My First Book Festival!!

I'm so thrilled to be on a panel at the Montgomery County Book Festival, February 15, 2014! I've attended this book festival for a couple years now, and to be invited to participate as an author is such an honor! They're still announcing the author lineup, but I've seen it, and it's exciting!

If you're local to Houston, come check it out. I'll have some ARCs to give away for the teens, and some swag to sign!

For more information, and to read my interview, CLICKY HERE.

On Meeting my Agent, Rob Thomas (Of Veronica Mars), and Blogging Friends

In September, I made the drive up to Dallas to meet my agent, Marietta Zacker, IN PERSON! She was a speaker at DFW's SCBWI conference, so I met up with her the day before for lunch and, of course, ice cream! She's smart, she's kind, and she's hysterical! We had a GREAT time, just like old friends.

Aren't we cute?! I'm one blessed gal, that's for sure. *hugs agent*

And last weekend I went to the Austin Teen Book Festival! What an amazing event, headed up by the one and only Jen Bigheart. She asked me to be one of the event photographers this year, so I came out of retirement, dusted off my camera and lenses (I really did have them professionally cleaned), and road tripped it out there with Maria. While I had a great time, I'm officially thankful I'm not in the photography biz anymore.

One of the highlights of the weekend was meeting Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas! He's so genuinely nice too!

I was also blown away by Sarah Dessen. I've only read two of her books, but after meeting her and listening to her on her panel, I'm a fan for life. She's just an amazing person. Sadly, I don't have a picture of us. Sigh.

But I do have pictures with the girls! I finally got to meet Julie Murphy in person!

She's so sweet, y'all. And one of the funniest people I've ever met. Watch for her book, Side Effects May Vary, coming from Balzer+Bray in March! 

And I finally met all of the Girls in the Stacks! I had so much fun rooming with them!

L-R: Top-Maria, me, Stephanie Pellegrin; Bottom-Shannan and Stacy from GITS, and Julie.

I VOLUNTEER!

L-R: Top-Katie from Mundie Moms, Stacy, Nancy also from GITS; Bottom-Stephanie, me.
(behind the camera is the super sweet and talented Magan Blasig of Rather Be Reading)

I had so much fun working behind the scenes and helping the Fierce Reads tour at their signing table. It felt like a stepping stone from attending spectator, to worker bee, to one day, however hard to believe right now, an author sitting on panels and signing books. So excited to start my debut year in just a couple months! Eeeek!

What have YOU been up to this summer? Go to any conferences or book festivals? Meet any blogging friends?

Nurse Log Books - Gayle Forman Event

A couple weeks ago, Gayle Forman (If I Stay and Where She Went) came into town for a book festival. Her presentation was a little unconventional. She discussed three entire books she's written that will never see the light of day. They're living in the cemetery of her hard drive. She calls these Nurse Log Books.

nurse log - a large decomposing tree trunk that has fallen, usually in a forest; the decaying wood provides moisture and nutrients for a variety of insects and plants

  
The books she's written between the ones that have actually gotten published may not ever be loose in the wild, but they aren't without purpose. They led her to the books that have gotten published. She says as a writer, you always have to be working on something, and sometimes you have to write the wrong book in order to write the right book.

Do you have any nurse log books? I'd say the first "complete" novel I wrote was definitely one. It's mostly junk, but it was like one giant exercise in writing. I stretched my writer legs on it. It was my 5k leading up to the marathon.

Bullet Points of Interest from Gayle Forman's presentation:

-If I Stay was actually her third published book, but it's the first one anyone paid attention to.
-Never intended on a sequel for If I Stay, but the characters would wake her up at 3am saying, "What have you done with us?"
-If I Stay was inspired by a family of four that she knew that all died in a car crash. The 8 year old lived longer and was life-flighted. She was struck by that, wondering if he knew his family was gone and chose to go with them.
-She never thought If I Stay would have done so well. She's still shocked that this thing she wrote in the corner of her family room is read by people all over the world, and she gets emails from readers in places like Indonesia.
-If she had actually set out to write a book with a message to teens about how fleeting life is, it would have failed.
-As a writer/author, the only thing you can control is what you're writing now. You can't control who reads it, how it does, what happens with the movie, etc. 

Meeting John Green

John Green and his brother Hank have turned themselves into rockstars. I'm sure most of that has to do with their vlogs (if you haven't heard of the vlogbrothers, check out their videos. They're insane, yet hilarious), but then there's John's actual books. I've only read Looking for Alaska, and while it's not necessarily a style I read often (or really want to write necessarily), the dude's so smart. His smartness just oozes off the pages of his books. It's really quite frustrating. It makes you want to quit writing. It makes you want to read everything he's written. It makes you want to get out your dictionary and write a list of all the awesome new words he's introducing you to so you can incorporate them in your own writing and appear, with intense effort, half as intelligent as he is without trying.

His book tour is just that: A TOUR. It has a program and everything. It's a SHOW. His brother Hank starts off with a sock puppet routine, informing us of the death of his sock brother by dog and then he marvels at how the audience could possibly think such a tragedy is humorous.

Then the sock introduces John, NYT #1 best-selling author, of course, and he reads the second chapter from his new book, The Fault in Our Stars. (I notice how many authors do readings from the second chapter of their stories.... interesting)

We laughed, we were touched, we were forced to contemplate LIFE. All in one chapter. The dude's that good. Then Hank came back out with his guitar and sang a few songs, one of which details his desire for JK Rowling to write an 8th Harry Potter book. In his chorus: "I wan't JK Rowling to say that the epilogue was crap, cause we all know it was crap." Now... personally I needed that epilogue. I wanted to know what happened 19 years later. You can't keep dragging out a perfect series just because you like it, because then it really will turn into crap. SUCK IT UP, HANK! ;)

They ended the show with a Q&A, and when the timer runs out, whichever of the brothers is caught talking gets SHOCKED as punishment. Yep, SHOCKED. John was the unlucky one this time, and he was angry about it. I managed to snap a picture just as he was in full pain, and when it was my turn to meet him, I told him about it. What else did I have to say? I was determined not to be a gushy fan girl and blabber on, and I also didn't want to just stand there and say nothing. So I said, "I caught a picture of your face just as you were shocked." John: "That sounds horrifying." Me: "Oh... it is." John: "I must see this. Send it to me."

So I tweeted it to him the next day, and he RETWEETED it. Now, for those of you on Twitter, you understand that this tweet of mine just went out to over a million followers, including Maureen Johnson, who also retweeted it and tweeted to me: "NEW SCREENSAVER!" My Saturday was full of retweets and funny responses and a handful of new followers. My 15 minutes of fame. *dies*

Did you make it out to see John and Hank Green on their tour? Do you read his books?

Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl - Yep, Another Signing!

I totally lucked out living in a city that gets SO MANY AMAZING AUTHOR EVENTS! I feel like I'm going to one every week!

This past Friday I got to meet the authors of the Castor Chronicles (Beautiful Creatures, Beautiful Darkness) for the release of the third, but not final, installment, Beautiful Chaos. As always, it's fascinating how different each author's publishing story is from the next, and these ladies... let's just say they don't call themselves accidental authors for nothing.

In bulleted note fashion, here's a very paraphrased version of how Beautiful Creatures came to be:

• Kami Garcia was an English teacher, and she led a book club for her students (Margaret's daughter was one of them).
• At one of their meetings (in 2007), the kids were griping about too many werewolves, vampires, wimpy and whiny female main characters, and generic story locations. 
• Kami and Margaret had lunch and discussed what the kids pointed out, and they started to dream up a world that broke the mold, and soon had a rough outline of BC on a napkin. 
• Their story idea was from a male POV with the female as the parnormal, with a setting in South Carolina.
• Margaret went home and told her daughter that she was writing a book with Ms. Garcia, to which her daughter replied, "Yeah, right, Mom. And in three days you'll be onto something else."
• Kami and Margaret took it as a challenge and wrote about 30 pages very quickly, then gave it to M's daughter who said, "It's okay... what happens next?" 
• Soon, all seven teens in the book club were chomping at the bit for more, desperate to know what happened next. The ladies kept writing, just for these kids, no expectations other than wanting them to enjoy it. 
• When they finished the story (Then called Sixteen Moons), they talked about creating a web page where they could post the story for all to read. When Kami told a friend--who was an author--about it, he said, "YOU ARE IDIOTS! DON'T DO THAT!"
• Said friend sent their story to his agent without telling them, after which Margaret got a phone call from her gushing about how much she loved their story. M had no clue who she was exactly, why she had their story, or if they had an agent now... she never sent them anything to sign... they were afraid to come right out and ask--they knew NOTHING about the publishing industry. Bloggers know more than they did! 
• That agent got their story sold to a publishing house, and the book went to auction (which they thought was a bad thing, because the runt pigs no one wants are auctioned off). 
• The book went on to be on Amazon's list before it was even officially released, it was nominated for awards, it just went CRAZY with popularity, completely blowing the ladies away. 
• ON WRITING: Margaret writes a chapter, Kami takes it and deletes what she doesn't like (a lot of commas), and they pass it back and forth about ten times, changing words here and there until eventually every sentence is a mix of both of them. Then Kami writes a chapter and they do the whole thing over again. 
• Kami types with only THREE FINGERS on her right hand. Three hovering fingers. 
• MOVIE NEWS: The final script has been accepted by the studio (the people that made The Blind Side), so they're one step closer! 

Pretty amazing story for two ladies writing a story written for seven teens. Have you read this series? 

Melissa De La Cruz - Her Story

Friday I drove into Houston for the Melissa De La Cruz signing event at Blue Willow. Before hearing her speak, I knew nothing about her except that she wrote the Blue Bloods series. What an interesting publishing story she has! Here's her journey, extremely paraphrased in bulleted points for easy follow-along-ing.

• Knew she wanted to write from age 11
• Took writing seriously in her early twenties, wrote a novel.
• Had zero connections in the publishing industry. She bought a book outlining agents and what they're looking for, then queried. 
• Landed an agent, but was unable to sell that novel to a publishing house. 
• Wrote a novel every year, and every year got rejected by publishers. 
• Sold her first book at age 27. They gave her a year to work on it and the editor told her it had no plot. 
• They gave her six months to fix it, helping her outline and work on character development.
• She studied plots and learned to take them very very seriously. Years later, someone said, "Oh you're Melissa De La Cruz! I hear you're awesome at plots!"
• Her editor wanted her to write a young adult, dark fantasy, and the idea for Blue Bloods was born--at the time, no one was writing about vampires. 
• As soon as she submitted her manuscript for Blue Bloods, she saw Twilight was released already. At first she was nervous about it, but the Twilight mania helped her success with Blue Bloods. 
• At a TLA event, she sat on a panel with Stephenie Meyer and they exchanged books (she is giddy about having signed copies!), agreeing that they would read them when finished with their own vampire series. When the Twilight movie came out, Melissa went to see it and was relieved at how different her story was from Stephenie's. She then read the books, and joined Team Edward. ;)
• Melissa outlined her latest book five years ago, and warns writers to write EVERYTHING down. If you're writing a series, keep notes even about the little things, because you never know what you're going to forget, such as the little things she hinted at in the first books that need to play out later. She doesn't retain information as well as she used to. 
• Television: For six months, she worked with producers at CW to develop Blue Bloods into a television show, and she had no reason to believe it wasn't going to happen. Everyone told her it was on. (Her husband later said she was unbearable during this time--really big head!)
• A week after the big meeting/presentation with executives at CW, the network passed on Blue Bloods. Two weeks later, it was announced that the CW bought The Vampire Diaries. Melissa joked that show is "dead to her" and she still hasn't seen one episode.  
• Since then, she's had several movie offers and turned them all down. 

• Cover story: Melissa actually has cover approval. For Blue Bloods, they showed her a rough idea pieced together with stock photos. She liked the idea but thought it was cheesy and asked for a photo shoot. They said, "Oh sure sure!" then went around their offices saying, "Who has a pretty neck?!" The girl that landed on the cover is actually Melissa's editor who was a ballerina. Her mom still calls her and says, "Hey, I just saw your neck in Target!" Book two is also someone from the publishing office. After book three they started having real photo shoots.       

Melissa was fun and entertaining, and it was great to meet her and get my copies signed. I look forward to starting this series when I get back in the vampire mood. :)

As usual, I'm inspired to write. If only I could find where I hid all my spare time....

I Love Author Events!

I'm going to skip all the negative bits about the Austin Teen Book Festival because I'm moving past the disappointing moments of bummer and suck and you can't make me talk about it any more! ALL I'm going to say is don't follow the logic that saving the best for last is a good thing. It will bite you in your REAR. Eat your dessert first, my friends.

The theme was steampunk thanks to the keynote speaker's latest series. Quite a few people were decked out in the full garb, but I just constructed a few pieces of steampunk inspired jewelry: A ring that I kept getting caught on EVERYTHING and eventually took off, and a necklace.

Here's a fellow I never dreamed I'd meet, but I did! And I cut myself out of the picture because, well, with this face you wouldn't be looking at me anyway.

The Keynote Speaker, SCOTT WESTERFELD! 

He totally made that face on purpose. Did you take a picture with him too? Let's compare.

Also met the hilarious Maureen Johnson.

Met some other authors too, but wasn't able to do pictures with them. I'll just say that Jackson Pearce is PRECIOUS! Mary E. Pearson is SUPER nice, and I also got my copy of Will Grayson, Will Grayson signed by David Levithan though I didn't actually get to meet him... but I'm not talking about that, remember?! STOP!

And let's not forget, my favorite author, STEPHANIE PERKINS!! 

After I read Anna and the French Kiss earlier this year, I pretty much forced my mom (and all my friends) to read it, and she inhaled it. It was fun having another fangirl along with me this weekend!

And... Stephanie remembered me. So I don't have to tell you other fangirls how freaking cool that is. ;)

Had so much fun meeting bloggers I haven't met before, making new friends, and seeing old ones!

As always, the writing inspiration is in FULL SWING. I've kicked out around 3,500 words this weekend. Anyone else feeling it?!

More Author Signings! And the Zero Draft

This week has been filled with author signings!

Tuesday, my local B&N hosted an author event with the lovely ladies that wrote these books:

   

They each read pages from their work, and had us rolling with their witty answers to questions. I had a lovely chat with local author Sophie Jordan, and also met Courtney Allison Moulton who is quite hilarious. All four of them are promoting their trilogies and it was interesting to hear how difficult the third book is/was for them to write. As readers we take for granted that the last book in a series will tie up all the loose ends, but I for one rarely think about how difficult it might have been for the author to tie them. I find myself thankful there are no series ideas in my head as of right now!

Last night, I ventured into Houston to Blue Willow Bookshop for the Ally Carter event. She's promoting the second book in her Heist Society series, Uncommon Criminals. I flew through Heist Society, and I'm positive it's sequel will prove to be just as fun. 

 

Houston is so fortunate to have a rockin' indie bookstore like Blue Willow. They always put on such fab events, authors come back year after year. I was able to meet Ally Carter last year, and last night when I approached her table to get UC signed, she looked at me and said, "We've met before!" Open mouthed and red faced like the fangirl I am at these things, I said, "A YEAR AGO!" Seriously. Incredible.  

Ally is a pro at these events. She answers questions quick as a whip, keeping things upbeat and hilarious.  As far as writing advice I soaked up from her, there were several things I'd like to share. 

• She doesn't outline in the traditional way. Her initial draft is called the ZERO draft because it's unworthy of being called a first! It's the bare bare bones that she works out from beginning to end, making sure she knows everything that's going to happen. From there, she starts back at the beginning and revises, adding in all the pretties, then it becomes the first draft. 
• She reminds us not to get frustrated with our zeros and firsts. And especially don't compare them to a finished work!! You know that favorite book of yours? It's far far far from what their first draft was. Fear not! Keep going!

Author events are also a great time to meet up with fellow bloggers and other local authors! I enjoyed chatting and having dinner with the ladies behind the blogs Stephanie, a History, Cari's Book Blogs, Windowpane Memiors, Between the Covers, I Read Banned Books, and local author of Dreaming Anastasia and Haunted, Joy Preble. Also finally met Sarah from Sarah's Books and Life!

When Blogging Buddies Meet Part II - And Dark Days of Supernatural Author Tour!

Last Thursday, I went out to Austin for the Dark Days of Supernatural author tour to see Veronica Roth (Divergent), Tara Hudson (Hereafter), Amy Plum (Die For Me), Ellen Schreiber (Vampire Kisses series), and Aprilynne Pike (Wings series). They were all fab, and per my usual, I rode the inspiration high all weekend and cranked out nearly 4,000 words!

Here is a picture of me with Veronica Roth and Tara Hudson.

I also met Amy Plum, who was super sweet, and she brought chocolate with sea salt all the way from France to share with all of us. 

I also got to meet Stephanie of Stephanie, A History 

as well as Cari of Cari's Book Blogs (far left) and Lena of Addicted 2 Novels (far right).

The third smiling face in the picture is my good friend (and fabulous writer) Mari. She is blogless. One of these days, she'll crack, and when she does, you'll be the first to know!

I also got to meet Jen from I Read Banned Books!

It was a great mini-road trip, and I look forward to seeing my blogging friends at future events :)

Because Lauren Oliver Told Me To...

I usually come away from an author event on a writing high, and meeting Lauren Oliver on Friday last week was no different. Here are a couple of things I accomplished this weekend, thanks in part to Ms Oliver:

I wrote around 3,000 words (which is a lot for me)! Lauren spoke quite a bit directly to writers, and she really encourages a daily word count goal. She meets hers every day, no matter what. And she travels a LOT. She said she's spent 10 days in her own bed in 2011. One point I found very interesting, is if you limit yourself to where you will write, like if you say you will only write at your desk at home and no where else, you're limiting yourself too much and leaving room for too many excuses NOT to write. She wrote parts of Before I Fall on her Blackberry! Sounds crazy, right?! But really, the more flexible we are with our writing atmosphere, the more opportunity we have to actually put pen to paper (or fingers to keys). I've set my daily word count goal at 500. My hope is to surpass it, but the goal has to be doable and not challenging to the point of stress.    

 

I also got my gym membership back. Wha?? I know, random. But several times while Lauren was speaking, she mentioned running and the gym (she is in SHAPE too), and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I had a gym membership for several years and loved it, but when I lost my job, it was one of the things I cut out to save money. But I've missed my group kickboxing classes, the weight machines, the treadmills, the EFXs... the motivation I get seeing the skinny girl a few machines over that never slows down. It was time to get all of this back. I eased back into it on Saturday--some cardio, some weights. Then yesterday I jumped back into Turbo Kickboxing. A whole hour of serious moving. My face was a tomato (it's very embarassing, but it's the way I am I suppose... I also blush VERY easily.). And today, I am sore in every single muscle in my body. And it feels incredible. Got another Kick class tomorrow and I can't wait!

Lauren was super friendly and funny, and it was so sweet the way she gushed about our southern hospitality. She got a gift at each event from the hosts, and at an event at a high school here in Houston, she said the kids were all so polite with their "yes, ma'am"s. The kids where she's from in New York say, "So are you rich now? Can you give me a dollar?" Ha! Proud to be a Texan! We are a rather friendly bunch, if I may say so myself. :)

Thanks for the encouragement and motivation Lauren! You ROCK!

I hope everyone had a great weekend! CLICK HERE to sign up for my Letters to the Future Blogfest if you haven't done so yet!
 

Rachel Hawkins!! And the Birthday Bash is Over!

Well, yesterday was the last day to sign up for the Birthday Bash... and I wasn't too good about reminding everyone to enter, so I apologize.  I'm currently going through the entries and I'll have the "chosen one" announced later this week!

On Friday I got to meet Rachel Hawkins, author of Hex Hall and Demonglass!!

Yes, I know I'm pink.  Since the sun's been out, I've been outside as much as possible.  Plus it was hot in there.  Plus, I was meeting Rachel Hawkins.  I turn pink when someone just looks at me.  

She read a chapter from her new book, told us a little about how she started writing full-time (she was a teacher, it was sucking her creative soul, her hubs was also a teacher with similar soul sucking going on, they both quit, he cashed in his retirement, gave it to her and said, WRITE!, he got another job, she wrote Hex Hall, got an agent after TWO WEEKS of querying, sold the book 6-ish months later, it was on the shelves a year and a half later), answered some questions (there WILL be a third Hex Hall, then a new series!), and signed our books! 

As usual, the writing high is strong now, yet I've had zero time to work on anything but editing photos.  Today I'm MAKING time!!  

Well, bummer! But....

Thanks to the snowstorm that took over the globe this week, Lauren Oliver was stuck in Chicago, which meant her Houston trip will have to be made up, possibly in April.

But I did get to meet the author of Dreaming Anastasia, Joy Preble, at her launch party for the second book in the series, Haunted.  She was super nice, and she lives right here in my community, too, which is pretty cool.  Be on the lookout for an interview with her coming to booKrushed.com!  And when I read these two new SIGNED books (oh how I love my growing collection of those), I'll be sure to review them.

This week, Sourcebooks is offering the E-version and PDF of Dreaming Anastasia for FREEBIES. So if you check it out and love it, consider supporting her and buy the sequel. :)

Something about meeting authors... gets me on a writing high!  Off to open Scrivener!!

Happy Weekend!

When Blogging Buddies Meet!

This past Friday, I drove downtown-ish for the launch party of Tera Lynn Childs new release, "Forgive My Fins."  Not only did I get to meet the author and have her sign a copy of my book...

I also got to meet two good blogger friends of mine, 

Jen from Unedited, and her sister Kim from Under the Umbrella!

Kim, Jen, and me. :)

It was great to meet you ladies! I look forward to next time!

I'll post soon with some good info, directly from Tera Lynn Childs!!!