WQI: Kelley Lynn, FRACTION OF STONE

Today is a great day because my bloggy buddy, Kelley Lynn, has her debut book birthday! To celebrate the release of FRACTION OF STONE (Sapphire Star Publishing), I'm pulling out all the stops and doing a World's Quickest Interview (WQI). Kelley has also sweetened the deal with a FRACTION OF STONE giveaway. (Check it out at the bottom of this post.)

You guys may remember the WQI drill. I ask a question and the featured author answers in Twitter style, preferably 40 characters or less. (Though I let them fudge sometimes and that's okay.)

Take it away, Kelley!

 




Describe your book in one sentence.  
One sentence?!?! Wait, that's not it. :) 

The greatest obstacle for saving mankind isn’t the bizarre creatures, extreme betrayals and magic-fearing men; it’s that the only one who can, doesn’t believe the world is worth saving.
 


How long have you been writing?

Since July 2011

Amy's note: Okay, that's not very long, Kelley. *bows head in awe*

Besides writing, what do you like to do most?

Sing. I used to be in a classic rock band. Due to time restraints I make guest appearances when area bands need help.

Amy's note: That is so cool. 

Who’s your favorite One Direction singer?

Okay, I know who these guys are, but I don't know their names :)

Amy's note: That's really okay.

What are three things you’d do on a perfect day?

Write, Sing, Hang out with friends/family/dog

All expenses paid vacation: where would you go?

Travel the world ;) Haha! I'd like to go to South America. Hike to Machu Pichu. Stuff like that.

 

Ice cream or cupcakes?

Ice Cream! It's like its own food group :)

Amy's note: Good answer. 

Early bird or night owl?

Both! 

Three words about what it feels like to reach your book birthday.

Finally! Exciting. Fulfilling.

Any advice for aspiring writers?

Everyone can do this as long as they never give up.


Thank you so much for being here, Kelley! Kelley is so cool! Please check out her blog, buy her book (and/or enter the giveaway below), and say a big congratulations!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Cover Love: Out of the Easy

My good bud, Melissa Sarno, recommended this book and had such wonderful things to say about it, I had to pick it up.

Melissa wasn't lying. This is an amazing read.

And this cover! *Swoon, gasp, die*

I love the textures and the colors, just everything about it. I could curl in a fetal position with this book close to my face and not need to surface for days.

Do you like it? Have you read it?

Blog Hopping Again!

You're invited to join the 

My So-Called Teenage Life Blog Hop

Part Deux 

March 25, 2013 

hosted by Andrea of Maybe It's Just Me, Christa Desir and Yours Truly

We couldn't get enough of this last time, so we're doing it again.

Here's how the blog hop works:

 

Step One: Sign up on the linky below

Step Two: Dust off those old sappy diaries bursting with teenage angst or high school notebooks filled with bad poetry*

Step Three: Skim through them until you find something share-worthy

Step Four: On Monday, March 25 POST IT on your blog

Optional: We all love seeing old photos, so if you have one lying around of you as a teen, post that, too.

If you'd like an example, >>here<< is my blog hop post from last year. 

We'll all be hopping around peeking into each other's private teenage lives on March 25. C'mon! What else do you have to do? (Definitely nothing this fun!)

*Didn't write in a journal or compose poetry as a teenager? Have no fear! Counterfeit entries are welcome. Pretend you're a teenager and write whatever you feel. Just make sure you're using your teenage voice.

And if you're still a teenager, hey, you're going to basically rock this blog hop.

Sign up here.

National Grammar Day

Today are National Grammar Day.

Which means we should all pay extra, attention to how and where, we punctuate and try our very best to avoid run-on seteneces, spelling mistakes and making sure our tenses were always consistent.

Because we need to be, clear, when we communicate right?! And if your going to call yourself a writer then you have to 2 B clear. YES?!?!?! Because its not really about rulez its about getting you're point across to you're audience. without Being DISTRACTING.

So please do yourself a favor today and have a blast on National Grammar Day today don't stay out too late get plenty of sleep. Because you never know when those Grammar police will knock on your door and give you a grammar pop quiz. Their mean like htat.
 

Photo credit: clarita from morguefile.com

The Next Big Thing Round 2

It's March! It's March!

To celebrate the first day of March, I'm finally going to post my second entry for The Next Big Thing Blog Hop. My lovely writing pals Myrna Foster, Christa Desir and SJ Kincaid all tagged me, and I agreed to play. Even though I've already done one of these for my contemporary YA Under Dark Water, I have another WiP, too. So ... round 2.



1. What is the working title of your book?
Red Butterfly

2: Where did the idea come from for the book?

A friend’s parents were having trouble adopting their two Chinese daughters and, since I’d been through the fire with our adoption, my friend asked for advice. Their story chipped away at my heart. I started thinking about all the children who are kept from fully belonging to people who love them because of red tape and restrictions. This book was born from that heart-heavy concern for my friend's family.

3: What genre does your book come under?
Middle grade verse

4: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Are verse novels ever made into movies? Name one that has been and I’ll answer this question. ;)

5: What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Twelve-year-old Kara is Chinese, living in China with American parents; but when she discovers she was never legally adopted and that her parents face repatriation, her life goes through a drastic metamorphosis.

6: Is your book self-published, published by an independent publisher, or represented by an agency?

My lovely agent will hopefully start submitting to editors sometime this month. (Eek!)

7: How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

The very first draft? Oh man, this book has been through SO MANY DRAFTS, I can’t remember the first one. It started life as a YA over a year ago and has been completely rewritten four times, and then revised extensively after that. So yeah, no idea. Seriously.

8: What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I really hate doing this because people might think I’m saying my book is as good as these books. So, if I answer this question, please don’t think I’m cocky. The two books that come to mind are HOME OF THE BRAVE by Katherine Applegate and INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN by Thanhha Lai. (Both amazing and I highly recommend them.)

9: Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I was inspired by adopting families who so often have to face insane hardships to see their adoptions go through. This book is for them. I was also inspired by my Chinese daughter, Olivia. If this novel ever sees the light of publication day, I’m dedicating it to her.

10: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

It’s set mostly in Tianjin, China. If you like novels in verse, you might like it. And Kara has a minor disability—she has only one finger on her right hand. 

I'm not going to tag anyone this time (I know, I know -- hand slap!). But honestly, if you haven't done this yet and you'd like to, let me know in the comments and I'll do a separate post later to direct people to your blog. How's that for a great deal? 

And even if you don't feel like answering all ten questions, tell me in the comments what you're working on. I'd love to know!

Cover Love: With a Name Like Love

I'm finally sitting down to read Tess Hilmo's WITH A NAME LIKE LOVE.

It's taken me way too long to get to this book. I'm utterly ashamed.

But I wanted to pause before I start reading and give some cover love, because having this book in my hot little hands made me appreciate the beauty of the cover even more.

Isn't it lovely? I love the colors so much. The clouds are cool. The RV in the background gives us a hint as to the book's era. Just all around great middle grade cover.

Have you read a book with a pretty cover lately?

The Problem with Pontification

Being a writer is a curse, I tell you.

Half the published books I read, I can't completely enjoy BECAUSE I ANALYZE THEM.

You see, we writers have little rules-of-thumb and tips-for-cleaner-writing floating around in our heads at all times. Which is usually great, because they help us become better writers (in theory). The problem is, they nag even when we're reading. Which is annoying. They make us want to take perfectly good published books and go at them with our red pens flourished.

For instance, I've been reading a book that is filled with creative tags.

I'm sure the writer thought she was very clever using lots and lots of big words to describe how her characters were saying certain things. Words like "pontificated" and "enthused" were thrown around freely, as if they could improve the dialog.

But all they made me want to do was throw the book across the room. 

They distracted me. I realized after I finished a page that I had no idea what the characters had been talking about, because I'd been too busy counting the author's creative alternatives to "said."

Please put me out of my misery!

If you've ever received a critique from me and you are a creative-tag-user, you probably listened to my spiel about simple tags (only "said" and "cried" allowed, and maybe "shouted"). My argument always is, if your dialog is strong, you don't need fancy tags.

I know some people choose to take my advice and some don't. Which is totally fine. It's one of those rules we throw around in the writing community, but outside the writing community? Let's face it, normal readers probably DON'T CARE.

But "pontificate?"

Please don't use "pontificate." For the love of all things tidy, if your character is pontificating, please show us they're pontificating instead of telling us the sentence they just said is a pontification. This is all I ask!

*weeps hysterically*

How about you? Do you use creative tags? Do you have other writing rules ping-ponging in your head that make you a fault-finding reader?

Photo credit: Andalusia from morguefile.com 

Wordless Wednesday: Best Way to Spend a Sick Day

10,000 Hours

At dinner, the dashingly handsome sidekick told me about a conversation he'd had with a co-worker about a concept in a book.

The co-worker explained that, in order to master something, you have to work at it diligently for 10,000 hours.

This can apply to anything in life: teaching, dance, golf, cleaning the bathtub and ... WRITING, of course!

This is so applicable to writers, I almost jumped out of my skin with excitement. Because it puts all our hard work in perspective -- why we can't just pick up a pen and write the next, great international best seller (or most of us can't, anyway ... and even if we do, it doesn't mean we mastered writing, it just means we stumbled upon some crazy good luck).

I tried to figure out how long I'd been writing. I really have no idea, of course, but I've been consistent about it over the last five/six years. And of course there were all the books I wrote as a teenager (*cough*), which have to count for something (even if they were crap). I don't have those hours logged, but in high school I regularly stayed home from hanging out with my friends so I could write. (I know. Geek alert.)

To get a handle on this, if you write every single day of the year for two hours a day, you will log your 10,000th hour in about thirteen years. THIRTEEN YEARS!

This illustrates perfectly that, even with talent, there's no replacement for butt-in-chair, good, hard work.

A quick Google search led me to this article on the National Geographic website, which describes Malcolm Gladwell's book OUTLIERS, the source of this theory. There's a really cool visual on that page, too, with graphs, which you won't want to miss. Believe me. (Plus, some tips on cheating the rule!)

So the next time you're feeling discouraged, keep plugging away, because every hour you write brings you that much closer to MASTERY.

Have you mastered something? How many hours do you estimate you've spent writing?

Wordless Wednesday: Books & Boys*

*my son and nephew poring over a Wimpy Kid book

Super Bowl Wrap Up (Mostly Commercials)

My Niners lost, which was a tragedy.

Especially because we didn't get to see them lose. We had DVRed the game and the dashingly handsome sidekick had scheduled a half hour of cushion time at the end. Which usually would have been enough. However, with the lights fiasco, we missed the last four minutes. *sobs uncontrollably*

But at least we got to see all the COMMERCIALS. Here are my faves:

• Leon Sandcastle made me laugh out loud 

• Budweiser Clydesdale made me cry (real tears)

• And I wonder how many future YA novels will be inspired by the Audi commercial 

Honorable Mentions go to:

• M & Ms

• And every librarian's favorite

Did you watch the Super Bowl? Which commercial did you like best? ... And which do you prefer, cookie or cream? (I'm definitely a cream girl.)