Deborah Halverson's Blog, page 10

Of Gingerbread Houses and Flying Dragons

When I think of Christmas, the first thing to come to mind isn’t Christmas trees—it’s gingerbread houses. My aunt and uncle used to send us gingerbread houses at Christmastime. My sisters and Ioved receiving that package in the mail, and even more than that we loved eating it.

I have spent many Christmases as an adult trying to mimic the experience by baking and building and decorating my own gingerbread house at Christmastime. The results tended to disappoint, as the gingerbread walls broke or the icing was too weak to hold up the house. Finally, a couple of years ago, I bought preassembled gingerbread house decorating kits, and that was the ticket! Pretty houses that stood!

Now my own boys look forward to getting boxes encasing gingerbread houses. We do them up with candies and icing the day after Thanksgiving instead of putting up a tree. And then, of course, we eat them. This year, we played the audiobook How to Train Your Dragon: How to Cheat a Dragon’s Curse as we decorated, which had us placing peppermint candies atop gingerbread houses as visions of flying dragons danced in our heads. Not the typical Christmas imagery, but it felt perfect to us.

The Cat in the House

My son, who has taken to crawling on the floor and rubbing against family members’ legs like a cat because he so desperately wants to be a character from the Warriors books, just informed me that he has a sore throat and that in the Warriors books the cats drink honey when they have sore throats so I have to let him drink honey. Uh, no. I granted him a couple of licks of a honeyed spoon, but no way is he going to drink honey. I lectured him on the hazards of choking but am a bit worried. We all know cats don’t follow orders so well.

Then he told me he wants his next open wound to be treated by letting him chew up marigolds so he can spit them out and create a poultice.

And apparently his next headache will be cured by oak bark.

Tomorrow I’ll make him some honeyed tea and have a chat about the merits of adopting medicinal practices from fictional kitties. Will I be more convincing than a medicine cat? That remains to be seen. At the very least, if I find my son prowling around the backyard bushes I’ll know what he’s looking for.

The Sweet Bliss of a Spooky Birthday

My birthday is the day after Halloween. That timing made for some awesome birthday parties when I was little.  Now that I’m a grown-up, I’m just not into celebrating with costume-themed sleepovers and the like. But that doesn’t mean my birthday doesn’t still have candy as its centerpiece.

Today is my birthday. I spent it teaching a half-day writing intensive focused on strategies for developing a youthful narrative sensibility in your YA and MG fiction. There were 36 writers in the class, and each one surprised me by bringing a chocolate treat. They filled a basket and a glass vase to overflowing. And then they served homemade chocolate cake. What fun! I reciprocated by making them work hard on individual writing exercises. Because that’s the kind of editor I am. The book comes first!

My boys’ eyes bugged out when they saw my sweet loot. I was gleeful: Mama’s birthday loot totally kicked their trick-or-treat candy butts. Take that!

To cap off the day, the boys joined me on an evening birthday walk. Being the day after Halloween, we played “Guess which brand of candy will be the next piece of litter.” After much excitement (Crunch Bar wrappers were by far the most common!), we vowed to take another walk tomorrow, heading in a new direction. Only next time, we’ll bring a trash bag.

Blog Tour, Book Giveaways, & Free Full Manuscript Edit Giveaway

The blog tour celebrating the publication of Writing New Adult Fiction is under way! From October 6 – 31, bloggers will be posting reviews of the book, interviews, and guest blog posts that I’ve written about craft, promotion, and the business of publishing New Adult fiction. All of the posts have giveaways, and there’s a tourwide giveaway of a free full manuscript edit.

Here’s the link for the tour schedule, updated with excerpts and direct links as each post goes live: http://deareditor.com/?p=6644

And here’s the link for the free manuscript edit giveaway’s Rafflecopter entry form: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/5440a354204/.

Choosing the Right Alien Invasion

This week I had separate parent-teacher conferences, which led to three separate warnings: “Now, the challenge with having a fourth grader who reads at high school level is choosing books with appropriate content. You can always ask me or librarians for help.” That made me smile three times. I appreciate their concern and their wise referral to librarians, but, you know, I think I got this one.

Maybe.

Two days after those meetings, I found myself laying on my sofa trying to steal a few minutes to read a book that wouldn’t let me go. One of my advanced readers was tucked into the other end of the couch with a book of his own. We got to chatting about our books and I explained that my book was troubling me. “I think it cheats sometimes. The main characters know stuff they can’t possibly know.” I explained to him about how, yes, readers choose to believe things like aliens coming to the earth, but that alien arrival must make sense within the fictional world that the author created. This writer seems to be cheating so that we readers will know some facts that’ll impress us about the alien invasion. I don’t like that, I explained, but I can’t stop reading because that same author keeps introducing new problems with just enough info to tease me so that I MUST know what happens next. A bit peeved and totally hooked at the same time!

This discussion was interrupted and I was called away, leaving my book on the couch. When I returned a half hour later, my son was many chapters into my book. Huh. Yet again I was troubled. See, he was intrigued by a book and getting as worked up with excitement as I’d been, which is good… but it’s a book for older teens and I hadn’t read enough to know if the content is within my realm of “appropriate” reading for my son. At that moment, I stepped away and didn’t interrupt him. He was due to leave for a play date shortly so I knew he wouldn’t get much deeper into the book.

Later than night, I read further. Well, lookie there — references to sex. Main Girl craving Hottie Boy. Oh, and lookie there — quite a few swear words. And of course there’s all the alien-human and human-alien killing. Huh. I know what I was reading when I was in fourth grade and it was *almost* adult stuff. I know for sure I read Gone with the Wind in fifth grade, and then I moved on to WWII spy thrillers (with assassins and other good stuff), and dramas like The Lords of Discipline and The Thorn Birds and then Holocaust literature by my tweens. I felt confident and comfortable with those books even though I was still young. But, there’s a lot of maturity difference between fourth and fifth grade. So my decision regarding this book, at this moment, is this: I’m going to return it to the library as soon as I’m done reading it but before he can realize it’s officially his turn. Out of sight, out of mind. If he asks for it, I’ll stall for a while. He’s in the middle of several long book series that aren’t in any “age appropriate” gray area. Those will keep him busy and happy for quite a while yet. The older teen alien invasion book isn’t going anywhere. He can get his alien fix now with Animorphs.

 

 

Writing New Adult Fiction Blog Tour Coming Together

So it’s happening, my blog tour for WRITING NEW ADULT FICTION is coming together. I’m still welcoming hosts (sign up here), but I can tell you already the process has been a pleasure. Mid-way through this summer I cried, “Uncle!” in the face of my workload and joined forces with IndieSage PR, my first time teaming up with a PR pro. Nicole at IndieSage is experienced with NA fiction and was highly recommended, and oh my goodness I’m loving working with her! I’ll blog about the experience of working with a blog tour specialist in detail after the tour, but I can tell you now that I’m already immensely happy I have Nicole in my corner. Here we go!

New Article!

The Sept/Oct issue of SCBWI’s The Bulletin is out, and I’ve got an article in it! “NEW ADULT FICTION FOR THE YOUNG ADULT WRITER.”

Excerpt: “Writers see an overlap between ‘mature YA’ and NA and wonder what it means for their own stories about older teens…. There are essential differences in story content, though, and knowing those can help you determine if your mature YA is actually an NA offering.”

Members can access the electronic issue by logging into your profile page and clicking on resource library, then on Bulletin in the drop-down menu.

Charlotte’s Web Has Become a Glass Half Full

The first novel we ever read to our boys, who where four years old at the time, was Charlotte’s Web. They loved it, we bought each boy a copy of the book to save to read to their own children, and we’ve gone on to read so may amazing stories together.

Now, five years later, those same boys groan at the mere mention of Charlotte’s Web because they’ve had to read it with their class every single year. My son this morning on the walk to school: “More Charlotte’s Web today. AGAIN.”

I told him it could be worse. Because it could be. He could have to read a book he hates every year. Glass half full, little man!

The Fun in Taking Your Book Launch Virtual

Way back in the Dark Ages before social media gave us Facebook, Twitter, and the ability to blog, writers would celebrate their book publications with big signings or launch parties involving food and libations. We can still do that—and often do—but thanks to the current state of social media we can party in a bigger way… a virtual way.

I’m doing that for my new book, WRITING NEW ADULT FICTION. My editorial background allows me to go an extra step and give back to writers who want to celebrate with me, so anyone stopping by my week-long virtual launch gets not only a peak at some info and writing tips from the book, but also a shot at a daily free manuscript critique and a full manuscript edit on the last day of the launch. Giving those things away makes me feel good about the publicity part of a launch, and it makes the week truly feel like “party” to me.

The details:  Daily “free critique” giveaways and a grand finale “Full Manuscript Edit” giveaway all this week to celebrate the publication of WRITING NEW ADULT FICTION. Visit DearEditor.com Aug 25-29.

 

Happy Pub Day!

My crazy/busy/fun summer hit’s its zenith today: Writing New Adult Fiction officially releases today!

I’m always urging writers to celebrate their milestones, and now I’m taking my own advice. Tomorrow, a night out—probably involving root beer floats—with my four fellas.

For everyone else, a week of “Free Partial Edit” giveaways and a grand finale “Free Full Manuscript Edit” giveaway during Launch Week on DearEditor.com starting Monday, August 21.

If you’re free tonight, pop into #NAlitchat on Twitter 9pmEST/6pmPST, where I’ll be the guest and we’ll be talking all things NA.

I’m also setting up a blog tour Oct 6-31 and welcome anyone interested in hosting a stop to check out the blog tour event site for details: http://bit.ly/1v19GIK