Meredith McCardle's Blog, page 3

Meal Plan with Meredith: March 17-21

I’m trying out a new feature here on the blog. If you follow me on Instagram (my username is MeredithMcP), you probably know that I’m a huge meal planner. It’s kind of the only way I can function, truth be told. Type A FTW! Every weekend, I sit down, go through recipes on the Internet, make shopping lists, and come up with a game plan. And early on when I first started planning, I wished there was a blog somewhere that would do all this for me—a one stop shop where I could magically be handed a meal plan and a shopping list. Alas, I never found one. At least not one that went along with my own personal food philosophies (I eat clean always, with lots of fresh vegetables—locally grown, when available—and I make vegetarian or vegan main dishes at least twice a week).

So I decided to create one! After all, it’s not that much harder for me to type up my shopping list and throw a few links on my blog.

So without further ado, here we go! This is what my family and I are eating this week, with links to recipes and a printable shopping list (click link to download).

Shopping list: Meal Plan Week of March 17

Monday: Meeru Dhalwala’s Butternut Squash and Chickpea Curry

Pic © Christopher Testani for The Wall Street Journal

Tuesday: Honey Mustard Roasted Salmon with Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Brussels Sprouts

This is my own recipe. Here you go: Set oven to roast at 425. Take a 1 lb. piece of salmon, skin off and bones out. Wild, not farmed, salmon is preferable. In a small bowl, combine 1 Tbsp. mustard (any kind you want) with 1 Tbsp. honey. Sprinkle salmon with salt and pepper, then brush honey mustard mixture on top of salmon. (Oooooh, do you guys know what’s amazing? Add a drop of truffle oil to the honey mustard, if you have it. Trust.) Roast salmon until done. Probably 10ish minutes, depending on thickness.

For the sweet potatoes: Peel two sweet potatoes and chop into 1/2″ cubes. Toss with a few teaspoons of olive oil and salt and pepper. Roast at 425 for 20 minutes or so.

For the Brussels sprouts: Wash sprouts, then cut in half. Toss with a few teaspoons of olive oil and salt and pepper, until fully coated. Add 1/4-1/2 tsp. vanilla extract, 1 tsp. balsamic vinegar, and up to 2 tsp. brown sugar. Stir to combine. Roast at 425 for 20 minutes, flipping halfway through.

Wednesday:  Stuffed Yellow Peppers with Israeli Couscous and Pesto

Pic © Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Thursday: Spaghetti Squash with Turkey Meatballs

 

Pic © Martha Stewart Living

Friday: Copycat Trader Joe’s Chili Lime Chicken Burgers (These are amazeballs delicious, you guys—if you make one of these recipes this week, make it this one!)

 

Pic © Kristin Porter at Iowa Girl Eats

Happy and healthy eating, everyone!

The moment it all becomes real

So Wednesday I was out and about when an email came through on my phone from my agent, addressed to me and my editorial team, about receiving advances copies of THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN. And you guys, when I say I dropped everything I was doing and ran home, I seriously mean I dropped everything I was doing and ran home. And sure enough, there was a plain brown box waiting for me on my front stoop. I opened it, pulled out a copy, then had a myriad of emotional reactions.

I put the copy back in the box and took a picture to get the whole effect.

And then the next day, a box of paperbacks arrived. I cleared out space on the bookshelves in my family room and lined them all up, like I’m a big name author with prime shelf space at the bookstore.

And then it all sunk in, for really the first time. I’d had blips of excitement in this process for sure—signing the publishing contract, getting a marked up copy of the manuscript from my editor, seeing the cover design, obtaining a blurb, checking over final interior layout—all crazy insane exciting. But holding a final copy of the book in my hands for the first time? That’s the stuff. That’s the real moment.

I am so lucky.

What’s Up Wednesday

So, I’ve known about What’s Up Wednesday for a while, the weekly meme started by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk, and while I’ve read a lot of the posts my friends have made, I haven’t participating myself because … well, I’m not sure why, exactly. I guess I’ve been in a bit of a blogging funk lately. But I think finally biting the bullet and participating is going to help me out of this. So without further ado, here goes….

What I’m Reading: I just finished WHERE’D YOU GO, BERNADETTE by Maria Semple, which if you haven’t read yet, you TOTALLY should. It’s kind of like GONE GIRL but less of a thriller and more of a black comedy. I was so sad when it ended. Now I’m trying to decide whether to start THIS IS NOT A TEST by Courtney Summers, SCARLET by Marissa Meyer, or SACRED by Elana Arnold. I think it’s going to be SACRED and we’ll take it from there.

What I’m Writing: I’m waiting for a revision letter from my editor on ANNUM GUARD, book 2 (which might actually have a title but which I can’t share yet). In the meantime, I’ve officially thrown myself back in the writing grind, which means waking up at 5:30 each morning so I can have an hour, an hour and a half if I’m lucky, before my kids wake up. I started a completely new project—completely different from Annum Guard— and like everything I write, it’s like pulling teeth to get the first 30,000 words down, but then I’m sure I’ll hit my stride. Or at least I hope I will. One can never tell with these things.

What Else I’ve Been Up To: Pitch Wars, Pitch Wars, PITCH WARS.

Pitch Wars goes live today, so I’ve been obsessively checking on my mentee, Addie Thorley’s WHERE DEVILS BREED, and my alternate, Nicole Lisa’s THE DESERT WALL. Both of these manuscripts are so good, you guys. I almost think I’m more nervous than Addie and Nicole here.

In news that is completely unrelated to writing, I made a resolution to be better at carrying my camera with me so I can take pictures whenever something strikes my fancy, versus when I’ve planned ahead and packed everything. I started by myself a new camera bag that can also double as a diaper bag.

Adorable, no? Then I took a bunch of pictures of animals.

And a few random nature shots.

I doubt National Geographic is going to come calling any time soon, but it’s a start!

What’s Inspiring Me: I’m less than four months from debuting (CRAZYCAKES), which is equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. And I’m coming to realize that, while I can try to promote the hell out of my book, there’s so much that’s out of my hands. I can blog and tweet and tumble my heart out, but most stuff? Completely outside my control.

And that’s ok.

I’m learning to let it go.* To trust that things happen for a reason and to just roll with it. And you know what? It’s a completely liberating, life changing experience. 2014 is going to be a great year, no matter how the cards fall.

*Dammit, now I’m singing the Frozen soundtrack in my head again. Also, is there some sort of petition I can sign to make sure Idina Menzel gets to sing that song at the Oscars and not Demi Lovato? Nothing against Demi, but come on. Idina Menzel.

 

 

THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN has a cover! Also, I’m giving away a Kindle!

I am so so SO excited that I finally get to share the cover of THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN with the world. I’ve been in love with it ever since I first got to see my first glimpse of an early draft months ago. Having to sit on it for so long has really tested me!

But now it’s here, and I can finally scream at the top of my lungs about it. I LOVE IT! And and AND, if just having such a beautiful cover wasn’t enough, my absolutely amazing publisher gave me a Kindle Paperwhite to give away along with the cover reveal.

I know. A freaking Kindle Paperwhite. It’s like an early Christmas present!

So hop over to Pub(lishing) Crawl, check out the cover, and enter the contest!

Meet Team Exclamation Point!

When I say that narrowing down my Pitch Wars entries to one winner and two alternates was an agonizingly hard decision, I’m really not exaggerating. I got about four times the number of entries as I was anticipating, and so many of them were SO strong. I wish I could have taken more than three on, but, you know, rules and rules and deadlines are deadlines.

At the end of the day, these three entries stood out to me more than the others.

My winner: Adrianna Cabello

Adrianna (aka Addie) blew. me. away. I couldn’t stop thinking about her book, WHERE DEVILS BREED, a story about a girl who’s hell bent on rescuing her sister from her life as one of the Sultan’s concubine slaves. Did I mention that it’s a fantasy based on the Ottoman empire? Um, YES PLEASE.

Addie’s writing is compelling and concise and … well … beautiful. I’m in love with this book, and I know everyone else is going to love it too.

My first alternate: Sarah Ahiers

Sarah is the author of ALL THAT REMAINS, a Renaissance-inspired fantasy about murder and betrayal amongst assassin families.  It’s so compelling. The world Sarah has created is richly imagined (for real—the level of detail she goes into is impressive), and she has that way of writing that leaves you on the edge of your seat. I’m so honored to have Sarah on my team!

My second alternate: Nicole Lisa

Nicole’s book, THE DESERT WALL, has everything I could want in a story: magic, a foreign setting, family secrets, and did I mention MAGIC? This book is compulsively readable, with a main character you can’t help but root for. I can’t wait to mentor it!

Go Team Exclamation Point!

PITCH WARS IS HERE!! About me and what I’m looking for!

It’s finally here! Today is the day Pitch Wars mentors post a little about ourselves and what we’re looking for, so without further ado, here’s mine!

About me: I grew up in South Florida in a boring suburban town that was founded all the way back in the 1970s! But despite that, I’ve always been drawn to two things: history and magic. I think I’d be just as content to live in Colonial Williamsburg as I would in Hogwarts. I was a practicing lawyer for several years before I was a writer, and I can’t seem to write books that take place in the present. Or that don’t have fantastical elements to them. My debut novel, THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN (May 6, 2014), is about a girl who joins a time-traveling government organization, so there are scenes from the 1770s to the 1990s and back again. I’m very lucky to be represented by Rubin Pfeffer of the East/West Literary Agency.

We might be a good fit if:

You write YA.
Specifically, you write fantasy. Or historical. Or historical fantasy!
As a bonus, you write fast-paced, dark, twisty stories with complicated plots—the kind of book that makes me stop and think but also the kind I simply can’t put down.
You adore books like Laini Taylor’s DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE trilogy and Leigh Bardugo’s GRISHA trilogy.
You like receiving notes with lots of exclamation marks!!! Or random CAPITALIZATION. Or exaggerated vooooooowels.

We might not be the best fit if:

You write MG or NA. Sorry, those aren’t my forte. 
You write beautifully lyrical and voice-heavy contemporary. I really like reading those, but I’m kind of crap at writing them. :/
You don’t like honest feedback. Or working very hard.

But if you think we’re a good match, submit to me! You can find the full submission guidelines at www.brenda-drake.com. I’ve been so fortunate to have benefited from the guidance of other agented and published authors when I was starting out, and I’m so, so excited to have been given the opportunity to give back and get you connected with one of these amazing agents!

1.       LouiseFury – Bent Agency

2.       SuzieTownsend – New Leaf Literary

3.       NicoleResciniti - The Seymour Agency

4.       JohnM. Cusick – The Greenhouse Agency

5.       SarahLaPolla – Bradford Literary Agency

6.       VictoriaMarini - Gelfman Schneider Literary Agency

7.       JessicaSinsheimer - Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency

8.       Pamvan Hylckama Vlieg - Foreword Literary

9.       QuinlanLee - Adams Literary

10.   JenUdden – Donald Maass Literary Agency

11.   EmilyKeyes – Foreward Literary

12.   Brianne Johnson – Writers House

13.   CarlyWatters – P.S. Literary

14.   LanaPopovic and Natasha Alexis - Zachary Shuster Harmsworth

15.   MollyJaffa – Folio Literary Management

16.   EvanGregorgy - Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency

17.   Rena Rossner - The Deborah Harris Agency

And if you don’t think we’re a right fit, no worries! Check out the rest of the awesome mentors, and GOOD LUCK!

1.
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Cora Carmack

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Stacey Lee

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Heather Webb

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Elizabeth Briggs

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Agent Assitant Lioness

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Susan Spann

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Marieke Nijkamp

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Shelley Watters

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Erica Chapman

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Jennifer Malone

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Veronica Bartles

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Brent Taylor

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Molly Lee

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Lindsey Sprague

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Megan Whitmer

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Michelle Painchaud

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Fiona McLaren

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Tina Moss

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Joy McCullough-Carranza

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Monica Bustamante Wagner

21.

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Sarah Henning

22.

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Mina Vaughn

23.

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Skylar Dorset

24.

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Meredith McCardle

25.

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Jen Swann Downey

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Jaye Robin Brown

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Gail Nall

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Dannie Morin

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Elizabeth Penney

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Natalie Knaub

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Jessie Humphries

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Stephanie Garber

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S.P. McConnell

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Veronica Park

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Trisha Leaver

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Lori Goldstein

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Rin Chupeco

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Evelyn Ehrlich

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Lindsay Currie

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Naomi Hughes

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Laura Tims

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Julie Sondra Decker

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Diana Gallagher

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Sarah Nicolas

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Nazarea Andrews

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SECRET LETTER: S

Musings from a debut author six months from publication

Today is November 6, which means that exactly six months from now, THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN will be released. Finally, people will be able to wander into a store and buy it (I hope). Or at the very least, it’ll be available with just one click of a mouse. It will be out there, in the world, no longer belonging to just me.

The question I get most often is “Aren’t you excited?” And I guess the answer to that question is yes? Maybe? I suppose? But the truth of it is that the reality of being a debut author is pretty opposite of what I thought it would be.

Over the past few years, before I sold my own debut, I watched friends go through the debut process. And I’m sure I drove them crazy with my “OMG, isn’t this all so exciting? Aren’t you excited? You must live in an excitementland filled with puppies and kittens and magical, exciting rainbows!” And I could never really understand their “Yes, it is exciting . . . but . . .” answers.

I understand now.

Don’t get me wrong. There are parts of the debut process that are downright thrilling. Fed Ex delivering a marked-up-with-red-pen copy of THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN from my editor left me shaking for days. When a cover comp arrived in my inbox, I kept it up on the screen and stared at it until my eyes went dry. And, of course, becoming a real-live published author means the Legitimacy Fairy visits you at night and sprinkles you with  pixie dust. You’ll wake up with offers to do awesome things like mentor for agent-getting contests you used to enter. Or you’ll find an email from a Kind of a Big Deal author sitting in your inbox. And when these things happen, it’s amazing. AMAZING.

But.

(There’s always a but.)

The Pressure Fairy comes calling after the Legitimacy Fairy has left. And the Pressure Fairy doesn’t bring pixie dust. She brings rocks and knives and nunchucks.  And she will whisper in your ear things like, “If your book doesn’t perform, your career is over.” Or “Critics are going to hate you.” Or, even worse, “Critics are going to ignore you.” The Pressure Fairy will fill your mind with images of book signings where no one comes, Amazon sales rankings languishing in the millions,* an average Goodreads rating of 1.8.

(*This does not mean you sell millions of books. It means millions of other authors have sold more books than you have.)

The Pressure Fairy is hard to fight, but I’m finding my methods. The Yoga Fairy and the Red Wine Fairy help a little bit, and the friendships and support I’ve found in other 2014 debut authors helps a lot.

And at the end of the day, I have to remind myself that this is my dream. I’m living my dream. It’s not going to perfect; it’s going to be messy. But that’s life, right? Good and bad, thrilling and terrifying, this experience is exactly as it should be. So mostly I just have to tell myself to quit it with the incessant navel gazing and enjoy the ride. Or try to enjoy it, at least.

It’s so shiny and pretty!

You may have noticed that I have some new digs. The lovely Hafsah of Icey Designs redid my website for me, and I’m so, so happy with the way it turned out! Hafsah is kind of a genius, you guys. I threw out one suggestion in passing (peacock feathers), and she took it and ran with it and turned it into exactly the kind of site I would have designed for myself if I had any sort of technological skills at all. LOVE.

In other news, I’m working my way through first pass pages for THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN now. That’s where I get a PDF of what the interior layout will look like, and I have to (get to?) go through the book yet again to make sure everything is as it should be. On the one hand, it’s my last chance to make any final changes, so I need to be paying close attention, but on the other hand, I’ve read THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN cover to cover at least 30 times now, so my eyes tend to glaze over whenever I even talk about the book these days. Oh well. There are worse problems to have, right?

I’ve also seen a draft of the cover for THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN, and it is so flipping cool. Not at all what I was initially expecting but a really unique concept. I seriously can’t wait until I get to share it with the world!

THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN is available for preorder! Also, author photos! And general updates!

So there I was, trolling Amazon on Sunday night while I was supposed to be revising, and I decided to type THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN into the search bar to see what happened. And then I got a hit. I reacted very much like this.

Because OMG, THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN is available for preorder!!! You can do so here if you’re so inclined.

Next item of news is that I got new author photos taken. If you recall, I got my initial pictures (which are still floating around on this website) taken when I was seven months pregnant. This was not the smartest idea I’ve had because I’ve heard over and over and over again that they don’t really look like me. So I sent off a frantic email to my editor, asking if I had time to retake them, and the good folks at Skyscape graciously agreed. So I did, and here’s my new photo, once again taken by my crazy talented photographer friend Stacey Brandon.

Other things that are keeping me crazy busy:

A website redesign. To WordPress or to Squarespace? To hire a designer or attempt it myself? To keep a blog as is or move to Tumblr? These are the questions that keep me up at night.
A full-scale revision of Annum Guard book 2. You guys. YOU GUYS. Writing book 2 is perhaps the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’ll be able to talk about it more in the future, but suffice it to say this book has caused me SERE-training levels of stress and anxiety.
Life with two young kids. When I was pregnant with Baby Dos, I really honestly thought I’d still have a lot of free time to write and keep up a website and stay active on social media and HAHAHAHA. I was delusional. I take a shower every day, and that’s like my biggest accomplishment.

What’s been keeping you busy these days? 

Updates. In bullet points. Because who doesn’t love bullet points?

Oh hey, I just finished revising a chapter, and my baby is stirring, so I have like 3 minutes. Literally. 3 minutes, tops. So here’s a post and run on what I’ve been up to.

MY BOOK HAS A RELEASE DATE! *flaaaaaaaails* February 25, 2014! Mark your calendars. Or just add it on Goodreads. You know, whatever you want to do.
I have a Facebook author page! If you like it, I’ll be your best friend. (I’m good at making friendship bracelets.)
I’ve finished a first draft of Annum Guard, Book 2 (which I think has a title but which I can’t reveal yet). As you can probably guess based on my writing process, this draft is . . . not very good.
I feel like I have no time to do anything. The era of I-don’t-really-feel-like-doing-this-today;let’s-see-what’s-on-Bravo has come to a close, and the era of you’re-getting-paid-to-do-this-so-stop-dicking-around has dawned, my friends. I’m coming up on a deadline to get a draft to my wonderful editor, and my free time has gotten whittled away to next to nothing, which, you know, is kind of a problem. So I hired a babysitter for the summer so I can work on making Book 2 something I would actually let other people read without cringing. This is the best money I’ve ever spent.

Let’s end on a good note.

THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN has jacket copy! And is presently going through cover design. Crazycakes. I can’t wait until I get to share all of it with you. Soooooooon! 

Enough about me. What are you working on now?