Megan Morrison's Blog, page 5
April 10, 2015
Positive Reviews from Booklist and School Library Journal
I’m so glad to be able to share more great reviews of GROUNDED! The full reviews are here:
Since both Booklist and SLJ require that users sign up to read full reviews, I’ll include a few of the highlights from each review here.
Booklist (reviewed by Stacey Comfort):
“Fairy tale meets funny in this fresh take on Rapunzel…”
“Morrison’s cuttingly clever take on classic tales will please readers and keep them hungry for more. Finding out the truth behind the tale has never been so snarky.”
School Library Journal (reviewed by Anne Jung-Mathews):
“The story line moves swiftly as Jack and Rapunzel face evil Stalkers, thieving bandits, biting cold, and an uncertain food supply.”
“…a story that has plenty of suspense and intrigue.”
“Fans of traditional and fractured fairy tales will thoroughly enjoy this new twist on an old story.”
Hooray!
April 2, 2015
See you all at GeekyCon
I’ve been invited to be part of this summer’s GeekyCon Lit Track, and I could not be more excited. The folks at Geeky announced it here today!
I went to GeekyCon last summer (when it was still LeakyCon) and attended as many Lit Track panels as I possibly could without a Time-Turner. It’s a brilliant con, and I cannot freaking believe that I’m included alongside authors like Maureen Johnson and Veronica Roth, among many awesome others.
I will not lie. I didn’t get this gig because I shine so brightly as a newbie unpublished author that the Powers that Be saw my specialness from afar and simply had to have me. Yes, I wrote a book, and yes, it’s coming out soon, and yes, I’m very, very proud of it, but I’m also incredibly lucky. I have a true friend in Melissa Anelli, who runs GeekyCon and who has believed in me since way back in 2001. Melissa is an insanely hardworking and ebullient creature who attracts a lot of limelight, and she’s also that rare breed of person who is happiest when she’s sharing the limelight with her friends. I’m fortunate beyond measure to have her on my side, and I CAN’T WAIT to be part of the Geeky joy this summer.
March 2, 2015
Praise from Publisher’s Weekly!
I read reviews much like I watch horror movies: with my hands mostly over my eyes. My editor sent me my Publisher’s Weekly review this morning, and I read it very quickly, missing almost everything, fearful that I might find some brutally negative monster sentence that would rip out my heart and stamp on it with its mean, cold, monster feet.
Instead, I saw words like “pleasantly surprised,” “emotional depth and inventiveness,” “potent mythology and symbolism,” and “full-bodied world worth revisiting.” Here’s the full review.
I’m so pleased and proud that the reviewer saw these things in my work. It’s awesome to know that I succeeded, at least for this reader, in what I set out to do.
February 24, 2015
Tyme’s new home base
Hello, everyone! Thanks for stopping by the new site. I’m so happy with it, and so grateful to the people who helped me get my digital life together. Thank goodness for cool people who know how to do all the things I don’t.
I needed music for my book trailer, but I couldn’t find what I wanted in the wilds of the Internet. Cue my friend and colleague Christy Bowman-White, telling me that her husband, Donny Audrell, is a musician who can totally handle the project. He wrote such a wonderful theme for the trailer – I could not have asked for anything more fitting. (If you’re an author looking for great trailer music, I will gladly put you in touch with him!)
Then I needed a web designer, but wow, there are a lot of them, and I had no idea how to sort through the options. Along came my agency sibling, Christine Hayes, who shared the name of the amazing designer she’d found: Jenny at Websy Daisy, who has done tons of fantastic author sites. I got in touch with her, and she was friendly and clear and super-duper easy to work with – and wicked, wicked fast. Once she started working on this site, she was done inside of a week. Gotta love a focused and skilled professional.
Finally, I needed illustrations for my site, so I reached out to my old friend Polly Beam, Weasley lookalike and fellow Harry-Potter superfan, who also happens to be a talented illustrator whose artistic sensibility is beautiful and whimsical and perfectly suits Tyme. She drew up a bevy of towers and spot illustrations, and in the end developed the background and navigation buttons you see here. Isn’t she fabulous? Yes she is.
So thank you, Donny and Jenny and Polly, for creating the music, web design, and art that will help me launch GROUNDED online – and thank you, Christy and Christine and J.K. Rowling, for bringing those fine people and their talents into my life.
T-minus two months and four days, people! Not that I’m counting.
February 13, 2015
Moving Day
meganmorrison.net
Since I started this little blog, so much has happened. I've found a wonderful agent, sold two books to an amazing editor, gone through the grueling process of revision, crowed over my first book cover, received my beautiful galleys, and even been lucky enough to see GROUNDED get a starred review from Kirkus. It's been an eventful two-and-a-half years, and I'm a little sad to leave behind this space, where I chronicled it all.
But I'm thrilled to be moving forward, and I hope that if you have been following me here, you will follow me there.
See you soon!
February 9, 2015
Welcome to the part where I hide and pretend it’s not happening.
If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, then you know I have a deal with myself: I have to post something here at least once every two weeks. I’ve only missed my self-imposed deadline twice, both times by one day, both times because I forgot. This time, I missed the deadline by a full week. Completely on purpose. I told myself it was because I have nothing to write about, but that’s never true. No, I’ve been avoiding this blog – and everything to do with writing, really – because I’m afraid.
GROUNDED will be published in two and a half months. After two and a half years of talking about it and blogging about it and building it up, we have apparently reached the big moment where I crawl under the covers and pretend it’s not happening. I have barely touched Tyme since Christmas. I’ve been hanging out with my family, teaching my classes, reading, playing video games, and deliberately ignoring the fact that the launch of my debut novel is almost upon me. When I’ve had to address book-related issues, I’ve done so quickly and distantly, and then immediately fled once more into the mists of denial.
Today, the fog started to lift. I think it’s because a very talented web designer, Jenny Medford at Websy Daisy, sent me a mock-up of what my new web site will look like, and it’s absolutely wonderful. Looking at the site design, it struck me anew that this IS happening, and I CAN’T hide from it, and even though all the scary parts are right around the corner, I’ve skidded well past the point of no return. And I’m glad. Because I worked hard. And I want this. And it’s going to be wicked cool.
So I’m not really sure why I’ve gone into retreat. My husband thinks it’s because I worked so hard, nonstop, for so long, that my brain finally decided to click off, to protect itself from breakdown. And I think he’s right to some extent, but I’m sure it’s also my brain’s way of coping with fear of the unknown. I can’t predict what’s coming. And I guess that’s always true, but there’s a certain predictability to the usual routine, and this whole debut novel thing is most profoundly not the usual routine.
Okay. I’ve written a post. Now forgive me while I run and hide again, while I still can. I’ll be back in a week or two, when I launch the new site.
Welcome to the part where I hide and pretend it's not happening.
GROUNDED will be published in two and a half months. After two and a half years of talking about it and blogging about it and building it up, we have apparently reached the big moment where I crawl under the covers and pretend it's not happening. I have barely touched Tyme since Christmas. I've been hanging out with my family, teaching my classes, reading, playing video games, and deliberately ignoring the fact that the launch of my debut novel is almost upon me. When I've had to address book-related issues, I've done so quickly and distantly, and then immediately fled once more into the mists of denial.
Today, the fog started to lift. I think it's because a very talented web designer, Jenny Medford at Websy Daisy, sent me a mock-up of what my new web site will look like, and it's absolutely wonderful. Looking at the site design, it struck me anew that this IS happening, and I CAN'T hide from it, and even though all the scary parts are right around the corner, I've skidded well past the point of no return. And I'm glad. Because I worked hard. And I want this. And it's going to be wicked cool.
So I'm not really sure why I've gone into retreat. My husband thinks it's because I worked so hard, nonstop, for so long, that my brain finally decided to click off, to protect itself from breakdown. And I think he's right to some extent, but I'm sure it's also my brain's way of coping with fear of the unknown. I can't predict what's coming. And I guess that's always true, but there's a certain predictability to the usual routine, and this whole debut novel thing is most profoundly not the usual routine.
Okay. I've written a post. Now forgive me while I run and hide again, while I still can. I'll be back in a week or two, when I launch the new site.
January 19, 2015
Starred Review from Kirkus for GROUNDED!
"The novel does not miss a beat in creating Tyme, a beautifully described world with a seamless fusion of magical and nonmagical beings, scenery and objects."
"Although there are dark, suspenseful moments and some acts of violence, there is also plenty of humor..."
"The characters are refreshingly three-dimensional, helping readers empathize with Rapunzel as she wrestles with universal feelings of love and betrayal..."
I have been absolutely terrified about this part of the process, so it's a huge thrill - and an equally huge relief - to get a review like this from a trusted name in the publishing industry.
It's one thing when your family and friends tell you that they like your book. It's quite another when Kirkus does it.
January 3, 2015
Debut Year
I've been looking forward to this year for so long that its arrival is almost anticlimactic. It doesn't feel real.
But it's plenty real. I have all kinds of proof. Things are starting to take shape in ways that make this whole "published author" thing almost tangible. I've got my final cover art, I've submitted the final edits, I've filled out the publicity questionnaire. I've made a Facebook author page. I've started setting up library and bookstore events in April and May, as well as blog stops for a mini-blog tour around launch time. GROUNDED is listed on Amazon, Goodreads, Indie Bound, and Barnes and Noble. It even popped up on a cool teen reader's blog.
Scholastic also asked me to supply an author photo. Author photo... yikes. Posing for photographs is definitely not an area where I am filled with vast personal confidence, so I did my research and ended up going to Studio B Portraits. The whole experience was relaxed and fun, and I very much enjoyed Brooke and the atmosphere that she created in her studio (I'm very happy with the photo, too).
A brand-new website is also in the works. It'll be up sometime in February, and I'll be importing this blog to that space at that time. More on that soon.
As for the new year, my resolution from September still holds: to be grateful for this wonderful opportunity, no matter what glitches there might be. So far so good with that one.
Two days before Christmas, I turned in the revision of Book 2 in the Tyme series, and then I stopped writing for a couple of weeks. I needed a solid break, mentally and creatively. So I turned my attention to my family, and the holiday break was fantastic - lots of toys, books, movies, and frosty cold walks outside with my husband and son, and lots of Dragon Age Inquisition for me (BioWare RPGs are so wonderful - I love their storytelling and have happily submerged in it).
On Monday, I'll get back to work.
Happy New Year!
December 21, 2014
Into the Great Wide Open
That's final. Final final. After revising and revising and revising, after line edits and copyedits, after the 1st-pass proof and the 2nd-pass proof, this 3rd pass was IT. Like, really it.
It doesn't feel real. I've been nudging sentences to behave themselves and licking commas off this thing for years. And now, more than a decade after beginning the first draft of this story, it's done. Done done.
Dun dun DUN.
It's scary.
But it's not too scary. Cheryl Klein is work ethic personified; this is an exhaustive, exacting process, and she is repeatedly meticulous. The production editor, copyeditor, and proofreader were also extremely particular. Thanks to their suggestions, I've made thousands of changes, ranging from the mountainous to the microscopic.
When I got my galleys in the mail, I went to put them away out of reach where my four-year-old son could not sticky them up. As I was standing there in the closet, I opened up a galley and started to read from a random point, and although this is a book that I can practically recite in my sleep, I was absorbed by it. I stood there and read fifty pages before I realized what I was doing - mostly because it was so smooth. And trust me, this isn't me patting myself on the back for my smooth, uncluttered writing. It's not like it was born that way. It took much guidance and many rounds of careful application to weed out all the stumbling stones.
And now it's done. It's not perfect, because nothing is, but it's perfect for me.
I need a Kleenex. I didn't realize that writing "Stet" and then "Yes" five times was going to be so emotional. But goodness, this is bittersweet.
Goodbye, Rapunzel. Be good out there, and have lots of adventures. I love you.
