and push forward.

That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

*Emma: My youngest daughter is named Emma but I assure you that this is coincidental. There's a reason for the name. Trust me.

Chosen blurb: 

Everything Emma Thompson owns fits in a suitcase she moves from one roach infested motel to another. She and Jake, her five year old son who can see the future, are running from the men intent on taking him. Emma will do anything to protect him even when it means accepting the help of a stranger named Will. Jake insists she needs Will, but Emma's never needed help before. And even though she's learned to trust her son, it doesn't mean she trusts Will.

Mercenary Will Davenport lives in the moment. Hauling Emma to South Dakota should have been an easy job, but his employer neglected to tell him about Emma's freaky son and the gunmen hot on her trail. Instinct tells him this job is trouble, but nothing can prepare him for Jake's proclamation that Will is The Chosen One, who must protect Emma from the men hunting her power. A power she doesn't know she has.

Will protects Emma and Jake on a cross-country chase from the men pursuing them, while struggling with memories from his past, his apprehension of Jake, and his growing attraction to Emma. Will's overwhelming urge to protect Emma surprises him, especially since it has nothing to do with his paycheck and possibly everything to do with the tattoo Jake branded on his arm. Rich and powerful men are desperate to capture Emma, and Will must discover why before it's too late.

Lend Me Your Reviews! August Giveaway!

Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes is doing even better than I expected with sales and has some really awesome reviews and ratings!!! At this moment, it has twenty-three 5 star ratings and seven 4 star!  I am ecstatic!!!

That's thirty ratings with an average of 4.76%.

That is unbelievable. THANK YOU!

But I'm also greedy. I'm a debut author and self-published to boot. Readers only have word of mouth and reviews to rely on as to whether Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes is worth 0.99 for an ebook (to be raised to $2.99 in September)  or $10.79 for print (Barnes & Noble and Amazon.)  So now I need your help, and I've provided an incentive.

Because I have bushel full of kids and I believe in bribery rewards sharing with friends.

I'm giving away three gift certificates worth $25 each to either Amazon or Barnes & Noble. (Winner's choice )

How can you enter?

Simple. If you've read Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes, just write a review and post it somewhere that hosts reviews. The review can be one sentence or a lengthy analysis. The only thing I ask is that it be honest. One review post equals one entry.

But, wait. Don't you want more chances to win? Just post a review somewhere else. It can be the same review, just post it on another site. Or a blog post. My only request is that it's somewhere that can be linked back to so potential readers can see it.

Criteria to enter:

One entry for each review posted. Must be a review, not just a rating because some of those are impossible to track.
Sites for postings include, but are not limited to: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, Shelfari, LibraryThing, a review on  your personal blog, a review posted on another blog (not a comment) or any other site you can think of.
Extra credit: Amazon has a Like button on both book format pages (Kindle and Print.) If you like each page, I'll give you one extra entry. This is totally on the honor system since there's no way to track back, but this is  a HUGE factor in Amazon's algorithms.
More extra credit: Another honor entry if you click all the tags at the bottom of the Amazon pages. The higher the numbers, the higher Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes shows up in searches for those tags. Feel free to add tags of your own.
Reviews can have been added BEFORE the beginning of the contest. Just leave a link to your review in the comment section.
In comments, list the site where the review was left and a link. You can list multiple links in one comment. Or one link per comment. Entirely up to you. If you add more to other sites later, you may make a comment further down. Tell me in the comment if you've "liked" my TWO pages on Amazon and clicked the tags on BOTH pages. Follow this link for Kindle and this one for print.

Contest ends at midnight CDT on August 31. 2011. Winners will be announced on Friday, September 2, 2011. Entries will be numbered and chosen by Random.org
And for those of you who have read Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes and loved it. Thank you. I wouldn't be where I am right now without you!

 

 

 

Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes Blog Stop #4

Today's blog stop is actually at TWO places. The first is at the blog of  the lovely Carolina Valdez Miller. She's hosting a vlog my children made to protest the one I made last week. They claim I'm a diva. So I wear a tiara. That doesn't mean anything. *shrugs*

The second stop is at Anne Riley's blog. She's hosting weekly giveaways and she's giving away a copy of Twenty-Eight and a Hal Wishes along with an ARC of ULTRAVIOLET by R.J. Anderson. She'll announce the winner at the end of the week and I'll be sure to remind you to check!

Oh, and the contest to win a book from Critique Sister's Corner is still going on, too. Lot's of chances to win!

 

Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes Blog Tour Stop #3

Many thanks to Eisley Jacobs for her post featuring my vlog yesterday about living the glamorous life of an author. And congrats to Devin for winning an autographed copy of Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes as well as a copy of Born to be a Dragon, Eisley's middle grade fantasy.

Today is a stop at my dear friend Trisha Leigh's blog. Trisha also happens to be my crit partner and even though we only live about ten minutes apart, we met on Twitter.  Trisha's giving you a review about Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes and featuring an excerpt from one of my favorite scenes. Rose's first kiss.  There's some behind the scene's info about that scene. Maybe I'll share it.  But YOU can share at Trisha's blog and enter to win a copy of Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes by sharing about your first kiss. I can't wait to read your stories!

 

Twenty-Eight and a Half Wises Blog Tour Stop #2

Yesterday's stop was so much fun and I want to thank Heather McCorkle for having me at Critique Sisters Corner. Heather's still hosting a giveaway of my book so hop on over there if you want a chance to enter!

Today is the second stop on the blog tour at my dear friend and critique partner, Eisley Jacobs' blog. Eisley knows how wacky I can be, and being someone who truly appreciates wacky, she asked me to make a vlog. Open concept.

Oh dear, Eisley. Haven't you learned anything about me by now? Be careful what you ask for…

What I am talking about? Hop on over to Eisley's blog to see a day in the life– the GLAMOROUS  life– of an author.

Note: Eisley is camping right now and the embedded video isn't working. I'm going to post the video here until she gets it resolved. Be sure to go over to her blog too, though. Eisley is giving away a signed copy of MY book and HER OWN middle grade book- Born to be a Dragon.