Cat Winters's Blog, page 29

June Updates

Here are some of the latest behind-the-scenes tidbits about my books.
An In the Shadow of Blackbirds book trailer is in the works, and it will feature the music of Jill Tracy ! I won't reveal the specific song at this point, but Jill's dark, Victorian-inspired work is absolutely perfect for my WWI-era ghost tale. The trailer will more than likely make an appearance a couple months before the novel's release date. More details to follow.
I may be seeing In The Shadow of Blackbirds cover art by th...

Confessions of a Reader Who Bawls over Books

Last week I admitted on Twitter that I broke into tears when I read the last lines of Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing to my seven-year-old son. Two fellow 2013 debut YA novelists, Elsie Chapman (Dualed) and Alison Cherry (Red), joined in on the conversation, and it was determined I was the wimpiest one of the group when it came to books and crying. Elsie suggested I blog about which books make me cry the most and give them tissue ratings for the amounts of tears they produced. Th...

2013 YA Book Covers

To celebrate the increasing emergence of 2013 book covers, I've created a Pinterest board called 2013 Book Cover Love , and I plan to keep the page as updated as I possibly can as artwork appears. Here's a snippet of the board:

View the entire board here.
I'll continually add the covers of books written by my fellow 2013 debut YA and middle-grade novelists, as well as the works of seasoned authors and adult-fiction writers.

I love seeing next year's titles grouped together like this and comtempla...

Why My Character Can't Carry Her Phone in Her Pocket

Yesterday I had lunch at one of my favorite pizza restaurants: Portland's Old Town Pizza (which is reputedly haunted!). I sat across from a telephone similar to one my In the Shadow of Blackbirds protagonist uses in the novel's 1918 setting:


I took the picture to demonstrate why you won't catch my heroine texting her friends or searching for her phone in her pocket. She and her classmates would never get in trouble for bringing phones to school, because that would entail ripping large wooden...

My Number One Tip for Revising a Novel

Over at The Lucky 13s today I'm sharing a revision tip that proved to be crucial for my In the Shadow of Blackbirds edits. I'm also sharing the book's fluctuating word count, which dramatically rose and fell as I cut scenes/characters from the story and added new material.

I always think of book edits as a complicated jigsaw puzzle: you have to figure out which pieces fit where and what parts don't belong before you end up with your final, satisfying picture.

Here's my post:

http://thelucky13s.b...

The Editorial Letter Stage... and How I Immersed Myself in the WWI Era While Revising

On March 23, 2012, my brilliant editor, Maggie Lehrman of Amulet Books/Abrams , sent me a seven-page letter detailing her suggestions for In the Shadow of Blackbirds . I was on vacation at the time, which was probably for the best. I tend to want to jump directly into revisions once I receive them, but a long car ride between northern Washington and Portland, Oregon, helped me process the changes and let ideas marinate.

Fast forward to May 8, 2012. My manuscript and I came to an agreement that w...

My Dear Teen Me Guest Post & Other Exciting News

I'm thrilled to be a guest today over at Dear Teen Me , a website where authors write letters to their teen selves. I've written a message to the fourteen-year-old version of me, when I had just moved to a new city and still hadn't recovered from my middle school-era insecurities and often-crippling shyness.

If you're arriving here from Dear Teen Me, welcome! Please make yourself at home. I have links to my Twitter , Facebook , and Goodreads accounts all over the place, as well as info about my n...

Revising!

My editorial letter for In the Shadow of Blackbirds arrived last Friday, so between now and mid-May I'll be nearly nonexistent on the web, aside from taking some Twitter/Facebook breathers now and then.

If you're unfamiliar with editorial letters, that's the stage of publishing when the main editor for a book sends the author several pages of notes suggesting how to make the book stronger. Here's a picture of the seven-page In the Shadow of Blackbirds letter the brilliant Maggie Lehrman of a

Crawling into My Writing Cave Again

This blog is going to be pretty dull and quiet for the next two months...but that's actually a good thing. My editorial letter will more than likely arrive next week, which means I'll be busy revising, beautifying, and polishing I n the Shadow of Blackbirds in preparation for its release next year. Before the letter arrives, I'm going to try to get my work-in-progress at a good stopping point so I can pour my heart and soul back into my beloved Blackbirds.

If I have time, I'll share a post abo...

Links for Young Writers

If you attended one of my writing sessions for 5th to 8th graders at the Soar with Your Dreams Conference today, thanks so much for signing up to hear what I had to say. Welcome to my website!


As I mentioned during my talk, my love of writing started in childhood, so I completely understand the need to express yourself creatively at a young age. I'm even including a picture of me at thirteen, the age when I started submitting my work to publications and won my first writing award. No, I defini...