It's a New Year, Baby!

Tip of the Day: writing goals don’t have to be your enemy.

Looking over last year’s writing goals left me in a bad mood. They were a complete failure. Wanting to binge out on the couch eating a gallon of Moose Tracks ice cream kind of failure.

Not one thing I accomplished, even the things I could control. And considering failure is one of my biggest fears, that’s not easy for me to admit.

But the only thing I can do is pick myself back up, slap on some make-up, and make some new goals. Unlike Kate, I do like making goals (or rather objectives of things I’d like to accomplish in the year). I’m not incredibly strict about them, but having some sort of guideline of things I’d like to accomplish (such as write so many words in so many days) helps keep me challenging myself and pushing myself further.

So goals I’d like to accomplish this year (which you may note is vaguely familiar to last year):

• Get an agent
• Get a book deal
  

And the ways I’m going to make this happen (i.e. the things I can control):

• Continue to push myself to learn my craft. I’m starting this off with a bang by going to the Winter SCBWI conference at the end of this month and I’m super excited to not only learn more about writing, but to get excited about writing again.
• Finish and polish at least one of my books this year.
• Then send that polished book off to as many agents as I can.
• Set a goal each month throughout the year of things I want to accomplish in that month.
  

My theme for this year is GROWTH. I want to grow as a writer and as a person. If by pushing to grow and blossom, something happens for me in my writing career it will feel great. If it doesn’t than knowing I accomplished any growth at all with be a resounding success for the year.

Happy Growth to all of you!!

--Emily, Miss Querylicious

Resolutions? Sorry, I Don't Do That

Tip of the Day: More information on the power of choosing one word to guide your year can be found at Christine Kane's inspirational blog.

I want to complain about peer pressure. I'm getting lots of peer pressure--from my local writing group, my online critique group, my A2A buddies--to craft writing goals for 2010. I think you know what I mean: "But Kate, you'll never accomplish anything if you don't know what you want to accomplish." "Well, I firmly believe that I need goals in order to get anything done." There's a sly implication that if I don't have goals, I must be the type of free spirit who writes whenever I feel like it. I can't possibly be serious about my writing if I don't even set goals.

Look, I've done the whole "set writing goals for the year" thing before. It doesn't work for me. By March, I might discover that the story burning in my head in January is a very different beast than I thought it was. By April, an unexpected opportunity might obsolete my goals entirely. So why do I need to add angst to my life in December by worrying about whether I met some imaginary goals?

I'm doing something different this year. I picked one word to guide my life for 2010. That word is LOVE. I want to love what I'm writing. I want to love what I'm reading. I want to write because I love to write, and that will be my measure of success.

Having said that, here are some things I would LOVE to do this year:

• I would love to write the YA Science Fiction novel currently burning through my brain. I'm absolutely in love with this story.
• I would love to learn how to take the research I've been doing for the Sci Fi novel and turn it into a non-fiction article. Wouldn't that be cool?
• I would love to attend an overnight writer's conference.
• I would love to write some romance into my novel and learn to be good at writing about love.
• I love being active in the online writers' community so I'm going to continue to do that.
• I would love to attract an agent or editor with the novel I'm currently querying, so I'll keep doing that, too.

You can call them goals if you want, and maybe rewording them to start with "I would love to ... " is sneaky of me. But it's not going to be a priority for me if I wouldn't love to do it, period. I refuse to go into 2010 feeling like I've got a huge to-do list and I'm already in the hole.

What's your theme word for 2010?

-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages

What a week

Tip of the day: Great post about showing versus telling. READ IT!

What a week!

Thanks to everyone for the CHASING BROOKLYN love! It's been a fun week. A busy week. And I'm excited to have another book out there for people to enjoy.

My signing Tuesday night to celebrate the release went well. Here's a picture my friend Suzanne Young took of me along with some of the Portland authors that were there:



And in case you haven't seen the book trailer for CHASING BROOKLYN yet, I'll share that here as well.



As I said in my silly traditional release day vlog, this book should have a big red ribbon on it, because it's really for the fans of I HEART YOU, YOU HAUNT ME. It's because of them I'm still here, writing books.

To all who have bought my books, shared my books with friends, loved my books - thank you from the bottom of my ever-grateful heart!

And welcome to the world CHASING BROOKLYN. Now go out there and do good things.

~Lisa, Miss Crafting a Career

Ghost! AH!

Tip of the Day: If you're an unpublished YA author who writes light romance fiction check out this contest being hosted by Blooming Tree Press. Winner gets a publishing contract.

Congrats on your book release Lisa!! I'm so excited to read Chasing Brooklyn! Really, you had me at the title. Such a sucker for good titles I am. And ghosts. I've even had an experience or two or three with a ghost. At least I think that's what it was.

Growing up, I always wanted the downstairs bedroom– the playroom my dad converted so my older brother could have his own room. I mean– he had everything down there–a TV, pool table, his own bathroom. It was like a mini-apartment. Not to mention he could sneak in and out as he pleased and sneak friends in and out just as easily. So when my brother got married, I moved all my stuff down there as fast as I could. And it was great. At first.

But pretty soon I started to notice that the bedroom got very, very dark at night. There were no windows or anything. The light switch was outside of the room even. And my whole family was not only upstairs but way the heck on the other side of the house. One night, I was woken up by some kind of shuffling noise on the other side of the room. I sat up in bed– totally cold. There was a dark shadowy figure standing by my closet. Oh. My. God.

So I threw the covers over my head and tried not to breathe too loud. Eventually I fell back asleep. The next night I made sure the door was locked so no one could get into the room and mess with me and the same thing happened. Brilliant. Now I’m locked in with the shadowy thing. You gotta be freaking kidding me I thought. I have to be imagining this. I hid under the covers again. The third night I thought I’d get all smart and brought in a lamp with me. A few hours after falling asleep I woke up and saw the same dark shadowy figure in front of my closet. Well, that was enough. There was no fourth night. I moved my stuff out of that room ASAP and the next brother in line moved in.

Kristina, Miss Delighted to Debut

Go Lisa! (or Three Times the Charm!)

Tip of the Day: If you want to meet Lisa in person, come to the Rochester Teen Book Fest in May!

Lisa, Lisa, bo-beesa, banana-nana fo-feesa, fee fi mo meesa, Lisa! GO LISA!

I have a Border's gift card waiting in my pocket for CHASING BROOKLYN to be in my local store and I can't wait to read it! I loved Lisa's first two novels, and her picture book is popular at my library as well.

My fave cover of Lisa's is the hardcover FAR FROM YOU design.

The colors are rich, the profile with snowflakes is telling and beautiful. It is also unique! I HEART YOU reminds me of the cover for THE COMEBACK SEASON:


CHASING BROOKLYN reminds me of THE BLACK BOX:



Not that there's anything wrong with that! But I'm just naturally attracted to fresh images like I am fresh concepts, and the original FAR FROM YOU cover -- and content! -- fit the bill.

Though the new paperback FFY cover is gorgeous as well, isn't it?


Happy release week, Lisa!!!

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

Ghostly Stories

Tip of the Day: today is the official release day of Lisa’s new book Chasing Brooklyn. You’ll want to make sure you pick up a copy!

In Chasing Brooklyn, both Brooklyn and Nico are haunted by ghosts. And not just any ghosts, but of people they know. Which in my opinion would be even freakier: you might be able to explain away a random image standing above your bed as your imagination, but if that image is of a friend or brother that just died it’s not so easy to get over.

My entire life I’ve been squeamish of ghost stories. One of my teachers in high school would have “ghost story day” and share stories of the ghosts that lived in his 100-year old farm house and then encourage other people in the class to share their own ghost stories. Talk about wanting to play hooky.

The thought of running into a ghost of my own has always freaked me out. It’s not like you could out run it—like a mouse or a spider. If it’s an angry ghost and wants to take out revenge on you, then you are pretty much screwed.

Since I had never had my own experience with these other-worldly beings, for most of my life I’ve kind of been on the fence on if ghosts exist or not. Some of those stories during high school “ghost story day” could be explained away. The moving rocking chair in the attic could be from a gust of wind and so forth. And from all the stories I’d heard most ghosts seem to be harmless and contained inside buildings, so for the most part my fear remained contained to not wanting to watch supernatural movies with the lights off.

That was until my husband and I moved into a 50-year old home in Tennessee, which we both believed was haunted. Neither one of us ever saw any ghosts, but there were constant feelings of someone watching you and just an overall “eerie” feeling. Now if one of us got that way and the other didn’t I might be okay, but both of us felt it constantly.

Neither one of us wanted to step foot into our basement, even though there were huge windows and a walk-out that made it fairly light and not that creepy. Just the feeling you got when you walked down the stairs made the mood shift and the hairs on your arms stand up. Luckily the laundry was located in the basement and it gave me an excuse to make my husband do it, so it might not have been all bad.

We looked into the house’s history and were unable to find anyone that might have been haunting it; especially because I always had a strange feeling the ghosts were children. Very friendly children that didn’t seem harmful, but just being there and the thoughts of them were creepy. We may never know if there were actual ghosts there and who they were, but both of us have decided that maybe slightly older homes are no longer for us and I pretty much don’t watch hardly any show or movie that involves a ghost (especially an angry one).

Luckily I’ve found that when I read ghost stories in books, I don’t get freaked out. So I can stomach reading about ghosts in Lisa’s books (with or without the lights off).

--Emily, Miss Querylicious

The Best Way to Start a New Year

Tip of the Day: Follow Lisa's Dream Big 2010 event, 26 fabulous authors for kids and teens writing on the theme "Dream Big".

Happy New Year! We're starting the year in the best possible way at Author2Author--with a BOOK LAUNCH!

Congratulations Lisa Schroeder on tomorrow's launch of CHASING BROOKLYN!

CHASING BROOKLYN is a novel in verse about Brooklyn and Nico, two teens haunted by the ghosts of people they care about deeply. Brooklyn and Nico's lives collide even as they hold back from each other the nightmare of being literally haunted by a ghost. Will they reach out to each other in time to save themselves?

Look, I'm not a huge believer in ghosts but I can't discount them either. I think that actually being haunted would be a nightmare and not fun at all. I'd like to convince myself that ghosts don't exist, except for something that happened to me.

After my daughter was born, her colic kicked in and I was very sleep deprived. My husband worked at night, and one night, I was finally collapsed from exhaustion in my bed, my daughter in her bassinet by my side. The room was dark. I woke up startled, but my daughter was still asleep; she hadn't disturbed me. Then the bedroom door pushed open and I heard someone walk across the carpet to her bassinet. Only nobody was there.

I freaked out and turned on the lights. I studied the carpet for footprints. Nothing. The presence was gone but I knew in my heart that it had been my father come to see his only grandchild. I didn't know my father. He left us when I was in preschool and died when I was in college. So I was NOT happy that he had come to haunt me and I was afraid he had bad intentions. I mean, not to sound melodramatic, but I was delirious from lack of sleep and there had been a ghost hovering over my baby, a freaking actual ghost of someone who hadn't been a good person in real life, and I doubted he was now a guardian angel. Maybe a demon in disguise come to snatch her up? I was terrified.

Maybe I misjudged a guardian spirit. Maybe I imagined the whole thing. Maybe. The presence felt very wrong to me is all I know. Instinct made me hug my daughter close and keep the lights on for a week.

I'm pretty sure I imagined the whole thing. There aren't any ghosts, right?

Anyway, my loving husband who no longer works nights preordered me CHASING BROOKLYN for Christmas, so I'll read it with the lights on. While he's home.

-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages