Vanessa Barneveld's Blog, page 14

You Heard It Here First!

Or you will hear it. Very soon. What on earth am I talking about? An audiobook!!! My publisher, Bloomsbury, and Audible are��publishing��an audio version of my YA,��This Is Your Afterlife!��Production has already started, and I can’t wait to hear the finished book.

I’m especially excited about this because as an audio describer for the blind and vision-impaired, I can appreciate just how valuable audiobooks are. (For those who don’t know what audio description is, my colleague Alison has a neat explanation on her blog.) Audiobooks are also great for those who find reading a challenge and for people who simply want to listen rather than read.

Do you enjoy audiobooks? Which books have you listened to recently?

Ready, Steady, Write!

50 days and 50 nights of writing — that’s Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood‘s annual WWF (Winter Writing Festival, not the former World Wrestling Federation), and it starts tomorrow, January 12. The basic idea is you set your own daily writing or editing goals, and if you meet your goals you earn a point. We’ll have writing sprints in our chat room, and there’s swag to be won, including gift cards, critiques, print and e-books, and more.

Link-a-rama:

The full details on how the free festival runs are here.
Golden Heart winner Elisa Beatty has some goal-setting advice that’s useful for the WWF and beyond.
Click here for Penguin/Intermix and Montlake author Kim Law‘s guide to Ruby writing sprints.
The official Ruby-Slippered Winter Writing Festival site.

Last Thursday, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by E.J. Stevens on her From the Shadows blog. Click here to find out who I would cast in a movie version of my book and what superpowers I’d like to have. Thanks for the fun Q&A, E.J.!

Happy weekend to all, and good luck to the WWF participants!

Today Started Out Like Any Other Day…

…until I learned that my debut YA book, This Is Your Afterlife, is a Favourite Paranormal Romance finalist in the 2014 Australian Romance Readers Association Awards!

Thank you so much to ARRA Inc and to all those who nominated my novel. I’m excited and honoured. HUGE congratulations to the nominees. Among them are my dear friends, Anna Campbell, Annie West, Kandy Shepherd, Christina Brooke, Christina Phillips, Cathleen Ross, and many more!

Now if you’re looking for some fantastic reads for summer (or winter, depending on where you are!), check out the full list of the finalists’ books on the ARRA blog!

‘Tis the Season to Make New Goals!

I was going to say my New Year’s resolution is to not make any resolutions, but…I thought better of it. What’s the harm in publicly setting a goal, eh? #famouslastwords

So my resolution for 2015 is to write at least 250 words a day, and work up to 2,015 words a day. They don’t have to be perfect words, but that’s okay. (Oooh, I think I could turn those two sentences into a song…)

No lame excuses like:

It’s too hot
It’s too cold
I’m too tired
I don’t feel inspired enough
My cats are sleeping on my keyboard
My cats want to play
My house is too messy
My house is too clean
I don’t have enough snacks
Et cetera, et cetera…

Sadly, I really have used every one of those excuses in the past! But I do think setting an easy target is the key. 250 words a day is not a lofty goal. Once I achieve that word count, it’ll fill me with warm, fuzzy feelings and inspire me to extend my writing session. Right? Right???

Do you make and keep New Year resolutions? What’s your advice for goal-setting? How do you celebrate when you reach your goals?

 

(Chocolate) Bark You’ll Want to Bite

The end of 2014 is nigh. Can you believe it? What a whirlwind of a year! I hope you’re taking time out to relax and recharge. As usual, I’m eating my way through the holidays. Exhibit A, flaming pudding on Christmas night:

It’s just a hunk, a hunk o’ burning pudding

One of the Christmas gifts I made for friends was edible ‘bark’, using Lindt chocolate. Ridiculously easy to make and eat.

I adapted a recipe from the Tasty Yummies blog to my own taste:

Ingredients

200g milk chocolate, broken up into smaller-than-bite-size pieces

100g dark chocolate (70% cocoa), broken up, etc

30g white cooking chocolate, broken up, etc. If you’re not a fan of white chocolate, you can skip this ingredient.

Topping of your choice – chilli flakes, gold leaf, dried cranberries, almonds, whatever you like. My choice included:

a handful of chopped, lightly salted raw macadamias

a tablespoon or two of coconut flakes

salt flakes, a couple of pinches

Ridiculously easy method:

In a double boiler, melt the milk choc and dark choc together. Just before all the pieces completely melt into unrecognisable blobs, take the mixture off the heat. Stir with a spatula until the lumps are gone.
In another double boiler, melt the white chocolate. I started melting the white choc as soon as I took the milk/dark chocolate off the heat. (By the way, you can do steps 1 and 2 in a microwave. I don’t have one, so I use the stove-top method.)
Pour half the molten milk/dark choc mixture onto the centre of a tray lined with baking paper, and the other half on another lined tray. Spread your chocolate puddles out into thin, rectangular slabs measuring about 30 centimetres by 15 centimetres*. I made mine half a centimetre thick. Don’t worry about getting your ruler out and smoothing the chocolate into a uniform thickness. Just make sure it’s not spread too thin.
Pour the molten white chocolate into the centre of one milk/dark choc puddle. Using a knife tip or skewer, gently swirl the white chocolate around.
Sprinkle your chosen topping/s over the chocolate. For my second puddle, I skipped the white chocolate and dusted it with coconut and salt. As for the amount of toppings, I didn’t want to overload it too much. I wanted the chocolate to peek through enticingly.
Let the puddles set in a cool place** for a couple of hours. Once set, smash the bark into random shapes. Or, if you prefer, chop into squares or rectangles.
Line a pretty container with tissue or baking paper and enclose your chocolate bark.

*If you need a metric conversion chart, check this site. To be honest, I wasn’t exactly keeping track of actual measurements when I made this batch!

**As it’s summertime here, I put my bark in the fridge to set and stored it there until I was ready to give it to my friends. Ordinarily, I don’t refrigerate chocolate, but I didn’t want to risk giving my friends dud, melted gifts. Other recipes, like this one, say do not put the bark in the fridge.

So I’ve just spent today eating bark and reading an excellent YA novel, I Wish, by Elizabeth Langston, one of my release week party-goers. I really fell in love with the cleverly named Grant aka a Benevolent Supernatural Being aka a BSB aka a genie. Grant does his supernatural best to help Lacey, a 17-year-old girl who carries a huge burden but stubbornly refuses to let anyone share the load. Great characters. So glad this is part of a series, because I can’t wait to read more!

I wish I could laze about for the rest of the week with a few more good books. What’s on your reading agenda? Do you keep your chocolate in the fridge or out? Let me know before the end of 2014 and you could win a copy of my debut paranormal YA, This Is Your Afterlife!

Happy Birthday, Bloomsbury Spark!

Bloomsbury Spark, the YA/NA digital imprint from Bloomsbury Publishing, just celebrated its first birthday — hooray! Much of its success is down to editor Meredith Rich, who gave me my big break and published This Is Your Afterlife. She totally made my year. Congrats to Meredith and to all the talented ‘Sparky’ authors on a stellar first year!

Check out the titles that were released in the past twelve months — there’s a great range, including sci-fi, contemporary, paranormal and romance. I’ve got my holiday reading sorted. Among the great titles coming soon is Eric Smith‘s Inked (January 2015). Isn’t that a gorgeous cover? It was designed by Jenny Zemanek, who also crafted my cover. I’m super excited about Valerie Tejeda‘s July 2015 release, Hollywood Witch Hunter.

 Giveaway!

Reviewer Lisa Bentley had some very nice things to say about This Is Your Afterlife last week. Go check out her blog. (Thanks, Lisa!) Now, because it’s almost Christmas and it’s Bloomsbury Spark’s first b’day, I’m giving away a Kindle copy of Afterlife. Tell me about the best thing that happened to you in 2014 and you’ll be in the running to win. Entries close 11:59pm December 31, 2014, US Eastern time.

This Is Your Afterlife book trailer from Vanessa Barneveld on Vimeo.

Super News!

My Paranormal Party is officially over. I’m sweeping up the confetti, recycling champagne bottles, and throwing out empty chocolate bar wrappers. (But I will be restocking on the choc shortly.) I am STILL nursing goosebumps over the stories shared by my guest bloggers and commenters.

Thanks to everyone who blogged, tweeted, commented, and entered the prize draw! De’Anne was crowned the winner of my party prize: a $50 Amazon card plus a copy of my debut YA, This Is Your Afterlife. Congrats, De’Anne!

Now, you’ve heard of food and wine pairing, but how about pairing YA books and TV shows? Entertainment reporter Valerie Tejeda does just that in her latest article for mtv.com. She matched up This is Your Afterlife with the CW Network’s Supernatural. 

Blog-wise, I may be scarce for a while because I’m taking another stab at NaNoWriMo — writing 50,000 words in 30 days. When I did this challenge in 2011, I wrote 30,006 words in what became This Is Your Afterlife, newly published by Bloomsbury Spark. Are you taking part? Good luck! Here’s a great survival guide from Elisa Beatty at the Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood.

Paranormal Party Guest – Tina Ferraro

Happy Halloween! It’s the last day of the Paranormal Party. Thanks so much for joining me and my YA writer friends as we celebrate the release of my debut book, This Is Your Afterlife.

My lucky last guest is two-time RITA®-nominated YA author and fellow cat lover, Tina Ferraro! We were introduced online by our mutual favourite person, historical romance author Anna Campbell, and finally met in person a little later. She’s funny and warm and one of the most generous souls I know. In addition to a love of all things Anna, we share a love of cats and peppermint tea. We once dined in West Hollywood alongside actor , who we now count as one of our closest friends. ;) The covers of Tina’s sweet YA books are gorgeous, but I thought I’d show off her first one in the gallery below because it features a prom dress that looks uncannily like my wedding dress.

I invited Tina to talk about her upcoming novella, Half-Life (Shine/Leap Books). It’s got a Halloween theme and it’s perfectly paranormal!

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 Tina Ferraro

According to an old wives’ tale, a girl can get a glimpse of her future husband by gazing into a mirror at the strike of midnight on Halloween. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking passed on by young girls.

I was about thirteen years old when word of it came my way, and while I was mesmerized by the prospect, I had more questions-­more worries­-than initiative.  What if my Mr. Right was hideous? Or old (you know, like thirty)?  What if I saw the weirdo who talked to himself in homeroom, or my best friend’s crush?  Or…or…what if I didn’t see anyone at all?  Did a no-show suggest I wouldn’t live long enough to get married?

Too much risk there.  Better to leave well enough alone.

But years later, as my writing career began to take shape, I revisited the mirror tale, realizing my fears were now what made it appealing. HALF-LIFE (Leap Books, 2015) was born, opening on teen Trisha and friends at a Halloween sleepover.  Trisha gets an eyeful in the mirror, not husband material, but her late twin sister, who is returning to try to keep her from a similarly early demise.

Part of the fun of making this sale was sharing the news with Vanessa, who’s been a valued friend since our meet-up at the 2009 Romance Writers of America Conference.  We’d both been nominated for Best Young Adult Romances in their contest’s published/unpublished categories, and after instantly hitting it off, decided to sit together at the award ceremony.  She wore her pink wedding dress, I wore my late mother’s charm bracelet, and we held hands for luck during the announcements of our categories.  Alas, neither of us won, but I like to think we got something even better from it: a lasting friendship.

Some months after the conference, I received a surprising e-mail from her: a thank-you for the feedback on an anonymous entry I’d judged in another writing contest.  It had been one of the best entries I’d ever judged, and I was delighted by this reveal on many levels.  Not only was Vanessa smart, charming and dear friend, ­but woo-hoo, could she write!

Since then, we’ve met up on both her continent and mine for meals and drinks and craft talk, have read bits and pieces of each other’s works-in-progress, and cheered the other on.

I was thrilled to hear she’d sold THIS IS YOUR AFTERLIFE to Bloomsbury Spark­-such a well-deserved recognition of her talent and perseverance.  Reading USA Today call her debut novel “a must-read” gave me chills.  And now comes the best part, cuddling up under my Scaredy Cat Halloween blanket, a bowl of trick-or-treat mini candy bars at the ready, and delving into Keira Nolan’s story, crossing from our world to the next as she goes about investigating her crush’s death…

It is an honor to participate in Vanessa’s blog tour.  I urge everyone to check out her marvelous book, and learn first hand what the buzz is all about!

- Tina

Tina, fantastic post. I can’t wait to meet Trisha! Thanks so much for being a terrific guest and dear friend. Thank you to all of my other Paranormal Party guests — Pintip Dunn, Amanda Ashby, Sara Hantz, Elizabeth Langston, Shea Berkley, Erica O’Rourke, Kim MacCarron, Stephanie Kuehnert — for posting such creepy but fun stories.

It’s almost time to wrap up this party. Before you leave, stick around and share more lore with us! We can’t get enough of the paranormal. How do you celebrate Halloween? Have you got a costume or party lined up? What’s the spookiest thing that’s ever happened to you? Luckiest thing? Strangest coincidence?

Giveaway!
Last chance to enter my Rafflecopter giveaway! Click  HERE to win a Kindle copy of my debut YA and a $50 Amazon e-gift card.

 

Buy the book!

Bloomsbury Spark | Amazon | iTunes Australia | iTunes US | Google Play | Kobo | B&N

Paranormal Party Guest – Stephanie Kuehnert

Welcome back to the Paranormal Party! We’re celebrating the release of my debut YA, This Is Your Afterlife. Are you having a good time? Have you been freaked out by some of the spooky tales we’ve shared over the past week?

I’m so lucky to be surrounded by a bunch of excellent writer friends. Today I’d love you to meet another one, the brilliant Stephanie Kuehnert!

Steph and I ‘met’ online years ago when we were both looking for critique partners. She has this amazing ability to see both the big picture and the nitty-gritty details, and I really have no idea where I’d be without her guidance. Music and cats are a huge part of her life, and those are just two of the many reasons why we get along so well. Steph’s first two YAs were published by MTV Books in 2008/2009. Keep an eye out for Steph’s upcoming memoir from Dutton Children’s Books.

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Stephanie Kuehnert

Ouija Boards & The Ghosts of Forest Park

My first encounter with a ghost was with George Washington. Like the first president of the United States, that George Washington. At least supposedly. It happened during a fifth grade slumber party at the queen bee/head mean girl of my grade school’s house where I used the Ouija Board for the very first time. There were maybe five or six of us and we were all sitting on the bed that folded out of the coach. The room was dark except for a couple of candles, most of us were nervous and giggly. I have no idea how we chose George Washington. I guess because we were eleven and no one had any dead people in their own life to call on—at least none they wanted to call on in front of everyone else—and he was a famous dead person who came to mind pretty easily and didn’t seem scary or evil.

However one of the first things someone asked him about was that cherry tree he chopped down as a child and apparently he didn’t to talk about it because suddenly the fold-out bed collapsed, we all screamed and a few people claimed to have seen a flash of green—you know like a dollar bill??? OMG—and then first Ouija Board experience was over right as it had just begun. I’m not going to lie, even though I didn’t see the green flash and I was pretty sure that the bed had collapsed from our weight, I was a little freaked out and I decided that the spirit world was best left alone… at least until I had something interesting or important to ask about.

My interest in the occult—tarot, the Ouija Board, psychic dreams, and love spells—arrived with puberty. I was thirteen, suddenly interested in boys, too terrified to actually talk to them about my feelings, so my best solution was to try to communicate those feelings psychically or magically and when that yielded no real results, I just wanted to hear what my future held. Every sleepover in eighth grade involved the Ouija Board. Instead of trying to think of some famous person to contact (though we did try to reach Sid Vicious once; he just spelled rude words over and over again, so that might have actually be real!), we decided to ask if any spirits wanted to talk to us, specifically we asked if there were any ghosts living in our houses.

I was a little nervous about this—even though my house was practically a hundred years old, I’d never seen anything spooky go down, but what if I somehow stirred up something awful and my family was suddenly living in a Stephen King novel! As it turned out, I had nothing to fear. The ghost who lived in my house was named Lulu and she was a sweet 20s flapper who was happy to tell me all about my crushes.

I’ve a few other ghostly experiences over the years, mostly in cemeteries because I had a little bit of an obsession with hanging out in them, which I wrote about in detail for Rookie magazine if you are interested. Two fun facts that you’ll learn about in that essay are that I actually named one of the main characters in I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone after a ghost from a Wisconsin cemetery and I was very excited when I bought my first house because it was located within a couple of blocks from three huge cemeteries. This was in Forest Park, Illinois, a town where the dead outnumber the living thirty to one!

There are a lot of great stories about Forest Park cemeteries. Emma Goldman and the Haymarket Martyrs are buried in one, which erm is actually the cemetery I used to go jogging in and Belle Gunness, one of the first female serial killers may or may not be buried there as well—it’s a mystery! Another cemetery is the final resting place of one of Liz Taylor’s husbands, Michael Todd, and home to Showmen’s Rest a mass grave of circus employees who were in a train crash—there’s a ghost story there, as you can imagine. And then there is the legendary Forest Park Flapper Ghost, a young hitchhiking ghost similar to Chicago’s Resurrection Mary.

When I heard about the Forest Park Flapper, I thought of my first ghostly friend, Lulu. Since Lulu lived…er, rather, resided, in my childhood home in a neighboring town, I started to fantasize that maybe my flapper ghost was the flapper ghost. I’d thought about writing a ghost story starring Lulu and when I was invited to contribute to Month 9 Books Very Superstitious charity anthology (which benefits the SPCA), I finally got the opportunity. It’s my first—and so far, my only!—piece of supernatural or paranormal fiction. I had a blast writing it, so it is my honor to give away a copy of this anthology in celebration of Vanessa and This is Your Afterlife!

- Stephanie

Steph, I’m honored to have you with me on the blog! Thanks for sharing these fascinating stories. I’m so glad Lulu was well mannered compared to Sid Vicious!

Giveaway!

Enter my Rafflecopter giveaway HERE to win a Kindle copy of This Is Your Afterlife and a $50 Amazon e-gift card!
Leave a comment to win a copy of Stephanie’s Very Superstitious anthology. If you could have a, um, conversation with a dearly departed historical figure, who would it be?

Tomorrow, join us for the final day of the epic Paranormal Party and the arrival of RITA-nominated author Tina Ferraro!

 

Paranormal Party Guest – Kim MacCarron

Yes, the Paranormal Party is still going! Thanks so much for coming by. I hope you’re having a good time. If this is your first visit, you might be wondering what the occasion is. Some of my YA writer friends are blogging each day to celebrate the release of my debut YA, This Is Your Afterlife. (Hooray!)

Today I’m welcoming Kim MacCarron to the party! Kim is a four-time YA Golden Heart nominee, and no wonder — her books are packed with emotional punch.

What can I say about my critique partner Special K? A lot! She’s a wonderful author who writes about strong friendships, courage and love. And as a person, she epitomizes those qualities too. This is a woman who’s legendary for hauling a blender to a conference and making us margaritas in her room. A woman who bought me a Broadway ticket to Wicked and firmly said, “I don’t want to hear a word. Take it.” A woman who took a wrong turn on the way to Albuquerque and ended up in Roswell, where she quickly blended in with the locals. She’s fun. She’s cute. She’s the one and only Kim MacCarron.

Hang out with Kim on Twitter and on her website.

Kim MacCarron

Vanessa, thanks so much for including me in your Paranormal Party Posts to celebrate the release of your debut, THIS IS YOUR AFTERLIFE.

In keeping with the paranormal theme, I thought about writing about my experience with the Ouija board, but it gives me the heebie jeebies even after all these years. Instead I’ll tell someone else’s experience, which inspired me to write my own short story based on the idea.

My friend had purchased a secretary at an estate sale or auction, but soon after moving the piece into the condo, strange things started to occur. A feeling in the room. A coldness. Creaking noises. She just felt something wasn’t right.

Then the deadbolt started to lock her door at the exact same time every day—right before her husband was due home from work. This caused some irritation because he kept asking my friend why she kept bolting the door when she knew he was on his way. She couldn’t understand how this kept happening. Again and again.

One day her husband called while on his way home, so she went to the door and double checked that the door wasn’t bolted. It wasn’t. She went to the sink to load a few dishes in the dishwasher, but turned off the water when she thought she heard a noise. She heard the distinct click of the deadbolt. She rolled her eyes, thinking her husband had used his key the wrong way, and he clearly had been doing the same thing all along.

She walked to the door to confront him about his mistake, but there was no muttered cursing on the other side. She turned the dead bolt, opened the door, but nobody was there. Just as she was about to close the door, her husband stepped off the elevator.

When she backed into the living room, she felt chilled. She told me later that she wasn’t scared so much as confused. What did it all mean?

So, being a writer, I often wondered about this. Curiosity made me crazy. Why did the ghost always lock the door at the same time? Who was it? And why did he/she hitch a ride to her condo in the secretary? Wouldn’t he/she have felt more comfortable in a familiar place or with family members? Why stick with a piece of furniture and be at the whim of whoever bought the piece?

My friend’s experience always stayed at the back of my mind. I’ve made up many little stories about why the ghost stayed with the antique secretary. Sometimes it was spooky. Sometimes it was a mystery. In the end, I made it into a romance.

- Kim

Wow, what a creepy story, Kim! Thanks so much for sharing it and your haunting short story, Just Believe. I wonder what secrets the previous owner held in that secretary!

Giveaway!

So, partygoers, how would you like to win a $50 Amazon e-card and a Kindle copy of This Is Your Afterlife? All you have to do is enter using my handy Rafflecopter giveaway mechanism right HERE.

Have you ever experienced a haunting? Had an object or piece of furniture with a life of its own? Leave us a comment below!

Join us tomorrow to mingle with another great YA author, Stephanie Kuehnert!