Just Me And My Canoe (Also The Boyfriend & Wildlife)

I have been writing like a madwoman.

I'm also writing about a madwoman, but that's a different blog post.

In the past week I wrote over 25,000 words. In the past two days alone I added 34 pages to the YA novel that will be releasing from Katherine Tegen in the Fall of 2015. My brain is rolling, my fingers are flashing, and this book is very nearly at its close.

But so is my social life and ability to function in the sunlight.

So, the boyfriend put me in the canoe for the Fourth of July and we just went away for about five hours. The novel has hijacked my brain and demanded all my time, so I haven't been paying as much attention to the blog as I usually do.

I'm making it up to you with pictures of animals. This is how we make things better on the internet.

One of the  awesome things that happened was jumping a few deer. They didn't think it was awesome but I did. The first was a buck, that came busting through the woods down to the stream. He must've been super thirsty because he hopped out into the water without taking any notice of his surroundings whatsoever. When he finally did look up, I swear to you that deer's face actually registered shock. I don't know if he'd seen people in a boat before, because he debated for about twenty seconds before snorting at us and bolting.

That's my hand while I show the boyfriend a really large mollusk. Meanwhile something awesome is happening behind me.

So that was pretty cool. The only other time I've seen an animal actually look shocked was back in high school when I came driving over a hill too fast and took a skunk by surprise. That story didn't end as well, and you don't want to see the pictures.

This kitty no want pet.

Further on down the line I got to see a very feral member of my favorite species. I assume he was fishing. I wanted to go to the bank and say hi, but judging by the look on his face I think he might have tried to kill us. 

Oh, but it gets better. Just when I thought life couldn't be more awesome, I totally got hit in the chest with the canoe while I tried to move branches out of the way. I got them out of the way. The canoe was so very grateful that it conveyed this by a surge of forward motion that knocked me down. It was actually kind of cool because I have canoe-bow shaped bruise on my chest now. There are no pictures either of the incident (boyfriend thought I was drowning) or the bruise (boyfriend said that's in bad taste).

My last critter picture for you is a baby beaver. Yep, a bitty baby beaver who I believe was also quite shocked at seeing people in a boat. You can see in the picture he's got his tail up, debating whether or not slap. He didn't, and I was thrilled because then we got to surprise his mommy and daddy downstream, who DID slap and I'm sure he got a pretty serious talking to about stranger danger later on.

So, that's what I did this weekend, along with a ton of writing. I could blog to you all about my writing, but that wouldn't have cute pictures involved. A writer at work is not a pleasant picture. There's a lot of staring at nothing and occasional grunting. I also tend to gesticulate while I work out dialogue so I appear to be quite insane.

Not that you didn't already suspect that.

Cover Talk with Karen Akins

I love talking to debut authors. Our experiences are so similar, yet so very different, that every one of us has a new story to share. Everyone says that the moment you get your cover it really hits you - you're an author. The cover is your story - and you - packaged for the world. So the process of the cover reveal can be slightly panic inducing. Does it fit your story? Is it what you hoped? Will it sell? With this in mind I put together the CRAP (Cover Reveal Anxiety Phase) Interview.

Today's guest is Karen Akins is a self-professed geek whose debut YA sci-fi novel LOOP is coming out October 21, 2014 with St. Martin's Press.

Did you have any pre-conceived notions about what you wanted your cover to look like?

I had some hazy ideas but nothing definite. It’s a story that could have taken several directions with the cover. They could have gone light and funny or more actiony and futuristic. I love where they landed. It’s romantic and swoony with a hint of sci-fi.

How far in advance from your pub date did you start talking covers with your house?

Hmm…I think we started talking about the cover around November…ish.

Did you have any input on your cover?

I did! If you look at the two O’s in LOOP, they form an infinity symbol, and that was actually my idea. 

The only change I asked for after they showed it to me was for them to chop off my main character Bree’s hair. 

Honestly, I loved it from the first moment I saw it, down to the texture of their tee shirts. (Okay, that’s a funny story. My editor has a lot of romance on her list, and the art department is used to her requesting steamier covers, so in the first version, Finn had no shirt on. She had to go back and say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Not that hot!” Some day, I’m going to track that version down.)

How was your cover revealed to you? 

I happened to be in New York the day that they delivered the cover art to my editor. She surprised me with it when I walked into her office. Needless to say, there was much squeeing.

Was there an official "cover reveal" date for your art?

Yes and no. Griffin Teen does a monthly cover reveal on their Facebook fan page.

How far in advance of the reveal date were you aware of what your cover would look like?

Three months.

Was it hard to keep it to yourself before the official release?

Do unicorns poop rainbows? (That’s a “heck yes!”)

What surprised you most about the process?

How fun it was to keep the secret! Yes, I can’t believe I just said that. But there really was this exciting energy that built up when I had to keep it on the down-low.

Any advice to other debut authors about how to handle cover art anxiety?

Talk to your agent. Talk to your editor. The clearer you are about your ideas and expectations, the less wrinkles you’ll have to iron out later on. I know it sounds cliché, but have fun with it!

The Thin Line Between Fiction & Reality

I'm working - hard - on my book for 2015. It's a Gothic historical, and as I am the nit-picky research-loving librarian that I am, I refuse to leave any stone unturned. The other day someone needed to call the cops in this book, and I didn't finish the sentence because I first had to go find out what cops were called in 1890's Boston. Are they policeman? Coppers? Constables? Fifteen minutes of research went into finding the right word to end that one sentence with. I also got distracted by the origin of the word "cops" - policeman's badges were originally made out of copper, so they were reffered to as "Coppers" which became shortened to cops. Now you know. I do too, and I just lost another ten minutes where I should've been writing.

I bought a map of the real town where my novel is set ($25.00 gone) from the right time period so that I could look at street names, locations of shops vs. residential areas, the locations where bridges crossed the river, etc.

Then I came to a line of dialogue where my main character and her partner in fighting crime are bemoaning the size of the population and their inability to catch a killer within such a large group. So I checked the 1900 census data for this city so that my line of dialogue was completely accurate... and hit a huge roadblock.

The city was much smaller than I had expected, population wise. In fact, it was so small that finding a killer within it would actually be a fairly easy proposition, given that his method of operation definitely points to a man of a certain occupation. I was wretched. Truly wretched. I'd built my entire plot around this city, researched for a year before even starting the book and literally have a map of it in my head so that when I visited a few weekends ago I could guide the boyfriend as he drove.

And now it was too damn small during the time period my book is set.

I seriously felt like puking. I shut the laptop, stomped downstairs and the boyfriend takes one look at me and says, "What's wrong?"

I tell my horrible story. All the wasted work and knowledge that now means nothing, the restructuring of the plot that's going to have to happen if I switch to a more metropolitan area. And the boyfriend leans back on the counter, looking horribly confused and says, "Well, this is fiction right? Just make the city bigger in 1900."

And this tiny fact that should have in no way been a revelation pretty much turned me on my head. I was ridiculously happy to realize, that yes, if I wanted to inflate the population of a city in the 1900's to serve my purposes I can, in fact, do that, because it's fiction.

Sometimes writers need to realize that while the research and dedication that goes into our writing is admirable, we can't let it dictate to us the parameters of our world - because it is, in fact, a fictional one. My 2015 release is my first historical novel, and I've been doing my damndest to keep it as accurate as possible. But the truth is that even with years of research poured into this thing, I'm going to have to tilt the mirror a little to make the picture fit the plot, and I'm also going to get some things flat wrong that I thought were right. And, of course, there are probably going to be points that I know I'm right about that people will think are wrong.

And that's okay - because it's fiction.