Category Archives: YA

Publishing: My First Good News!

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It’s been a while since I posted (and a while is seriously understating my lack of presence) but I had hoped to have something concrete to announce before now. So, if that’s the case, you may be asking yourself, why post now? Because I finally have what I’d been waiting for: something concrete to announce.

On Monday morning I sent in the contract that officially makes me an author! A short story I wrote last year titled Sing, Sweet Nightingale will be part of an young adult paranormal anthology. The anthology (title is still under debate) is about to start the editing and formatting process and is set for publication in Spring of 2012. It will include authors like my fabulous friend Lani Woodland whose second book released this week (Indelible is amazing! Buy it, read it, love it, then buy more for your friends!), Melanie Marks, Rita Webb and Wendy Swore (who are co-editors of the book), as well as a couple of other authors who are making their debut with me. I’ve had a chance to read some of the stories already and I am very excited to be working with such a wonderful group of talented people! I will post updates and progress reports every so often, so be on the lookout!

In related news, I posted last year that I had scrapped my then-current project Safety Net (previously titled Fallen, for those of you who have been following my slow progress for the last couple years). What I didn’t say much about was the novel I then turned my attention toward. It has been on the back burner for a couple of years, something I worked on when I needed a break from my main story, but I’ve always felt the pull to finish it. I’m hoping that the first draft will be complete by the first of the year. I don’t want to say too much about it now (you never know what may change in the editing process), but I will give you a little bit of information. It is told by a seventeen year old girl named Tabitha who lives in my hometown of Ft Lauderdale and it is NOT paranormal. I know. Shocking, huh? No ghosts, no vampires, no angels, no faeries. Just people and all the good and bad things they’re capable of. It’s tentatively titled My Own Prince Charming and I have high hopes for it.

In other tangentially related news, I got a job in publishing! I now work for a magazine as something of a factotum. I answer phones, source photos and videos, help develop the digital side of the magazine, run their newsletter campaign, and copyedit, among other things. Also, I have a full-length article in the upcoming issue and I am very excited to see my name in a internationally distributed publication! It’s not fiction, but it’s really darned cool. And, this job is an actual, viable step toward my ultimate career goal: becoming either a novelist or a fiction editor. In fact, I’ve managed to take steps toward both possibilities this year. I am gaining experience in the publishing field and have actually sold a piece of fiction. I had a feeling that 2011 would be a good year.

Better late than never, right? 😉

Books: Intrinsical by Lani Woodland

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Isn’t it pretty? Yeah. I know both the author and the woman who took that fantastic picture. It helps that they’re the same person, though, I guess… How did so much creativity and talent get packed into one (tiny) person? I don’t know, but it’s gloriously unfair. KIDDING, LANI! Well, about the unfair part, not about the talent. 😉

Intrinsical is a true young adult paranormal with all the juicy bits of a good love story and all the suspense of a good ghost story. Set in the Pendrell boarding school (which doesn’t exist, but the land it sits on does and OMG gorgeous), Intrinsical follows Yara as she arrives at this school expecting nothing more than boy trouble and homework stress because the long dominant trait of otherworldly communion seems to have skipped her. This hopeful outlook lasts only as long as it takes for her to set foot on Pendrell’s campus, for on her first day she intervenes in a spiritual attack on another student named Brent, saving his life and drawing the attention of a malicious spirit that appears to her as a black mist. Yara soon finds out that there is more to this new school than uniforms, curfews, and panoramic vistas. She becomes entangled in a sixty-year-old curse that endangers her life and the lives of everyone attending Pendrell including her best friend Cherie and her new flame Brent (yes, the boy whose live she saved. Isn’t it romantic?!).

Besides being one of the kindest, most awesome people I’ve ever met in my life and had the fortune to call a friend, Lani’s book is an engrossing read. And that picture really doesn’t do the cover justice. The book is available now in hardcover from Amazon and Barnes & Noble (unfortunately my bookstore is dropping the ball on this one, but I’m working on making sure Borders carries it soon, too), so stop by your local B&N branch and demand a copy!

Erica’s rating: 4/5

Writing: Exploring New Territory

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So, my novel is out with publishers again and I get a text message from my friend Lani Woodland asking me if I want to contribute to a young adult paranormal anthology. Well, sure! Why not? Only problem? Deadline is in two weeks and I have nothing that could even loosely fit that description in the works right now. I tell her I will try to think of something and let her know if I can’t and then I go about my business.

The idea popped into my head at work one morning (waaaay to early in the morning to be at work) while I was listening to my iPod. A Kate Nash song followed a couple of minutes later by a Silversun Pickups song started a spark in my head. I wrote down the title and the one sentence that popped up out of the flames that spark started and let the fire burn for a while (by force really. I was at work, remember?). Later on in the day, I open a new document on my iPad (which I absolutely adore, by the way) and let the title and that one sentence transport me into another world. As is my tendency, I immediately saw the potential for a novel in the story that was flowing onto the page, but I had both a deadline and a word count limit to work under so I held myself back from all those tantalizing subplots and backstory scenes. And you know what? It’s going fabulously. I’m already over word limit (but, really. 5000 words? Was I ever known for my brevity on a page?). I may miss the deadline (really short timeframe! But I’m trying!). But no matter what happens,I’m back in the creative saddle working on something I’d never have come up with otherwise. It feels fantastic.

Book Reviews: Life As We Knew It

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I just finished reading a book by Susan Beth Pfeffer called Life As We Knew It. I know people consistently tell you that you shouldn’t ever judge a book by its cover, but this cover was what caught me:

Marketing is key and this striking cover made me interested enough that I stopped to read the blurb on the back. So, for those of you hoping to be published one day, be kind to your art department. They could easily make or break you before you even leave the gate. But, anyway, back on topic.

The book follows fifteen-almost-sixteen year old Miranda Evans. It’s a diary format book which is hit and miss in my experience, but Pfeffer really pulls it off with this one. It starts in early May and follows Miranda and her family through the following year and all the disasters that befall them. And not your average everyday disasters, either. I’m talking epic world-ending disasters.

On May 18th, a huge, dense asteroid struck the moon. While the strike was expected (as in, people saw it coming) astronomers underestimated the mass and the impact on the moon’s orbit. The force of the blow knocks the moon closer to earth, and that is really the beginning of the end. Tsunamis, massive tidal changes, earthquakes, and volcanoes completely change the landscape and make every moment of every day a struggle for survival.

Life As We Knew It is reminiscent of many other doomsday books (Alas, Babylon comes to mind), but it’s missing one thing those other books always carry–human guilt. This disaster and everything that spawns from it is beyond human control. The earth is not rejecting its evilest of inhabitants and aliens are not coming down from on high to punish us for our sins. What that leaves this story with is all the trappings of environmental propaganda (Cherish what we have! Be kind to the world! Be not wasteful!) without the bitter aftertaste.

I fell in love with this family despite their failings–all of which are shown clearly through the course of the book–and I rooted for them to make it through. I found the writing engaging and thoughtful, the characters honest, and the scope of the book terrifying in its probability. All in all, it made me anxious to get my hands on Pfeffer’s companion novel The Dead and the Gone.

Writing: Creative ADD

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I have had writers block. It sucks, but it’s not an everlasting thing. (Honestly, I think that’s the trick to beating it–seeing it as a finite, manageable event.) But for a long time I’ve had what I consider Creative ADD.

Not including Fallen, I am currently juggling twenty-four separate novels in my head. Some of these are fully formed stories with characters, plot, conflict, motivations, and even pieces of dialogue in place. Others exist only in a vague idea form that may or may not ever turn into a book. The problem right now–for me, at least–is sticking to just one.

The ideas I get are varied, each sparked by something different. Sometimes it’s books I’ve read recently (see my earlier posts about the right way to steal ideas), sometimes it’s something I hear someone say, or a random occurrence of synapse connections that scientists have yet to explain (really, sometimes I have no idea where these ideas come from). A few of these ideas already have a strong hold on me–I love them, they’re my babies, and I will see them completed one day. Others…not so much.

But picking and choosing between the ones I love? (Anyone else hear REM in their head, or is that just me… Just me? Yeah, I was afraid of that…)

I guess I just have to be grateful for the fact that I’m not yet working on a deadline, that I can come and go between stories as inspiration carries me without worrying about how many words I’m writing per day or when the polished draft of a certain book is due to the editors. I write this down so I remember this realization and enjoy it while it lasts.

Does anyone else notice that this is me looking for a bright side to the life of an unpublished writer? 😉

Books: The YA Stigma

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I grew up reading books that were well above my grade level and discovered the sci-fi/fantasy section of the bookstore pretty early on. Because of this, I never really picked up YA books. Part of this (I’m ashamed to admit) had to do with the stigma attached to YA–they’re kids books, they’re all the same story in different clothes, they’re just kind of dumb. Luckily, I’ve been proven wrong. And then today I discovered this article and found out I wasn’t the only one to go through this transition. Go NY Times! It makes me happy to see things like this being covered at all, but I think this essay in particular is fantastic.