Angst & writing book #2

Once upon a time it was a dark and stormy night and I wrote a book. You can't tell from this cover but Jump/Drive, my book, won an award even from TheKindleBookReview.net for best YA from a new author in 2013 which I find pretty cool.

I have been very lucky and found quite a few very kind people who have enjoyed my book and the reviews are pretty nice as well, especially when they're from people I don't know. *grin* Hey, if you've read it and haven't reviewed it yet feel free to go drop me a few stars, the more the merrier, over on amazon why don't you? lol

I've started a second book with the same protagonists, Caleb, John, and Devon back in the town they'd lived in their whole lives. It was, and is, a sort of modern day Hardy Boys, a Scooby Doo & the Gang with a smaller cast and less Scooby & more gang... I've started that second book three different times three different ways, they're around here somewhere on a google drive, or dropbox, but the problem is as I write it all I can think about is this book and how well it did for me. Now, it didn't do Stephen King well for me. It didn't sell enough for me to buy a car, but it has garnered me some royalty payments from more than one country and that's fun right? But all I can think is what if book two isn't as good as the first book? Then I freeze and the words dry up and I can't do anything. Caleb and John sit around in the Prius just looking at each other wondering what to do next. Devon sits at the ice cream shop eating a banana split waiting for a call to come that never does. Adrian... well, he's not really in any of the other books so much. He's alive out there, just not necessary in future stories really.

So, I've decided, after being asked yet again, when the next book is coming out, that I can't handle it lol. That sounds funny because I should just shut up and write the next book. I'm not good at that though. I need to do something else. I need to write some other story, some other different story to sort of free myself up to revisit those characters that people really connected with. I'm a little scared to visit them so soon after the minor success, major for me as a new author, but in the scheme of things not really all that great.

So, I'm going to write another book, I've been going to write another book for a while. Now I know it's not going to be in the same series as the first book. It'll be new, no pressure that way, no expectations. Same target audience. It'll be Young Adult with male protagonists, no love triangle, no vampires, but maybe a little urban fantasy just because fantasy is cool right? I like to read it, and well... it's different from the first one and I need that right now.

Jump/Drive is now an award winning novel!

Huge thank-you goes out to the reviewers and judges of the The Kindle Book Review's 2013 Best Indie Book Award for choosing Jump/Driveas a winner in the Young Adult category.

I stayed up late Monday night into the morning of October 1st hoping to hear the results. I literally couldn't sleep from nerves and excitement. This means a lot to me. It's my first real effort at a novel and it would absolutely not have been the success it was without my beta readers, editors +Nan Allen and +Damian Trasler and since we know people really can sometimes judge a book by the cover I would be remiss if I didn't thank +Allen Simpson for his excellent photography and work he did on my cover.

I don't want this to turn too long and rambling but writing a book that deals with sexual abuse wasn't easy. Writing one where I tried to deal with it gracefully and truthfully and honestly without being prurient wasn't easy. But it was worth it. It was even worth it before it won an award... but I won't lie, knowing that the reviewers of TheKindleBookReview.net who read a TON of books each year selected it as one of their best? Yeah. That's pretty great.

Thank you all. Thank you readers. Thank you reviewers. Thank you to all of you who offered me feedback, suggestions, and help along the way. Thank you for believing in me when it got hard and I wasn't believing I was up to the task of writing a book anybody would want to read. It really means a lot to me, and so does Jump/Drive.

2013 Finalist...

My book Jump/Drive, a YA adventure that deals with deeper issues relating to sexual abuse in the backdrop of a natural disaster in a small town is a finalist in the 2013 Kindle Book Review Best Indie Book Rewards. Now THAT is a long sentence isn't it!

I got off work last night around 11PM and found the notification that I'm a finalist, me and four others, for winner of the Best Indie Book of 2013 by KindleBookReview.net. Obviously any idea of sleep went right out the window, car window as I still had to drive home... singing... and grinning like an idiot.

If you've read my book thank you. If you haven't and want to shoot me an e-mail. I'll bet I have a spare digital copy in kindle format I can share with you if you want. While I'd appreciate a review, an honest review so I can get better in the next book, I can't do more than ask for one. I'm asking. :) I'd love reviews.

October is when my book was released on amazon and in the past year it's been seen by a lot of eyes. I've had good reviews, luke-warm reviews (One guy didn't like that there was swearing in it) and the threat of what sounded like a bad review... that one hasn't materialized yet but I'm curious to see what he didn't like about it... unless it was all of it. That he can keep to himself.

In my sentence synopsis I said it "deals with deeper issues relating to sexual abuse in the backdrop of..." I'm not in love with that preposition. I don't think it's the right one even now. The important part of the book, and one that one of my reviewers on Amazon commented on was that there are two stories here. Just like a movie set in World War Two can be said to be about World War Two but not something you'd find in history books, I attempted to set this book in the setting of something bigger, something visible and interesting. So, while the book is about the natural disaster and what caused it and what happens next there is another story line about friends talking about something serious that happened a long time ago (in their lives it seems like a long time to them) and how they dealt, and deal with it then and now. That story is at least as important as the first one. I have a feeling if the book were made into a movie that story would be cut out.

I'm rambling. It's because I'm excited and look forward to seeing how this all turns out in October. To pass the time I'm going to read the other four finalists to see what I'm up against. Why don't you do the same? Check out the full list over on The Kindle Book Review site and grab a couple of them. Maybe mine if you haven't yet & don't want to e-mail me to ask for a copy? (Their links to the books are, I believe, like my first Jump/Drive link in this post, affiliate links. I say that not as a snark or anything, just letting you know. If you click those links you'll be supporting the site that's hosting the link. I appreciate any purchases made on Amazon after clicking one of my affiliate links as it helps me out & costs you no more than if you'd typed in the URL yourself. Times are tough lol. Ever nickel of amazon affiliate money helps keep me in reading material lol.)

Too much?

I'm in the planning stage of book 2, Hard/Drive, and am doing interviews of people for research and I'm getting ready to write it starting in April. My original idea for the story had two parts, and the more I think about it the A & the B story lines don't fit well together and they're both kind of big. I think I'm going to have to break my idea(s) into two books which is cool.

It means I'll have a working idea that I've done some thinking about and research on for book 3 that I can foreshadow in Hard/Drive. I like that idea. I'm finding seeds of Hard/Drive as I read Jump/Drive again to get things about the characters down in my notebook so I don't contradict myself in book 2. I'm not a fan of continuity errors in TV shows and don't imagine I'd like it any better in one of my books.

Who knew I'd have to re-read my book to know what happened or what color someone's hair is? I wrote the thing! How would I forget? Surprisingly, to me at least, I did.

What is Young Adult Literature?

I recently got a two-star review on Amazon for my Young Adult (YA) adventure story Jump/Drive and I have mixed feelings about the review. First and by degrees of magnitude ahead of any secondary feelings is how happy I am someone else almost read my book. Second is that the reviewer hadn't really read my book. That's a problem with amazon reviews that  is worse, I think than their belief that authors shouldn't review books.

The reviewer had bought my book for his eleven-year old daughter. I have to say that's not part of my target audience. She will, one day be my target audience but right now she's eleven and that's not, by my feelings, a young-adult.

Wikipedia says YA fiction goes from twelve to eighteen. I, personally, would say twelve is on the low end but there are some precocious twelve year-olds for whom it'd be okay. In those cases, the gray area cases, I'd hope the parent would read the book first, or at least be familiar with the author. I'm new. Not many people out there in the world are familiar with me yet so let me explain what I mean when I classify my books as YA.

Fairy tales are stories that help children deal with things that they'll encounter later. Fairy Tales teach them, through story, important life lessons in a way that doesn't appear to be teaching things. They teach good and evil. They teach that if you keep trying you can win out. They teach that we all have allies out there and if we accept their help they'll help us through hard times. Hell, Fairy Tales teach us that there ARE hard times but in a palatable way. In a way a child can understand without being threatened.

Young Adult literature does much the same thing but in a way that's closer to home. There aren't any witches or wizards in my stories. There may be step-parents. There aren't magic beans. There are guns. There aren't vampires. But there may be talk about sex. There are things that young adults, may well encounter in real life and I try and deal with them in a tactful, tasteful way that is realistic, sometimes idealized way to get the young adult thinking and talking about the subjects that are in my stories. Maybe the things in the book haven't happened to them, maybe they have. Maybe they've happened to a friend of theirs and they don't know how to deal with it or talk about it, or even what to think about it. I  hope my stories are a safe way for young adults to encounter teaching stories in a way that is fun, entertaining, and thought-provoking.

In Jump/Drive the story itself is about a hole that opens up in a small town and exposes a secret, underground, area beneath the town that the government was building for the population to retreat to in the event they needed to evacuate to somewhere safe. That's how the story starts out. The lesson in the book, the learning opportunity, is about abuse, sexual abuse, and what love is and how love, desire, and sex may be related but they're not the same thing.

My story has teenaged boys in it and they talk like teenaged boys talk. Their language isn't what you'd hope to hear in church, but is what you'd likely hear if you could hear boys that age talking to each other without an authority figure around them to stop them from swearing. The reviewer objected to the swearing and for that I'm truly sorry. Not sorry that it's in there. That's how they would talk. The dialog is the part of the book I think rings the most true. That's not just my opinion, but the opinion of everyone I've talked to about the book. Even those who object to the use of the swearing agree that while they don't like it, it is how they would talk. It's real.  I want my stories to be real. Fiction isn't just lies and made-up stories. Good fiction, which I hope my story is, is truth, real truth, told as if it were fiction so we can learn from it in the same way Fairy Tales teach our kids a truth by using witches, poison apples, and candy houses.

So, if you are someone from, my age range would be more ideally from 13 - 35, grab a copy of my book and read it, tell me what you think about it. Talk to your kids about it after they read it; let them know before they read it that they can talk to you about it if they want. But if you're not sure about a book, like really really sure, read it first.

Yeah, Author... that's me. HA! :)

Guess who is going to call himself an author now?

This guy. That's who.

My book Jump/Drive is available on amazon.com now for the kindle. The paper version will happen later. It's $2.99 for the e-book and if you're an amazon prime member you can borrow the book for free.

When a sink hole swallows up a small mid-western town's mall three teens decide to find out what happened and let the world know what happened in their small corner of the world.

Relationships are explored, old friendships deepened, and unlikely friendships formed in the backdrop of conspiracy and adventure created by the disaster. 

Adolescents bring all sorts of strange ideas to sex, love, and how those two are related, but when there is past sexual abuse in the picture the strange ideas can be even stranger and the at night, when the lights are off and they can't see each other's faces, they talk about it and learn things about themselves, and each other.

My book, Jump/Drive is back from the editor!

I'm going through edits and editor's comments now.

It's all very exciting but I can't imagine someone watching me would find it so. 

Observations:
1) I keep wanting to say, "But I meant..." and I don't. I do what the edits say because in almost every instance so far one of my beta readers mentioned it. Not multiples. Anything more than one beta reader commented on I fixed. Lots of things one beta reader would comment on I'd fix. But some I thought, "No, that's what I meant." Not arguing anymore. Fixing. It's not a baby to defend. It's a product to be improved.

2) Seeing lines marked out/deleted and then re-reading it has, in every case created an "Ooooh, that IS tighter. Why didn't I think of that?" Love killing those excess words! (Even when I want to say, "Yes, but that was there to indicate..." See #1 above lol)

3) I'm not going to get this done in a day. I got up at 4am and I'm beat.

Thank you to  for the editing and  for the cover. You're both helping make my book better and I can't thank you enough.

You've all seen the cover right? 

Edit Done -- Now off to the editor

I’ve done all the editing I can think of and had help from friends and family for it. I’m going to make one more pass through it and then I’m sending the book off to the editor.

I think it’s already better than it was when I started editing. No. That’s not true. I know it’s better than it was before. It’s tighter and I think I explained the things that needed explaining and cut the stuff that distracted. I’m pretty proud of the story as it stands.

I’m nervous and curious about what it will look like after the editor is done with it. I see two choices. It will either be as much better after she’s done with it as it is after this first round of editing which will make it from good to WooHoo! Or she’ll take one look at it, gasp at the greatness of my beta reader’s perception and our uncanny editorial skills and fall to her knees and say, “YES! Finally a writer worthy of my talents!” Then she’ll fix a word that needed a hyphen I left out and send it back to me with exhortations of my greatness. 

I’m not holding my breath for the second one.

In truth I was curious how I’d respond to people saying they’d found errors in my work and so far I’ve been very appreciative and grateful for their help. My beta-readers have been doing a lot of work to help me make the story better. I can’t thank them enough.

I’d like to thank Allen, April, Carol, Chris, Deborah, John, and Kit. All of them helped me at some point between my writing “The End” and the one I’m sending off to the editor this week.

I can’t stop being excited about having an editor either by the way. Who’d have thought I’d be excited to pay for a person to tell me what I’ve done wrong? All my friends out there willing to do it for free and I’m glutton enough to pay someone else to do it some more.

It just occurred to me I need a cover still!