Heather Demetrios's Blog, page 13
March 30, 2015
March 18, 2015
BLOOD PASSAGE Cover Reveal!!!
Carving Angels - Process and Practice
Julia Cameron’s Vein of Gold, a companion to…
March 11, 2015
Why YA Romance Gets Me Every Time
When I was a little girl, my grandparents’ room was filled with Harlequin romances. My grandma devoured them. There were stacks of them against the walls, thin paperbacks with titles like Raging Passion, A Rogue and a Pirate, and—much to my excitement—The Demetrious Line.
article in the New Yorker, Flame was “the first bodice-ripper to very implicitly rip bodices.” In fact, here’s a snippet, if you don’t believe me:
She was left breathless each time his mouth took hers and passionate kisses seemed to cover her face and bosom. She felt his hands go up her back and with an easy tug he separated…March 5, 2015
My Publishing Journey
Trying to get your first book published is a marathon, not a dash. I’m not a runner, so the running metaphor stops there, but it’s an apt one to keep in mind as you begin the publishing journey. It isn’t luck, although what’s happening in the market can certainly effect whether or not your book is acquired or the details of your deal. The fact of the matter is that if you write a story readers can’t put down, a story that connects with them emotionally, gives their imagination a workout and—bonus—challenges them in some way, then somebody is going to buy your book. I think new or unpublished writers spend far too much time worrying about trends. This is something you should be aware of, especially in YA, but it shouldn’t ultimately determine what you choose to write, assuming, of course, that you’re writing the story your heart is begging you to put down on paper. Any other story is for the birds.
When I found out that Something Real sold, I felt a little like this:
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There’s a line in I’ll Meet You There that pretty much sums it up for me: Getting what you’ve always wanted, after wanting it for so long that the wanting was imprinted on your very being—it was too much.
It was pretty surreal,…
February 24, 2015
The Hope You Hold
Sometimes it can be helpful to think about endings when you’re at the beginning of the process—not plotting the ending, but doing a bit of free, no-holds-barred thinking about your character’s emotional inner journey and where you hope she goes. This is what you write towards, that hope you have for her in your heart. Your plot is moving toward something, a climax that, especially in YA, results in some sort of self-discovery on the protagonist’s part, a revelation about the world and their place in it. In real life, we have no idea what comes next. Our journeys are fraught with the unexpected. But we often know where we want to go, don’t we? Thus, much of what we experience comes from what we put out into the world and the choices we make. It’s not a surprise to see where we’ve ended up once we go back and connect the dots. It’s often inevitable. In fact, when we do this work, we see how much of a hand we have in our own fate regardless of who’s pulling the strings of our future.
So how can our protos experience this inevitability if we’ve imposed a plot on them with…
February 17, 2015
The People That Fill The Holes Inside Us
One thing I don’t get to talk very often about when discussing I’ll Meet You There is the relationship that Marge, the owner of the Paradise Motel, has with Skylar and Josh, the novel’s protagonists. Skylar describes Marge as a mama bear, a Midwest transplant who bought the Paradise after her Army son was killed. In the novel we see the ways in which she supports Sky and Josh, whether it’s feeding them when they’re hungry, offering shelter, or just being a solid, dependable presence. Both Sky and Josh have troubled home lives with emotionally absentee parents or, in Sky’s case, literally absent, as her father has been dead for several years. Marge is a mother who lost a child and so she directs the energy she can’t put into her son’s life toward these two broken kids. Marge doles out tough love and gentleness in equal doses—she doesn’t let Sky or Josh get away with anything. The balance between accountability and affection is key to the relationship between an authority figure (she’s their boss) and a young adult.
Looking back on the novel, it’s no surprise that I inserted Marge into Sky and Josh’s lives. I myself come from a broken home and though I know my mom loved me, she wasn’t always able to be everything I needed. All through my childhood and adolescence I had adults who stepped in to shoulder some of my single mom’s burden and, later, to be there when the…
February 15, 2015
On PTSD
It’s fate or something that just when I start writing this post in the passenger seat of my car, my husband drives past Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia. My fingers leave the keyboard and I look up. It’s dark outside and the distinctive architecture of the Marine Corps museum cuts into the sky. I can’t see much else, but I’ve been there before and I can imagine the exhibits inside, discovered during a special trip with one of my best friends almost exactly a year after I’ll Meet You There sold to Macmillan. I’d visited on Memorial Day weekend, which included a visit to the famous Iwo Jima Marine Corps memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. For a lot of people, Memorial Day is a holiday, meant for barbecues and sleeping in. But in Washington DC, it’s more than that. And suddenly, for me, it became more than that, too. You don’t write a book about a nineteen-year-old Marine who loses his leg in Afghanistan and forget what Memorial Day means.
I’ll Meet You There is a love story about a really good girl who’s been dealt a really bad hand, and a bad boy trying to make good after one bomb changes his life forever. It’s also a story about war, poverty, death, grief, and how you can find beauty in unexpected places. And one other thing: it’s about PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). A lot of my younger readers might not have any idea what that combination of…
February 10, 2015
On Becoming The Designated Typist
For some people, starting a new novel is like that scene in The Sound Of Music, where Maria’s tralala-ing on a mountaintop, arms spread out, spinning in delirious joy. (Let’s all take a moment to acknowledge that we secretly hate these writers). If you’re like me, though, that blank white page isn’t cause for bursting into song. Bursting into tears, yes. The endless possibilities are overwhelming, so many possible plots and characters to choose from—and what about voice, structure, tense and…and…and… In order to banish the insanity and keep your freak-outs at bay, it can be tempting to hurry up and create a nice, tidy plot that you can stick characters into, much like those Velcro and felt landscapes in pre-school…
Thoughts On Publishing
In the past 364 days I’ve had three books published (Something Real, Exquisite Captive, I’ll Meet You There), each more different than the last. To say I haven’t felt overwhelmed would be a bald-faced lie. My dream of being a published author has come so epically true, it’s kind of hard to wrap my head around sometimes. I’d say be careful what you wish for, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. One of the biggest challenges of any debut author—and especially one with more than one publisher, as I have—is learning how to navigate the world of publishing. Before you sign your first contract, publishing is sort of this ephemeral land of book genies. No matter how much research you do, you don’t really know much about it. Like most authors, I thought that once I had a book deal all my problems would fade away. NOT! In some ways, my problems seemed to multiply (kinda like, as Biggie says, “Mo money, mo problems.”). First, some perspective: these are first world problems. Worrying about if anyone is going to buy your book is not the same as worrying that you won’t be able to eat today. I get that. Having perspective is key to surviving life as a published author—more on that later.
The first thing you will experience is an adjustment to the ownership of your book. You go from your baby being just yours to it suddenly belonging to loads of people. This can be a little disorienting.…
