Writers' Wednesday: Ruminations on Hosting an Exchange Student

Continued from Monday...reflections on the first week of hosting an exchange student.


First, it's fun. Experiencing a new person from another culture gives you a lot to talk about.


It's also interesting in ways you don't expect. Language barriers (even when your student speaks pretty fluent English) can lead to trouble communicating. Best to speak slowly and using common terms if possible.


It's exhausting. I'm sure this is partly the adrenaline of the whole change/experience of meeting someone new, but for us it's an added exhaustion because we don't have other kids. I'll be honest: having to consider someone else in your house (besides hubby, who can pretty much fend for himself by now) isn't something I'm used to. It's OK, and I'm getting used to it, but it's definitely a psychological change.


It makes you think about things you hadn't thought about before. Your own politics. Your own country and quirks about the culture. How big everything is here. Which qualities and thoughts and values you want to communicate to your student (and which are better left unspoken).


And this is only the beginning. I'm sure there's much more in store (and hey, maybe a story idea or two as well). To sign off, some pictures:

Outside her adopted American high school

Opening a Chinese fortune cookie for the first time!

At a wedding over the weekend

Volunteering at a local pet shelter (each student actually needs 10 hours of community service for the year)

Husking corn for the first time!

Monday Mentionables: Welcoming our Foreign Exchange Student

“To cement a new friendship, especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world, a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person, and cut across the accidents of place and time.” ~Cornelia Otis Skinner

Just 1 brief thing to mention today, because it's crazy back-to-school day for me today!!:


We welcomed our exchange daughter Hanna from Norway last Friday, and she's settled into our house wonderfully :) I'll have time Wednesday for a full report, so please come on back; until then, a picture from our first day together, at the local exchange program orientation:

Writers' Wednesday: A Word About "BitTorrent" Files

"Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom." ~Thomas Jefferson

Last night I was in a liquor store buying my favorite bottle of local Riesling (side note of trivia: it's made at the oldest winery in the country, which has this title only because it was never shut down during Prohibition because the monks needed wine for services).

I noticed the guy behind the counter (probably in his mid-late 50s) had an eBook reader lying open. I asked him about it - it was a Kindle, and he'd just gotten it for his birthday 2 weeks ago. He didn't ask for it, but he's such a voracious reader that his family chipped in and bought it for him. I asked how he liked it - he loves it! Wonderful. So we're chatting a bit about eBook readers (I haven't yet mentioned I'm an author) and he says with a smile, "Well, you know, you don't really have to pay for an ebook at all. You can download them for free at bittorrent sites."

Red Flag! Red Flag! Alert Alert Alert!

In case you don't know, bittorrent sites are websites where you can download files of information (books, music, movies, etc). Usually they've been uploaded by someone who bought the file legally and is now sharing it with the online community. THESE SITES ARE ILLEGAL IN MANY CASES. They are giving away copyrighted files and depriving authors of their sales and royalties. Sure, millions of people do it, unfortunately. But that doesn't make it right. Every time I find a bittorrent site with my books on it, I try to contact the website owner and tell them to remove the file, which they always do (they have to, legally). But I can't spend all my time policing the web.

So I said to the man, "You know, those sites are illegal. Authors don't get any royalties when their books aren't sold and are just given away online."

He turned a little red and said, "Yes, I know. You're right." I took my wine and left.

So please be aware of these illegal sites, and spread the word about them. Artists work awfully hard to create an original work. They deserve to be rightly and legally financially rewarded for that.

Monday Mentionables: The World According to Marilyn Monroe

Today, for no particular reason, I thought I'd share some famous quotations uttered by Marilyn Monroe. The first has been enjoying populaity on Facebook, but the others are a little lesser-known. Still, pearls of wisdom, I think. Enjoy!


"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together."

"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring."

"If you're gonna be two-faced at least make one of them pretty."

"Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world."

"Ever notice how "What the hell?" is always the right answer?"

"We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets."

"It's not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on."

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition."

"I want to grow old without facelifts. I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I have made."

"Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you."

"I don't want to make money, I just want to be wonderful."

Friday Fun Facts: A Collection of Ramblings Today...

Random facts on this Friday...

1. I finished and submitted my novella for Samhain's Just Romance Springtime Anthology - it's called "La Forma Perfecta" (Spanish for "The Perfect Shape" which, yes, does have significance within the story).

2. I thought this article about a reclusive 104-year old zillionaire heiress was SO interesting. How many stories are wrapped up there?

3. A recap of one agent discussion at RWA (thanks to my writing friend for sending on the link) revealed a yen for more contemporary romance (yay!), less focus on paranormal, and a desire for authors to have some kind of web presence established.

4. My Samhain royalties for July were not nearly as high as for June, but still a nice amount, which means those ebooks are still selling after my One Night in Boston free Kindle push back in May.

5. Speaking of ebooks, I sold my mother-in-law on the Nook. She reads so many books a year, all hard-cover and at $20+ a pop, that the Nook was a natural solution for her :)

6. My goal for the rest of August is to finish another revision of my YA and start querying agents. Because as soon as school starts up again, I'm on the crazy treadmill of super-long days and paper-grading til all hours of the night.

Happy Friday! Have a great weekend!

Writers' Wednesday: The Agent Search

"The first step in blogging is not writing them but reading them." ~Jeff Jarvis

OK, I'm not really going to talk ALL about the agent search today. If you're currently looking for an agent, though, you should know that the best thing you can do is lots and lots of research. Make sure the agents you're querying for your project actually rep that kind of work; find out who else they rep; do your best to figure out if that person is a good match for you. Do you (and they) like a hands-on relationship with your writing? Or less so?

There are many good agent blogs to read on a regular basis; these folks give you tons of insight to their world, and you really can learn a lot from them. Two I recommend:

Nathan Bransford
Kristin Nelson

And finally, though I don't read her blog on a regular basis, I found this post on Jenny Bent's to be very interesting. It's actually by one of her interns and talks about why so many queries are rejected (it's not why you think!)

And why all this discussion of agents today? Well, I'm in the final revision stages of my YA novel and am taking some time now to put together the list of agents I want to query for it. I'll keep you posted!

Monday Mentionables: Book Signings in Review

Two appearances last week, both different and both a lot of fun.


The first was my 3rd annual appearance at a local book club. They read my book for a select month each summer and then I come in to discuss it. It's mostly retired-age people, and they (and I) always get a kick out of the whole thing. It's really neat to talk about your book - your characters, your plot choices - with readers. I love their questions and their observations too.


The second was a reading/discussion at a local library. While not very well attended (about 6 people), the ones who were there asked good questions and were mostly writers, so they were interested in my process/the publishing industry as well. Even better, the librarian asked if I'd be interested in coming back to run a half-day writing workshop - and how much I charged! I've said it so many times: you never know how networking and making public appearances will affect you later down the road. Do it! Take advantage of people who want to hear about your books and your writing!


A couple of pics:

With the lovely host librarian

Reading from One Night in Napa

Writers' Wednesday: Two Upcoming Appearances

I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date!....

Two, actually:

Tonight I'm the guest author at the Glen Haven Book Club, for the 3rd year in a row. I'll be discussing my third One Night book, One Night in Napa, with a group that reads select books each summer and then has a discussion in a historic local schoolhouse. Really looking forward to it!

And tomorrow, I'm doing a public reading/signing at the Phillips Free Library in Homer, NY, at 7 pm. Think I'll be talking more generally about my publishing experience, and showing off my e-reader!

Pictures to follow on Friday...

Monday Mentionables: A Nook, Some Books, and a Teenager Arriving Soon...

"I have never been in any country where they did not do something better than we do it, think some thoughts better than we think, catch some inspiration from heights above our own." ~Maria Mitchell

Well, I've spent the weekend playing around with my Nook, and I pretty much love it! It's very easy to use and easy to read on. The screen is well-lit and I especially like the fact that I can change the font size if I need to. It seems like that's one great feature, especially for anyone who reads large print books or just doesn't want to squint at smaller print. I also like the fact that it marks where's I've left off reading (a virtual bookmark, say). Mostly, though, it's really convenient. I can definitely picture myself downloading books to take places to read, instead of lugging around an armful (or bagful) of books.

*****

Three weeks left of summer vacation - where did it go? And why do I still have so many things on my To-Do list?? 3 of those things are polish my YA/begin submitting to agents; polish my short-sweet work to submit to Samhain's anthology call; and heavily rework Entwined, with the goal of submitting to Samhain. I've started the last one over the weekend and am doing some major work, to both characters and plotline. Right now it seems to be going OK...but boy oh boy is it a lot of work!

*****

The other thing that's happening in about 3 weeks is that the foreign exchange student we are hosting for the year arrives! Yes, that's right: hubby and I will have a teenager in our house for the next 10 months. She's from Norway, and her name is Hanna. I think (I hope) it will be a great experience for all of us, but YES, there are going to be changes around here!

Will keep you posted...

Friday Fun Facts: Talking About the B&N Nook

"The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of television." ~Andrew Ross


Reminder that The Long and the Short of It's 3rd Anniversary Party is going on this whole month, and by participating you can win some great prizes, including a Barnes & Noble Nook eReader!

Speaking of the Nook, I just bought one this week. Very excited! I decided, after 3 years of publishing in the eBook industry, I should really have one so that I could bring it to signings and readings and talk about it.

But which to buy? Of course, there, Amazon's Kindle. There's also the SONY eReader. There's the Nook. And some lesser-well-known ones as well (here's one site that compares them nicely). I made my decision based on a few factors, including reviews, price (the Nook comes in either a $149 Wi-Fi version or a $199 3G Wi-Fi version, which is pretty squarely in the competitive $$ market), and ease of buying/sharing/storing books. If you buy a Kindle, you have to purchase your books from Amazon, in their format. With some of other eReaders, Nook included, you're able to read different formats of eBooks and thus purchase/download from various sites. That, for me, was a big seller. Oh, and the Kindle is "Temporarily Unavailable" until September.

So the Nook it was! I was thrilled because I ordered it around 10 pm on Tuesday night, and it arrived (standard shipping) Thursday around noon. I had it charged, registered with B&N and was playing around with it by that evening.

I'll be back next week with a full user-review!

Writers' Wednesday: Guest Blogging at Samhain Publishing

Hi, everyone! I'm blogging over at Samhain today about the joys of summer and my dream that it might go on forever....

Want to know the details? Please come on over and see me, and maybe leave a comment too!

Monday Mentionables: A New Book Trailer

I'm gearing up for a promo push when Summer's Song releases in print November 1st, and part of that included finally making a trailer for it. I've made trailers for every other book I've written, and a few for fellow authors as well. This time around, though, I found myself going the super-simplistic route, with very few pictures and just straight-forward text. I also included a couple of reviews.

While there's no hard evidence that trailers lead to book sales, it cost me little in materials (less than $20 to download royalty-free music) and only about 2-3 hours in labor. I'll post it on a number of free websites and my author loops, as well as on some low-cost advertising sites I pay for. All in all, if it gets my name in front of a few more people, that's enough for me!

Let me know what you think...

Writers' Wednesday: Win a Nook!

Hey all, The Long and the Short of It Review site is celebrating its 3rd anniversary (which I can't believe, since I remember when Marianne and Judy began it!).

So they're holding a scavenger hunt for the month of August - find the "Nook" graphic on participating authors' sites, and you can win tons of great prizes...a Nook (eBook reader) is the grand prize of all, and they're giving away 3 of them!

Click on the graphic below for more information:

Monday Mentionables: Writing Sweet

I'm off to a remote lake location for a couple of days, which means no Internet, but I'll have my laptop and hope to do some writing. What am I working on now? A "short" work (20K words or so) for submission to Samhain's Just Romance anthology. This is actually the first story of this length that I've written, and it's interesting how it's different from either a true short story at 5K or a full-length novel at 60K+.

Mostly, I like the word count limit. I'm finding that it forces me to stick to a tight storyline and character development, because I have to accomplish a whole story in 1/3 of the space it usually takes me. It's also a challenge, though, getting the characters to fall for each other and have good, honest conflicts as well. Since it's a sweet romance - no sex allowed, which is what I write anyway - there's a whole lot of building up of intimacy and tension.

And speaking of that, I found myself looking up video clips of "The Age of Innocence" - did you ever see that movie? Ah, I loved it. One of the best portrayals of love denied, and the building up of sexual tension is so, so yummy. Here's the trailer:



See you in a couple of days! Fingers crossed that I finish my story in the meantime...

Friday Fun Facts

Fun Fact #1: I finished the second draft of my YA novel this week - up to 60K words, which I'm really pleased with. Still some rough spots, but I'll let it sit for a week or two and then go back and tackle a third revision. Now I'm switching gears and working on a short, sweet-heat submission for Samhain's "Just Romance" anthology.

Fun Fact#2: I just added a reading/Q&A for 7:00 pm on Thursday, August 12th, at the Phillips Free Library in Homer, NY. I'll read from a couple of my books and talk about my experiences getting published. And I'll be selling and signing books, of course!

Fun Fact #3: On this date in 1984, Vanessa Williams resigned as Miss America, after Penthouse said it planned to publish photos of her. Remember that? I do - very controversial. I was somewhat disappointed - not so much in her (she didn't pose while she was reigning as Miss America) but in the fact that she was pressured to step down because of something she'd done in her past.

Have a great weekend!

Writers' Wednesday: Making a Name for Yourself

"Success doesn't come to you; you go to it." Marva Collins

It bears repeating: authors need to market themselves. I don't care whether you're a first-time small press debut author or a NY Times best-seller. You need to spread the word about your books, and you need to interact with the public and reach your readers. Best-selling authors, of course, have a little advantage when it comes to a reliable readership. But even new and small-press authors can reach more people by being VISIBLE.

And why am I talking about this? Last weekend I spent Saturday at a booth at the local craft fair in my childhood hometown. It's my 3rd time participating, and I've always had pretty good sales - yes, because I grew up there and people get a kick out of owning a book by someone they knew when we were both 10. But also because even those who don't know me are fascinated by a hometown-girl-turned-published-author.

This past Saturday, I actually sold out of the books I brought with me - 34 total sales for the day, which is a record for me. Better than that, I got contacts from 3 community members who want me to come to their groups and give readings or talks. Of course I said yes (you should too, even if it makes you nervous!), and I can't wait. Even if you aren't the most outgoing person in the world, if you've published a book, you can get up in front of a group of people and read from it. You can talk about your own experiences getting published

And every time you meet another person, you meet another potential new reader. Many of those new readers become regular readers. You don't ever know...so get out there! Participate in signings, in readings, in craft fairs. You don't have to shout from the rooftops or even peddle your books to every person that walks by. But if you have a chance to set up a booth or a table or appear for a few minutes one night to a local community group, take advantage of it! It's all about growing your name.

Good luck!

Friday Fun Facts

Fun Fact#1: I finally put down Thirteen Reasons Why, a YA novel I was trying so hard to get through. Got halfway and finally gave up. Why? Whiny, unsympathetic main character (and I feel like a schmuck saying that, since she's dead from the start) and unbelievable events that are supposed to make me feel sorry for her. I felt like asking the author, really? You think every teenager doesn't go through all this crap? Talk to some teens or spend time in a high school before writing about what really causes them angst. Sorry. Maybe some of you out there liked it. I just couldn't.

Fun Fact#2: I'm spending tomorrow at the BIG craft fair in my (childhood) hometown, the one where everyone turns out with their extended family and you see people you haven't seen in at least a year, maybe 10 , and you find out all the latest gossip. I love going because I don't live there anymore, so I get to visit with childhood friends. Plus they treat me like a local celebrity, which is kind of nice too.

Fun Fact #3: I opened my royalty statement from Samhain earlier this week to discover that yes indeed, the Kindle Freebie promo that featured my novel One Night in Boston back in May definitely translated into June sales! Very exciting...not only did my sales for that book go up, but for my backlist as well. In fact, I've never seen those kinds of numbers on my royalty statements before, so I did a little jig of glee. I also sent off an email thanking the folks at Samhain for choosing my book as one to feature, since it's not one of the "hot" ones they're known for. One of the marketing staff wrote back and told me my book had the highest number of free downloads of any they featured. So, very cool!

Writers' Wednesday: A Word About Voice

You hear it a lot in the writing world: authors should develop a strong voice. A distinct voice. Their own voice, above all. For some, that's easy. For others, it's a struggle. What is voice, exactly? Simply put, it's a writer's individual style. It how an author uses language to bring to life his/her characters and storyline. While voice can be learned and developed, I also think it's one of those things that is naturally inherent to really brilliant writers.

The voice I'm loving right now is that of YA author John Green. Looking for Alaska is wonderful - if you haven't read it, you should. Paper Towns is also good, though I didn't think the story was as strong. And I'm only partway into Will Grayson, Will Grayson (cowritten with David Levithan). In all 3 books, though, Green's voice is distinct and brilliant enough to make me green with envy. His male first-person protagonists come to life in the very first pages, and he develops all his characters, really, in just a few brush strokes.

A couple of examples:

On the second page of the Prologue of Paper Towns, Quentin describes Margo, his next-door neighbor and earliest crush. Look how at once, we get a sense of who 10-year old Quentin is AND the kind of girl Margo is, as well:

I always got very nervous whenever I heard that Margo was about to show up, on account of how she was the most fantastically gorgeous creature that God had ever created. On the morning in question, she wore white shorts and a pink T-shirt that featured a green dragon breathing a fire of orange glitter. It is difficult to explain how awesome I found this T-shirt at this time.

And from Will Grayson, Will Grayson, on the first page, we get a terrific account of Tiny Cooper, one of the protagonist's closest friends. Again, it takes Green just a paragraph or two to establish who these guys are:

Tiny Cooper is not the world's gayest person, and he is not the world's largest person, but I believe he may be the world's largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world's gayest person who is really, really large. Tiny has been my best friend since fifth grade, except for all last semester, when he was busy discovering the sheer scope of his own gayness, and I was busy having an actual honest-to-God Group of Friends for the first time in my life, who ended up Never Talking to Me Again due to two slight transgressions:

1. After some school-board member got all upset about gays in the locker room, I defended Tiny Cooper's right to be both gigantic (and, therefore, the best member of our shitty football team's offensive line) and gay in a letter to the school newspaper that I, stupidly, signed...

Honestly, any writer, experienced/published or not, would be smart to read and study John Green's style. Great voice. Just great.

Monday

Monday's Mentionables: A Word on Submissions

"Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any." ~Orson Scott Card

Happy Monday! Over the weekend, I had a book signing at my local Borders - a little light, since it's a big travel/grad party weekend, but it did give me a chance to chat with my fellow authors that I rarely see, except 2-3x a year at these events. What did I find out?

Samhain is currently taking submissions for a "Springtime Just Romance" anthology (yes I probably should have known this, since they're my publisher, but I hadn't checked their sub page in a while). Interestingly enough, they want "sweet heat" only for this one. This, of course, is great for me, since that's what I write, but interesting for Samhain, since what they're known for, and what they sell, is hot-hot-hot erotic/menage. I guess maybe they're trying to reach out and appeal to a different/wider audience, but I just wonder how successful that will be.

Anyway, the submission info is here. They're looking for stories in the 20-25K range, with a submission deadline of November 1, 2010. So get working, or pull out those stories and polish them up!

*****

And in other interesting submission news (thanks to Kristin Nelson's blog) Tin House Books is requiring all authors submitting unsolicited ms. to include a receipt for a recent bookstore purchase. How great is that?! Apparently they're concerned that many aspiring writers aren't reading as much as they should be - or at all. You can read more about it here...very interesting!