It's here! RAINING DOWN RULES is out - and a giveaway!

WHERE CAN I BUY THE BOOK?

  

It's really hard to believe that what I once thought would NEVER happen (and by never, I mean seriously, NEVER) has actually happened! You see, when I stopped reading in 3rd grade it was because my school was forcing it down our little third grade throats and I hated it so much I started lying about what I had read. Or in all honesty, what I hadn't read. I can remember about 5 books that I picked up and read before I turned twenty (though I really wish I could remember the name of one specific book I read as a young kid...turning to Google to find it). Anyway, because I stopped reading, I never thought I would someday write a book, let alone have it published.

That all changed about six years ago when a friend of mine suggested I read The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale. I didn't know books like that existed. It BLEW MY MIND. I loved it and have since read it three more times.

Shannon Hale unknowingly caused my newly found love hunger for reading. These days, I read an average of 10 books a month, though in January it was 16. I really hope this doesn't negatively affect my children...Perhaps it will some day fuel their love for reading.

Fast forward to three years ago (actually, almost 4 years now) and I've started my gazillionth book but something is different about this one. This one has me so fired up I start and finish it in 30 days ending with 82,000 words. The words kept pouring out of me and I couldn't stop them. That story was The Phoenix (which is out on submissions right now), and I have since re-written the story because I knew it needed work. Now, I love it even more!

There is so much that inspires me to write, but most of it stems from the feelings I receive when listening to music. Often times an image will pop into my brain that leads to a character's name or an event that happens in that character's life. Then, their story begins to unfold as write. This is what happened in the case of RAINING DOWN RULES. An image of a young woman driving down a darkened street one night popped into my head, followed by her seeing a man stumbling down the street. As she drew closer, she realized it was the lead singer of her favorite rock band.

That was it. That was the image I saw and from there I asked myself what would happen to these two seemingly different people? Would they fall in love? What had happened in the girl's life making her who she is today? Why is the rock star an addict? These are just a few of the questions I asked myself as I sat down to write their story.

I loved writing Jemma and Jordan's story, but like all lives in progress, other events occur throwing the characters for a loop. Insert Vic, the fireman. He was a surprise and a good one at that.

I hope you enjoy RAINING DOWN RULES as much as I enjoyed writing it and look forward to Jordan's story of finding love in RAINING DOWN REDEMPTION coming later this summer.

Oh, and because I think you should win a $20 Amazon gift card, here's a little giveaway for you!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Where I'm at in the publishing process, pt. 3

I thought it might be fun to do some documenting of my publishing experience.  Now that it has been three weeks since I signed my contract with Limitless Publishing some fun things are in the works!

Let's recap:

Sept. 10 - received a partial request from Limitless
Sept. 14 - received a full manuscript request from Limitless
Sept. 20 - received an offer of a contract to publish Chasing Forever
Sept. 24 - received contract
Sept. 28 - signed contract and became part of the Limitless Publishing Team
Oct. 1 - received a cover questionnaire, book blurb sample request and synopsis request
Oct. 6 - a new title has been given—Raining Down Rules
Oct. 9 - pre-edits come in and I've been assigned an editor
Oct. 12 -sent back my pre-edits
Oct. 14 received my book release date!!!

Every publishing house has their standards for formatting a novel, and for the most part, I'm sure they are all fairly similar.  That being said, since I've never published a book before I was a little nervous about the pre-edits.  But they came in and, even though I did have a few things to change, it wasn't terribly scary—PHEW!  So here is some stuff I learned:

Double spaces after . ? ! are OUT.  Seriously?  Like when did this happen?  My thumbs are constantly tapping twice on the space bar and I CANNOT STOP IT!  In case you haven't noticed, even my blog posts are riddled with double spaces.  It is ingrained in my brain and my fingers type on autopilot.  I. Must. Resist.

Em Dashes—now I know how to make them!  I kind of felt stupid when I learned the keystrokes to do them, but now I know and will never forget.  On a Mac (which is what I'm currently using) it's SHIFT+OPTION+- and you magically get —.  For the PC you type the word--and then type the next word.

Alright does not equal all right.  So, apparently alright isn't grammatically correct, it's all right.  Check!

There are more than one type of "quotes".  As in smart (curly) quotes vs. straight quotes.  See example below.  What I want to know is how in the heck my novel had both types in it?!?!   Anyhow, they've all been corrected.

"That's a 'magic' sock." wrong (straight quotes)

“That’s a ‘magic’ sock.” right (smart quotes)

Get rid of filler words or over used phrases.  Writing is different than just plain talking.  When we talk we use filler words to help us make our point to to emphasize something.  In writing, we really don't need to do that.  So here are a few words and phrases to search for in your novels or to avoid altogether unless they are absolutely necessary (in dialogue sometimes it's okay):

that
get
just
really
feel

very
actually
make their way
began to / started to
for the most part
just then

There are others out there and check out these links for more, here, here & here.  Search through your novel to find these words/phrases and see if the sentence can work without it and if so, DELETE it.  Or, find another more appropriate word to use in its place.  (Did you notice how my words above sorta look like the bottle from I Dream of Jeannie?)

I was also assigned an editor for my novel which is really exciting.  She's scheduled my book to begin edits on December 9th and have them back to me by December 15th.  So in other words, I have to wait almost 2 months until I begin my real edits.

Patience grasshopper.

Now, one last thing.  Get ready for this...

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

Raining Down Rules will be released to the world and I couldn't be happier!!

Some ramblings on writing

When I first started writing about six years ago, I'm not going to lie—my writing was pretty atrocious.  I head-jumped, wasn't really aware of the proper format regarding speaking patterns and dialogue tags.  Let's not even talk about constantly switching between past or present tense.  Yeesh!  But you know what?  Every project I wrote—whether I finished it or not—got better.  So, my friends, I want to tell you a few things I've learned along the way.

1. You're writing will never get better unless you keep practicing.  Seriously.  The more you write, the more you learn the craft.  You can't expect to go to the Olympics and perform a triple lutz in an ice skating routine of you've never stepped on the ice and fallen on your bum at least once, right?  The same is true in writing.  Whether you're writing your first novel or your tenth, just the practice of writing alone will help you grow as a writer.
   
2. Just like practicing writing, reading in your preferred genre will help you grow in leaps and bounds.  Truly.  Let's say you've chosen to write an epic fantasy novel that includes dragons, faeries, water nymphs and an army of lightening riders who battle to save the kingdom of Valetross before it can be conquered by the evil army of the un-dead King of Scorchio—but all you read is contemporary romance.  Okay, so romance can be in almost every YA+ book, but it has it's time and place.  The more you read fantasy similar to what you are righting, the more your story will follow certain expected patterns.  You'll also learn what is acceptable in terms of novel length, character arcs, etc.
   
3. Get involved on Twitter and other social media outlets.  For Reals.  About six months ago I started actually using Twitter.  I'd been a member since September 2010, but never used it because I didn't understand how it worked.  Since becoming active on Twitter, I've not only secured a publishing contract for my first novel, but I've made some great online friends, learned even more about writing, found links on the internet to help build my craft and learned about so many FREE contests run by writers, agents and/or publishers.
   
4. Writing doesn't have to happen every single day.  Many people will tell you that in order to complete a novel, you must write every day.  I have found that nearly impossible.  If you're a writer who can push out a novel every 30-60 days, I applaud you—you have a gift!  I say write when inspiration hits.  Find a time you feel most productive and write then, you're writing will be better for it.  If you force yourself to sit and write when you're not feeling inspired, the writing will most likely show it.  It will feel flat and can lean toward the boring and not essential side of writing.  That's okay for word count, but when it comes down to it, word count isn't all that matters.

So now, I am off to read through an ARC for a review and then, maybe if inspiration hits, I'll do some writing of my own.