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2012 YA Debut Interview + Giveaway: GRIM by Anna Waggener

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Time for more in the Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview Series, featuring debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read! I’ve chosen eleven (yes, 11 this time!) debuts to feature, and I hope by the end of this series you’ll be as excited about these books as I am.

Today’s Summer 2012 YA Debut is Grim by Anna Waggener. Read on to see how this author answered the Q&A… And be sure to enter to win a signed ARC of Grim!

Nova Ren Suma: I’ll start with the dreaded question you may be hearing already from strangers on elevators, long-lost family members, and your doctor while you’re sitting on the examination table in the paper gown during your next checkup: “So what’s your book about?” (Feel free to use the jacket copy, or describe in your own words. Up to you.)

Anna Waggener: My go-to description: “A single mom gets in a car accident and wakes up in Limbo. All she wants is to return to her children, and all they want is to move on after her supposed death. It’s a book about love. Family love, selfish love, and all the gray areas in between.”

Scholastic’s jacket copy (they’re better at this than I am):

“When Erika wakes up after a horrific car crash, she finds herself somewhere between earth and heaven, between life and death. She doesn’t want to accept help from Jeremiah, who she’s not sure she can trust, even as she finds herself drawn to him, following him into a grim city of souls. She’s not sure who wants to help her and who wants to hurt her. And she’s desperate to get back to her children.

Shawn’s never thought about having to shoulder the responsibility of caring for his young sister Megan and his reckless older sister. And he never imagined that the three of them would find themselves in a haunted wood, sometimes chased, sometimes assisted, never sure where they’re headed.

With Grim, the terrifically talented Anna Waggener delves into the place where myth becomes reality, where family can distort you as easily as it cares for you, where death and eternity meet.”

My friends consistently tease me for the “terrifically talented” bit ;)

In my experience, every book wants to be written differently—and each one behaves differently from the one before it. Some novels like it out of order, and some rigidly insist on being written from start to finish. Some novels come out fast; others are excruciatingly slow. Some novels torment you, and some sing you to sleep. What did your novel want? How did you appease it? Did it ever misbehave?

This was the last novel for NaNoWriMo that I ever penned—not because I didn’t enjoy the process, but because I got swallowed up by big-people life (i.e., college). I went into NaNo with a rough sketch of what Grim would become and it spilled out. So. Fast. I’m sure that time away has made it seem like a more painless process then it actually was, but I do remember staying up late at night and thinking about the book throughout my day; I loved these characters and it was a pleasure to be with them.

The editing process, on the other hand, was a grueling one. I performed an edit before submitting to Scholastic, and three more in a two-year span while they held onto the manuscript. By the time I received an offer from them in November 2010, I had spent a lot of time away from Grim, and had moved onto other projects.

But I was ecstatic that November! Being published was something I’d always dreamed about—something that I’d studied and researched and desperately wanted.

In the middle of my euphoria, I dusted off the manuscript that had changed my life. And I hated it.

I obsessed over it for months, reading and rereading the prose that I thought was too stilted, the characters whose motivations had seemed so clear but no longer were. I doubted myself and I doubted Scholastic for believing in me. I didn’t want to talk to people about this self-doubt for fear, ironically, of looking full of myself. I had a book offer from a huge publishing house! Why couldn’t I be happy for myself?

I went through a multi-month period when I would reread sections of Grim and feel sick to my stomach. I tried to edit and had a lot of trouble. At one point, I finally went to one of my creative writing professors and told him that I didn’t know what to do. He told me to start over.

From my conversation with that professor, I felt a lot better about being able to go back in and rip Grim apart if that’s what it took to make me happy with my own work. I calmed myself and reread the manuscript without letting myself dwell on how frightened I was, or on other people’s expectations. I scribbled on the pages. I also received a more intensive editorial letter from my editor, and realized how brilliant she was—and how she’d seen things in my work that I had forgotten about and overlooked during my period of Grim-bashing.

In the end, I didn’t start from scratch, but I gave myself permission to—and that was one of the best decisions I ever made. I wrestled with the text and with my own intensions and I fell in love with Grim again. In a different and more complicated way than I did when I first wrote it, but probably in a healthier way too.

Tell us about the place—as in the physical location: a messy office, a comfy couch, a certain corner table at the café—where you spent most of your time writing this book. Now imagine the writing spot of your fantasies where you wish you’d been able to write this book… tell us all about it. 

I wrote Grim primarily in my bedroom in the house I grew up in, by a window that overlooked our backyard. I no longer live there and the house is currently being rented, so I can’t provide a photo—but this where I write now:

It’s the couch in my apartment living room, and it’s usually a lot messier than this. I’ve also been writing on the floor a lot, which my boyfriend critiques as bad for my back. But I go where the muse goes!

My fantasy spot is an office in the upper floor of an older house, whose walls have been converted into bookshelves. I’m a bit obsessed with bookshelves—they always make cameos in my novels.

Imagine you’re on the subway, or the bus, or sitting in a park somewhere minding your own business… and you look up and see the most perfect person you could picture devouring your book. This is your ideal reader. Set the scene and describe him or her (or them?) for us.

She’s in that flexible age between high school and college and she’s reading Grim in a coffee shop on a sunny weekend afternoon, before meeting friends. She’s clever and confident but also reflective, and she loves reading books, from the classics to contemporary YA. Maybe this is reflected in the stack of books she has sitting on the table beside her cup of tea, or maybe you can’t tell. Reading is a part of who she is, not just what she does, and I’d be thrilled to find that Grim isn’t merely a guilty pleasure for her—it’s a book that she’s happy to read with the dust jacket on, in public.

Publishing a novel is full of high points, low points, absolutely surreal points, and shocking points you never thought you’d see in your lifetime. Tell us a high point, a low point, a surreal point, and something shocking or at least somewhat surprising about your experience so far.

High point: Receiving my first in-depth editorial letter and mark-up from my editors. They were both so supportive, but also had some great constructive criticism, and I felt respected and valued in an incredible way.

Low point: I went into this in question two, so I won’t rehash except to say that self-doubt is an evil, debilitating creature.

Surreal point: Talking to Rosemary Stimola on the phone, after she’d read a draft of Grim. I tried to sound coherent even though my mind kept telling me that, in that moment, I was one degree of separation from Suzanne Collins.

Surprise!: Receiving my cover! I’d talked to my editor the week before and had been told that it would be blue and silver—only to receive an orange .jpg! It turns out she’d meant to say not blue and silver, but I’d caught her pre-caffeine.

Dream question: If you could go on book tour anywhere in the world, with any two authors (living or dead), and serve any item of food at your book signing… where would you go, who with, and what delicious treat would you serve your fans?

I’d tour with Sarah Rees Brennan (who seems like a lovely, hilarious person) and Terry Pratchett (because I think he might be a god). We’d tour by train through Spain, France, and Germany, and hand out black tea and croissants with my mom’s homemade apricot jam.

If you had to pick one sentence, and one sentence only, to entice someone to read your book, what would it be? (I almost hate myself for asking you this question and making you choose! Almost.)

Nooooo!

Okay, fine.

I love my youngest child more than the other two, and God bless them but they all know it.

Grim will be published by Scholastic on June 1, 2012. Read on for a chance to win a signed ARC!

Anna Waggener was born in Thailand and has spent many summers eating ripe-to-bursting mangoes. At college in Minnesota she spends her winters buried under the snow, studying English and human rights, and happily writing YA fantasy. She was the 2008 winner of the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards novel writing category, and Grim is her first novel.

Visit her at annawaggener.com to find out more!

Follow @AnnaWaggener on Twitter.

The giveaway is now closed. Congrats to the winner!

What is the next Summer 2012 debut novel I’m looking forward to? Come back tomorrow to find out.

2012 YA Debut Interview + Giveaway: FALSE MEMORY by Dan Krokos

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A new week, and more in the Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview Series, featuring debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read! I’ve chosen eleven (yes, 11 this time!) debuts to feature, and I hope by the end of this series you’ll be as excited about these books as I am.

Today’s Summer 2012 YA Debut is False Memory by Dan Krokos. Read on to see how this author answered the Q&A… And be sure to enter to win a signed and personalized finished copy of False Memory! UPDATE: Dan is giving away his book to TWO lucky winners!

Nova Ren Suma: I’ll start with the dreaded question you may be hearing already from strangers on elevators, long-lost family members, and your doctor while you’re sitting on the examination table in the paper gown during your next checkup: “So what’s your book about?” (Feel free to use the jacket copy, or describe in your own words. Up to you.)

Dan Krokos: I’m going to take the easy way out and post the jacket copy:

Miranda wakes up alone on a park bench with no memory. In her panic, she releases a mysterious energy that incites pure terror in everyone around her. Except Peter, a boy who isn’t at all surprised by Miranda’s shocking ability.

Left with no choice but to trust this stranger, Miranda discovers she was trained to be a weapon and is part of an elite force of genetically-altered teens who possess flawless combat skills and powers strong enough to destroy a city. But adjusting to her old life isn’t easy–especially with Noah, the boyfriend she can’t remember loving. Then Miranda uncovers a dark truth that sets her team on the run. Suddenly her past doesn’t seem to matter…when there may not be a future.

In my experience, every book wants to be written differently—and each one behaves differently from the one before it. Some novels like it out of order, and some rigidly insist on being written from start to finish. Some novels come out fast; others are excruciatingly slow. Some novels torment you, and some sing you to sleep. What did your novel want? How did you appease it? Did it ever misbehave?

This novel was an adventure from the beginning, because I’d never written anything like it before. It started as an experiment. I wrote a lot of masculine adult fiction for a long time, and stacked up quite a few rejections saying exactly that—too masculine. I was worried I was turning into those authors that could only write one thing.

At this point I’d been really getting into YA because of The Hunger Games, and, yes, even Twilight. So I decided to mess around with a character that kept popping up: a girl named Miranda North, who didn’t know who she was.

It was hard. But I wanted to grow, so I didn’t give up. There were times during the editing process (before submission to publishers) that I would lie down on the floor and think maybe I should just take more classes and try to get a real job before pursuing a writing career. I’m glad I didn’t take the responsible road, because the experiment turned out great—I grew as a writer, which was the ultimate goal. I know now that I can do more than one thing.

Tell us about the place—as in the physical location: a messy office, a comfy couch, a certain corner table at the café—where you spent most of your time writing this book. Now imagine the writing spot of your fantasies where you wish you’d been able to write this book… tell us all about it. 

I wrote False Memory in my condo in Cleveland, on the top floor, during a hot summer with no air conditioning. During the day the temperature would hover between 88–90. I wrote the book without wearing a lot of clothes.

Imagine you’re on the subway, or the bus, or sitting in a park somewhere minding your own business… and you look up and see the most perfect person you could picture devouring your book. This is your ideal reader. Set the scene and describe him or her (or them?) for us.

My ideal reader is anyone who picks up my book and takes the time to open it. If a leopard was sitting on the subway bench with False Memory in its jaws and was really just puncturing the pages with its teeth, I’d still thank it for at least carrying the thing around.

Publishing a novel is full of high points, low points, absolutely surreal points, and shocking points you never thought you’d see in your lifetime. Tell us a high point, a low point, a surreal point, and something shocking or at least somewhat surprising about your experience so far.

High: The editing process. More than one person at Disney has made me look like I know what I’m doing, which I’m so grateful for.

Low: There have been a couple low moments. All of them were my fault. But I’ve learned from them—perhaps even become a better person because of them—and that’s called turning a frown upside down.

Surreal: Seeing my cover. That might sound like a canned answer, but it was the first proof I had that there were people I didn’t personally know working on my book. A team of people worked on it. I’ve met some of them. There’s a guy I haven’t met who designed some parts. I wonder who he is. It’s crazy that his job for however long was to work on my cover. It was a moment of validation, that I’m not just some guy with coffee and a keyboard.

Shocking: Seeing the amount YA writers talk about other YA writers. I think the community could benefit from everyone taking a week off and remembering why we’re all here.

Dream question: If you could go on book tour anywhere in the world, with any two authors (living or dead), and serve any item of food at your book signing… where would you go, who with, and what delicious treat would you serve your fans?

This is easy. I would go with Josh Bazell and Chad Kultgen. I would serve beef wellington (I had it at a wedding once and it blew my mind out of my face). And while Josh and Chad don’t write YA, a tour would be a great way to force them to hang out with me.

If you had to pick one sentence, and one sentence only, to entice someone to read your book, what would it be? (I almost hate myself for asking you this question and making you choose! Almost.)

I stand on the edge, hands on my hips, heaving, a little shocked I’ve thrown two people off roofs in the last ten minutes.

False Memory will be published by Disney*Hyperion on August 14, 2012. Read on for a chance to win a signed and personalized finished copy!

After pumping gas for nine years to put himself through college, Dan Krokos, now twenty-six, dropped out to write full-time. He enjoys watching TV, playing MMORPGs, and drinking coffee. Currently, he’s hard at work on the next book in Miranda’s journey.

Visit him at dankrokos.com to find out more!

Follow @DanKrokos on Twitter.

The giveaway is now closed. Congrats to the winner!

What is the next Summer 2012 debut novel I’m looking forward to? Come back tomorrow to find out.

2012 YA Debut Interview + Giveaway: THE LITTLE WOODS by McCormick Templeman

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It’s time for more in the Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview Series, featuring debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read. I’ve chosen eleven (yes, 11 this time!) debuts to feature, and I hope by the end of this series you’ll be as excited about these books as I am.

Today’s Summer 2012 YA Debut is The Little Woods by McCormick Templeman. Read on to see how this author answered the Q&A… And be sure to enter to win a pre-order of The Little Woods!

Nova Ren Suma: I’ll start with the dreaded question you may be hearing already from strangers on elevators, long-lost family members, and your doctor while you’re sitting on the examination table in the paper gown during your next checkup: “So what’s your book about?” (Feel free to use the jacket copy, or describe in your own words. Up to you.)

McCormick Templeman: Unexplained disappearances. Suspicious deaths. There’s something wrong with the woods behind St. Bede’s Academy. When Cally Wood starts at St. Bede’s mid-way through her junior year, she’s suddenly thrust into a world of privilege and prestige, and in no time flat, she learns to navigate the complex social world of the upper echelon. But amid the illicit romances and weekend-long parties, Cally discovers that a brilliant but troubled girl, Iris, had disappeared from St. Bede’s just a few months earlier. Most people assume she ran away, but the police never found her. And Iris wouldn’t be the first girl to go missing from the school. Ten years earlier Cally’s sister was visiting a friend from camp at St. Bede’s when both girls vanished from their beds in the night.

As Cally tries to unravel the mystery surrounding Iris—one she can’t help but feel is linked to her own sister’s death—she discovers that beneath the surface of this elite school and its perfect students lies a web of secrets where rumors become indistinguishable from truth and it seems everyone has something to hide.

In my experience, every book wants to be written differently—and each one behaves differently from the one before it. Some novels like it out of order, and some rigidly insist on being written from start to finish. Some novels come out fast; others are excruciatingly slow. Some novels torment you, and some sing you to sleep. What did your novel want? How did you appease it? Did it ever misbehave?

The initial spark for The Little Woods came to me when I was reading a collection of case studies written by a medical examiner in the late nineteenth century. One of the cases was so horrific and bizarre that after reading it, I just sat there shocked, and then suddenly I had this flash of a story. I knew I had to follow it. I had a lot of false starts with it. I had to throw out mountains of work, but once I found the right setting, the rest came fairly easily, although not especially quickly. At the time, I wasn’t really focused on writing as a career; I knew the odds weren’t good. So I wrote for fun and when I had the time to do so. The book had a lot of time to steep, and I had no sense of urgency about it, which allowed me to make all kinds of excellent mistakes. So, I would say it was behaved like a very good dog that has accidentally ingested something hallucinogenic.

Tell us about the place—as in the physical location: a messy office, a comfy couch, a certain corner table at the café—where you spent most of your time writing this book. Now imagine the writing spot of your fantasies where you wish you’d been able to write this book… tell us all about it. 

Once I found my stride, I wrote this book wherever and whenever I could. I was in my final year of a graduate program in Chinese medicine, so I was at school or in the clinic for very long days, and the time I had, I had to steal. I wrote in the library between classes. I wrote in the clinic pharmacy. I wrote a lot of it during a class on practice management, which turned out to by a very bad idea because once I did open my practice I was terrible at managing it. I wrote in little notebooks while standing up on the subway. I did a lot of revising at the NY Public Library reading room, which was where I I’d had that initial spark for the book. That reading room is also my ideal workspace.

I love everything about it—the magnificent arched windows, the squat metal lamps juxtaposed with the dripping luxury of the chandeliers. I love the guy whose music is seeping out of his headphones. I love the self-important lady who shooshes him. I would work there all day every day if I could.

Imagine you’re on the subway, or the bus, or sitting in a park somewhere minding your own business… and you look up and see the most perfect person you could picture devouring your book. This is your ideal reader. Set the scene and describe him or her (or them?) for us.

My ideal reader would be someone to whom the book brings joy. They would have that look on their face—you know the one you get when you’re really escaping into a book. I can’t really see much more about them, just that the book would be making them happy.

Publishing a novel is full of high points, low points, absolutely surreal points, and shocking points you never thought you’d see in your lifetime. Tell us a high point, a low point, a surreal point, and something shocking or at least somewhat surprising about your experience so far.

Surreal point: Talking to potentially interested editors on the phone. It was crazy. I kept thinking I was going to pass out.

Shocking point: I am shocked about pretty much all of it all of the time. Writing novels is such a weird thing. You’re going along being kind of a crazy loser who’s pursuing this insane dream, and all the time and effort you put into writing seems to be for naught. And then one day your book is being published and that seems to validate all your work retroactively, but really everything’s still exactly the same. You’re still sitting alone in your pajamas making up stories. I’m shocked that I’m getting paid to do that. I’m shocked that anyone wants to read my crazy stories.

Low point/ High point: This book went out on submission twice, and the first time it got very close a couple of places, and then everyone passed pretty much at once. When my agent emailed me the passes, I was at a party, and I went into the bathroom, sat on the floor, and cried. This was the second book I’d written, and the second one that had died at this stage, and it seemed like it was never going to happen. Getting an agent had been freakishly easy for me. I queried one agent and she took me. I know that kind of luck is beyond normal human luck, and I think the universe had saved up the requisite rejections for the submission stage. In those moments when I sat on that cold tile crying, I was a failure. I was worthless. That was my lowest moment. And then I realized that I would never ever think that about someone else, so why was I thinking it about myself? I decided to do what I would tell a friend to do: don’t take it personally, pick yourself up, and keep on going. So I washed my face, read the email again, and looked for a common thread to follow. The editors who passed had been extremely generous with their criticism, and as I read their reactions, I tried to see the book through their eyes. I decided I needed to re-read the book, keeping their comments in mind, but looking for my own solutions to what wasn’t working. I knew that if I did that, then I could fix it. That moment where I refused to beat myself up, where I refused to believe that I was a failure just because I had failed, that was the highest moment for me.

Dream question: If you could go on book tour anywhere in the world, with any two authors (living or dead), and serve any item of food at your book signing… where would you go, who with, and what delicious treat would you serve your fans?

If I had my druthers, I would get a big bus and have anyone from the YA community who wanted to come just pile on in, and we would have an amazing party with mojitos and board games and paint ball. But, I could never pick only two YA writers, so instead I will choose some dead people: Vladimir Nabokov and Dorothy Parker.

The three of us would sort of meander along, stopping to catch butterflies, and the two of them would make me laugh and cry. I would serve a panoply of pickled vegetables, and everyone would enjoy them as much as I do.

If you had to pick one sentence, and one sentence only, to entice someone to read your book, what would it be? (I almost hate myself for asking you this question and making you choose! Almost.)

It’s lucky when you don’t believe in ghosts.

The Little Woods will be published by Schwartz and Wade /Random House on July 10, 2012. Read on for a chance to win a pre-order!

McCormick Templeman is descended from musicians and criminals. She holds a BA from Reed College, two master’s degrees, an acupuncture license, and the world title for most irascible air hockey player. Her first novel, The Little Woods debuts on July 10, 2012, and her second novel, The Glass Casket, is forthcoming in 2014. She lives in California with some people and some stuff.

Visit her at www.mccormicktempleman.com to find out more!

Follow @McTempleman on Twitter.

The giveaway is now closed. Congrats to the winner!

What is the next Summer 2012 debut novel I’m looking forward to? Come back on Monday to find out.

2012 YA Debut Interview + Giveaway: ZOE LETTING GO by Nora Price

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It’s time for more in the Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview Series, featuring debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read. I’ve chosen eleven (yes, 11 this time!) debuts to feature, and I hope by the end of this series you’ll be as excited about these books as I am.

Today’s Summer 2012 YA Debut is Zoe Letting Go by Nora Price. Read on to see how this author answered the Q&A… And be sure to enter to win a signed ARC (advance reading copy) of Zoe Letting Go!

Nova Ren Suma: I’ll start with the dreaded question you may be hearing already from strangers on elevators, long-lost family members, and your doctor while you’re sitting on the examination table in the paper gown during your next checkup: “So what’s your book about?” (Feel free to use the jacket copy, or describe in your own words. Up to you.)

Nora Price: While at a clinic receiving treatment for anorexia, Zoe is instructed to write letters. Through letters, she tells her mother and brother about the clinic; the doctors, the food, her struggle to get better. But she tells her best friend Elise about the strange goings on around her, the shady relationships, the dark mysteries. When the lights go out, the place turns into someplace else.

While her mother and brother write back, their letters filled with cheerful encouragement—Zoe’s letters to Elise remain unanswered. As Zoe struggles to understand why her best friend would cut her off, she must unravel the secrets that surround her in the clinic.

In my experience, every book wants to be written differently—and each one behaves differently from the one before it. Some novels like it out of order, and some rigidly insist on being written from start to finish. Some novels come out fast; others are excruciatingly slow. Some novels torment you, and some sing you to sleep. What did your novel want? How did you appease it? Did it ever misbehave?

My novel was like a sassy toddler who refuses to get into the bathtub. I spent a lot of time chasing it.

Tell us about the place—as in the physical location: a messy office, a comfy couch, a certain corner table at the café—where you spent most of your time writing this book. Now imagine the writing spot of your fantasies where you wish you’d been able to write this book… tell us all about it. 

Cafés are appealing because I get lonely writing at home. There’s a tiny, secret French café near my house where I can usually nab a corner table (Photo below!). I used to work in the service industry, so I am very careful to leave at least a dollar tip each time I buy something to eat or drink. It’s like paying rent.

I also adore Ashley’s Café in San Francisco, where Ashley makes organic chocolate chip cookies that are crispy on the outside and molten on the inside. It’s basically the cookie version of that Drake song “Best I Ever Had” (You know a lot of cookies be thinkin’ my songs are about them / This is not to get confused, this one’s for you / Cookie, you my everything, you all I ever wanted)

Imagine you’re on the subway, or the bus, or sitting in a park somewhere minding your own business… and you look up and see the most perfect person you could picture devouring your book. This is your ideal reader. Set the scene and describe him or her (or them?) for us.

A girl in her bedroom, curled up safe and happy. That’s my ideal reader.

Some of my loveliest afternoons have involved a good book, a cup of coffee, and a cat wound up into a tortellini-shaped bundle at my side. On some days, you really don’t need more than that. I love how it feels to melt into somebody else’s world.

Publishing a novel is full of high points, low points, absolutely surreal points, and shocking points you never thought you’d see in your lifetime. Tell us a high point, a low point, a surreal point, and something shocking or at least somewhat surprising about your experience so far.

High point: Writing the first sentence.

Low point: Writing the last sentence.

Surreal point: Seeing the cover for the first time.

As for surprising—what shocked me was the physical effort involved in writing a book. The fact that my brain was a pile of oatmeal by the end of a writing day—well, that wasn’t surprising. But I did not expect my legs to be cramped, my muscles to ache, and my middle right finger to develop a dime-sized callus (I write by hand).  After all, I was just sitting in a chair, not moving except to refill my tea. It remains a mystery.

During moments of unbearable agony, I would walk to a nearby candy shop and load up on chocolate Pop Rocks. Pop Rocks stimulate the brain—it’s scientific!

I have a big sweet tooth.

Dream question: If you could go on book tour anywhere in the world, with any two authors (living or dead), and serve any item of food at your book signing… where would you go, who with, and what delicious treat would you serve your fans?

Jane Austen. That’s an easy one. Second would be Betty MacDonald, who wrote the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books. What both women have in common is that they each had a delightful sense of fun and a confident way with mystery stories.

As for a snack, I would serve individual jars of peanut butter with a spoon for each guest who was nice enough to show up, because peanut butter is nutritious and you can eat it like a cat (with frequent licks). I would be sure to offer a choice of chunky or smooth, since we all have strict opinions on that matter.

If you had to pick one sentence, and one sentence only, to entice someone to read your book, what would it be? (I almost hate myself for asking you this question and making you choose! Almost.)

I have learned not to trust my memory on certain matters.

Zoe Letting Go will be published by Razorbill/Penguin on June 28, 2012. Read on for a chance to win a signed ARC!

Nora Price is a twenty-three-year-old writer living in Brooklyn. Zoe Letting Go is her first novel.

Visit her at noraprice.tumblr.com to find out more!

Follow @noraprice on Twitter.

The giveaway is now closed. Congrats to the winner!

What is the next Summer 2012 debut novel I’m looking forward to? Come back tomorrow to find out.

2012 YA Debut Interview + Giveaway: ALL THESE LIVES by Sarah Wylie

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It’s time for more in the Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview Series, featuring debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read. I’ve chosen eleven (yes, 11 this time!) debuts to feature, and I hope by the end of this series you’ll be as excited about these books as I am.

Today’s Summer 2012 YA Debut is All These Lives by Sarah Wylie. Read on to see how this author answered the Q&A… And be sure to enter to win a signed ARC (advance reading copy) of All These Lives!

Nova Ren Suma: I’ll start with the dreaded question you may be hearing already from strangers on elevators, long-lost family members, and your doctor while you’re sitting on the examination table in the paper gown during your next checkup: “So what’s your book about?” (Feel free to use the jacket copy, or describe in your own words. Up to you.)

Sarah Wylie: My answer to this question inevitably ends up being a series of “ums” and “uhs” and “well, it’s about this girl…” so I’m going to cheat a little bit and use the blurb:

Sixteen-year-old Dani is convinced she has nine lives. As a child she twice walked away from situations where she should have died. But Dani’s twin, Jena, isn’t so lucky. She has cancer and might not even be able to keep her one life. Dani’s father is in denial. Her mother is trying to hold it together and prove everything’s normal. And Jena is wasting away. To cope, Dani sets out to rid herself of all her extra lives. Maybe they’ll be released into the universe and someone who wants to live more than she does will get one. Someone like Jena. But just when Dani finds herself at the breaking point, she’s faced with a startling realization. Maybe she doesn’t have nine lives after all. Maybe she really only ever had one.

In my experience, every book wants to be written differently—and each one behaves differently from the one before it. Some novels like it out of order, and some rigidly insist on being written from start to finish. Some novels come out fast; others are excruciatingly slow. Some novels torment you, and some sing you to sleep. What did your novel want? How did you appease it? Did it ever misbehave?

The first draft was like that brooding movie star that waltzes in demanding to be your fictional boyfriend…oh, wait. All These Lives did very much insist on being written and, in a lot of ways, came fully formed. The characters and plot knew who and what they wanted to be from the start, and subsequent drafts were about making them just that. Once I actually started writing, the first draft came out fast—in a few weeks. The rest of the journey was slower; it involved some unexpected turns, some tears and doubt, a little bit of hair pulling and, like all good things, plenty of sugar.

Tell us about the place—as in the physical location: a messy office, a comfy couch, a certain corner table at the café—where you spent most of your time writing this book. Now imagine the writing spot of your fantasies where you wish you’d been able to write this book… tell us all about it. 

I did most of my writing in bed. Some days, if I was feeling really adventurous, I’d migrate to my desk beside the window.

This is where I wish I’d written this book:

Can you imagine? I’m huddled in a corner of a tiny Parisian café, typing feverishly on my laptop (or, you know, writing longhand since we’re being imaginative). A French waiter who looks a little like this brings me a tray of macarons and I’ve been there so long that the smell of fresh croissants has buried itself in my coat (a decidedly European trench that still screams eccentric writer).

A terrible cliché, but still The Dream.

Imagine you’re on the subway, or the bus, or sitting in a park somewhere minding your own business… and you look up and see the most perfect person you could picture devouring your book. This is your ideal reader. Set the scene and describe him or her (or them?) for us.

Hmm, I’m not sure there’s such a thing as an ideal reader. I think I’d just be freaking out about seeing my book in the wild! I’d be completely irrational about it, too. Like, wait, was that a massive eye roll or was he/she checking to make sure they hadn’t missed their stop?

Obviously, I’d have to take a picture. The challenge would be doing so without looking like a creep.

Honestly, it wouldn’t matter whether the reader was young or old, male or female, but I do think it would be extra special to see a teen reading it.

Publishing a novel is full of high points, low points, absolutely surreal points, and shocking points you never thought you’d see in your lifetime. Tell us a high point, a low point, a surreal point, and something shocking or at least somewhat surprising about your experience so far.

Getting ARCs was definitely both the high point and the most surreal point. Up until that point, your book is a manuscript, a bunch of words on a screen and sometimes on paper. The first time I saw All These Lives in book form was hands-down the most surreal, weirdest, happiest, scariest point of this journey so far.

The low point…that moment where you’re knee-deep in revisions, your book is in fragments, and it just doesn’t seem possible that any of these pieces will fit together to form what you’ve hoped and dreamed of.

Most surprising….maybe just how much things don’t change. I guess I figured once I was an “author,” the words would come more easily. The words would be better. I would feel like an author, and those nasty word-slayers (self-doubt and anxiety) would stay far away from this Author. In real life, the words don’t come easier, sometimes they are worse, and I still write in bed and dream of Parisian cafés. It isn’t a disappointment—not really. In some ways, it’s a relief. There are ways to improve, things to reach for and dream of, and secretly, I really enjoy fighting for those words. Just don’t remind me during revisions. :)

Dream question: If you could go on book tour anywhere in the world, with any two authors (living or dead), and serve any item of food at your book signing… where would you go, who with, and what delicious treat would you serve your fans?

Ohhhh. As someone who suffers from Chronic Indecisiveness™, I had such a hard time with this question.

John Green is one of my very favorite authors and he seems so personable and intelligent and funny, so I have to pick him, right? For exactly the same reason, I’d also go with Sarah Dessen.

Although, if I did pick them, I fear I’d spend the entire tour being starstruck and totally inarticulate. So do I save face and pick two of my favorite authors from when I was younger (Enid Blyton and C.S. Lewis)?

Really, I’d be just as starstruck. But I figure I’d show them how to use Google or introduce them to an iPhone and they’d be completely impressed and everybody wins! Even if I never utter an intelligent sentence throughout the entire tour.

Food: Since we’re on the subject of Paris (and hopefully touring there!), we’ll have plenty of French pastries. Some of these:

If you had to pick one sentence, and one sentence only, to entice someone to read your book, what would it be? (I almost hate myself for asking you this question and making you choose! Almost.)

Why are favorite sentences always so spoilery?

I think this sentence sums up quite a bit about the book without giving away too much:

I have to be the girl with nine lives, because I did just drown, and now, I’m back.

All These Lives will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) on June 5, 2012. Read on for a chance to win a signed ARC!

Sarah Wylie lives in Canada, where she has been writing for as long as she can remember. After some unfortunate forays into the world of headbanger poetry (this is a thing), emo songwriting, and terrible fanfiction, she finally discovered young-adult fiction. When she’s not writing, you might find her hurling textbooks across a room, reading, or watching bad reality TV.

Visit her at sarahwyliebooks.com to find out more!

Read her blog at sarahwithachance.blogspot.com.

Follow @sarah_why on Twitter.

The giveaway is now closed. Congrats to the winner!

What is the next Summer 2012 debut novel I’m looking forward to? Come back tomorrow to find out.

2012 YA Debut Interview + Giveaway: STRUCK by Jennifer Bosworth

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Welcome to the Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview Series, featuring debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read. I’ve chosen eleven (yes, 11 this time!) debuts to feature, and I hope by the end of this series you’ll be as excited about these books as I am.

Today’s Summer 2012 YA Debut is Struck by Jennifer Bosworth. Read on to see how this author answered the Q&A… And be sure to enter to win a Struck necklace!

Nova Ren Suma: I’ll start with the dreaded question you may be hearing already from strangers on elevators, long-lost family members, and your doctor while you’re sitting on the examination table in the paper gown during your next checkup: “So what’s your book about?” (Feel free to use the jacket copy, or describe in your own words. Up to you.)

Jennifer Bosworth: Struck is about a girl named Mia Price, who is not only a human lightning rod, but also a lightning addict. She’s survived countless strikes, but her craving to connect to the energy in storms endangers her life and the lives of those around her.

Los Angeles, where lightning rarely strikes, is one of the few places Mia feels safe from her addiction. But when an earthquake devastates the city, her haven is transformed into a minefield of chaos and danger. The beaches become massive tent cities. Downtown is a crumbling wasteland, where a traveling party moves to a different empty building each night, the revelers drawn to the destruction by a force they cannot deny. Two warring cults rise to power, and both see Mia as the key to their opposing doomsday prophecies. They believe she has a connection to the freak electrical storm that caused the quake, and to the far more devastating storm that is yet to come.

Mia wants to trust the enigmatic and alluring Jeremy when he promises to protect her, but she fears he isn’t who he claims to be. In the end, the passion and power that brought them together could be their downfall. When the final disaster strikes, Mia must risk unleashing the full horror of her strength to save the people she loves, or lose everything.

In my experience, every book wants to be written differently—and each one behaves differently from the one before it. Some novels like it out of order, and some rigidly insist on being written from start to finish. Some novels come out fast; others are excruciatingly slow. Some novels torment you, and some sing you to sleep. What did your novel want? How did you appease it? Did it ever misbehave?

Oh yes. Struck was trouble from the start. This book wanted to be rewritten so many times that I almost washed my hands of it. Actually, Struck started out as a completely different book with a completely different concept. It was originally titled Damned, and was about a teenage girl who falls in love with the Antichrist. It was like Twilight meets The Omen. But I just couldn’t seem to make that book work, so I came up with a new idea and plugged some of the characters from Damned into Struck, rewrote it a few thousand more times, and then . . . all of a sudden it started working!

Tell us about the place—as in the physical location: a messy office, a comfy couch, a certain corner table at the café—where you spent most of your time writing this book. Now imagine the writing spot of your fantasies where you wish you’d been able to write this book… tell us all about it. 

I’m with Virginia Woolf in needing a room of my own to write. I’ve never been able to write in coffee shops. I can barely manage to concentrate if there’s music on or a lawnmower buzzing outside. So I make sure that wherever my husband and I land I have a space I can use as an office. We moved three times when I was writing/revising Struck, so there’s no consistency there, except that each time I had my “space.” At one point we were living in an industrial loft with no walls or doors. That was NOT a space conducive to writing. Aside from the lack of privacy, I don’t find ultra-modern living spaces very inspiring, even though I love them from a design standpoint.

I wish that I’d written Struck in the two locations where most of the action of the book takes place. One would be a house near Venice Beach, preferably one overlooking the ocean and all the crazy people who hang out on the boardwalk.

The other perfect location would be an office on the top floor of a tall building in downtown Los Angeles. I think writing about downtown LA being destroyed from that particular vantage point would have been inspiring . . . and extremely nerve-racking.

Imagine you’re on the subway, or the bus, or sitting in a park somewhere minding your own business… and you look up and see the most perfect person you could picture devouring your book. This is your ideal reader. Set the scene and describe him or her (or them?) for us.

He’s Stephen King. He’s in a coffee shop eating apple pie and barely tasting it because he’s so engrossed in Struck, and also patting himself on the back because his Dark Tower series is what inspired the novel and he can tell. Just as I’ve worked up the courage to interrupt him and introduce myself, his son, author Joe Hill, breezes in and sits down across from King. He says he read Struck, too, and then father and son have a lengthy discussion about all their favorite parts of the book. I eavesdrop the whole time. And order pie.

[I apologize for my poor Photoshop skills. —Nova]

Publishing a novel is full of high points, low points, absolutely surreal points, and shocking points you never thought you’d see in your lifetime. Tell us a high point, a low point, a surreal point, and something shocking or at least somewhat surprising about your experience so far.

The most surreal part was when the book went to auction. After two years of revising and criticizing and doubting the manuscript, I suddenly had four editors who wanted the book. My brain couldn’t comprehend such a thing. Sometimes it still can’t.

Low point . . . there hasn’t been a concrete low point, but one letdown all authors have to deal with is when they sell a book and discover that it doesn’t immediately change everything and fix your life. You aren’t suddenly validated and overflowing with self-esteem. Your parents probably won’t respect you more. People will continue to think you don’t have a real job. The lesson you have to learn after that is to stop needing those things and become self-validating. Easier said than done.

My favorite part—the high point! For me it was my book trailer shoot. I had an amazing cast and crew, and everything went perfectly. We even shot an entire scene from the book. Seeing Struck come to life in such an amazing, cinematic way made me feel like we should just go ahead and shoot the movie. We just needed sixty million more dollars and we could have done it.

The most shocking part was when my publisher, FSG/Macmillan, announced they were sending me and a few other authors on a two-week book tour in June. It was completely unexpected! I can’t believe I’m getting such tremendous support on my first published novel.

Dream question: If you could go on book tour anywhere in the world, with any two authors (living or dead), and serve any item of food at your book signing… where would you go, who with, and what delicious treat would you serve your fans?

I’ve always told myself that once I publish a book I will reward myself with a trip to Romania. I’d bring fellow 2012 debut authors Sara Wilson Etienne and Leigh Bardugo along with me, partly because they’re wonderful friends and amazing writers, and partly because they’re new to publishing, like me, so we’ll be equally unknown and won’t steal each other’s spotlight. Not that anyone in Romania would have any idea who we were, but they’d come for the free butterscotch pudding and bourbon, right?

If you had to pick one sentence, and one sentence only, to entice someone to read your book, what would it be? (I almost hate myself for asking you this question and making you choose! Almost.)

“My name is Mia Price, and I am a lightning addict.”

Struck will be published by FSG/Macmillan on May 8, 2012. Read on for a chance to win a Struck necklace!

Jennifer Bosworth lives in Los Angeles, California, where lightning hardly ever strikes, but when it does she takes cover. She is the writer half of a writer/director team with her husband, Ryan Bosworth. 

Visit her at jenniferbosworth.com to find out more!

Follow @jennbosworth on Twitter.

The giveaway is now closed. Congrats to the winner!

What is the next Summer 2012 debut novel I’m looking forward to? Come back tomorrow to find out.

2012 YA Debut Interview + Giveaway: AMELIA ANNE IS DEAD AND GONE by Kat Rosenfield

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Hello and welcome to my Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview Series, featuring fun Q&As with debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read! I’ve chosen eleven (yes, 11 this time!) Summer 2012 YA debut novels to feature, and I hope by the end of this series you’ll be as excited about these debuts as I am.

If you’re here for some giveaways, why, you’re in luck! Each debut interview will feature a giveaway that you can enter by commenting or filling out an accompanying entry form… And at the end of the interview series, I will give away a pre-order of the winner’s choice, open internationally!

Today is the very first Summer 2012 YA Debut I’m thrilled to feature: Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfield. Read on to see how this debut author answered my interview questions… And be sure to enter to win a signed finished copy of the book!

Nova Ren Suma: I’ll start with the dreaded question you may be hearing already from strangers on elevators, long-lost family members, and your doctor while you’re sitting on the examination table in the paper gown during your next checkup: “So what’s your book about?” (Feel free to use the jacket copy, or describe in your own words. Up to you.)

Kat Rosenfield: On a hot summer night in a small town called Bridgeton, a girl named Becca experiences a brutal betrayal at the hands of a boy she thought she could trust. The next morning, the body of a girl nobody knows is discovered on a patch of desolate country road just outside the town line. Paralyzed by fear and indecision in the aftermath, Becca retreats inward as the life she carefully planned begins to fall apart around her.

Short chapters detailing the dead girl’s final hours are intercut with Becca’s first-person narrative, as old grudges and terrible secrets bring her—and the reader—ever closer the horrifying, hidden truth about Amelia Anne Richardson’s death.

In my experience, every book wants to be written differently—and each one behaves differently from the one before it. Some novels like it out of order, and some rigidly insist on being written from start to finish. Some novels come out fast; others are excruciatingly slow. Some novels torment you, and some sing you to sleep. What did your novel want? How did you appease it? Did it ever misbehave?

My novel wanted to be written, and it wasn’t afraid to take drastic measures to make it happen. For a long time, it wasn’t a novel at all; it was just a few thousand words that I’d written as an exercise (in what, I no longer remember) and then left sitting on my computer for two years. But then, in 2008, I lost my job. And in the two months I was unemployed, I decided to finish my first draft.

At which point I very foolishly went back to ignoring the book. And exactly a year later, I lost my job again—and this time, I used the ensuing months of unemployment to finish the revision that ended up being bought by Dutton. And by then, the story had been pent up inside of me for so long that it came flying out, head to tail, at a hundred miles per hour.

So basically, I firmly believe that my book secretly sabotaged my career—twice!—in order to get my attention. Which, on the spectrum of bad behavior, probably puts it somewhere between “grocery-cart toddler having a tantrum in the candy aisle” and “Real Housewife of New Jersey.”

Tell us about the place—as in the physical location: a messy office, a comfy couch, a certain corner table at the café—where you spent most of your time writing this book. Now imagine the writing spot of your fantasies where you wish you’d been able to write this book… tell us all about it. 

I was living in a long, dark, railroad apartment in Brooklyn at the time that I was writing Amelia, and I did pretty much all my work on the bed—there was nowhere else to sit. As a result, substantial portions of this book were written with my cat sitting on my hands and my dog trying to sit on my lap. Which was a problem, since he weighs as much as I do.

As for my fantasy writing spot, I’d like it to be in a turret. That’s all. I don’t really care where the turret is, or to what structure the turret is attached; any turret will do. If you have one available, I will take it.

Imagine you’re on the subway, or the bus, or sitting in a park somewhere minding your own business… and you look up and see the most perfect person you could picture devouring your book. This is your ideal reader. Set the scene and describe him or her (or them?) for us.

I would be beside myself if I ever came across anyone reading my book in the wild, really. But here’s my dream scenario: I would be flipping through some haute publication that covers the lifestyles of the rich and famous—like the NYT Style section, or Vanity Fair—and I’d come across a photo from a big-deal, black-tie party. Everyone in tuxes and evening gowns, celebrities everywhere, and the main subject of the photo would be a group shot of, say, Julia Roberts hanging out with George Clooney and Heidi Klum. But in the background, at a table, there’s person—sitting all alone, head down, completely uninterested in the party going on around him.

And it’s Christopher Walken.

And he’s reading my book.

And then a unicorn walks across my lawn.

Publishing a novel is full of high points, low points, absolutely surreal points, and shocking points you never thought you’d see in your lifetime. Tell us a high point, a low point, a surreal point, and something shocking or at least somewhat surprising about your experience so far.

The high point was definitely calling my mother on the night that I found out I was being published and shrieking, “MOOOOOOOM! IT’S HAAAAAPPENIIIIIIIING!” It was a moment I’d dreamed about—for me, the best part of good news is being able to share it—and she went “EEEEEEEE!” and I went “AHHHHHH!” and it was just perfect.

On the downside, there have been a series of these terrible moments—from getting my first editorial letter to re-reading my ARC and thinking, “Oh, God, why did I choose that word!”—when I’ve felt daunted and terrified and in over my head, and generally convinced that I’m not cut out to do what I’m doing.

And at this point, I think the most surreal and most surprising thing are one and the same, which is seeing the book being talked about by other people. I still think of my novel as this silly, self-indulgent thing I made in my apartment, and it’s mind-blowing to realize that soon it’ll be out in the world, in people’s hands, doing things and making friends that I don’t know about.

Dream question: If you could go on book tour anywhere in the world, with any two authors (living or dead), and serve any item of food at your book signing… where would you go, who with, and what delicious treat would you serve your fans?

I’d invite Dorothy Parker and Edward Gorey to accompany me on a tour of Europe, where we’d serve oysters and champagne cocktails to our delighted attendees. Apart from the book-related events, I imagine this trip would mostly consist of Dorothy and I sitting in a corner, drinking whiskey, and trading bitchy bon mots about everyone we’d met, with Edward occasionally looking up from his drink and whispering, “Do you ever wonder what spiders are thinking?” and then Dorothy would be like, “Geez, Edward, you’re such a freak!” and then we’d all laugh and laugh and laugh.

If you had to pick one sentence, and one sentence only, to entice someone to read your book, what would it be? (I almost hate myself for asking you this question and making you choose! Almost.)

“The night before Amelia Anne Richardson bled her life away on a parched dirt road outside of town, I bled out my dignity in the back of a pickup truck under a star-pricked sky.”

I could only choose this sentence—it’s the very first one in the book, and it’s one of the few things that has remained unchanged and untouched from the day I first wrote it five years ago. Cheesy as it sounds, this is the sentence that made me a writer. It drew me in to the world of Amelia then, and I can only hope it will draw other people in now.

Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone will be published by Dutton/Penguin on July 5, 2012. Read on for a chance to win a signed copy!

Kat Rosenfield is an internationally-published writer, illustrator, and advice columnist. When not working on a new novel, she can be found gossiping about people’s outfits on MTV’s Hollywood Crush and giving flirting pointers on Barnes & Noble’s SparkLife. She lives in Connecticut with a dog, a cat, and one charming gentleman.

Visit her at katrosenfield.com to find out more!

Check out Kat’s blog at pinkindiaink.tumblr.com.

Follow @katrosenfield on Twitter.

The giveaway is now closed. Congrats to the winner!

What is the next Summer 2012 debut novel I’m looking forward to? Come back tomorrow to find out.

Turning Points: “How Michael Jackson Helped Me Love Writing Again” Guest Post by Aimee Phan (+Giveaway)

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Dear Readers: Thank you so much for stopping by to take in the Turning Points series here on distraction no. 99, in which I asked authors the question: What was your turning point as a writer? Today’s guest post is the last before I take a short hiatus at a writers colony—but the Turning Points series will return in May, with more inspiring guest posts from more wonderful writers, I promise.

In the meantime, I’d like to leave you with this Turning Point from Aimee Phan, in which she struggles in the face of the recession to find a good reason to keep writing…

When my then boyfriend and I left graduate school in our early twenties, all we wanted to do was write. We had no responsibilities but to take care of ourselves. Our parents were healthy and financially independent. My parents often lent me money during the lean months when my checking account was low. Although it took some convincing, my parents were willing to see me through this writing dream to see if I could actually make it work. Matt’s parents were even more encouraging and supportive of his ambitions to write poetry. Everything about our upper-middle-class suburban background had fooled us into believing that if we worked hard, we could have it all: literary success and a cushy, comfortable first-world lifestyle.

The Reeeducation of Cherry Truong

It is that short, but blissful, bubble of time that most writers probably never have. And for the few who do, they will never appreciate it enough while they are in it, and will always want it back: the absolute freedom to write without much concern about anything else. The beginning felt promising: within a few years, I had sold my first book as part of a two-book deal and landed a tenure-track creative writing position. My boyfriend was awarded a prestigious post-MFA fellowship to pursue his PhD in literature. I realized how incredibly fortunate we were, and felt thankful for the opportunity to have this support to continue to write.

A few years later, still in the bloom of our teaching and writing careers, freshly married and now relocated to the San Francisco bay area and its thriving literary community, we watched as the economy crashed. The condo we had purchased transformed from nest egg into a money pit. We lost two of our beloved cars to random car accidents, which the insurance companies deemed better to total rather than repair, even though we could not afford to replace them. My parents started coping with serious health issues that required my brother and I to rotate regular visits to Southern California. Our bills were mounting, while our savings dwindled. As the great recession took its toll on our neighbors, family, and friends, and as we read about many others who were experiencing even worse financial circumstances, I struggled to find a good reason to continue writing. While I still loved my manuscript and its potential, it felt somehow inappropriate to commit myself to an imaginary world, when the current world I lived in was imploding. Recently laid-off or underemployed people surrounded me in coffee shops, crouched over their laptops, searching the Craigslist want ads or refining their résumés. I felt incredibly guilty—they all wanted hourly jobs to make ends meet and support their families, while I thought nursing my mocha and playing with words was worthwhile.

When I became pregnant, my writing anxiety grew worse. With the impending birth of our first child, and her amazing arrival and adorable companionship afterward, I began feeling like the inadequate parent. While our friends and siblings were able to provide spacious nurseries, safe neighborhoods, and luxurious grass lawns for their progeny, we were squeezing Amelie’s crib into our office space between bookshelves and our writing desk. I would look at our cramped condo with increasing concern: How we were going to provide for her? Didn’t she deserve better than two parents who were still dreaming of their own successes? I started to believe that our choice to become writers was selfish, indulgent, and irresponsible. I already had a day job as a professor, and started concentrating more on these administrative duties, which had been steadily piling up. I encouraged my husband to consider looking for 9-5 jobs so that we could have a bigger income that could keep us afloat in the expensive Bay Area. Essentially, I betrayed everything I held precious about the writing life. I devalued, deprioritized, and marginalized it. And I fooled myself into believing I was growing up.

I wasn’t the only one questioning my livelihood. Our classmates from writing school were doing the same thing. Many had moved on to other jobs to pay for rent and health insurance, or returned to school for law or psychology degrees. On the phone and in our Facebook updates, talk of writing projects dissipated, gradually replaced by more realistic, yet mundane, objectives of real life, such as the best 401K plans or the safest neighborhood schools for our children. It was…absolutely depressing.

But perhaps this was what was supposed to happen. Our twenties was our time to be hopeful, dreamy, ambitious, while our thirties was about realizing the limitations of our abilities, and taking up the responsibilities we owed to our families. My novel felt very far away from me. I wondered if I could ever finish, if it was worth it, if anyone would even care. I worried about my daughter, Amelie, a child of two writers, and how very likely it was that she’d have the same unrealistic expectations her parents currently harbored, and face a life of financial uncertainty.

So what pulled me out of my slump? It wasn’t an amazing work of literature, or a poem, or even a great film or addictive television show. It was a dance move. By the Jackson Five.

Michael Jackson had just died and the television was awash in tributes and flashbacks of his musical glory. One evening, they re-aired clips from the Jackson Five Reunion Motown 25 special, so I left it on the television as background while I finished up some work emails. Michael and his brothers had run onto the stage to perform one of their greatest hits, “Stop, the Love You Save.”

The moment for me occurred near the end of the song: a choreographed series of dance steps between all the brothers that came together in several seconds of pure inspiration and beauty. My heart grew full and I nearly burst into tears. The irresistible combination of their singing, dancing, and beleaguered history transfixed and fascinated me. This, I thought, is why art—literary, visual, performative—is transcendent, and worth all the years of heartache and frustration. I tried to explain to my husband, who had barely been watching, why this was so fantastic. I could even try to tell you (if you go to this youtube video, it occurs in minute 3:50 to the end of the song), but I would not be surprised if its specialness does not translate to anyone else but me. The Jackson Five probably has many other song and dance highlights that surpass this one. But for me, this was my turning point.

This is why I write, in absolute pursuit of that emotional, heart-stopping moment. And I know in my writing, I am not chasing after the lyrical sentence or an evocative expression of a physical act, but instead the intersection of human connection, of both tragedy and hope—when I feel as full and joyous and sad as I did watching Michael reunite with his brothers.

So I found myself reinvesting in my writing and realizing that these years of efforts and hard work are worthwhile and important. Because if Michael and his brothers could achieve that musical epiphany so many years later, then I could certainly try to find my own apex, though admittedly on a much smaller scale. It is worth trying. It is why I started writing in the first place.

Every year that passes, I know it will be harder to write. There are too many moments when it is simply easier to just close the laptop and concentrate on the solid tasks that I know will make my daughter happy, give us more security, and assure us a place to live and an income to depend on. Our financial troubles and concerns for the future have not gone away, but we’ve grown more comfortable with its unpredictability. We can prepare, without blaming our youthful choices. I only have to look around me now to realize that the harder it gets, the more important it becomes to prioritize my writing. No one else is going to do that for me.

Recently, Amelie has begun inventing narratives. She will open a book—any book, whether it’s a cookbook in the kitchen or one of Matt’s theory books lying in the car, and in her most articulate, teacherly imitation, she will mash up the stories she remembers us reading to her the previous night. Her memory and imagination astonish me. She is entertaining herself with these made-up, rather nonsensical, deconstructed tales. She takes delight in the creation, just as we probably had when we were small children.

I do not know what Amelie will choose to be when she grows up. But I cannot in good conscience ever discourage her from wanting to create something beautiful, not when her mother is still trying to accomplish the same goal.

—Aimee Phan

Aimee Phan is the author of the forthcoming novel The Reeducation of Cherry Truong, which will be published tomorrow, March 13, by St. Martin’s Press. She is also the author of the story collection We Should Never Meet. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, and The Oregonian, among others. She teaches at California College of the Arts.

Visit Aimee at www.aimeephan.com. 

Follow @aimeephan on Twitter and visit her on Facebook.

EDITED MARCH 20: WINNER OF A SIGNED COPY OF THE REEDUCATION OF CHERRY TRUONG ANNOUNCED! 

The Reeeducation of Cherry Truong

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway via the entry form—and thank you to the author for donating the prize! I’m happy to announce the winner:

Lisa Kalner Williams won a signed copy of Aimee Phan’s debut novel, The Reeducation of Cherry Truong! Congrats! I’ll email the winner to ask for a mailing address. Thank you again to everyone who entered!

And thank you again, blog readers, for reading the Turning Points series. If you missed any of the guest blogs, you’ll find them listed below—and come back for more writers’ Turning Points starting again in May!

Here are the posts in the series:

Series images by Robert Roxby.

Turning Points: Guest Post by Andrea Cremer (+Giveaway)

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This guest post is part of the Turning Points blog series here on distraction no. 99—in which I asked authors the question: What was your turning point as a writer? I’m honored and excited to host their stories. Read on as Andrea Cremer reveals the accident that led her to writing her first novel, and the choice she had to make to keep writing more…

My turning point has been both sudden and slow. It began with a horse and ended by turning everything in my life upside down.

I’ve always been a writer. Since I first could hold a crayon I’ve drawn pictures and created stories about those pictures. The picture to written story ratio reversed as the years went by, but the creation of worlds and characters never ceased.

Despite my love of writing, I didn’t see a career as an author as a viable option. To strive to be a writer was akin to hitchhiking to New York in the hopes of making it on Broadway. Sticking with the sensible road, I pursued graduate education until there was none left to pursue and set out into the working world with a Ph.D. in early modern history. I landed a dream job at Macalester College, a wonderful liberal arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota. Work was both close to my family and introduced me to an abundance of smart colleagues and incredible students.

Though I was thrilled at the job and enjoying the start of my ‘real’ adult life following so many years of studenthood, the summer after I finished my first year of teaching I felt that something had been missed. Having given over so much time to study, I decided that some time off was in order and went in search of the those things that I’d left behind when I dedicated my life to the study of history almost exclusively.

Like many girls (and boys) I was obsessed with any and all things horse, and benefited from summers working on a local horse ranch. Once I went to college both time and money kept me from riding. With a job secured and the summer free I thought it no better time than to return to my love of horseback riding.

In June 2008 I had my horse all tacked up and ready to go on our first trail ride. As I led him from the stable, he was startled by another horse, jumped, and came down on top of my right foot. With two broken bones in my foot, the summer of riding came to an end before it began.

Not only would I not be riding, I had doctor’s orders to stay off my foot for the entire summer. My days would be spent on the couch, rather than on the trail.

I consoled myself for a time with my go-to comfort activity—watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But even Buffy couldn’t offer a full reprieve from my sense of a summer lost. In Minnesota, where winter goes on forever, a lost summer is something to truly grieve.

Wanting to salvage my days before school began again I wracked my brain for something that would give me a sense of accomplishment. Something couch friendly. As I mulled over the possibilities, a long-time dream came to mind. I’d always wanted to write a novel. My journals, notebooks, and computer hard drive were already filled with scenes, thoughts, and scribbles accumulated over the course of my life, but I’d never given myself the space or time to write a book from start to finish.

Still on the couch, but armed with my laptop, I began to write.

That was the beginning of my turning point.

My love of writing was not only confirmed, it was transformed: into an obsession. I had never felt so alive, or complete, as when I put words to the page. The experience was thrilling and terrifying. It reminded me of falling in love—I was afraid to let go of the experience, thinking I might never capture the magic again and at the same time the thought of trying to make writing more than a sideshow in the carnival that was my working and personal life seemed an impossible task.

But I couldn’t stop writing.

And I began to live a double life. Professor by day, writer by night (and morning, and any time I could snatch for myself). In addition to writing, I did research. I  consumed every piece of information I could about the publishing industry. I taught myself about literary agents and query letters. And after writing two “practice” novels, I wrote Nightshade. And I knew I’d reached the point where I wanted to take my work into the world.

I began to query.

There were rejections.

I continued to query.

My (would soon be) agent requested the manuscript.

I waited.

My (almost) agent offered to represent me.

I signed with the agency.

We revised the manuscript.

Nightshade went on submission.

Nightshade

Michael Green purchased Nightshade in August 2009, a little more than a year from the accident that started it all.

This is halfway through my turning point.

By phone and email I met my editor, Jill Santopolo, who turned out to be (and still is) one of the most talented and amazing people I’ve ever met. Not only did Jill understand my writing, she understood how to make it better.

I learned much more about writing and revising through working with Jill. Nightshade went into copyedits. I wrote Wolfsbane and began Bloodrose while Nightshade was in the run-up to release.

Nightshade was published in October 2010 and hit the NYT bestseller list. I cried and danced. I kept writing. I kept teaching.

Wolfsbane

Writing and teaching managed to be both complementary to and at odds with one another. My students always inspired and energized me, but the time of preparation, instruction, office hours, recommendations, and meetings sapped the time I needed to write. When I’m drafting a novel, I want to immerse myself in it—an aspect of my process that required compromise in the face of my “real” job obligations.

Wolfsbane debuted on the NYT list. I finished writing Bloodrose and embarked on multiple new projects. I requested and received a reduction in my teaching load to part-time. For a year I thought I could do it all.

I discovered I could not.

The time and energy required not only by writing, but also in promotion, answering email, touring, was draining my enthusiasm for teaching. Not because I didn’t love being in the classroom, but simply because I was exhausted. I’d been stretched thin by my schedule and while those sacrifices were reasonable when I was trying to get my foot in the publishing door, I seemed to have landed in a room of my own and I wanted to live in it instead of feeling like a sub-letter.

I had a choice to make. To maintain my academic career and continue to write would mean I’d have to scale back my life as an author by a long-shot. I’d have to travel less and write fewer books. I would have to take time off from writing to focus on my academic work.

Bloodrose

I could have made that choice, but my turning point had set me on another path. What I wanted was to be a full-time writer. A writer who could lose herself in her books without apology. Admitting that the writing life was the one I wanted was as frightening as beginning to write my first novel. It meant leaving a life of comfort and security, for one that is more unpredictable. It meant that my Ph.D. would still be put to use, but in an unconventional way that might draw questioning gazes from more than a few people.

But my life had turned, opening a new road that I wanted to walk. Turning back would only feel like defeat.

I write this piece amid the last semester I’ll teach at Macalester. When classes end, I’ll pack my bags and head to New York to chase a dream. And life will begin again, until the next turning point.

—Andrea Cremer

Andrea Cremer

Andrea Cremer lives in Minnesota and teaches history at Macalester College in St. Paul. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling Nightshade series. She wants you to know that history is not boring and dreams are best lived.

Visit Andrea at www.andreacremer.com.

Follow @andreacremer on Twitter.

EDITED MARCH 17: WINNER OF A SIGNED COPY OF BLOODROSE ANNOUNCED…

Bloodrose

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway via the entry form—and thank you to the author for donating the prize! I’m happy to announce the winner:

Kel Vorhis won a signed copy of Bloodrose! Congrats! I’ll email the winner to ask for a mailing address. Thank you again to everyone who entered!

Want more in this blog series?

The Turning Points series will continue with new guest posts three times a week. Subscribe to distraction no. 99 to keep up with the series, or read all the posts with this tag.

Here are the posts in the series so far:

Series images by Robert Roxby.

Turning Points: Guest Post by Jaclyn Dolamore (+Giveaway)

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This guest post is part of the Turning Points blog series here on distraction no. 99—in which I asked authors the question: What was your turning point as a writer? I’m honored and excited to host their stories. Read on as Jaclyn Dolamore talks about making things that seem impossible happen…

Sitting down to write a blog post like this, you have to review your whole life in brief, looking for where the turning point actually was. Usually I think of it as the moment I sold Magic Under Glass. Well, the moment my agent sold Magic Under Glass. Which is kind of the problem with that as a turning point. It was a huge turning point for my life and I could tell you all about how I sent 100 queries and rewrote the book twice and found critique partners and read Self-Editing for Fiction Writers and all the work that led up to it.

But when I really think about it, turning points happen first in the mind. Once in a while, amazing opportunities and life changes fall into people’s laps. But usually they don’t. Usually life is a bit of a rut. This is what I do, this is where I live. If you’re lucky, you’re exactly where you want to be.

In 2005 I was not where I wanted to be at all. I was young. But not so very young that it didn’t feel like something better should be happening. Some of my friends were at great colleges, and one of them was a professional comic book artist, while I was directionless. I wanted to be a writer in theory, but I wasn’t doing the work at all. Being able to BE a writer, to do what I loved and get paid for it, felt impossibly far away. I knew that every year, agents and publishers received KAJILLIONS of manuscripts and they only accepted a few. I was one of those kids who got a lot of attention from adults growing up, because I could write and draw and speak articulately and use big words. Life is often hard for those kids when they grow up. “Hey, you’re a kid who isn’t stupid!” is no longer enough to make you feel like a winner. You have to actually DO something. And deep down, I wasn’t sure I could do it, I guess. I was afraid of failure, although it wasn’t a very conscious fear. It just felt like a resistance to meaningful action.

Before you can get to the point where your life actually changes, I think you have to actually believe it can change. And maybe that is the hardest part sometimes. If you don’t actually believe your life can change, why do anything about it? At first it feels like an uphill battle. You click “send” on a few e-queries and sit there nursing nausea and a sense of hopelessness. It feels like there is SO MUCH between you, a writer sending your first query, and a published writer with books on the shelf. Getting a request for pages back on my first batch of queries helped. I started to treat writing like it was my job. Writing became my default task for my days off. No reading or TV-watching or anything else was to be done until I sat in front of a document for a couple of hours, whether I wrote a few sentences or 3,000 words. But I still sometimes had trouble imagining it happening. REALLY happening. There were no guarantees it would ever happen. Just a lot of work, a few years of it, while I made more and more writer friends and saw more of them sell books, and every time they sold their debuts, it felt a little more like I could sell mine too, but it also brought a huge wave of doubt that maybe I just wasn’t quite good enough, that maybe being “the smartest two-year-old in Oviedo, Florida!” would have turned out to be my life’s peak.

Selling Magic Under Glass was a huge accomplishment, but even then I was stuck in the rut. I was born and raised in central Florida, but I never liked the place. My family took us on a lot of road trips. I was enthralled with mountains. At the low point of my young retail days I was standing alone in the lingerie department of Sears where I worked and I started thinking of mountains and how I hadn’t seen them in two years and I just went into the stock room and cried. I felt so trapped and miserable. If I could just afford to take a trip to the mountains, I thought, I could keep living, but as it is, what the HELL AM I DOING?

I had no idea how to get there. It would take a lot of money and a lot of steps. I was hugely overwhelmed.

Between the Sea and Sky

This time, at least, I had learned a little bit of a lesson from Magic Under Glass. I knew that things that seemed really impossible could happen. And I knew that the way to make them happen was to just believe they were possible and start behaving as such even if you had NO clue how to get there at the moment. So I started spending hours investigating different towns and their available housing stock. I checked out books from the library about how to buy a house to learn about the process. I used some of my advance money to take a trip to Maryland to check it out. My partner grew up in Baltimore and he thought Maryland would be a great place for us. I loved it there from the start. The next year we took a trip to Pennsylvania to check out some other areas. “Next time we visit we’ll have a Realtor,” I said, even though I still didn’t have anywhere near the kind of money to buy a house.

I was right. The price of houses continued to fall, and meanwhile I sold my next book for enough money for a down payment on a house. That makes it sound so easy. But…let me rephrase. Enough money for SOME kind of house. I still struggled constantly with my fears about the process—could I get a loan, could we actually find a house in our price range that we loved enough to make that kind of commitment, could we really afford it with all the associated costs that were hard to calculate until you were kind of IN IT, from hiring movers to paying heating bills? We had already accepted that we had to look around Hagerstown, which was 70 miles from DC and Baltimore. I didn’t really mind that, it wasn’t like we had day jobs in the city and it is darn pretty in Washington County. But we were still looking in a pretty low bracket. After looking at a baker’s dozen of houses in one day, houses I had been watching for weeks or months on real estate websites, houses that APPEARED to be the best choices around, I felt sick and I cried. I didn’t want any of them.

Magic Under Stone

Luckily my partner tends to have a clearer head when I’m losing it. He really loved a Victorian house, the last one we’d seen. It had pretty much everything on our wishlist. It was the ONLY house that had almost everything on our wishlist. We looked at it again, and after having a night of sleep to clear my own head, I fell in love with it too. We made an offer. The loan worked out. I’m sitting in that house right now writing this. I love it even more now that it’s mine.

So now I have the career I want and the house, too. I can still hardly believe it. But there are still unfulfilled dreams. Things I worry and worry over because I don’t know how they will happen. But it’s starting to get easier. At least I know where to start. I just have to believe it’s possible.

—Jaclyn Dolamore

Jaclyn Dolamore is the author of Magic Under Glass, Between the Sea and Sky, and Magic Under Stone. She spent her childhood reading as many books as she could lug home from the library and playing elaborate pretend games with her sister. She has a passion for history, thrift stores, vintage dresses, David Bowie, drawing, and organic food.

Visit Jaclyn online at www.jaclyndolamore.com.

Follow @jackiedolamore on Twitter.

EDITED MARCH 17: WINNER OF A SIGNED COPY OF ONE OF JACLYN DOLAMORE’S BOOKS ANNOUNCED…

Between the Sea and SkyMagic Under Stone

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway via the entry form—and thank you to the author for donating the prize! I’m happy to announce the winner:

Megan Ratliff won a signed copy of the book of her choice—and she picked Magic Under Glass! Congrats! I’ll email the winner to ask for a mailing address. Thank you again to everyone who entered!

Want more in this blog series?

The Turning Points series will continue with new guest posts three times a week. Subscribe to distraction no. 99 to keep up with the series, or read all the posts with this tag.

Here are the posts in the series so far:

You can keep up with all the open giveaways on the giveaways page!

Series images by Robert Roxby.