Books for kids, teens, & those who are young at heart
Gillette Castle has gone missing! Join the fun as twelve Connecticut authors and twelve Connecticut illustrators solve the mystery in THE GREAT CONNECTICUT CAPER, a serialized story for middle grade readers and those who love adventure. Chapter one will be released on January 4, 2015 with a chapter to follow every two weeks.
Come celebrate the launch on Wednesday, January 7, 2015 at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT. I’ll be there! Will you?
I’m the kind of person who holds her emotions really close to her chest. I hate crying in front of people, even the ones I’m closest to, and have always, as far back as I can remember, felt this way. I don’t like openly showing many strong emotions often feel embarrassed when I do, and sometimes even feel embarrassed for other people when they are showing strong emotions (though they themselves probably aren’t feeling that way…they are simply reveling in whatever they are feeling).
It’s not that I don’t have strong emotions. In fact, it’s just the opposite; I have strong emotions, it’s just hard for me to show them. When I’m upset about something or hurt, it most often comes across as anger…because for some reason my brain thinks it’s okay to show anger if I have to show something.
Psychoanalysis aside (not really interested in analyzing myself, especially not here on a public website…yikes!), being this kind of person makes it hard for me to open up my emotional self in my writing. One of my goals this year was to push my writing to show deeper levels of emotions, and that included all forms of my writing: blogging, the journals I keep for the boys, my novels, everything.
I really stripped down and got real here on the blog with my post “How Does a Mother’s Love Grow?” back in February. I was going through a really tough time as a mother and shared some real and not necessarily flattering feelings. Frankly, that was a terrifying moment when I hit Publish on that post. But it got a lot of hits and so many wonderful comments. Though when I think about people reading that post, it kind of makes me nauseated.
My WIP is a really gritty novel, a thriller about a girl with a dark past (much of which she can’t remember) and who isn’t sure if she deserves a chance to remake herself. She isn’t even sure if that’s possible and wonders if she’s just an evil person at the core. Not that her feelings are my own per se, but the idea is to push and explore those very deep emotions and draw them out. Whatever they may be.
So I think I’ve begun to chip away at that goal. And I think it’s bringing my writing to a whole new level. Because it’s those deep emotions that resonate with readers, it’s what they connect to and remember from a story. Ultimately that’s the kind of stuff I want to write, even if it kind of makes me cringe a little on the inside. It also makes me glow on the inside, too. One of the many dichotomies of my life!
I guess the next step in this process of mining my emotions would be to allow myself to express them to a fuller extent. Not only would that aid in my writing, but it would probably be healthy for me and my relationships (not that any of that is bad, but those could always be better, right?).
So where have you pushed yourself and your writing this year and where are you taking those things in the next year?
I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. As you probably noticed, I took last week off from blogging, and from writing too, which was kind of a bummer because I had an awesomely productive writing week prior to Thanksgiving. Getting back on track this week, though, and thought I’d give you an update on the office attic space.
It has been coming along nicely (a bit slowly as well, but that’s life, I suppose) and I’ve been enjoying my new writing space. In fact, I’m there right now writing this blog post. The Prince is on his baby play mat behind me, and The Boy is outside playing with his grandma. I even have tea and leftover pumpkin pie to enjoy (devour!). All in all a pretty good deal.
The office isn’t finished finished…there are still boxes that need to be put away, storage units that need to be built, molding to be finished, a few doors to be installed, and we need to figure out where exactly we’re going to put my ficus tree, which I bought when I was 9 years old and has grown considerably larger since then. But it’s turning out to be a very functional space even with all the clutter.
My view isn’t the prettiest, but it kind of makes me feel like a suburban Mary Poppins. No chimney sweeps and certainly not as picturesque as London at twilight, but it’s mine and I love it all the same.
One of these days when the room is organized and clean (which may never happen with the kiddos playing up here), I’ll post some good before, during, and after photos. In the meantime, I’ll keep writing my WIP in my WIP of an office. 🙂
Today Ellen Allen, author of the YA thriller THE SHAM, is sharing some insights on the self-publishing process, which is something I think all of us authors, if we’re not doing it already, have at least thought about doing. Welcome, Ellen!
A writers guide to self-publishing
by Ellen Allen
Having recently self-published my first book and because more and more people are choosing to do so instead of following “traditional” routes to publishing (and asking me how I did it), here’s a handy cut out and keep guide – basically everything I would have liked to have known beforehand!
1. Get a critique of your final draft. If you’re going to spend any money, it should probably be in the editing process (as well as in preparing the cover). Otherwise you run the risk of publishing what agent Mary Kole calls, “just a printout of (your) manuscript bound between two thicker pieces of cardboard, and about as fulfilling as a pile of scratch paper”. Sites such as youwriteon allow other writers to critique portions of your book and sites such as wattpad and widbook will help you connect to readers to see if they like it.
2. Get your “platform” ready.If you’re starting at zero you’ll need time to find twitter followers and facebook friends. It also takes more time, and organisation to link all your different mediums together so that people can find you more easily.
3. Get some beta readers to review your book. Once you’ve got yourreal final draft (after editing and critiques) put it in the hands of actual readers. Goodreads has lots of groups of people who are willing to beta read and will offer really constructive feedback on your story.
4. Decide how to publish your book. For example, are you going to use a professional service, like BookBaby or do it yourself, through Amazon’s CreateSpace? Your decision will depend on money, confidence and your strategy. You may want more hand-holding than other people and want professionals to be available to answer questions about Digital Rights Management – DRM – for your book, etc. The answer also depends on distribution. Do you want your book available everywhere or just Amazon?
5. Create your cover. It probably pays to use a professional but regardless, make sure the name of your book is clear in the thumbnail. Spend time investigating the look and feel of other book covers; readers will use your cover to decide whether or not they’ll read your book!
6. Preparing your final document will take much longer than expected, as you’ll need to proofread and check the formatting. You’ll have greater distribution possibilities if your book is available in all three main formats (mobi for the kindle, epub for nook and iBooks and of course, pdf) but they’ll all need to be proofed separately.
7. Get your marketing blurbs ready. You need to distil your book into one or two sentences for taglines and you’ll also need long blurbs, short blurbs, A4 summaries (with plot spoilers and without) and a variety of teaser paragraphs. Make sure you also have your cover photo stored somewhere online in a really high resolution that you can link to different sites (Photobucket will let you do this). Keep all these marketing documents in a word document on your desktop so it’s easily accessible to cut and paste from at a moment’s notice.
8. Sort out your advertising. Are you going to run giveaways, youtube book trailers or pay for ads on sites like goodreads? Are you going to try to get some author interviews fixed up? You need to think about this before your book is out.
9. Line up reviewers before the book is launched. If you don’t have reviewers lined up for your book, then no one will read it! There are lots of places to ask for reviews but goodreads is a good start.
10. Finally, remember to celebrate the small victories. You are your very own, editing, marketing, advertising and production department and you have a very long road ahead of you. It won’t happen overnight, if at all (you only need to trawl through the millions of goodreads authors to understand how few people actually manage to become successful self-publishers) so remember to enjoy the small things: the jump from ten to fifty twitterfollowers; reaching 100 likes on your book’s facebook page; gaining a real footing on goodreads, where you have met some great friends, supporters and fans. Don’t spam your followers with “all about me” posts but do publicise your good reviews!
THE SHAM blurb:
When love leads to death, be careful who you trust…
Eighteen-year-old Emily Heath would love to leave her dead-end town, known locally as “The Sham”, with her boyfriend, Jack, but he’s very, very sick; his body is failing and his brain is shutting down. He’s also in hiding, under suspicion of murder. Six months’ ago, strange signs were painted across town in a dialect no one has spoken for decades and one of Emily’s classmates washed up in the local floods.
Emily has never trusted her instincts and now they’re pulling her towards Jack, who the police think is a sham himself, someone else entirely. As the town wakes to discover new signs plastered across its walls, Emily must decide who and what she trusts, and fast: local vigilantes are hunting Jack; the floods, the police, and her parents are blocking her path; and the town doesn’t need another dead body.
WARNING: this book is unsuitable for younger teenage readers. It depicts adult situations, murder scenes, conversations about sex and profanity.
Giveaway
The Sham is a YA contemporary thriller with scenes that are unsuitable for younger readers. If you want to read what other people think of The Sham, check out the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. If you want to win a copy of The Sham, enter the facebook giveaway here.
About the Author:
On her inspiration for The Sham
The idea for this book came to me in a nightmare. It was so vivid that I imagined I was 17 again, at school, in the same group of 4 friends that I used to hang around with. We were involved in a murder and cover-up. I started writing partly as a way to get it out of my head and then the characters turned into real people… and Emily and Jack were born.
More about Ellen
In a previous life, Ellen Allen was an Associate Director in a small consultancy firm (focusing on Sustainable Development and Climate Change) running research projects and writing client reports. She doesn’t find fiction writing too dissimilar in process but she gets to use her imagination considerably more! She now lives in the south of France with her small daughter.
If you want to contact Ellen Allen you can find her on twitter @EllenWritesAll or facebook www.facebook.com/EllenWritesAll or on her writing blog: www.writingright.net. If you want to buy her books, find her on Amazon.
Beverly Stowe McClure is an author, a former teacher, and a wonderful, supportive member of the kidlit writing community. Today she is sharing her MG contemporary STAR OF THE TEAM with a post about how she wasn’t always a reader. Welcome, Beverly!
JOHN NEWBERY AND A CLASSROOM OF FIFTH GRADERS
by Beverly Stowe McClure
When I was very young, I was not a reader. I listened to the radio instead. A program called “Let’s Pretend” came on every Saturday morning. This was BTV (Before TV). I loved Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Snow White and the Severn Dwarfs and all the others. Even though I never read the books, perhaps I absorbed the stories that years later I would remember how much I enjoyed them.
I squeaked through high school, reading only what I had to. After graduation I worked at various jobs, none of them exciting. When my sons started school, I decided to attend the local university so I could find a job with a future. This meant reading, lots of it. Four years later, I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Education degree. And, now get this, I became a teacher. What was I thinking? Teaching meant more reading. I also made an amazing discovery. Not only did I love teaching, I loved reading children’s books.
One of the requirements we had for our fifth-graders was a book report every six weeks. This was before the AR program many schools have today. Our students had to read Newbery winner or honor books. Memories surfaced of how much I hated book reports in my school days, so I hoped to make them more pleasant for my boys and girls. I also had to read the books so I could tell they’d read them. Sigh. I wish someone had introduced me to these stories when I was in school. Maybe they did and I wasn’t listening. For whatever reasons, I was hooked. My students’ reports were amazing. Sometimes, they dressed like the characters and acted out the stories. Other times they wrote reports with illustrations or in story form. Most of them had fun. The teacher had fun. Reading was fun. Remember the saying: “You’re never too old to learn.” It’s true.
So today, I thank John Newbery, the wonderful books that have won his award, and my classroom of fifth-graders for showing their teacher the beauty of a good book.
STAR OF THE TEAM blurb:
A girl.
A dream.
An accident.
A dream shattered.
Eleven-year-old Kate Taylor dreams of being the star of her basketball team, Angels. When Kate’s tooth is knocked out at one of the games and her mother, who is also her coach, says she can’t play until the tooth the dentist replants heals, Kate’s dreams are in jeopardy. Add Emily, the new girl at school who claims she’s the best, and Kate faces a challenge to prove that she is the star.
Will Kate succeed? Or will Emily ruin Kate’s plans?
Find it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
About the Author:
Most of the time, you’ll find Beverly in front of her computer, writing the stories little voices whisper in her ear. When she’s not writing, she takes long walks and snaps pictures of clouds, wild flowers, birds and deer. To some of her friends, she is affectionately known as the “Bug Lady” because she rescues butterflies, moths, walking sticks, and praying mantis from her cats.
For twenty-two years Beverly taught children in grades two through five how to read and write. They taught her patience. Now, she teaches a women’s Sunday school class at her church. To relax she plays the piano. Her cats don’t appreciate good music and run and hide when she tickles the ivories.
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