Announcing My New Book Deal!

If you follow me on Twitter and Facebook you know that last week I signed a two book deal with Putnam for GIVEN TO THE SEA, the first of an epic, multiple POV, fantasy series set on an island of rising tides, where tribes battle for resources, unexpected alliances are forged, and love bends to the whims of war.

Yes, it's true I'm jumping genres yet again. I started out with post-apoc survival for both NOT A DROP TO DRINK & IN A HANDFUL OF DUST, veered over to Gothic historical thriller with A MADNESS SO DISCREET, and will be dishing out a really dark contemporary for you in Fall of 2016 from Katherine Tegen, tentatively titled THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES.

I feel very lucky that publishing has trusted me to hop around with my stories. My brain likes to churn out books, but it's never been fond of staying on any one particular path. Hopefully my readers have similarly chaotic reading tastes that like to bounce around and see what's going on elsewhere in the world... even totally different worlds.

This Is My 1000th Post

That's actually a little bit of a lie, it's my 1001st post. But it's only fitting that my 1000th post from yesterday was a Saturday Slash, because this blog is above all things a writers blog, meant to help aspiring writers.

I've been up and running since March of 2011. My first post was about the fact that I'd landed an agent, and I'd like to point out that I didn't have a huge social media platform at that point. No Facebook author page, no Twitter account. I definitely didn't have a YouTube channel, and Tumblr didn't exist. Instagram might have been up and running, but I was ignorant of its existence.

Now I'm everywhere. You can't get away from me, and if you try I will catch you.

Blogging is a large part of my internet presence, but I use this particular platform as a tool that I very much wish would've existed when I was pre-pubbed. Often I have aspiring authors ask me for tips on getting published and while I certainly don't mind being asked, there's a basic misunderstanding at work that I correct as nicely as possible.

Asking an writer for tips on how to get published is like asking a teacher, lawyer, veterinarian, or any other professional the same thing. The answer is that you need to educate yourself, and I don't mean that you should enroll in an MFA program. A lot of the aspiring authors that ask me for tips are completely gobsmacked when I follow up their question with questions: Do they want to be traditionally published or are they aiming for self-pub? If traditional are they thinking of targeting mid-level indies or some of the bigger houses, and regardless are they searching for representation or are they going to submit themselves?

I never intend to gob smack people or deflate them. I can't give tips of any sort without knowing the answers to these questions, and the vast majority of the time I'm met with blank looks, questions about the difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing, or even complete shock that agents come into the picture at all.

And that's fine. A little frustrating, yes, but it's also fine. That's the whole reason this blog and thousands of others like it exist. This is why I do my interview series with published authors, covering everything from the writing process to querying to cover art.

I don't expect people to know the publishing industry inside and out. It's a fluid beast, and a complicated one. I'm definitely here to help, and I hope to continue to run this blog far into the future. It brings no money to me, and that's fine. I like having it as a base of operations, and I think of it so much as an act of giving that I sometimes forget to use it as a promotional tool.

I've got a lot coming up in 2015, and things planned into 2016.

So stay tuned.

For both our sakes :)

Things To Do In 2015 - Don't Make January A Starting Point

It's that time of year when the exercise equipment goes on sale and everyone buys cookbooks with pictures of vegetables on the front. I'm skeptical of New Year's Resolutions, not because I think self-improvement is deluding, but because there's no reason why anyone should wait until January 1st to start doing it.

Yes, it's a convenient reference point. Yes, making goals is the first step. But New Year's Resolutions are their own kind of joke; everyone knows you're not going to stick to it. It's the equivalent of taking your vows at the altar and then making an aside joke about adultery.

Why is January special? Why can't you remake yourself in the middle of June?

I've always been mystified about this. We like to make large, sweeping statements at the beginning of the year, but most of us don't break those down into the little goals necessary for the day, the week, and the month that will add up to that big year-end goal.

I can say I want to write a novel in 2015 (and I do), but if I don't establish a word count for the day or week, that big goal seems insurmountable by the time July rolls around and I haven't approached that monolith of an achievement I set for myself seven months earlier.

I definitely have things I want to accomplish this year - actually doing them is the trick.