Heather Demetrios's Blog, page 15

Interview With Hello Giggles

Here's the first of many interviews and blogs related to the release of I'll Meet You There. Loved getting to talk about this book I love soooooo much...

Hello Giggles Interview

For more on I'll Meet You There and to read the first five chapters, click on the book cover below. :)

A Few Good Links

With the publication of I'll Meet You There exactly one week away, I haven't had too much time to blog. But that doesn't mean I haven't been writing posts. Below is the blog tour schedule for IMYT and I can't wait for you all to check out the stops. I put a lot of time into these posts and it was great fun getting to talk about this book that means so much to me. Click the quote below for tour dates.

Finally, I've already been getting incredibly touching responses from readers who have connected with Josh and Sky's story. Below are a couple of reviews by bloggers who took my…

An I'll Meet You There Promo for the Die Hard Romantics

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Starred Review of I'll Meet You There

I am THRILLED to share this starred review from Booklist for I'll Meet You There. Huzzah! Sky and Josh FTW.

Skylar’s postgraduation plans are pretty much set in stone: trading in a life in the trailer she shares with hermom in Creek View, where she has spent all of her 18 years, to study art in San Francisco. But when herold coworker Josh, a U.S. Marine, returns from Afghanistan minus not only his leg but also his party-boyways, Skylar’s crystal clear view of the future starts to blur. Over the summer, Skylar grows unexpectedlycloser to Josh. She thinks she might even love him, and when her mother loses her job, her future only getsmore complicated. Can she really leave behind this place and the people who need her? Demetriosexplores a complicated web of issues surrounding her intelligent protagonist in a summer full of changes,and she breathes life into fictional Creek View by populating the novel with eccentric yet familiarcharacters, from Skylar’s closest friends to her boss Marge to Josh’s unrelenting flirt of a brother.Demetrios smartly interweaves brief splices of narrative from Josh’s point of view, providing a necessarycounterpoint that effectively buoys the romance and expands the reader’s understanding of Josh’sexperience in Afghanistan. Part coming-of-age, part romance, and part war story, Demetrios’ latest is remarkable.

— Jennifer Barnes

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Quotes to Dream By

I am, as stated on my Twitter profile, a snail mail afficionado. I LOVE stationary and stamps and pretty pens and sending things to people. It makes me happy to imagine my little missive on its journey across the country, being passed from hand to postal worker hand and then somehow, magically, winding up in a mail box, covered in stamps. So, of course, I send Christmas cards. In these cards I always include some of my favorite quotes from the year. I have a little notebook where I compile them, writing down the words that inspire me. Around the holidays, I choose my favorites and then put them on a little piece of paper that I include with the card. My writer friends get one set and everyone else gets another (I figure they probably won\'t have loads of use for writing inspiration).It\'s a small gift for those I know and love, something I hope will inspire them as they look forward to a new year. I\'ve pasted them below for you, Reader. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season filled with magic, joy, and peace and a 2015 that will knock your socks off.

Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

~Rumi

People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

~Maya Angelou

The…

The I'll Meet You There Blog Tour Schedule

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Faulkner's Six and the Placeholder Protagonist

keep in mind Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech when crafting that oh-so-important first chapter (not to mention the rest of the novel). We’ll talk about the speech in a sec. Though I have a lot of revision ahead of me, I needed to hear my agent’s wise words, born from years of experience as both a writer and an editor herself. This is why you need an agent who knows what makes a great book, not just how to sell one. In my draft, I’d committed one of the biggest sins you can as a novelist: I didn’t give the reader an opportunity to care about my protagonist. I think this can happen with any genre, but for me it’s most likely to happen in early drafts of my fantasies, when I’m so occupied building a world that never existed before, a magic system that doesn’t reek of every fantasy that came before it, and an ensemble cast of fascinating characters with magical powers and sinister or altruistic motives of their own, that I create a placeholder…

For Your IPod

Music is such a huge part of my life and my writing. I make playlists for all my books and the one I created for I'll Meet You There is one of my favorites. Some of the songs are actually mentioned in the book, while others make me think of Josh and Sky and everything they're going through. I wanted to re-create the feeling of Creek View, summer, and complicated love. From Lorde to the Dixie Chicks, there's something here for everyone.

Breaking Bread With The Greats

Last week totally qualifies as a five-star week in large part because I got to have lunch with Katherine Paterson (of Bridge to Terabithia fame) and Tobin Anderson (Feed is my favorite of his excellent novels). This all came about because for the first time in my life I bid at an auction and decided that I was going to win or die trying. The meals were part of an annual auction held at VCFA every year, and I bought them for myself as a graduation present (we were awarded our MFAs just a few days after said auction). I brought my dear friend and Ally,

It was, I have to say, a kind of religious experience getting to meet and hug and hang out with the Katherine Paterson. Jacob Have I Loved was one of my absolute favorite books growing up. The story meant—and continues to mean—so much to me. It’s one of the finest examples of young adult literature in the canon and to have the opportunity to pick Katherine’s brain was something I will never forget. We talked quite a bit about how a novel like this may not get published today. It’s a deeply internal story that follows its protagonist into her adulthood. It doesn’t have a hook or sexy plot.…

The Boggart In My Closet

So, fear. Someone recently told me that it’s possible that all the anxiety I have over my works-in-progress, my submissions, my books sales, my this, my that may all stem from—you guessed it—fear. And I have to admit, I think she might be right. Sometimes fear can be our best ally, the thing that pushes us to do what we really want to, even though it scares the…