Christina Hoag's Blog, page 5

another 5-star & 2 4-star reviews GIrl on the Brink!

Woohoo! Another 5-star review and two new 4-star reviews in for "Girl on the Brink," all from readers in the UK! We are rocking this week so I can't help bragging!
Here's what they say:
From Julie James, who gave it 5 stars: "A compelling book highlighting how easy it is to be caught up in an abusive relationship. The feelings or shame, fear and isolation when trying to break free are written very well. Would be a worthwhile book for all young adults to read as abuse is difficult subject to deal with."
Fiona writes: "This is an important topic, impressively told and I hope that it reaches a wide audience, particularly amongst the YA market."
And from Sue Wallace: "A good read with good characters. Little slow in places but then soon picked up and I couldn't put it put it down."
Thanks for reading all and for leaving your thoughts! Very much appreciated!

A pitch for Skin of Tattoos turned into a comedy routine!

Author Terry Irving offers his running commentary on my 2-minute "pitch" for my literary noir crime novel "Skin of Tattoos." It's pretty funny!
Ye gods, woman! How did you sneak in here?
Are you some sort of reporter?
Well, I used to be but now I write books.
Is that why you're dressed as a nun? It's an old habit; works great with guerrillas and publishers.
Oooh, a smart one. "Old Habit," huh? OK, my heart is beginning to fibrillate. How did you come up with the idea?
Years ago, I did a magazine story about gang members deported from the United States to El Salvador. I interviewed a number of these former homeboys in San Salvador and their stories stuck with me. They were essentially fish-out-of-water in a country where they hardly spoke the language. I actually ended up writing not about their lives in El Salvador but what I imagined what had led them to that situation.
I can understand their situation,I feel like a fish out of water every time I walk into a bank.Sort of washed-out and dry. OK, What’s the Teaser Pitch?
Think “Sons of Anarchy” meets “The Outsiders.” A literary crime novel, Skin of Tattoos is about a gang member who wants to leave “la vida loca” but finds his homies offer him what he cannot get elsewhere, from employment to acceptance, but in the end he finds that gang life is all a facade. It’s also about the struggles of an immigrant family in Los Angeles, and youth coming to accept and forgive their families as flawed people.
Gang life is nothing, he should try the movie business. Talk about your "flawed people"
How does this antihero hero change in the book?
Magdaleno, aka Mags, is a twenty-year-old guy who thinks he knows it all—and himself, but of course he doesn’t. Despite his desire to leave the gang, his pride and ego lead him to stay in it. In the end, he finds that this costs him everything and everyone he loves.
Sounds good. I love a happy ending.
"Skin of Tattoos"?
Why did you pick this title?
Mags’s tattoos identify him as a gang member, but he’s a lot more than superficial markings on his skin. Trouble is, he cannot escape the tattoos and what they symbolize because they are inked into his skin. Getting rid of tattoos is a long painful process, just as Mags leaving his past is a long, painful process.
Why should he leave?
Some of the most successful people in LA are gangsters. Never mind, I'm just dreaming.
What’s the logline?
Sometimes your best friends are your worst enemies.
I like that.
A lot.
OK, let’s cut to the chase.
Why should I, the Incredibly Rich and Handsome Movie Mogul, buy this book?
This is a raw emotional drama about a guy who makes some bad choices, ones that carry high stakes and are difficult to reverse. It’s a story about friendship, love, betrayal and family in inner-city neighborhoods where life is cheap. It’s got plenty of suspense and action, but also heart and pathos
I LOVE it!
Pathos hung out with Aramis and d'Artagnan, right? I always liked the way Aramis smelled.
Sign this contract.No, don't bother reading it,
Just sign it. Next stop: Billions!
Let's hope the bestseller gods are listening to Terry!
http://www.tiredoftalkingaboutmyself....

Review for Girl on the Brink: "Brilliantly written."

Five stars from reader Audrey Gibson:
"I hope every teenager reads this book. Kieran really unsettled me from the beginning and my heart ached for Chloe. Domestic abuse touches so many people and its wrong, especially when it affects someone so young. Brilliantly written and hats off to the author for tackling such a sensitive subject. I highly recommend this book."
Thanks so much Audrey!

On Blog talk radio talking gangs!

I was a guest on Fran Lewis's blog talk radio show this morning discussing gangs! I've been on Fran's show twice before to discuss my noir crime novel "Skin of Tattoos"and writing. So listen in for an interesting talk, together with former Portland, Maine, detective turned novelist Bruce Coffin.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/fran-lew...

2 great new reviews for Girl on the Brink!

Five stars from reader Dorothy Elliott: "suspenseful and well written"
""Powerfully written" says reader Gail Atkins, who gave it four stars. Woohoo!
Writes Gail:
"A powerfully written story about a seventeen year old female who starts a relationship with a slightly old male.
Chloe can't believe her luck when she starts a Summer internship as a reporter for a local paper.
One of her first assignments was at a local nursery..where she meets budding actor Kieran.
Chloe is impressed that Kieran is treating her with respect but she doesn't realise that he is slowly pulling her away from her friends and family.
Chloe hopes she can help him get over his early traumas and when things start to go wrong, she still gives him chances.
Will good conquer evil? You'll have to read it for yourself!!"
From Dorothy: "A suspenseful story about a teen searching for romance, only to realize she is entangled in an abusive relationship. This is a well written book in a style that any age can read to understand the signs of abuse and find helpful."

5-star review! Skin of Tattoos

A new review in that zeroes in on Skin of Tattoos' theme of an immigrant family. This is a key aspect of the book that often takes second place to the gang theme, but it's just as important! Thanks to this reader for mentioning it!
"An original story that expresses the hopes of an immigrant family as they struggle to make a better life only to find that their new life in LA is rife with challenges and pitfalls just as their old life was. The main character, Mags, symbolizes their struggle through his involvement with gangs. This is a thought-provoking, well written literary story that kept me turning the pages and at the end left me thinking a lot about poor immigrants and the hard time they have making it and achieving their dreams."

On the blogs: Genre is Key

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I'm on Kristina Stanley's Mystery Monday blog today, writing about one of the lessons I've learned on my publishing genre: the importance of genre!
https://kristinastanley.com/2017/05/0...
This week on Mystery Mondays we have Christina Hoag, author of SKIN OF TATTOOS, and GIRL ON THE BRINK. I met Christina through this blog, so it’s pleasure to have her on as a guest. She’ll share her experience about genres and why and author needs to know where their novel fits.

The Importance of Genre

By Christina Hoag

One of those writing clichés tells aspiring authors to “write the book you want to read.” That may be true, but make sure your book fits into an accepted genre or no one else will read it.

As I was writing my noir thriller Skin of Tattoos, I never gave a thought as to what kind of a book it would be, as in what genre it fell into. After all, a good story is a good story, right? Not quite. As I later painfully discovered, genre is critical. It is how publishers market your book. If your book doesn’t fit neatly into a category, they don’t how to sell it and guess what, they won’t buy it.

Luckily, genre didn’t seem to matter in getting a literary agent. After much querying I landed a good agent, after first signing with a bad one. But then the agent had to figure out how to pitch the book. Was it noir, which involves telling an inside crime story from the point of view of the criminal? Well, yes. My novel is set in the gang underworld of Los Angeles and is told in first-person by a gang member protagonist. Or was it a thriller, which involves escalating tension between two characters as they battle over high stakes? That also loosely applied to my book as Mags, the narrator, is in a power and revenge struggle with his rival homeboy Rico for leadership of the gang.

Then there was my style. Amid the gang slang, Spanish phrases and occasional profanity, there was a lot of lyrical prose that wasn’t the usual style for a thriller, plus Mags’s character has an arc. In the end, the agent described it as a “literary thriller.” Although I hadn’t thought of myself as a thriller writer before, I thought that was an accurate enough description and out the book went.

The rejections rolled in. There was high praise for the writing, story elements, originality, and so on but the most pervasive comment was “who would be the audience for this book?” In other words, “literary thriller” wasn’t cutting it, especially coming from an unknown author. My agent consoled me, saying these were rejections based on “business decisions,” which was much better than having the book rejected for story reasons. Still, I saw that my book was too different, too original. I lamented that to my agent, who responded “publishers do want original stuff, but at the same time they want the same stuff. The same, but different.” Not very helpful.

Eventually, she ran out of places to submit and I got my manuscript back, but I wasn’t going to give up on it. I knew it was a good book. Top publishing editors had said so. I just needed to find someone to take a chance on it. I revised it yet again, cutting out about 13,000 words, including stuff that both agents had me add and that I now saw went nowhere. In fact, the additions didn’t make much sense and simply made the manuscript too long.

I sent the tightened version out to small publishers that accepted unagented submissions. The same thing happened. It was praised, but it didn’t fit in their lists. I started to despair then a publisher, Martin Brown Publishing, offered me a contract on it.

Skin of Tattoos finally was released in August and has been well received. Several readers told me the book is “unlike anything I’ve read before.” I take that as a compliment, unfortunately the mainstream publishing industry doesn’t.

I had another genre problem with my second novel, a YA called Girl on the Brink I was calling it a “contemporary romance,” but it’s not a romance because it’s about teen dating violence. Romance novels must have a happy-ever-after ending, which mine does not. But then the genre gods blessed me. I discovered my book did have a built in category: “contemporary social issues.” Since it contains a lot of suspense and escalating tension between the protagonist and the guy she fell for, I also describe it as a “romantic thriller,” which sounds like a less heavy read.

As for my third book, I’m making it a thriller after another discovery: I have to have an author brand because I’m expected to keep writing the same genre to build readership. So although I never set out to write thrillers, that’s now become my brand by default. Moral of the story: Know your genre.

On the blogs: Lessons learned from my publishing journey!

Tpday I'm on author Nicole Angeleen's blog talking about all the surprises I learnt as I dove deeper into the world of publishing books! Read on:

http://www.nicoleangeleen.com/2017/04...
I often wonder if I’d known all I know now about the publishing business, would I still have flung myself headlong into writing novels?

The answer is probably yes. Writing novels has been my dream since I was a small girl. Still, I wish I’d known a few practicalities beforehand.

A key one is how much more I could have done to build my author’s platform before I was even published. In fact, this may have helped me get published as agents and editors are all looking at an author’s platform as much as their manuscript these days.HoagChristina-GirlOnTheBrink

As a journalist, I should have had a website up and running with my nonfiction book that I co-authored, and I should have started other social media sites such as Instagram, GoodReads and a Facebook author page. (I’m glad to say I did do something right—I built my Twitter following to 20.4K over the course of steady daily tweeting.)

I should have started joining writers’ organizations that are open to unpublished authors, like Sisters in Crime, which would have allowed me to network and make more connections that could have helped me gain marketing and promotion expertise. Ditto with writers’ conferences. I could I could have saved myself so much time and energy in cold-querying agents by pitching them directly at conferences, and again doing that crucial networking.

I should have thought more about branding myself and developing one genre instead of, as my former literary agent told me, writing “all over the place.”

So why didn’t I do all this stuff? In short, I didn’t believe in myself. I didn’t have the confidence in myself and my writing that I should have. I was intimidated by conferences and organizations because they were just for published authors, or so I thought. According to me, I was just another one in the mass of aspiring novelists begging for a contract. I was afraid I wouldn’t be taken seriously until I was published.

So I got published and then ventured out into the woolly world of trying to get my books discovered. Then began another series of lessons.

I had no idea developing a genre or writing a series of books was essential to building a publishing career. To me, writing the same stuff over and over again seems boring, but I seem to be the only person who thinks this way. I also had no idea just how competitive publishing is and how writing a good book just isn’t enough to catapult you above the heads of everyone else. I didn’t realize getting readers to write reviews was a Promethean struggle.

I didn’t realize I was way ahead of the game in being a newspaper reporter and and foreign correspondent for many years, which gave me a far more interesting bio than many as well as more expertise in the subject matter of crime, as I’ve covered real life crime and cops, done ridealongs and so on. I should have emphasized this from the getgo.

I also didn’t realize that agents were basically sales people and weren’t going to invest a lot in an author they hadn’t sold, such as in advising them that they should build a platform or social media, or give editorial advice on early-stage manuscripts.

But here’s the thing. I’m glad I didn’t know all this stuff. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t have even attempted this foolhardy game of being a novelist at all. Maybe I would have put too much focus on business instead of just working on my craft. And let’s face it, writing the best book you can write is still the heart of this business.

So now I’m building my author platform, slowly but steadily. It’s been a steep learning curve, that’s for sure, but now I know.

YA FACEBOOK PARTY SATURDAY!

https://www.facebook.com/events/79774...
YA AUTHORS FACEBOOK PARTY! Saturday from 10 a.m. EDT! Tune in to play games and win prizes I'll be on from 11-11:30 a.m. EDT/8-8:30 PDT. I'l have Facebook Bingo with a YA tote bag as the prize and there'll be a drawing for a brand new writing journal for everyone who comments! See you at 11 a.m. Saturday!

On the blogs: Girl on the Brink Character Interview!

Raven Eckman features me, er Chloe Quinn rather on her blog today. Chloe is being interviewed about the ordeal she went through in "Girl on the Brink," where the guy she thought was perfect turned out to be far from it! Read on or check out the post.

Today we interview Chloe Quinn, the main character in Girl on the Brink, a YA novel by Christina Hoag about dating violence. The novel relates Chloe’s intense but ultimately tragic romance with a quirky aspiring actor named Kieran Dubrowski. It was named as one of Suspense Magazine’s top YA books for 2016.

So Chloe, tell us a little about yourself.
Let’s see. I’m 17 and a senior at Indian Valley High School in Indian Valley, New Jersey. I’m on my school newspaper and yearbook. My mom is a sculptor and my dad a concept artist for the entertainment industry. I have a younger brother, Tyler. We generally get along okay.

You’re obviously the “girl on the brink” the title refers to. What’s that all about?
That refers to what happened to me over the summer between my junior and senior years. It was pretty earth-shattering, actually. It started when I was doing an internship at the local weekly paper. I was doing a story about the upcoming Multicultural Fair in town and went to interview the man who runs it, Ed Yamamoto. He owns a local garden center. It was there that I met Kieran. He worked for Ed.

So far so good. What happened?
Kieran basically took one look at me and wanted to go out with me. It was very flattering, although thinking back on it, I didn’t even like him that much at first, but suffice to say, he grew on me, and we had a very intense, whirlwind kind of romance. It was really like something out of the movies. I’d never met anyone like Kieran before. He was nineteen, so a little older, and he wanted to be an actor. He was taking acting classes and working at the garden center. He was really different, like he had all these quirks. He loved peanut butter and pickle sandwiches.

Sounds great.
It was until it wasn’t. He started changing, going into rages in an instant like a Jekyll and Hyde, getting really jealous, not wanting me to see my friends. I didn’t notice it at first, I guess I kind of justified it, then it got worse and I actually got scared. But he would apologize, give me presents, tell me it wouldn’t happen again. He also told me that he had had a really rough childhood and I was convinced that if he got help, he could cure himself and we’d have the perfect relationship.

I’m guessing that didn’t happen.
Despite my best efforts and his promises, it did not. Instead it got worse and worse, and my life spun out of control. I lost my friends. I was lying to everyone. I looked terrible all the time. I finally broke up with him. It was really, really hard because I didn’t want to break up with him, if that makes sense.

Sure. You wanted it to work out but you finally saw it wasn’t going to.
That’s basically it. All the details are in the book. But that wasn’t even the end of it. Kieran wouldn’t leave me alone, and eventually the police got involved.

The police?!
Yeah, he made up a bunch of stuff about me in revenge and went to the cops. It was really scary but luckily for me, I learned all about investigative reporting during my internship and I was able to prove my innocence. It’s kind of a long, involved story.

I’ll bet. I’m dying to read the book to find out the details. Obviously you survived this experience. What’s next for you?
I’m going to Boston University next year to study journalism. My dream is to be a foreign correspondent. By the way, the other thing that happened that summer was my parents split up so that was another trauma in my life.

You’ve certainly been through a lot. Thanks for sharing your story with us.
Thanks for interviewing me. Before I go, I’d like to mention that the ebook of Girl on the Brink is going to be on sale for just 99 cents until April 23. And we have a new short story collection from my publisher called Kick Ass Girls of Fire and Ice YA, which is available as a free ebook on Amazon, Smashwords and Nook. It has a story about one of my best friends, Jade, (I’m in it, too) and a pretty bad situation she found herself in after going to the carnival one night.
https://anewlookonbooks.wordpress.com...