ELANA JOHNSON ABANDON COVER REVEAL

Today I'm thrilled to help Elana Johnson celebrate the cover reveal of ABANDON (Possession #3).

Here it is!

 

Isn't it absolutely gorgeous? And it fits so well with Elana's series.

Here's a description of ABANDON from Goodreads:

seduced by power,

broken by control,

and consumed by love...

Vi has made her choice between Jag and Zenn, and the Resistance may have suffered for it. But with the Thinkers as strong as ever, the rebels still have a job to do. Vi knows better than anyone that there's more at stake than a few broken hearts. 

But there is a traitor among them...and the choices he makes could lead to the total destruction of everything Vi has fought for.

Vi, Jag, and Zenn must set their problems aside for the Resistance to have any hope of ending the Thinkers' reign. Their success means everything...and their failure means death.

I can't wait to read this! It'll be published in June 2013.  I've already added it to my TBR list on Goodreads. You should head over there and do it too.

Elana is running a Pinterest contest for the cover. She wants to get 500 pins (or repins) over the next  two days. If we can get that many, she'll pick someone who pinned the cover to win a $50 Amazon gift card. It's so easy to do this. All you have to do is click over to Elana’s blog for details. 

Hope you'll head over to Elana's blog and congratulate her on her awesome cover.

See you on Monday! 

UNCONTROLLABLE BLOG TOUR AND GIVEAWAY

Hi Everyone! Today I'm so excited to participate in Shelli Wells-Johannes' (also known as S.R. Johannes) blog tour for her new book UNCONTROLLABLE, the second book in The Nature of Grace series. UNTRACEABLE, a mystery thriller set in the Smokey Mountains, is a Amazon bestseller and 2012 Kindle YA Semi-Finalist. Shelli is also a 2012 Georgia Author of the Year YA nominee. 

I loved the setting of this series. Having been to the Smokey Mountains, I really felt transported back there reading Shelli's book UNTRACEABLE. And she does a fantastic job weaving in Cherokee traditions and setting up a fast paced mystery. Grace is a great character, who is vulnerable but very independent and determined.

Here's a blurb of UNCONTROLLABLE from Goodreads:

As Grace recovers from tragedy, her science class is chosen by Agent Sweeney at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to help with research on the new "Red Wolf Reintroduction Program".

While she’s excited about helping with the conservation of the endangered wolves, Grace knows this means being outdoors in the worst winter recorded, in a place she no longer feels comfortable. It also means working closely with Wyn (her ex) and his annoying girlfriend (Skyler), a girl whose idea of getting close to nature is picking silk plants and growing fake plants.

After a couple of wolves show up dead, Grace almost quits. However, when a fellow project team member goes missing, Grace continues the assignment under a renewed suspicion that someone might be sabotaging the conservation program. She quietly begins to hunt for clues.

Little does she know, she is being hunted too. 

Shelli is an expert in marketing and she's sharing some of her advice today. So here's Shelli.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking book marketing over the last several years.

What I think has helped me the most is relationships.

It is not about how many ads you place or how many followers you have. It’s about connecting with people authentically.

Do I think I have a good book? Yes.

But I think the word of mouth has helped me because I have spent years meeting people, helping people, and connecting with people. Not for any purpose but because I love people.

I also reached out to bloggers first. I think bloggers make this book community and I admire what they do for books just because of their passion for books.

5 steps to starting a platform

1)   Join networks you are excited about

2)   Create a place where you hang out – tumblr, blog, web site (ect)

3)   Start visiting blogs and commenting to make connections

4)   Find ways to help others

5)   Make things personal – minimize spam or group emails

5 ways to use Twitter

1)   Help other people before yourself. RT their news.

2)   Don’t always tweet about yourself. It gets old. Random twitter giveaways to get followers or for followers are always nice.

3)   Tweet with a purpose – don’t over tweet too many things all at once.

4)   Take part in conversations. Make it 2-way.

5)   Don’t focus on your follower numbers.

You can find out more tips in Marketing Your Words book.

Thanks Shelli for your great advice. I've been wondering a lot lately about what to do with Twitter. You can find Shelli at her blog.

And the book Shelli is referring to is her new book about marketing, MARKET YOUR WORDS -A Writer's Guide to Best Selling Book Promotion. It sounds like a great resource when you get ready to market your book.

 Shelli has generously donated an e-book of UNCONTROLLABLE for a giveaway. Don't have a e-reader? Not a problem. I didn't have one until my aunt just gave me her old Nook. I've been reading e-books on my computer with no problem

 

To enter, all you need to do is be a follower (just click the follow button if you’re not a follower) and leave a comment by midnight on September 29th. I’ll announce the winner on October 1st. If your e-mail is not on Blogger, please list it in your comment. International entries are welcome.

If you mention this contest on Twitter, Facebook, or your blog, mention this in the comments and I'll give you an extra entry. 

You can find the whole blog tour with lots more giveaways here.

Here's what's coming up next.

Tomorrow I'll be sharing a cover reveal for Elana Johnson's new book ABANDON.

Monday I'll be sharing THE CROWN OF EMBERS, by Rae Carson. It's the sequel to THE GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS. I can't believe I got it. I'm giving away my ARC. It's a fantastic fantasy series and I'm so excited to have an ARC to share with you.

Next Wednesday Lisa Nowak will be sharing a guest post on publishing options and sharing about her new book DRIVEN, a contemporary romance about a girl who loves to work on cars. And there will be a giveaway.

The following Monday I'm so excited to help debut author Shannon Messenger (she's the founder of the Marvelous Middle Grade Monday posts and one of the founders of WriteOnCon) celebrate the release of her book, KEEPER OF THE LOST CITIES. I'll be interviewing her and giving away a copy of her book.

And don't forget our Tuesday Tips and Casey's Thursday agent spotlights.

Hope to see you on Monday!

Tuesday Tip #143

Tip Tuesday features writers' tips on craft, research, querying, blogging, marketing, inspiration, and more. If you'd like to send in a tip, please e-mail me at agentspotlight(at)gmail(dot)com.

Hi Everyone! It's Natalie here today. Today I have a fantastic tip from Rory Shay. This is her first tip here. She has a great website/blog where she blogs about the writing and publishing process, so be sure to check it out.

Tip:  How to balance the rest of your life while writing:

A lot of people have asked me how I manage having a family, a young infant, a full-time consulting career, a position on a non-profit board of directors, and socializing with friends while I write novels at the same time.  Balance is definitely the key word because it is truly a balancing act.  Obviously my family and child come first, no matter what.  But I am also super-focused when I write.  It’s like I’m in another world where not much else breaks through.  So how do I fit it in?  I work in short little stints, whenever I can get in a few minutes…after my child goes to sleep at night, on a day off from work, while the baby is napping, etc.  I carry paper with me wherever I go, and if a good idea or a good few lines hits me, I'll write them down immediately.  It doesn't matter if it's during a particularly dry meeting at work or in the middle of cooking dinner.  I take every opportunity and don’t wait for a long stretch of free time.  Even 10 minutes is enough to open my laptop and jot down a few paragraphs.

I wrote most of my first YA fiction novel, ELECTED, while I was on maternity leave.  I was worried I’d be bored at home for four months, and everyone kept telling me that the last thing I’d be was bored.  But when it came down to it, my child slept for about 17 hrs a day for the first four months.  So when I wasn’t napping with her, I spent a lot of time writing.  It was January, and I had to find something with which to occupy myself  indoors because of the weather.

Most of the writers I know do it as a hobby, not as a full-time career.  So that means most of them are also balancing a bunch of other priorities.  If anyone else has advice on how they balance writing in the middle of everything else they do, I’d love to hear it!

Rory Shay

KAT ZHANG INTERVIEW AND WHAT’S LEFT OF ME GIVEAWAY

Happy Monday everyone! By the time most of you read this, I will have been to school to provide breakfast of bagels, juice, yogurt, milk, etc. for the swim team after their 6:00 am practice. They grab the food on their way to class. They so deserve it so we all take a turn providing breakfast. And then of course, there's a busy day of work. Hope you're having a great day!

So before I share my fabulous interview with you, I want to announce the winners of two contests.

The winner of SKYLARK is VERONIKA!

The winner of EMBRACE is MARTINA!

And the winner of THE MOON COIN is ANUBHA!

Congrats! E-mail me your addresses so your books can be sent to you.

I’m so very thrilled  to help celebrate Kat Zhang’s debut with her and to share her fantastic new book WHAT’S LEFT OF ME that releases tomorrow. I’m so excited to share this book with you because I love it. I got totally sucked into the idea of two souls in one body from page 1. I loved Eva’s voice and her struggle to survive. 

I had just started this before going to the airport in Dallas in July to come home. When we got there, we found we had a three hour delay before we left. Kat’s book kept me totally entertained through the 10 hours of sitting around and I almost finished the book. I still remember how much I enjoyed the whole experience because of her book.

Here’s a description from Goodreads: 

What's Left of Me tells the story of a fifteen-year-old girl fighting for her right to survive in a world where two souls are born into each body and one is doomed to disappear. Pitched as The Golden Compass meets Girl, Interrupted.

Eva and Addie started out the same way as everyone else—two souls woven together in one body, taking turns controlling their movements as they learned how to walk, how to sing, how to dance. But as they grew, so did the worried whispers. Why aren’t they settling? Why isn’t one of them fading? The doctors ran tests, the neighbors shied away, and their parents begged for more time. Finally Addie was pronounced healthy and Eva was declared gone. Except, she wasn’t…

For the past three years, Eva has clung to the remnants of her life. Only Addie knows she’s still there, trapped inside their body. Then one day, they discover there may be a way for Eva to move again. The risks are unimaginable–hybrids are considered a threat to society, so if they are caught, Addie and Eva will be locked away with the others. And yet…for a chance to smile, to twirl, to speak, Eva will do anything.

See what I meant about this being an amazing story?

Happy Debut Kat! Thanks so much for joining us.

1.  Tell us a bit about yourself and how you became a writer.

Hi! J Thanks for having me! I’m currently a senior at university, where I study English and Creative Writing. I read voraciously as a kid, started writing stories early, and decided to publish a book at age 12 (after which I quickly learned that in order to publish a book, one has to actually finish writing a book—something that didn’t happen until much later). I’ve always loved to tell stories; my best friend and I made up all sorts of stuff starring ourselves, and we wrote plays and drew comics. I guess it was only a matter of time until I started writing J

 

2.  That's so awesome you wanted to be published at 12. Can you share how you came up with the idea of two souls in one body and how the idea evolved as your story did?

Sadly, there isn’t any super cool story about how I came up with the idea for WHAT’S LEFT OF ME! I just started thinking about the idea of an internal monologue, and how in a lot of movies, it’s portrayed as this whole other voice loud and clear in the character’s mind, and what if that voice really belonged to someone else? And what if she couldn’t control your body at all, but could only speak to you in your head? What would that be like? That’s how the idea for Eva, the recessive soul, came about, and the rest of the book developed from that.

 3.  Maybe that doesn't sound like an awesome way to come up with the story since you've been working on it for so long, but I think it's brilliant. I love learning how writers come up their ideas.

I love Eva’s voice and experiencing the story as the soul who should have disappeared. You could have switched POV from her and Addie or told the story from Addie’s POV. What made you pick Eva as the only main character?

To be honest, I never considered telling the story from Addie’s POV. It was always Eva’s story for me, which isn’t to say that Addie isn’t important, or that I didn’t spend a lot of time figuring out her feelings and motivations! But like I said, the idea for WHAT’S LEFT OF ME came from the idea of that captive “inner voice,” that trapped character, and so when I wrote the book, it just naturally stayed in Eva’s POV. There’s a lot to explore from her perspective, and I think the book would be quite different overall if Addie had a POV, as well J

4.  And I really like how you explored from the trapped soul. Yet you can't help but sympathize for Addie too. You have the challenge of showing the internal conversations between Eva and Addie. You did it in an interest way. For example:

We swayed.

Addie cried.

And

I said.

Sorry everyone, but the marks don't show up in blogger here but you can see them in Kat's answer. The marks surround the dialogue above.

Tell us how you came up with this way of them communicating. Did you have any other challenges in developing them as characters?

I think one of my critique partners actually suggested the use of the < > marks. In the beginning, I just used italicized double quotes, but it did get a little confusing, because there isn’t that much difference between “Run!” and “Run!” (the former being someone shouting Run! aloud, but emphasized, and the later being Addie or Eva shouting it in their head!).

I also had to pay a lot more attention to pronoun use than ever before, and it was a bit of a unique challenge to show some of Eva’s emotional reactions because I couldn’t use normal physical cues (i.e. “I frowned” or “my stomach twisted” or “my legs weakened”).

5.  I bet it was a challenge showing Eva's emotions. But you did a great job because it never seemed anything but natural to me. I’ve read that you wrote this while in high school. Seeing how busy my daughter is and she’s only finished 9^th grade, I have a hard time imagining how you found time to write this. Share how you juggled school and writing. How are you juggling it now that you’re in college?

Congrats for your daughter for finishing 9^th grade! Hope she enjoyed her freshman year J I started WHAT’S LEFT OF ME during the winter of my senior year of high school, and I finished my first draft the spring of my freshman year of college (I then revised until the end of summer), so I did take my time on it. It’s easier during the summer, of course. During the school year, there’s a lot of writing before class or writing late at night. I carry a notebook around everywhere and do a lot of typing up later. Other people pull all-nighters for schoolwork; I pull all-nighters for revisions ;) (well, I pull all-nighters for schoolwork, too!). It’s a balancing act, but it’s work that I enjoy very much.

6.  Juggling the writing and school must be such a challenge, but it will help you find the balance if you have another job as well as write after school. I know the writing and working is a challenge for me.

 Emmanuelle Morgen of Stonesong is your agent. I read about how Emmanuelle became your agent and how you sold your story to Harper Collins. It’s a pretty amazing story. Please share it with us.

Emmanuelle is wonderful! I signed with her about two months into querying, and we revised over the winter, going on submissions in spring. I think we got our first offer about a week into subs, and we sold in a pre-empt to HarperCollins Children’s about a month in. It was all a bit of whirlwind of the nicest kind J

7.  That's such an amazing story. We'd all wish to have our journeys to publication go that easily. How are you marketing your book and how is being in college affecting your marketing plan? Do you think it will be any easier for you to get the word out about your book to teens because you’re so close in age to the high school YA readers?

I guess I’m marketing my book the usual way—I’m having a launch party, and I’ll be doing a number of events like signings and panels, plus internet-y things J I don’t think being in college will have a huge effect on marketing efforts, though my creative writing professors and the entire creative writing department at my university have been incredibly kind and supportive. I’m not sure if high school readers will be more interested in my book because I’m closer in age to them! I do hope to do some school visits! (where I’ll probably be mistaken for a student, because I look ridiculously young). 

8.  That's so awesome your professors are so supportive. What are you working on now?

I’m currently working on revising Book 2 of The Hybrid Chronicles, and I’m on-and-off writing a YA fantasy and a contemporary, as well.

Thanks Kat for all your advice. I hope you have a wonderful debut. You can find Kat on Twitter @KatZhang, her website, and her blog.

Kat's publisher generously provided an ARC of WHAT'S LEFT OF ME for a giveaway.  To enter, all you need to do is be a follower (just click the follow button if you’re not a follower) and leave a comment by September 29nd. I’ll announce the winner on October 1st. If your e-mail is not on Blogger, please list it in your comment. International entries are welcome.

If you mention this contest on Twitter, Facebook, or your blog, mention this in the comments and I'll give you an extra entry. 

And don't forget all my other awesome contests at the top of the blog including for ENDLESSLY, the final book in Kiersten White's series ENTICE, the second book in Jessica Shirvington's EMBRACE series., and THE PECULIAR, a stempunk fantasy.

Here's what's coming up.

On Wednesday, I'm participating in Shelli Wells-Johannes' (also known as S.R. Johannes) blog tour for her new book UNCONTROLLABLE, a murder mystery set in the Smokey Mountains. UNTRACEABLE, the first book in the series, made the Kindle YA Semi-Finalist for Best Indie Books of 2012. Shelli will be sharing marketing advice and giving away a copy of her book.

Thursday I'll be doing a cover reveal for Elana Johnson's new book ABANDON.

Next Monday I'll be sharing THE CROWN OF EMBERS, by Rae Carson. It's the sequel to THE GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS. I can't believe I got it. I'm giving away my ARC. It's a fantastic fantasy series and I'm so excited to have an ARC to share with you.
 
Next Wednesday Lisa Nowak will be sharing a guest post on publishing options and sharing about her new book DRIVEN, a contemporary romance about a girl who loves to work on cars. And there will be a giveaway.

The following Monday I'm so excited to help debut author Shannon Messenger (she's the founder of the Marvelous Middle Grade Monday posts and one of the founders of WriteOnCon) celebrate the release of her book, KEEPER OF THE LOST CITIES. I'll be interviewing her and giving away a copy of her book.
And don't forget our Tuesday Tips and Casey's Thursday agent spotlights.

Hope to see you Wednesday!