The ARCs have landed!

Posted on by May 27, 2011
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You know how I mentioned last week that The Way We Fall ARCs were on their way? Well, they arrived even sooner than I imagined!

I opened the package, eager to hold my book as an actual book for the first time, and squeed over the (not yet final, but still awesome) cover:

After a period of squeeing and petting this awesomeness, my husband, who had immediately absconded with the other copy, said, “Have you looked at the inside yet?” I hadn’t. So I flipped open the cover, and squeed some more:

How much do I love that title page? Very very much. As I was telling my husband so, he noted that I hadn’t seen everything yet. So I turned the title page over:

It is hard to see, but the back of the title page has this really cool after-image effect on it. Hey, I thought, I wonder what they did with my section titles. (The book doesn’t have chapters. It’s divided into many journal entries, which are split between three sections.) I paged a little further in, and discovered this:

Cue even more squeeing and book-petting. Is that not lovely? I think it is lovely. And I am so, so excited for when you all will finally get to see this book and its awesomeness, inside and out, in person. January 24! Less than eight months now!

Not that I’m counting or anything…

Writing exercises for kids–suggestions?

Posted on by May 20, 2011
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You may remember a couple weeks back I talked about a kids writing workshop I’m running this month. I think it’s going really well and the kids are turning out some great stories, but I am finding that a few of the kids are finishing a lot faster than the others, which means I need to find something for them to do. It’s not so much that they write faster, but that they write less for each part of their stories, and each of my prods to “write more about X” leads to them maybe adding another sentence or two.

So I’d like to offer them writing exercises that would give them some practice in fleshing out action and description. Anyone have suggestions of some that would be fun? I figure I’ll come up with something better picking your brains than just on my own. 🙂

Apologies and awesome news

Posted on by May 19, 2011
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This blog has been very quiet the last couple weeks, but for good reasons. I have been doing lots of writing and other important things! I think you will agree that finishing books is more important than writing blog entries.

But I wanted to let you all know some very excellent news: The Way We Fall has sold to Murdoch Books/Pier 9 in Australia!

This is the eighth country that’s picked it up, and it’s especially cool because this is the first foreign edition I will actually be able to read! Not that I generally sit around reading my own books after they’re published. But if I wanted to in this case, I totally could.

I am hoping to have more exciting news soon… I have been working on some final tweaks of the jacket copy for The Way We Fall with my editor, which I hope to share before much longer, and she says galleys are on their way soon. Stay tuned!

Workshop time!

Posted on by May 7, 2011
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I’m heading off in a couple of hours to teach a writing workshop at the local library. The class is going to span four Saturdays, and I’m hoping to take the kids all the way through the creative process, from beginnings and ends to revision and sharing one’s writing. Really looking forward to it!

The kids I’ll be working with are 9-12, and I’d guess most of my blog readers are older than that. Those of you who are authors or aspiring authors, what do you wish you’d known about writing at that age? What could an author have said to you that would have been most helpful?

Reader Question: New ideas

Posted on by May 3, 2011
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When an idea strikes you, what do you do with it? Write it down in detail or as it jumps out at you? Or do you make an outline of it?

To some extent, it depends on how strongly the idea strikes me. If an idea pops into my head and I get excited about it right away, I write it down as soon as possible, because I’m afraid of losing it. If it’s an idea that seems kind of interesting but isn’t totally unexpected, I often let it just sit in my head for a bit, to see if I come upon an angle that makes me more excited, or a particular element starts to stand out to me. I don’t write every idea I have down; there are lots that seem neat for an instant, and then quickly fade as I realize they’re derivative or don’t lead anywhere.

I don’t like to push ideas too fast. Once I’m excited, all sorts of details will usually jump out at me automatically, and I’ll write those down too. But I don’t make myself brainstorm or start working out logistics yet. I just see where my mind wanders to, as it’s playing with the idea. Don’t want to stifle that innate creativity by worrying too much about what the best approach is too early.

A good idea will keep coming back to me, without me even trying. I’ll write it down one day, and then a few days or a week or a month later, my mind will happen to wander back to it, and a few more elements will occur to me, and a little later I’ll get some more, and eventually it starts to feel like a whole story. It’s usually around then, when a sense of the beginning, end, and turning points in the middle have come to me, that I start to focus on it more methodically. I purposely poke at the gaps between the events I know will happen, seeing what I can come up with to in the blanks. I imagine how the book’s opening scenes might play out. If the brainstorming’s going well, at that point I’d try to write a scene-by-scene outline, which would be the last step (and test of the idea’s workability) before I actually write the story.

But people say “Ideas are cheap,” and that’s true. I get a lot of ideas, and the vast majority of them die either before I bother to write them down, or before they spin out enough material that I think they could produce a whole book. What’s really important is finding ideas that both excite me enough that I want to work with them for the years the writing, revising, and publishing process will take, and that I think will be saying something at least a little bit new amid all the books already out there.

A sort of glimpse of the Japan book

Posted on by May 2, 2011
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Naturally, as I have just gotten back from Japan, I have started reworking my Japan book! (I wrote a very rough first draft a couple years ago, but I didn’t want to take it any further until I’d actually visited the country and the locations of many of the scenes. Which turned out to be a good decision, because there were a number of logistical factors I wouldn’t have realized otherwise, and the plot needed to be adjusted to account for them.)

I probably will not be talking about it here a whole lot while it’s still in progress and unsold, but since I’m just getting started and I’m all excited about it, I wanted to share one element of it. Here’s song I consider the book’s theme song, “Evolution” by Ayumi Hamasaki (though live, this is actually quite close to how the recorded song sounds–and it comes with handy English subtitles):

(I must report that at the moment there are no golden cheerleaders in the book. Perhaps I should consider changing this? 🙂 )

Ah, listening to it again makes me extra-inspired. Must get back to writing!

Paperback GHOST Giveaway winners!

Posted on by May 1, 2011
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Thanks so much to everyone who entered the Great Paperback GHOST Giveaway, and extra thanks to those who helped spread the word! I tallied up all the entries and ran them through my number randomizer, and the winners are…

For the North American copies:

Jamad, in Canada

Christina Farley, in the U.S.

For the international copies:

Elena, in Romania

Ioana, also in Romania

Congrats to the winners! You should have an e-mail in your inbox shortly–if you don’t see it, please comment here.

Give Up the Ghost in Germany!

Posted on by April 30, 2011
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Thanks to the magic that is GoodReads, I have discovered that the German translation of Give Up the Ghost is due to be released on September 1, 2011. Just a few months away! So any German readers interested in checking it out, keep an eye on the bookshelves over there. 🙂

The cover’s the same, but as in Romania, the title’s been changed:

Google tells me that “Der Geist an meiner Seite” means “The Spirit at my Side”, which I have to say is a very appropriate title! So interesting to see how these things get translated, since “give up the ghost” is a metaphorical phrase in English.

Ghost fan covers

Posted on by April 29, 2011
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While I was away in Japan, the awesome Romanian book blogger Sabinna was running a very cool contest for Give Up the Ghost, where fans designed alternate covers for the book. As part of the judging, she had me look at all the covers and pick my five favorites. It was hard, because there were some really gorgeous ones! In the end, I picked five that I both liked the look of and thought fit the content and feelings of the book the best. And now I get to share them with you!

(In no particular order)

If you were going to redesign the Give Up the Ghost cover, what would you put on it? 🙂

Final Japan Trip Photos!

Posted on by April 28, 2011
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I was hoping to post this yesterday, but between jet lag and having a meeting at the day job, there just wasn’t time. So you are getting it today!

In any case, I am back! And so, so glad we kept our plans. If we hadn’t been following the news, there was very little indication while we were in Japan that anything was unusual. I suspect there were fewer Western tourists than usual, though that was difficult to judge since we hadn’t been there before to compare. We missed a couple of attractions in Tokyo (Edo Tokyo and the observatory at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building–both have since reopened), and we sadly were not able to take the bus partway up Mt. Fuji because the road was closed for repairs. But otherwise the atmosphere and attitudes of everyone we encountered were very positive and welcoming, and we never felt unsafe. It actually made the trip even more meaningful knowing that the tourist industry was suffering and we were contributing to keeping it afloat.

We were without internet access our last four nights, so I’ll share a bunch of photos from the last segments of our trip:


(At the monkey park in the Arashiyama area of Kyoto. Managed to snap of shot of this cute baby with his mom.)


(One of the monkey park staff offered to take a picture of Chris and I–with one very un-self-conscious monkey. 🙂 So you have proof I was actually there!)


(Our room in the ryokan where we spent two nights, in the Gion neighborhood of Kyoto. A ryokan is a traditional guesthouse. The building was about 150 years old, and we slept on Japanese-style futons rather than beds.)


(The street our ryokan was on–our room looked out onto the canal.)


(Gion street in the evening.)


(Lake Kawaguchiko in the Fuji Five Lakes region, where we spent our last two nights. Our hotel is near the water, just below the tip of the clouds.)


(The view of Mt. Fuji from the other side of Lake Kawaguchiko. We got lots of lovely clear shots of the mountain, though it did often like to wear a cloud toupe.)

I’ll be writing a longer trip report with more info and photos when I have a chance, and will link to it here for anyone who’s particularly interested in Japan or thinking of visiting!