Blog Tour!!!

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Julie at A Tale of Many Reviews has organized a gigantic blog tour for NERVE! You’ll find interviews, juicy background details on the book and, of course, many reviews.

My heartfelt thanks to the many bloggers who participated! I know you guys take the time to read, review and blog because you love, love, love books. You guys rock!

Hugs,

Jeanne

You can find the full schedule HERE!

The posts that have been published so far are below. Note, that you can click on the blog name to go to it. (For some reason, I can’t get the font to highlight.)

Monday, Sept. 17:

Tuesday, Sept. 18:

Wednesday, Sept. 19:

Thursday, Sept. 20:

Friday, Sept. 21:

Saturday, Sept. 22:

 

It’s Release Week for NERVE — And the game’s on!

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NERVE’s release is almost here! To celebrate, there are all kinds of giveaways, interviews, blog posts and even a blog-on-blog dare challenge going on over the next two weeks! Before I tell you what’s coming up, there’s a giveaway winner from last week to announce!

The winner of a signed ARC of NERVE is: Rebecca Alyce Berto !!!

Now, without further ado, here are some fun posts and giveaways for NERVE you can check out this week:

Monday, Sept. 10th:

Will the blog on blog dares come to this? Check them out on Friday to find out.

* Since NERVE is a game of dares, the debut authors I blog with at Emudebuts have challenged the debut authors at Friday the Thirteeners to a blog-on-blog double dog dare! Check out the gauntlet being thrown! In this corner: Friday the Thirteeners!  And the opponent: Emudebuts!

* Nova Ren Suma (author of lush, lyrical thriller, Imaginary Girls) launches her Fall 2012 series of interviews with debut YA authors and I’m up first! Check it out HERE! And commenters will also be entered for a giveaway of a signed copy of NERVE.

Tuesday, Sept. 11th:

* First Page Panda will feature NERVE and host a giveaway for a signed copy.

* Emudebuts will post an interview with Tony Sahara who designed NERVE’s oh-so-perfect cover.

Thursday, Sept. 13th

Emudebuts will post an interview with my editor, the fabulous Heather Alexander!

Friday, Sept. 14th

This will be super fun! The videoed dares from the blog-on-blog dare challenge will be posted on Emudebuts and Friday the Thirteeners. Plus, there will be a giveaway for commenters on both blogs! I’ve previewed several of the dares and you don’t want to miss them! Totally. Hysterical.

And that covers it for this week! Next week there’s gonna be a whole lotta blogs posting info and reviews. Stay tuned!

Readers of the Last ARC

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Once upon a time, I had all these pretty ARCs…

My book NERVE comes out in exactly two weeks! There have been many milestones along the journey, one of the most exciting of which was receiving my ARCs (advance reader copies). All but one have gone on their way to reviewers, booksellers, and other folks who can get the word out. Originally, I’d planned to keep the last one as a souvenir, but then I realized that there’s already an ARC making the rounds of some of my agency mates which will end up on my doorstep (the ARC, not my agency mates, although they’re welcome to come visit).  Who needs more of a souvenir than that?

Which means I can give away the lonely little ARC that remains here. The last one.

Although my website is relatively new, I’ve been tickled to receive messages via it from readers around the world. To repay some of that book love, this giveaway is open INTERNATIONALLY! Thanks to the amazing subrights team at Penguin, the translation rights have already been sold for French, German, Turkish, Chinese, Dutch and Russian! Here’s hoping for more languages! But in the meantime, maybe one person in country far away will be win a copy before anyone else they know gets it. Or maybe it’ll go to someone around the block from me. Who knows? But you can’t win if you don’t enter!

Good luck!

Jeanne

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Crunch Time

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Hello, Wipsters!

Here, it is, the last Monday in August already. Really! For those of us who have kids, or are still students ourselves, or work for schools, there’s a clear demarcation between summer and fall. The school year offers the steady hum of routine, getting back to habits we may’ve let slide during hectic travel or leisurely days with the kids at the park. (Okay, maybe not leisurely, but not related to writing.)

I like routine, crave it in fact. But sometimes even a routine isn’t enough when you have to get a lot of words out in a small amount of time. I’ve calculated that in the next two months I need to draft at least 40,000 new words, and then revise them along with whatever I’m able to salvage from the first version of my manuscript. The whole thing needs to be tidied up and wrapped in a bow by November 1st.

So I’m panicking. Just a little.

I’m not the fastest writer, yet I need to meet my obligations. What’s a writer to do? Well, here’s how I’ll attack it.

1) Carve out a schedule. This will mean saying no to things I don’t normally say no to this fall. It also means prioritizing and taking time where I can get it. Whatever it takes to fit in at least twenty hours of writing a week.

2) Plan before I write. I have a chapter map that consists of a brief description for each new scene. Knowing what I want to accomplish before I start pumping out words each day saves on a lot of frittering. Taking a little time at the end of each writing session, when the momentum is flowing, to jot down ideas of what I should write the next day helps too.

Full Steam Ahead!!!

3) Cut the distractions. For me, this is spelled: I.N.T.E.R.N.E.T. As much as I love being connected, I curse it. Back in the day when not all coffee shops were wired, I could choose places that DIDN’T have wifi when I really needed to get stuff done. This is now almost impossible. Two ways around this are: 1) Use tools that block out the Net, and 2) work off of hard copy whenever possible. Even though this latter technique adds the extra step of having to transcribe whatever I’ve scribbled onto pages, it’s still faster than working at a computer and constantly taking breaks to surf.

4) Whenever I feel overwhelmed, chant, “One page at a time; one page at a time…” It’s a mantra I trust, because it’s helped get me through tight deadlines before.

Will this be enough? It has to be. At any rate, you’ll see my progress on Twitter!

Any advice? I’d love to hear it.

For this week’s giveaway, I’m offering another book from my collection (minus whatever this week’s winner chooses. The full list can be found at the bottom of this previous post.

Happy Writing!

Jeanne

p.s. The winner of last week’s giveaway is Kim Baccellia! Please choose a book from the collection or let me know if you’d like a hoopdance DVD instead. Email your choice and mailing address to jamr88 at gmail dot com.

Working toward Mastery — at Something Else!

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Good morning, Wipsters! Welcome to the third check-in for August! How’s your WIP progressing during these doggy days of summer? Panting along or all frisky?

As you know from my post last week, I just received a fresh batch of editorial notes, so my week was spent in planning mode. The highlight was a long chat with my editor where much brainstorming ensued, and still ensues as I plot out a new course for my book.

This is a business for folks with the long-term view. Sometimes it takes ages to sort out a plot. Sometimes a month to write a single scene. Sometimes years to land an agent. Sometimes decades between a dream and a deal. During all that time, we’re told to keep writing and keep learning. That’s great advice. The writers I’ve seen make it have put in tons of work toward mastering their craft.

But all this single-minded striving can have a downside, when the focus turns to obsession, and too much of our feelings of self-worth hinge on meeting that overarching publishing goal. That certainly happened to me, so much so that those around me could easily see how my quest was progressing by how morose I was.

Hoops and Books: Two of my favorite things to hang out with.

So, in 2007, after three years of writing and a year of querying, I decided I needed a second outlet, something else I could try to master besides writing. For me, that turned out to be hula-hooping (or simply ‘hooping’ as the cool kids call it). I spent the summer teaching myself tricks I’d seen on YouTube, then bought a few videos, and eventually enrolled in a class at a local circus school. Although I’d never be graceful or talented enough to perform in public, the important thing was that I was having fun and furthermore making progress. Progress I could see! (which hasn’t always been the case with my writing.) Hooping also turned out to be a great stress reducer when the writing wasn’t going so well.

The walls, ceiling and floors of my "office" are covered in "hoop kisses."

I think having a second hobby, one where you can witness tangible results, is a great antidote to the rejection-filled, hair-pulling angst we so often feel in the publishing biz. Mine sure helped me, and, who knows, there may be a hooper in one of my books someday.

How about you? Are you working toward mastery in any areas besides writing?

For this week’s giveaway, I’m offering a choice of either a copy of my favorite beginner hoopdance DVD or, if that’s not your cup of tea, a selection from the book collection I showed in my last post, minus whatever was chosen by last week’s winner, who is *drumroll*: Angelina Hansen!

Happy Writing!

Round and round and round we go, where it stops only our readers know…

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Greetings!

Thanks to the power of the internet, I was able to host last week’s #wipmadness and be on vacation in New York at the same time. (When our tour boat stopped in the Hudson Bay to let off a seasick passenger, I pulled out my phone and approved a few comments.)

Getting all those plot points to fit together into a functioning whole is intricate work.

But now it’s back to the real world, and with it came the editorial letter for my second book. That got me thinking of the many rounds of revision, and the rounds within each revision, like some intricate clockworks, that we as writers undertake. Since many of us seem to get the most juice from wipmadness when we’re riding through those first few waves that yield a completed (if not finished) manuscript, I thought I’d share mine.

0th draft: Figure out a rough plot line using references such as Save the Cat, an eight-point screen structure, scribbles on napkins, nine-block story grid, whatever helps me get started with the story.

1st draft: Get the story down on paper. No matter what, keep writing. Just get to the end. During the first fifty pages of the draft, I’m concurrently working on the synopsis/outline to figure out the overall plot as I use the first pages to work out the voice and characters. If plot lines, character names, whatever changes along the way, I just keep going. By the time I get to the end of the first draft, I have a huge mess on my hands. But there’s a story there. Somewhere.

2nd draft: Clean up the mess. Make sure the plot progresses logically from beginning to end. (And fix those character names.) As you can imagine, lots of stuff gets written, trashed and rewritten at this stage.

3rd draft: This is where the revision fun really begins. Examine each chapter for pacing, character goals, and opportunities for plants and payoffs. Now that I really know the characters and story, I add telling details and look for ways to evoke emotion.

4th draft: Polish it up enough for human consumption.

At this point I’m ready to show it to critique partners or my agent or editor, depending upon what kind of deadline I’m working under. Using their feedback, I go back in rounds of three: macro changes, line edits, polishing, getting feedback after each polishing stage until it’s done. Whew!

How about you? Is your process similar? Where are you now with your WIP?

All this talk of cleaning stuff up in my drafts has me wanting to clean out my bookshelves as well. So, for this week’s giveaway, the commenter whose name is drawn can choose from one of these fine books (I’ve tried to include a good mix of fiction and craft so hopefully there’s something to appeal to everyone.):

Make a Scene – Crafting a Powerful Story One Scene at a Time by Jordan E. Rosenfeld
Hooked – write fiction that grabs readers at page one and never lets them go by Les Edgerton
Spilling Ink: A young writers handbook by Anne Mazer & Ellen Potter
The Writer’s Idea Book by Jack Heffron
A Writer’s Guide to Fiction by Elizabeth Lyon
101 Things I learned in Film School by Neil Landau with Matthew Frederick
Blood Ninja by Nick Lake
The Mermaid’s Mirror by L.K. Madigan
Morpheus Road: The Light by D.J. MacHale
drizzle by Kathleen Van Cleve
Requiem for the Devil by Jeri Smith-Ready
The Knife that Killed Me (ARC) by Anthony Megowan

And the winner from week one is: L.S. Taylor! Please email your address to me at jamr88 (at) gmail (dot) com, and let me know what craft or inspirational book you’d like me to order.

Happy writing!

Jeanne

Checking in for #wipmadness? You’ve come to the write place!

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Greetings, WIPsters!  (For anyone not in the know, wipsters are writers who connect with each other under the #wipmadness hashtag on Twitter.)

Is your August off to a great start? I thought I’d welcome you by talking about inspiration. You know, that spark that keeps us writing and writing. And writing. Certainly, the love of what we do, plus the big brass ring of publication, not to mention the writerly relationships we form, are driving factors. But it sure helps to find just-in-time motivation in those weak moments when we’d rather do anything besides tackle that WIP.

So, let’s share, okay? And since I started the topic, I’ll go first. Here are a few of the things that spur me into action:

  • Books or essays by other writers who’ve been there, done that. One of my favorites is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. If I’m in revision mode, I find that reading a fresh approach to editting and/or plotting can get me excited to try something new. My faves include Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel, Cheryl Klein’s Second Sight, and Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.
  • Rejection: I know, weird, right? But during the years I was querying for an agent and now when my agent is subbing to editors, each rejection ignites a little process I go through. Sure, my first reaction is to be bummed. But then I get angry. Or maybe it would be healthier to call it “resolve.” Whatever the emotion is, it prompts me to push forward in an “I’ll show ‘em” burst of productivity. All things being equal, I’d love to avoid the rejection altogether, but since I’m a writer, I know it’s part of the game. So why not use it?
  • Success: Lest you think I’m a glutton for punishment, I much prefer success as a motivator. And every little bit helps. I used to enter contests galore, and each win, no matter how small, came at the right time to pick me up out of a slump. Plus, some contests provided super helpful feedback, such as those offered on Miss Snark’s First Victim site.
  • Productivity tools: Okay, maybe I am a glutton for punishment because my favorite app, hands down, is WriteOrDie. Whenever I have to fast draft, this is my goto tool. You set how many words you want to write, a time limit, and a consequence that ranges from “gentle” to “kamikaze”. You can also set it to block access to the internet and any other program until you meet your goal. For someone like me with attention issues, this program has been a godsend. However, if you prefer more of a carrot than a stick approach, I know folks who love Written?Kitten!
“Vitamin C” if you’re a writer

And, of course, chocolate is always there for us!

How about you? What are your secrets to getting your behind in the chair and getting to business?

To celebrate another month of wipmadness, I’ll send one commenter on this post a copy of a writing/craft/inspiration book of their choosing. (Must be available from The Book Depository and up to $20.) I’ll draw names on Sunday and announce the winner on next week’s check in.

Go get ‘em, you guys!

Howdy, WIPsters!

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Happy August!

I thought I’d give my new but barely used blog a little workout by hosting the awesome WIPMADNESS folks for their checkins this month. What is WIPMADNESS? Why, a most awesome hashtag on Twitter that links up writers who want some accountability, camaraderie and fun while pumping out those manuscripts. Check-ins will be here every Monday during August, and YES there will be giveaways! But if you’d like to get your goals set at the beginning of the month, feel free to comment here and say hi. Otherwise, I’ll see you on Monday, Aug. 6th.

Jeanne