R.A. Dines's Blog

Launch recap, school visits, and a November writing challenge

Hello! It’s been a little while since I sent a newsletter, but a lot has happened, so let me fill you in!

Launch recap

The last you officially heard from me, it was the publication day of How I Hacked the Moon! The book has now been out for 2 months and I’m calling it a roaring success. Some highlights from the launch:

Hit #1 Bestseller status on Amazon in several categories

Was the #1 new release on Amazon for Children’s Sci-Fi Dystopian books

Crossed more than 50 reviews across Amazon, Goodreads an...

I woke up a published author today

Snuggling my beautiful first Amazon proof

This morning I woke up. Had my coffee. Chased my son down the sidewalk while he biked to school. Came home. Opened my laptop. Pretty normal day. Except not. Today, I published my debut novel, How I Hacked the Moon. I’ve only been working on it for 10+ years, in one form or another. My husband unhelpfully pointed out that I’ve been gestating this book longer than it took to gestate my son.

Long story short…

I’ve talked a lot in past posts in this newsletter...

Pre-order special and an interview with myself

I am a duck

Phew. T- 2 weeks to launch of How I Hacked the Moon. I feel like one of those ducks who is paddling furiously below the underwater, but looks totally calm above the surface. It reminds me of this lovely Nathan Pyle cartoon. I think I look like the duck in the top two squares, but I probably look like the bottom two.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3719607628123873&id=163385977079407&set=a.163399730411365

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In my last newsletter, I said I was hunting for 50 ARC...

HOW I HACKED THE MOON: Cover reveal and ARC signups

Hi! It’s been a little while since I’ve posted a newsletter, I’ve been heads down revising and editing the manuscript for my debut novel. But guess what? I have a little break right now while I wait for line and copy edits to get done. So what’s happening now? TLDR, the book has a new title, a new cover, a shiny new developmental edit and is still on track to publish on September 5th! Here are the details, for those who are interested in the day in the life of an Indie author.

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Revisi...

I’m done querying

Last week I made the call: I'm done querying. Over 2.5 years, I sent 141 queries! Here are my stats:

Full request, eventual decline: 3

No response: 74

Declined: 64

I'm sharing these stats to help other querying authors feel less alone, less rejected. Because the truth is, getting an agent and then traditionally publishing is not quite as rare as being struck by lightning, but it's not too far off.

Odds of getting struck by lightning: ~1 in 15,300 people during their lifetime

Odds of traditional publis...

Holding myself accountable for how I spend my time

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I've never really been on a budget. I grew up middle class. I did work-study through college to finance my pocket money. I graduated with minimal student loans and landed quickly in a well-paying tech job. I've also never had to budget my time. Before becoming a parent, my approach was to spend pretty much all of my time working, and any scraps that were left over were thinly divided among friends and family. Becoming a parent meant I carved some of the ti...

Generative AI Eliminates "Productive Struggle" for Kids—And That’s a Big Problem

AI Transparency Disclaimer: No parts of this article were written with AI. I used ChatGPT to provide light copy edits to improve grammar and readability.

My son asked me a question yesterday that I didn’t know the answer to.

“Let’s Google it,” he said.

So we did. We typed in a search (skipping over the AI summary I can’t seem to turn off), read articles from trusted sources, and came to a conclusion.

Voila! A mini research project—complete with inquiry, critical thinking, and our own conclusion. Was...

10 Critical Skills Kids Need in the AI Era

AI Transparency Disclaimer: As we move into this new era, it’s critical that we start normalizing and openly discussing where we use AI. No parts of this article were written or edited with AI. However, we did use AI to help research this article. Our approach is to start with credible sources and use AI to help summarize the articles to pull out the key findings and more related articles to review.

It’s inevitable: we’re in the era of AI. According to a recent study from YouGov, 59% of Americans...

In defense of dropping out

When I was in fourth grade, I desperately wanted to drop out of soccer. I wasn’t very good, I could tell I was dragging down my team. It was an age when kids started to get more serious and I knew I didn’t want to get more serious about this sport. When I told my mom, her response was a flat “no” and when I whined enough “whyyyyss” her string of justifications went something along the lines of:

We finish what we start

We don’t stop doing something just because it’s hard

Your teammates are counting ...

Adventures in 3D printing

In my first newsletter about getting off the treadmill (aka, quitting my day job), I talked about what I would be up to in my retirement, which included a wide variety of activities from writing and publishing to 3D printing. Many of you have asked me questions about 3D printing, so I figured it would be good to talk about that a little bit. I know this is a bit of a departure from what I’ve been writing about so far, so please leave a comment and let me know if I’ve gone too far off the rails h...