2015 was a wild, jam-packed year.
It left me tired, and breathless, and ever so grateful.
And as 2015 was winding down I was finally able to finish the  draft of THE BEAUTY OF DARKNESS, Book 3 of The Remnant Chronicles! Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Milestone achieved!
Here's a Flipagram (My first one! Are you on Flipagram?) which gives you a quick glimpse of 2015--and what it's like writing a first draft while a whole LOT of other stuff is going on!
Deep. Breath.
THANK YOU to all of you who helped make 2015 an amazing year.  I loved that I got to meet so many new fans, and reconnect with old ones! And continued thanks for your blogs, tweets, instagrams, book tubes, and all the ways you spread the word about The Remnant Chronicles and embraced Lia, Rafe, and Kaden's world. YOU are the best.

And now 2016 is starting out with a bang!
MORRIGHAN, my e-novella which is a prequel to The Remnant Chronicles, is out on January 12!!! I'm very excited!  It's an ebook and there are lots of places where you can preorder and download it. My publisher has more information HERE on the remnantchronicles.com site.

I hope you love this tale the way I do. It started out as a short story, but then the characters of Morrighan and Jafir took hold of my heart, and a hundred pages later I was still engrossed in their world and lives. I learned their secrets, their hopes, and their sorrows even as I wrote the story. It was both heartbreaking and a joy to watch it unfold.

MORRIGHAN, is about the girl Morrighan, who is the namesake of Lia's kingdom, and also about Jafir, a boy from a clan of scavengers, two young people trying to survive on their own terms in a world that has been devastated by disaster. When they meet, history is changed forever, both for them and all the kingdoms of the Remnant yet to come.

Before borders were drawn, before treaties were signed,
before wars were waged anew,
before the great kingdoms of the Remnant were even born
and the world of old was only a hazy slate of memory told in story and legend,
a girl and her family fought to survive. And that girl’s name was Morrighan.
​

 So to celebrate a new year and two new books on the horizon, I think it's time for a giveaway! Don't you?  
Enter for a chance to win one prize package that includes:
One signed paperback of
​The Kiss of Deception
One signed map/poster
Remnant Chronicles Stickers

Go #TeamLIA!

Thank you for marking your calendars for January 12 and the e-novella MORRIGHAN!

​Happy New Year all! I hope the coming year brings you peace and the best kinds of challenges.

​XO

Anonymous asked:

How do you know when an idea for a book is "The One"? How can you tell it's worth pursuing, that you won't tire of it halfway through?

My reply on Tumblr

Getting ready to shove off for ALA, but before I do . . .

I've been tagged by Alyson Noel!
Alyson is the #1 New York Times Bestselling author of not one, but three amazing series—The Immortals, Soul Seekers, and Riley Bloom-- plus several standalones, plus a spanking new series she's working on, Unrivaled, (yes, I am in awe of her talents) and she's tagged me in a Blog Roll where writers share a little about their work and writing process. I always love to hear how other writers approach writing. Here are my responses:

  1.      WHAT AM I WORKING ON –

I’m currently being torn in fifty different directions, which is the usual state when you have one book coming out, and another you’re trying to put to bed.  I’ve been doing quite a bit of blog writing and interviews for the imminent pub day of The Kiss of Deception.  At the same time, my revisions for the second book, The Heart of Betrayal are almost due. Throw in a little travel and I am working on juggling! It's a tricky part of the process. I haven’t dropped a ball—yet.
Oh wait, what's that rolling away . . .

2.      HOW DOES MY WORK DIFFER FROM OTHERS OF ITS GENRE?

Well to say too much would be spoilerish, but I had one reviewer call The Kiss of Deception, genre-bending, which I think is an accurate way of saying, my work doesn’t necessarily fit into one category of fiction. I write the story I want to write, without regard to genre.  Really though, I think every writer’s work stands out in one way or another, because they tell the story the way only they can.  Every voice and perspective is different even within a genre.

3.      WHY DO I WRITE WHAT I DO?

A character, an idea, a voice, a premise—something grabs hold of me and doesn’t let go. I have to write about it. Writing is a journey for me, as much as it is for the reader. It makes me think, wonder, ponder, and explore all kinds of things. I answer questions for myself, and I discover new ones I  didn't even know existed. While I stick to a teen perspective, the books I write have been all over the map--from contemporary realism, magical realism, romance, and science fiction, to fantasy. It's the character and premise that decides the genre, not me.

4. HOW DOES MY WRITING PROCESS WORK?

 My process is always evolving. I’m a writing craft junky and I can never resist hearing how another writer does it.  I usually have at least half a dozen “scenes” in my head when I begin, but I’m not always sure how they will fit together or if they will even all make it into the story. I will kind of sketch out a beginning, middlish, and an end, and other scenes fall into place as I write, but sometimes a character or idea throws me a curve and scenes get thrown out and new ones develop.  Post it notes for scenes on a big board are very helpful for me. No matter what my process though, the time-honored BIC, butt-in-chair, is what saves the day. I live and die by daily word counts. To the left you can see a chart I keep. It is like clocking in for me.  If I didn’t have goals, I would set aside my writing every time I hit the Writing Valley of Doubt. Worth saying again: Butt-in-chair. Keep going. For me, that’s the most important thing to remember.

5.     HOW DOES MY WRITING PROCESS NOT WORK?

One thing I’ve learned is that writing begets writing.  Sometimes I am forced to step away, or I play hooky for a few days.  It is like pulling teeth for me to get back into my writing brain. Hence, a daily word count chart helps to keep me going and avoid that pitfall--even if I only write a few words.

Now it’s my turn to tag!

Lynne Matson – Lynne is a debut author and her first book NIL, came out in March. I loved it. Besides the characters being trapped on a mysterious island, the romance was so—.  I don’t want to spoil it, but trust me, you need to read this one! Let's hear what Lynne has to say . . .

It's the last day of January and that means the last day of #Jan1000.  I posted here about #Jan1000
but the essence was a commitment to write every day.  Keep the momentum going!

As I said in my post, it's hard to have a "group goal" because all of our writing and personal lives are different, but boy did the words fly in January!  Some of us wrote ginormous words a day, some of us only a few, but ALL goals were celebrated.

I lost a week of writing (yeah, life happens) but without #Jan1000 I gasp to think where I might be.  So THANK YOU to all my fellow writers who kept the momentum going.  Want to join us in February?  Just check in on Twitter with the hashtag #Feb1000.

Remember, all our goals are different.  Yours might be a 1000 words a minute (yes, we hate you ; ) or a 1000 words a day, or maybe a 1000 words for the month--whatever it is, we'll keep the momentum going.  Writing begets writing.

Now, onward to . . .

#Feb1000

Can you believe it?  2013 is almost over.  I've been cleaning up after the holiday rush, and I'm so ready to jump back into my WIP.  I had to set it aside for all the hoopla of the holidays which was fun--and during that time fun things arrived in the mail which I didn't have a chance to talk about . . .

ARCS!  Beautiful glorious arcs!

And something else too:
THE FINAL COVER ART!!!
I'm dying to share it! It is so completely--!

My lips are zipped.  My publisher will be revealing it soon. More news to come about when and where!

(But I LOVE it.)

In the meantime, I'm focusing on the WIP (book #2) On Twitter a few of us writers are jumping into January with a commitment #Jan1000, which for me means at least a thousand words a day every day.  Yes, every day. One truth I've learned is that writing begets writing.  Sometimes it's hard to get the writing engine warmed up, but once you do, it's hard to stop the wheels from racing. 

I actually hope (and expect) to write more than a thousand words a day, but that is my minimum goal. I like having goals that don't overwhelm me. Yep, bite off a sweet chunk that won't choke you!

Trying to do a "group" shared goal can be difficult because each of our writing lives are different.  We all have different kinds of commitments which include day jobs, children, other books that need editing while we try to write a new one, etc.  So #Jan1000 might mean a thousand words a day for one writer, like it does for me, or a thousand words a week, a month, or an hour (for you over-achievers.) But it is a goal!  And I need those.

If you do too, join us for #Jan1000 and make a dent in that writing project.

Bring it on 2014!

Now that Book One of YetToBeNamedTrilogy (though I have a strong preference!) is off for copyedits, I have spent the last few weeks:
1. Resting
2. Nesting
3. And just this past week, actually digging in and writing.

But first things first.  The Resting.  I went on a week long road trip through central California with my hubby.  Get away from it all! But when you carry this whole book world you've created in your head you kind of don't want to forget it--the world just keeps whispering ideas to you.  And sometimes your book makes you braver. 

Yep.  On mile 700 down this one lane country road that seemed to go no where but my husband kept insisting had to lead somewhere and I watched our gas tank get lower and our cell phones die, I thought of my character and the far scarier unknown I put her through and tried to see this endless, nameless road as almost sweet in comparison. Ahem. Good wife that I am. It WAS lovely once I resigned myself to the possibility of running out of gas and spending the night in the middle of nowhere.  And hey, we at least had food--nearly a whole bag of goldfish and six bottles of wine we had picked up at a winery.  We wouldn't starve.  Quite. If the local beasts didn't get us first.

Ah, but at last we did reach civilization. I love chickens.  Something about their attitude. 
"Hey!  Yeah, you!  What do you think you're doing here?" 
"You think she's got any food, Gladys?"
"Nah, just a worthless lookie-loo."

(Admit it.  You can see little thought bubbles over their heads too.)

Later, we came upon another very lovely sight:

The very awesome indie store, The Book Loft in Solvang, CA.  They have a wonderful YA section and I bought one of my faves I had already read as an ebook but wanted the hardcopy too.

And they had The Jenna Fox Chronicles, so I signed those too. They didn't even ask for my ID : )

On our little getaway I also got some reading done.  That is part of
My Nesting:

Whenever I start a new book, there is research and "stuff" to get in order before I actually dig in.

My reading included both fiction and nonfiction on ***** (can't tell you subject yet--don't want to spoil it) to see how it might play out in my character's world--or the new one she is heading into.

But another book I can tell you about--not too spoilery.  A History of Weapons by John Bryan.  Yeah, this is the "gore" part.  It is amazing the weapons we have created over the centuries to hurt our fellow humans.  This one on the right is particularly gruesome.  It's called a Mancatcher.  If you don't want to kill the person you're trying to subdue, you just push this around their neck.  If they struggle against you, it ain't very pretty.  Can you imagine? No, you don't want to go there.

Okay, on to less gruesome nesting.  There is the necessary "cleaning."  Yes, take a look now at this clear desk because it won't look this way again for a LONG while.  Though I hate clutter in my life, when I am in the throes of a book it somehow seems a necessity.  Papers on papers and files all over my desk and multiple computers, books, and coffee cups, and somehow, I know where everything is.   But when I start a new book I like everything to at least start with a clean slate.

Part of my nesting is drawing maps, floorplans, cities, lanes, roads, etc. so I have a firm grasp on my character's world.  Of course as the story progresses, these maps are revised to accommodate new twists and turns.  I need a new road?  City? Country?  Voila, it is there! I also look for pictures of characters and setting and pin them to a bulletin board behind my desk.  I love Pinterest for this! Lots of great stuff there.

And finally there is the Digging In. 
Butt in Chair.  Just Write.  Routine.  Get the words down.
That's what I am doing now.  Slow going at first, but writing begets writing and I know I will pick up speed.

Oh, and my nice clean desk is already a mess. But that's okay. Bring it on.

PS  The first and last pictures in this post are ones I took in France a few years ago that are among my writing inspirations for the setting.

I don’t usually participate in memes but I couldn’t resist this one.  Opening lines! 

There are so many reasons opening lines grab, haunt, shake me, or send a little shiver up my spine so that I’m compelled to keep reading. 

It might be an intriguing premise, or a character I have to know more about,  an incredible voice, or language that is simply irresistible.  Here are some opening lines from both recent and older books that I have loved and made me keep turning the pages.

What are some of your favorites?


I didn’t know how long I had been in the king’s prison.  The days were all the same,
except that as each one passed, I was dirtier than before.  
--The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

Now come the mousies nosing out their hole, thinks Kuhru as he wipes fresh bone marrow from his snout. Three pretty little mousies.  Humans.  Females.  Ripe and soft and full of warm blood.
–Black Hole Sun by David Macinnis Gill.

The circus arrives without warning.  No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. 
It is simply there when yesterday it was not.
–The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

There is a certain kind of girl the goblins crave.  You could walk across a high school campus and point them out: not her, not her, her.
–Goblin Fruit by Laini Taylor

I am dying: it’s a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of a cello: dying.
–Surrender by Sonya Hartnett

The sirens are louder than I anticipated.  Not that I ever in a million years anticipated sirens at the beginning of all this.  Otherwise, obviously, I never would have agreed to it. 
Hindsight.  It’s a bitch.
–My Life Undecided by Jessica Brody

Being dead became fashionable approximately forty-five seconds
after Samantha “the Divine” Devereaux came back from summer break.
–Dead is the New Black by Marlene Perez

The screw through Cinder’s ankle had rusted.
–Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Here’s the thing: I was probably gonna write a book when I got older anyways.  About what it’s like growing up on a levee in Stockton, where every other person you meet has missing teeth or is leaning against a liquor store wall begging for change to buy a beer.
–We Were Here by Matt De La Pena

There was a hand in the darkness and it held a knife.
–The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I have been in love with Titus Oates for quite a while now—which is ridiculous since he’s been dead for ninety years.  But look at it this way. In ninety years I’ll be dead, too,
and then the age difference won’t matter. 
–The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean

    The last several months have been crazy.  I've spent much of it tucked back in this corner of my yard--yes, even in winter with a blanket wrapped around me--writing on my laptop. 

    Being out there gave me an "away" spot where phones, doorbells, and the internet weren't distractions, but I was still near my research and notes in my upstairs office if I needed to get to it.  I had a tight deadline which meant that I had to write every day and all day.  I not only had to finish the first book in a new trilogy, I had so many details to work out for how this whole new world worked. Details!

    The surprising thing was, I found I loved writing even more when I wrote this way--non stop. There was less agonizing over what came next.  The juices were always churning. Except for a few days around Christmas, I never missed a single day of writing from November through April.  That was almost 6 months of non-stop writing!  And pretty much all day long.

    For me this was a huge leap.  But I definitely had to make some changes in how I approached my writing.  For one thing I increased my daily word count goals to 1200-1500. I know for some writers that is nothing, but for me that is a lot.

    Another thing I did was NOT incessantly revise as I wrote.  I had a habit of spending as much or more time revising each day as I did writing.  That was a hard habit to break.  I like to see things pretty and perfect and my words to sparkle and they definitely weren't doing that.  Also, revising is so much more fun than heading into uncharted territory. But this time, I was writing a true ROUGH draft.  This actually made more sense because why spend hours making something perfect if it might get cut in the revision or totally overhauled?  Still, I love playing with words and getting only the most essential ones down, and getting the emotional tone fine-tuned, so I had to get tough and turn a blind eye to the crappiness.  The carrot I held out to myself was that when I was finished I could revise to my heart's delight--my favorite part of the process. (But my poor editor and beta-readers had to deal with abundant yards of burlap, purple, and knotted prose.)

    As I wrote I looked for writing inspiration from time to time, perusing again my writing library, or looking for new tidbits, and I came across this from Laini Taylor: "Be an unstoppable force.  Write with an imaginary machete strapped to your thigh."  All of her writing advice was great but this really hit me because I already had this sort image lurking in my brain along with the order, "Be fearless!"  If I expected my characters to forge ahead, I could expect nothing less from myself. That became my daily motto--along with a scary me waving a machete.

    I also came across this from Rachel Aaron.  I especially found the "Knowledge" advice so completely helpful.  The thing was, I was already doing something similar but in a less effective way.  Each day when I finished writing, I used to jot down a few words or sentences of where I thought I wanted to go the next day.  I reversed that and started keeping a notebook, a daily log where I spent 10-20 minutes writing out scenes, interactions, key points I thought should happen, all in much more thoughtful detail than I used to, each day just before I began writing. It set the tone and my writing goals.  Did it all happen or go the way I thought?  Never.  At least not exactly, but it gave me something to work with, or diverge from--not just empty white space to get lost in. And if I did feel lost, I would look back at this log and revise my plan!

I've always kept daily word counts for my books--it helps me "see" in a concrete way the progress I have made. (I'm also a list maker because I love to cross things off!) but this time my emphasis was on the DAILY part.  This is a picture of my log for my newest book which will be out next year. I loved seeing the words add up and be able to go back and see a week's worth of progress. It also helped me predict how much I was capable of writing in a month, because I really wasn't sure before.  I'm just about ready to dig into Book 2 which means it's time to print out a fresh sheet and start filling in those rectangles.

With each book I've written, I've tackled it a little differently, but this time I tackled it a lot differently.  I think it's good for a writer (well, at least for me) to shake it up now and then and get out of their comfort zone.  You learn new things about yourself and maybe add a new tool to your writing chest.

In the midst of all this writing, I did have other things going on, including the publication of the last book (!) in The Jenna Fox Chronicles, Fox Forever--and all that went along with that, including some fun travels (Thank you Houston, Rochester, and Fort Worth!)  These travels included a first for me--presenting in a church on the altar no less--with stained glass saints looking on!  It somehow felt scandalous. (Jessica Brody, Marissa Meyer, and Lauren DeStefano, I'm looking at you.)

Other book news is simmering that I hope I can share soon.  In the meantime, I'm getting ready to revise the above mentioned book (3rd round) which is still untitled and I'm quite eager to jump into Book 2.  I've fallen in love with my characters over these past months.  I want to see what happens next!  I'm sure more months of craziness lie ahead.

But if you're in the middle of it now . . .