Chantele Sedgwick's Blog, page 11

Great News for Kasie West! ;)

I'm so excited for my friend Kasie West! I'm sure most of you have heard by now, but I'll post it anyway!

June 6, 2012[image error]
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Kasie West's THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US, a humorous love story about a girl who has her lifelong disdain of the wealthy challenged by the son of a hotel mogul, whose attention and loyalty almost convince her that being rich isn't a character flaw, until she finds out that money is a bigger part of their relationship than she realized, to Sarah Landis at Harper Teen, in a very nice deal, in a two-book deal, for publication in Fall 2013, by Michelle Wolfson at Wolfson Literary Agency (World English). Translation: Taryn Fagerness Agency   YAY!! Kasie sold two other YA books to HarperTeen! WOOT! Go over to her blog and celebrate with her! :D Have a great weekend!!     

Fried

I noticed I have a few new followers from this weekend. Hello and welcome! :D SO glad to have you here. :) Hopefully you'll stick around. I've been posting irregularly for a while now and I feel bad about it. But then I realize I shouldn't feel bad about it. We all have lives other than our blogs. We all have jobs or kids or vacations. We all have a LIFE. So I shouldn't feel bad. Right? RIGHT? I still do. :(

I love blogging. I love making new friends online. I've made a ton and I couldn't be happier about it.  Sometimes I think I have to write posts because I'll be letting my friends down. But when I have nothing to say,  it doesn't feel right. You know?

As you know, this pregnancy has fried my brain. It really has. And those who have been where I'm at, know what I'm talking about. ;) I still love blogging, I still love visiting your blogs. I'm not online as much as I used to be, but I'm still here. I'll always be around. And I'm definitely not going to stop blogging. I'm just letting you know I'm probably going to be sporadic at best until this baby comes. But I do have some exciting things coming up. Like my BOOK COVER!! :D And a blog tour, which I really need to organize... Once I get dates on my cover reveal and blog tour I'll let you guys know. And if anyone would like to do a cover reveal or something for me, send me an e-mail. :) As I said before, my brain doesn't work right now... And I'm probably going to be the worst self-promoter ever. Ha ha. :) I'm really not joking...

Anyway, thank you all for sticking around. I love you guys.

Google Searches

I've looked a few times at my stats and thought it would be fun to post the keywords people use to find my blog.

Want to guess what the #1 search to find my blog was this month? Anyone? Anyone?

1. Mean Parents.
Uh ... I'm not sure why anyone would find my blog looking for information on mean parents. I swear I'm a good parent! And I love my own parents! This one just baffles me. Oh well. I vaguely remember writing a post on mean parents in YA... Maybe I'll look it up.

2. 50k
I did a writing exercise about 50k in a month. I guess people want to know more about it?

3. Bad word symbols
Um ... I have no idea.

4. Chantele Sedgwick
Cool! People looked me up by my name! Woot!

5. Fairy costumes
I did a post a LONG time ago about what if we had to dress up as our main character for an agent interview. I thought it was funny, but I'm sure the people searching for fairy costumes think it's a little weird.

What are some random google searches that bring people to your blog?

Random Thoughts From This Week

1. My little guy finished first grade today. Holy crap. I have a second grader now. And  Kindergartener. It makes my eyes tear up to have two in school in the fall. :(

2. I'm finally making progress on my WIP's. Yes, I'm not just writing one. My brain can't focus on just one right now. So, I'm writing my Fairy Tale sequel, a paranormal and a contemporary. The contemporary is just for fun, so I'm more focused on the others. Still. It's good to be writing again.

3. Yay for Memorial Day weekend! Are you guys doing anything fun? We're just hanging out with the fam and having a BBQ. Good times! ;)

4. It's been cloudy for days. No rain. Annoying. I love the rain. It makes me want to sit in the house and write all day. In other words, do nothing. Ha! Lazy much? :)

5. I got some good news this week. My release date for NOT YOUR AVERAGE FAIRY TALE is August 1st!!! :D :D :D That makes me all kinds of happy!! And I get to see my cover next week. I'm so nervous. It's kind of ridiculous how nervous I am. Ha ha. Anyway, have a happy Friday and a fun Holiday weekend!!

When Your Journey Takes a Detour

When I started this crazy writing journey, I always imagined getting an agent and then a book deal with a big publishing house. I never thought I'd get a huge deal or anything, but I would have been happy with whatever.

Little did I know, things didn't work out that way. My journey has been so different than what I expected. I did get an agent. I was so happy and excited when my book went on submission. But when it didn't sell, and my agent decided to pull it, I got a little down. Actually, a lot down. There were several factors involved when it came to leaving my agent. It still makes me sad, but it was right for me and my book.

After that whole thing, I thought about small presses. I'd never thought about them before. It wasn't part of my plan. What about the big book deal? The tours? The beautiful hardcovers I was supposed to have? I had to change my focus and think realistically. I had hope that my book was special enough. And even though a big book deal would have been nice, I just wanted people to be able to read it. So I submitted it to a small press I'd heard good things about. And two days later I had an offer. They have been awesome to work with and I couldn't be happier with the way my book has turned out.

What I'm trying to say, is this. Things sometimes don't work out the way you think they will. I always had one goal. A big publisher. A nice advance. But it wasn't supposed to happen that way for me. Obviously. And that's okay. There are so many ways to get our books out there now days. Do whatever works for YOU. As for my journey, I'm working on other books and will do the whole query thing again. I want an agent and I still would love to see my books on bookstore shelves. Sometimes you just have to take a little detour to start your career. I did. And I couldn't be happier. Maybe I'll land a great agent someday and get into bookstores. Maybe not. Either way, I'm enjoying the ride.

Has your writing career taken a different turn than you expected?

On Piracy

Yay! I have a computer again! :) I hate not having a computer. First of all, some of my best friends live in it. Second, I couldn't write for a week. I did write in a notebook when I had time, but I still missed my computer. Anyway, it's good to be back in internetland.

 I wanted to talk about piracy today. And not the hot swashbuckling kind. I'm pretty sure every knows what piracy is, but just in case...

Definition: The unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.

We've all heard of it. It's getting to be a bigger problem now days and bottom line? It sucks. That's really all there is to it. Every industry has this problem. Movies, music and now books. People losing thousands of dollars when their product is downloaded for free.

Over the past week, a few author friends of mine found their books on pirating sites. People have been downloading their books for free. Some have had their books on the sites for months and had no idea. One girl had her new release downloaded 100 times. Another, 1000 times. There was another author who had a series of 3 e-books and they were downloaded 10,000 times. Do you have any idea how much money she lost because of this site? I'm sick for this girl. We as authors work SO hard to get our books into the best shape possible. We work even harder when we secure an agent or publisher or decide to self-publish our books. If you found out your book was being downloaded for free on some pirating site, I think you'd be devastated. I know I would. And I'm sure most publishers fight to get them taken down, but once they find the book, the damage has already been done.

Now, there's a difference between getting a book on Amazon for free vs a pirating site. Amazon places books for free sometimes. I'm not sure if the author has any say in it, (you authors that have done this, let me know) but most of the time it's a marketing tool. Place your book for free and you have a lot of people interested. Then with other books in the series, people will be willing to buy it to find out what happens next.

Pirating takes a copyrighted book and puts it on the internet illegally. It needs to stop. I wish there was more we could do about it, and I'm sure it will just get worse. But keep in mind when you come across a pirating site, (some can be very legit sounding) think about the author that worked so hard on his/her books. Buy it from a known source. Barnes and Noble, Amazon, or your local bookstore. Hopefully book piracy will diminish a little if we keep our eyes open.

Any thoughts on this? Have you ever had your material on a piracy site and found about about it later?

Grrrr....

Remember that one time when I said I was back from a blogging break? Yep. I remember it too. Well, Tuesday night our computer died. Our new one will be here on Saturday hopefully. I just want to remind everyone to back up your work on a flash drive. You never know when your computer might fail you. Have you ever lost your work? I would have had a heart attack I think...

Where I've been

I'm back! Sorry about the lack of blogging. I've been at a conference, on vacation and running my kids to school and activities the past few weeks. So ... no time for blogging. No time for writing. No time for basically anything. :P But school's out next week, (weird) and even though my kids will be home all day, life won't be as crazy. :)

My brain is still not working the way I'd like, so I'm still having trouble focusing on one project to work on. Which is fine, just frustrating. But I only have 4 months of my pregnancy left, so it won't last forever. At least I keep telling myself that! Ha!

So, what have I missed? Any good news you guys want to share? Interesting stories from the past few weeks? I've been so out of the blogging loop, but I promise I'll be better. You all know how it is. ;)

My internet is being stupid, so who knows if this will ev...

My internet is being stupid, so who knows if this will even post. I don't have much to say today, other than the high school dance blogfest that's going on today is freaking hilarious. I'm sure you've seen some of them. So funny. Anyway, I'll be on vacation until next week, so I'll see you guys then. Have a great week and weekend!

Storymakers Overload!

So ... this weekend was MADE of awesome. It was so amazing being in the same room with hundreds of other aspiring writers and published authors. Seriously. My brain sort of hurts from all of the awesomeness and great advice I soaked up, but it was so worth it. If you ever get to go to a conference, seriously go.And now, since I can't think, here are a few pictures I managed to snap. Well, I guess I didn't snap them, but people snapped them for me. Ha ha. :)

Waiting for an awesome agent/editor panel to start. My roomies: Katie Dodge, Donna Nolan, Ruth Josse, Me and Jeigh MeredithAnd just in case you were wondering ... no. We didn't get any sleep either night. Ha ha. :)

Being photo-bombed by Abel Keogh. And look at cute Shelly Brown in the black and white. I love her!

Back Row: Tasha Seegmiller, David Powers King, Jessie Humphries, Melanie FowlerFront: Jeigh Meredith, Me, Katie Dodge, Ruth Josse, Leigh Covington, Angie Cothran

A few of the same peeps from above. :)

Overall it was an amazing conference. I wish I had gotten pictures with Erin Summerill, Peggy Eddleman, and a few others, but there were so many things going on that I forgot to get my camera out most of the time. They were so much fun to meet though.

I'll post about some of the classes and things this week. :)