Sometimes It Takes Longer

This book I'm finishing (again, for the fifth or sixth time, although not always in this particular incarnation) has been a struggle.

Various reasons for that: First it was because it was an extra project and I never seemed to have enough to time to fully flesh out where I wanted it to go. (It started as a time travel story which when you finally read it will seem impossible. But sometimes characters come to you and the basic story of them falling for each other just as everything else in the world is falling apart, and the rest is sort of window dressing. (Okay, I'm not even sure what that phrase means, but out it popped this morning and I mean for it to reflect the idea that the rest is just setting and plot points but the character arc is the idea I need first and foremost and that has never wavered.)

Another reason: At one point this novel became the potential option book for one of my editors but we could never agree on certain aspects and eventually I began to feel that I was writing a book by committee and said no. I'll do something else but not this. But the story and my reasons for telling it never diminished and so I knew I simply had to get it right, mine out the gold and rip away all the extra plot lines and rambling and confusion that came from trying too hard to please other people.

There are other reasons I could illuminate, all of them legitimate, but in the end I think it is safe to say that ultimately, I hit a wall that I hadn't hit before and I had to step back. I've talked about this before, most recently on Cynthia Leitich Smith's blog, CYNSATIONS in a guest post about surviving and thriving long term in a writing career.  If you read the whole series (which I think is still ongoing), you will see some definite similarities in other authors' posts. The industry shifts. Your previous books aren't the financial success everyone hoped. You have time issues or family issues or you just have to stop and fill the well.

Stepping back is hard. The publishing world keeps rolling and the book deals keep getting announced, the festival invites invited, the movie deals confirmed, and there you are, on draft 6, trying to stay hopeful.

Publishing is about many things, but hype is a huge one. We authors love to tell you how busy we are, how many words we've written, how many events we're doing, how stressed we are about all those things, how much you are going to LOVE THIS NEW BOOK, how happy we are to have made this list or that list or whatever list. Mostly, we need to do this because it's part of how the business works.

One of my roles at the bookstore is now Children's Book Buyer and let me tell you, hype is real on that end, too. Editors and publicists send us a LOT O' STUFF (info, swag, notes, posters, bookmarks, more swag, some of it even candy!) about certain books.

So between author generated hype and publisher generated hype,  and the general crazy of social media, sitting at your laptop in the wee hours of the morning before work, plodding through draft six of a book (even if you LOVE IT) is sometimes a tricky thing. You feel invisible most days and then suddenly one day you're kind of okay with that because it feels like it felt before you were published. Just exciting and hopeful and totally passionately authentic.

More on all this tomorrow.

Til then!

Fighting the Doubt Monster

So here's the tricky thing about highly competitive occupations: Some days you feel like you will never be enough. I'll be writing along, as fast and well as I can-- loving the story and its complexities and loving the challenge of putting this grand adventure on the page--and then it happens. I catch up on the industry news or I dip my toes into some form of social media or another and there it is: The three book series that someone else sold while I'm still trying to get a proposal to work. Or yet another list of wonderful books which I'm not on. Or an event to which I wasn't invited. Or I read a review that is less than stellar. Or someone says, no, unfortunately, we couldn't budget that for you.

And suddenly I feel like I'll never possibly be enough. I started too late, or I'm just not good in the first place. I'm not smart enough or quirky enough. I don't have a fascinating narrative. My wardrobe is dirty yoga pants. The shelf life on me being labeled a prodigy has expired, and even if it hadn't, I was pretty ordinary to begin with. (my stellar Star Trek fan fic on yellow legal pads and reams of angsty unrequited love poetry aside. Cause that stuff is killer.) I am the Queen of Sucky who lives in Suckyville and that's how it is, you know? What did I expect? Who did I think I was? Aren't I looking at all those Instagram shots of all those people having fun and being uber cool while I'm struggling with this page I can't get right? If I posted right now, I would caption it:  #isuck

Yeah, whatever.
The truth as I see it: You don't have to be the smartest person in the room. You just have to show up and keep at it. And yes, some luck is often involved. (that's the scary part)

Wildly successful fashionista Diane von Furstenburg once said that she often feels like a loser. That in fact, according to her, all successful people HAVE to feel like losers sometimes or they don't get that creative, competitive fire in the belly that pushes them to do something new.

So yeah. I agree.
I think if you're not hungry enough of the time, you stop reaching high enough.

But what can you do when you feel less than enough?

What do I do?

I take a deep breath.

Sometimes I have to take another.

Or walk the dog.

Or buy a new coffee pot.

Or--yes, really -- do something nice for someone who is not me.

I remember that I did come to this later in the game and how freaking wonderful is that? I shifted course  and left a more comfortable niche and found the creative life. Being brave enough to do that has changed everything for me. I am very lucky.

Then I get to work on the one thing I can control--which is, of course, the work.
As Mark Twain once said and as I quote to myself quite often: The world owes you nothing.
But I owe the world my best work. I owe my readers my best work.

Going to finish this book now. You will see it in 2016. :)

Five Years

Hanging out at Houston Community college

Been doing some events-- Had a lovely time speaking to the reading club at Houston Community College.
And then last Friday, I spent the day at the John Cooper School Signature Series as a local guest author. Keynote was given my the delightful Tyler Florence of Food Network fame, who was quite gracious about photo ops, as you can see here!

At the John Cooper School Signature Series

And it's Tyler Florence!

I'd participated in this event back in '09, when DREAMING ANASTASIA was first out, so it was fun to be back now as book 6 is ready to arrive. And humbling and also fun to have various people come up to me, saying how that's where they first met me and started following my career and reading my books. So much has happened--both professionally and personally-- since then it's kind of crazy, really. Just five years, but holy cow! Books (two more in the DREAMING trilogy, then two SWEET DEAD LIFE books, and now FINDING PARIS in April 2015 and then IT WASN'T ALWAYS LIKE THIS in 2016) and travel and teaching and then deciding to quit teaching full time and building this career… And as many of you know, a scary battle with thyroid cancer that began just as things were taking off. (MD Anderson declared me cancer free in 2013. I hope to stay that way.)

It hasn't always been smooth. In fact, quite often it has not. It's been a wild ride of revolving editors and promises both kept and unkept and amazing mentors who lift me up every single day, and the total thrill of what is truly an entire new world of people and ideas. I know I've found my tribe and I know that makes me lucky beyond words.

Still, I think I'm just one who is destined to work a bit longer and harder. Some days I angst over not sitting at the cool kids' table. Maybe I never will. Most days I get over my bad self and just do the work and enjoy the ride. No good comes in this profession from playing the comparison game.

I've realized along the way that somehow I was writing about all that in the white space between the words in all my stories: about what it means to be human--the good, the bad, and the ugly of it.

And for this I am profoundly grateful--particularly to all of you who buy my books and read my words and love my characters as I do. Even on the days when the words aren't coming easily.

And so!

You guys, FINDING PARIS is up on Edelweiss now, which means that people are requesting it (and YOU can request it!) and if Harper Collins says yes, then you get an early read before it arrives from Balzer and Bray in April! This is of course, both thrilling and nerve wracking -- as it always is.

 People are reading Leo and Max and Paris's story. It is out in the world and no longer mine and I am writing away on other things. This book that I love with all my heart, this story of how far you'd go to protect someone you love, about terrible secrets and what they do to us, about love and loss and very broken families. And road trips and Vegas and LA--both places where people flock to have their dreams come true. It's out there for you now, dear readers, at least in its galley form. It's dark and twisty, and it's my first contemporary without a paranormal element. *shivers with excitement.*

And I've got some really really awesomely cool swag in the works for those who pre-order. Stay tuned for that soon!

Super Sunday and Dreaming Anastasia

The husband is doing his happy dance today because Super Bowl Sunday is a like a national holiday for him. Came home yesterday clutching his special rootbeer and pretzels.

As for me, Super Bowl Sunday is always connected to Dreaming Anastasia. Why, you might ask? Good question, that! Because on Super Bowl Sunday of 2006, during the 2nd quarter, I wandered upstairs to the office computer, held my breath, and fired off four fresh agent queries about what was then titled Spark. I hadn't queried since the fall because I'd been revising some and licking my wounds of rejection. But it was time, I thought. As I've written about widely, I was having the worst school year ever. It was really now or never as far as I was concerned. I was going to keep going til I got it right.

By half time, I'd gotten one rejection from the four and one request for a partial. The next day, I got another partial request. One just disappeared into the ether. One of those requests was from Laura Rennert of ABLA, who passed the manuscript on to then ABLA junior agent, Michelle Andelman. The rest, as they say, is history.

So - for some it's the commericals. For others it's the game. For others, the beer and snacks. For me - it's the dream of publication coming true because I had the guts to try it again and I didn't give up and the stars all got aligned and sent me a gift.

It is thus fitting, that tomorrow or the next day, I will be making a VERY BIG ANNOUNCEMENT as soon as that VERY BIG ANNOUNCEMENT is officially posted somewhere else that it is going to be posted.

To me Super Bowl Sunday = Books on shelf/Dreams Come True

til next time...