First of all, I must apologize for being behind in posting the contest winners; my trip to Argentina was jam-packed with excitement, adventure and very good coffee — until I came down with some sort of Hell Virus, which is only now releasing its taloned claws. But I can now breathe (most of the time) and so announce that the winners of ARCLIGHT and FATEFUL are Jime and Kathy! Congrats to you both. Now, for some assorted fun stuff —
As those of you who follow me on Twitter already know, I’m headed down to Argentina, specifically to Buenos Aires, for next week’s Feria Del Libro! Although I’ve traveled to Buenos Aires before, it was a very brief stay, and I’m excited to spend more time in the city and especially to meet readers there. I’ll be taking part in lots of appearances & interviews while I’m down there, but a few highlights:
So, like any other YA reader out there you are slavering to get your hands on Josin McQuein’s thrilling debut ARCLIGHT, right? I have not one but TWO copies to give away to the daring, the courageous and the bold. In addition, each of the two winners will also get a signed copy of my book FATEFUL, just because. What do you have to do to win? It’s easy: Just tweet a link to any of my blog posts during the past month (your pick) (not including this one b/c will form ever-repeating MOBIUS STRIP and we’ll be trapped in an Escher drawing forever) — that’s it! Both winners will be chosen at random next Thursday, May 2. Open to anyone; yes, I’ll ship internationally. You can obviously enter multiple times by tweeting multiple links – but if you also comment at the blog (in a vaguely on-topic fashion) with a link to your tweet, I’ll count that as an additional entry. SO MANY CHANCES TO WIN. Apparently I like all-caps today. Guess I just like contests. So on your marks, get set, go!
I’m asking as much as a reader as a writer, here: Have any of you guys dipped into the serial-novel format in your reading? As a cliffhanger addict, I admit, I’m very tempted … but I would love to first hear recommendations for romantic YA or New Adult serials you guys have found. (I’m open to other genres too; those are just the first ones that sprang to mind.) How do you find serial novels? What are the pros and cons for you, as a reader? What formats work best for you? And have you ever bought a paper copy of a serialized novel after it was already out?
Yes, this is a post with lots of questions and no answers, but consider these questions from one reader to another!
1) Vampires are turning scary again … at least, if NBC has their way. Jonathan Rhys Meyers (“The Tudors,” “City of Bones,” “Velvet Goldmine”) is starring in a new TV series version of “Dracula.”
You know who Michigan J. Frog is, right? You do, even if you don’t know it. He’s the frog in the immortal Warner Brothers cartoon who, when he’s alone with the guy who found him, jumps up and starts singing, “Hello, mah baby, hello, mah honey, hello, mah ragtime gaaaaaal –” But whenever the guy tries to show the frog off to someone, Michigan J. Frog just sits there, motionless, and goes, “BRRRRRAAAAAP.” Eventually, of course, this drives his finder mad.
Now, we’re not supposed to think Michigan J. Frog is being malicious. There’s no evidence in the cartoon that the frog cares what people think of the man who found him; I’m not sure he even really notices that guy. Sometimes Michigan J. Frog wants to do a little ragtime number with his top hat and cane. Sometimes he doesn’t. It’s as simple as that.
Today was one of the days where, as a writer, I was Michigan J. Frog (observed.) I got up early, applied butt to chair, opened my file and — after many hours — had managed to produce about 250 words worth keeping. So I took a break, ran some errands and tried again. Still, nothing. Remember the part in the cartoon where the guy picks up Michigan J. Frog and tries to make his little legs kick in a dance? Yeah. I had that kind of day.
However, I do not have “writer’s block.”
As Dan Wells (author of PARTIALS and all-around good egg) says, “Writing is the only profession where we can claim we can’t do our job because we’re ‘blocked.’ Plumbers never say, ‘Oh, I have plumbers’ block! I can’t work on your sink!'” I completely agree. Writer’s block is an illusion our profession has created, and an entirely self-defeating one. It takes a temporary problem (“had an off day”) and turns it into something epic, something mysterious, something uncontrollable — and, most dangerously, something that lasts and lasts. People often ask how to deal with writer’s block; I always say that you deal with it by not believing in it. If you’re stuck right now, you have a problem with your story, or you’re writing the wrong story, or something else in your life is messing with your head. (In my case, I suspect it was the last one; I knew my accountant and I would be meeting to do my taxes this evening, and that bit of tension and distraction is probably what kept me from completely sinking into the world of the SPELLCASTER prequel novella I’m working on right now.)
So today, I’m not thinking of myself as having some mysterious, unsolvable burden — writer’s block — that’s keeping me back from being productive. I’m thinking of myself as Michigan J. Frog (observed.) No song. No dance. Too many worries were watching me. But tomorrow I’m going to be back at my keyboard, and I bet this time I’ll need my top hat and cane.
(See how I sneaked that announcement about the novella in there? More details to come soon!)
If you guys haven’t seen it on Barnes & Noble’s web site, I’ve done an interview with them about the cover for SPELLCASTER — specifically, how the good people at Harper and I worked together to come up with a cover that we all loved:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/requesting-a-stronger-pose-for-a-powerful-heroine/
Take a look and let me know what you think? I would love to hear your thoughts on the process, and on the SPELLCASTER cover.
So, now that SPELLCASTER has been out in the world for a couple of weeks, I’ve heard feedback from readers — most of it happy, thank goodness! — but there’s one thing that keeps coming up that I have to admit I don’t see at all. Several reviewers have said that SPELLCASTER ends on a cliffhanger. To which I have to ask — really? Does that count as a cliffhanger?
** POTENTIAL SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT OBVIOUSLY**
I am an author who has written cliffhangers before, as those of you who have read HOURGLASS know. I live on your tears. I am without mercy and possibly without common humanity. (At least, when it comes to ending books. Day to day I am perfectly fine, at least if you are not between me and coffee, which frankly is a risk you took on yourself and for which I think I can’t be blamed.) Will I go there? Yes, I will.
And the thing is, I love cliffhangers, not just as an author but as a reader and viewer, too. The first cliffhanger that stole a shred of my soul was the third-season finale of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” which was back in the days before shows that weren’t soaps even did cliffhangers. We weren’t expecting it. At all. It just came along, and the ride we thought we were on was a roller coaster, and my friends and I actually sat there screaming at the TV for something like 5 minutes after it ended. Horrifying! And I wouldn’t trade that experience for the world. Some of my favorite endings for books and TV seasons since have been cliffhangers of the most daring variety: CATCHING FIRE, or the third season of “Lost”, or pretty much every single episode of the first season of “Alias.”
So as both a creator and fan of cliffhangers, I feel like, well, I know one when I see one. And I don’t think the ending of SPELLCASTER qualifies. No, not everything is completely resolved at the end, and you should have a very good idea of exactly what kind of mayhem is going to break out next. However, the core elements of the story are resolved. Nobody’s life hangs in the balance. We know where things stand romantically. Etc. The loose strings are just there to signal that, yes, STEADFAST is coming (March 2014!)
But I don’t know – maybe I’m too close to it. What do you guys think? If you’ve read SPELLCASTER, would you say it ends on a cliffhanger or not? And what cliffhangers have you loved (or not loved) over the years?
It’s SPELLCASTER day! It’s SPELLCASTER day!
This means the book is finally out there in the world, sitting on bookshelves or curled up in code, waiting to be bought or downloaded. (A few readers have revealed that they found early copies out there — but this is still the official day.)
I think before I was published I thought book release day would be marked by some sort of glitzy party; the reality involved more time spent in airports and on planes, as I was traveling out to my present location of Provo, Utah, to relax a little before tomorrow night’s event. (Have you checked out all the Dark Days events, the days and times, whether or not we’re coming to you? If not, check the News & Events page on my website to get the scoop!)
Right now I long to sink into the welcoming hotel bed and sleep for many hours, but first I have to deliver the final character sketch of the people you’re going to get to know in the SPELLCASTER trilogy. Now it’s time to get to know Mateo —
Mateo Perez has lived in Captive’s Sound his whole life, but he still feels like an outsider. This isn’t because his dad is a relative newcomer who’s only been around for 20 years; no, it’s because of his mother’s family, which for generation after generation has lived in this same small town.
And generation after generation, they’ve all succumbed to insanity — a strange madness that no modern psychologist or drug seems able to help. It begins with nightmares, and then a deep, unshakable conviction that the dreamer has seen the future. Over time each person either succumbs to despair or gives way to violence. The last was Mateo’s mother herself, who took a boat out onto the ocean and never returned.
Mateo’s dad has always told him that the “family curse” is nothing but small-town gossip. Mateo has tried hard to believe him and leads a fairly ordinary life, helping out in the family restaurant and doing his best to fit in at Rodman High. But now the dreams have begun, and no one — not his best friend Elizabeth, or his dad, or even the beautiful girl he’s just met, Nadia — can keep him from realizing that he truly is seeing the future. That means he’s doomed … because even if Nadia thinks she can help him, he knows from his family’s tormented past that anyone who gets too close will just be doomed too.
**
By the way, I’m loving the reviews some of you have linked to these posts — feel free to comment with more!
Last week I believed we were three weeks away from the SPELLCASTER launch. Wishful thinking, I guess, because the book will be out one week from today. One week! Yes, I can get done with my revisions and pack for tour in time, hahahahahaha oh please someone help me.
AHEM. Maybe we should continue with the character sketches for SPELLCASTER, moving onto our next character — our lead character — Nadia Caldani.
As this is a series about witchcraft, you will probably, perhaps, just maybe have picked up on the fact that the MC is a witch. But she won’t discover witchcraft in the first book, or unlock a secret power she never knew she had. Nadia not only knows she’s a witch but is prouder of it than anything else in her life. Yes, sometimes it’s tough, having to keep something so important a secret … but that’s one of the rules Nadia lives by. The First Laws of the Craft are sacred, and one of them forbids her to reveal the Craft to any woman who might betray it. Another tells her she may never speak of it, ever, to any man. Her dad and little brother remain oblivious to her powers, even though they’ve had to become closer these past few months.
Why? A few months before the start of the book, Nadia’s mother — her one and only teacher in the Craft — suddenly left the family. Not only does Nadia feel as hurt and abandoned as anyone else would by that, but she also has no further way to progress in her studying. She’s on the verge of this tremendous power, on more or less “graduating” to the level of witchcraft she’s worked for and aspired to all her life, and now she’s just … stuck. Although Nadia is determined to teach herself more, she questions how much farther she can go on her own. She wishes she could find another teacher but isn’t sure how to go about it. And she feels betrayed by her mom, by the friends who didn’t know how to stand by her when she was hurting, and maybe by the whole idea of love. (See, Nadia always thought of her parents as a perfect couple, people who had the kind of marriage everyone dreams of. Her friends always talked about how much her parents seemed to just like each other, while their moms and dads seemed to yell all the time. If that could fall apart, anything could fall apart, right?)
But then her father, hoping to give the family a fresh start, moves them all to the small town of Captive’s Sound, Rhode Island. Nadia doesn’t feel like trying to make new friends, or branch out at all. She’s going to power through her senior year, keep her head down and help take care of her brother Cole, who’s had a rough time since Mom’s been gone. Sounds like a plan.
Of course, that plan goes up in flames the second (I mean, the very second) she enters Captive’s Sound. Nadia immediately realizes a mysterious power is at work here — a magic infinitely greater and more dangerous than her own. She isn’t yet strong or experienced enough to face that, but she has to. There’s no one else.
And she meets Mateo, whose life has also been affected by magic in very different ways, and who may make Nadia believe in love all over again.
(Don’t worry: Mateo’s character sketch will be up soon!)