Liar Society Blog Tour

Today I have the privilege of welcoming Lisa and Laura Roecker, the authors of THE LIAR SOCIETY, as part of their Blog Tour of Awesome.

Lisa and Laura are two of my favorite, favorite bloggers. They are hilarious and super sweet and inclusive. When they sent me an ARC for their debut novel THE LIAR SOCIETY, I knew I was in for a treat.

I was not disappointed. THE LIAR SOCIETY was a very fun read. One of the things I appreciated most was the well thought out mystery. They kept me guessing right up to the end. I asked them to share a bit about how they managed to keep the mystery fresh and exciting.

KEEPING A MYSTERY MYSTERIOUS


A big part of our process when we're writing a mystery is outlining. We would be completely lost if we didn't have some kind of road map while we're drafting. For us, outlining and mysteries go hand in hand. We need to at least have a rough idea of where the story is going. For us that translates into a loose outline of the entire book and then a more detailed chapter outline for Act 1. After we wrote the first act we created an outline for Act 2. This worked really well for us because we had both structure and flexibility as we drafted.


Revising was an entirely different beast. After editing The Liar Society for the nine millionth time, we began to really, truly, whole-heartedly regret our choice to write mysteries in the first place. Keeping track of which clues went where and who we were supposed to suspect and when is enough to make our collective heads explode. Our number one goal while writing was obviously to keep the mystery fresh, but not completely out of left field.


At the end of the day, for us, the most important thing was to have fun with the book. Our hope is always that if we have fun writing, our readers will have fun reading. Hopefully our theory holds up!

If you want to enter The Liar Society Blog Tour of Awesome contest, and really, who wouldn't want to enter!?! There's a $100 Amazon gift card up for grabs! Just click here and enter the super secret password, BFFS, for an entry. Remember you can enter one time for each stop on our blog tour, so be sure to click here and see where else we're visiting this month to maximize your chances of winning.

Audi, Vide, Tace,

L&L

Thank you Lisa and Laura!

Critique a Week

It's finally summer! The kids are out of school, the weather is warm, and I am getting quite humongous (I'm pregnant so this is sort of okay). It will be pretty busy having all three at home 24 hours a day, so I'm going to cut down my posting schedule to once a week (every Sunday). I'm hoping to do some cool things over the summer to make up for my infrequent posts.

During the month of June I want to give something back to my blogging writer friends. It's been so fun to beta read for friends during these last few months, and to see a few of them get agents and book deals. I thought it would be cool to get to know more of you through your writing, so I'm going to offer a ten page critique to one commenter every week.

This is how it will work.

-You must follow the blog and comment on this post to be eligible for this week's drawing. You'll have until next Saturday to do so.

-Tell me in your comment that you'd like to win a critique. Most weeks I'll probably write a real post about something writing related too, so people who don't want a critique can still comment on that and stay in touch. :)

-Next Sunday I will randomly choose one of this week's commenters to win.

A few things to consider:

-I will be nice but I'll also be 100% honest, because I don't think anything less will be helpful to you. If you can't take an honest critique you probably shouldn't enter.

-I write MG and a little YA. The only genres I've critiqued in the past are MG and YA, so if you write literary fiction or romance or thrillers or something I might not be the best person to critique your work, but you can still enter and I'll do my best.

-I won't be posting these critiques on the blog. They are just between you and me (and I'm nice, really), so you don't need to be nervous.

I hope this will be a fun little experiment.

I also want to say congratulations to my friend Thomas who just accepted an offer to publish his MG book! I hope you'll pop over to his blog and say congratulations too.

Book Recommendations and Contests and Jury Duty, Oh My

There are A LOT of great contests going on right now, and there are two I'd like to bring to your attention. First off, my lovely writing group friend Megan Rebekah is having a 500 followers contest on her blog. She's got 3 books to choose from or A FULL MANUSCRIPT CRITIQUE. Trust me when I tell you, you want the critique (even though she's got some awesome books too). Megan is a fantastic beta. Her notes have made my stories SO MUCH BETTER.

Second, I'm sure you've heard about Elana Johnson's book deal giveaway extravaganza this week. It's been epic. There is still another day or two to enter to win one of her prize packages. They are all super cool (all of them include Girl Scout Cookies!), so you should go leave a comment there too.

So you all know I'm trying to read 100 books this year, right? The book count currently stands at 31 and the year is almost half over, so I may not make it (or I may need to start counting picture books!). But I have read several amazing books this year though and I thought you might want to know about the very best book I've read so far this year. The Help by Kathryn Stockett was amazing. I know it's a bestseller. I know many of you have already read it. But those of you who haven't need to pick it up.

And finally, I have jury duty next week. I think this is pretty unfair since I served on a jury just a few years ago and my husband has NEVER been called, but I'll smile do my civic duty. Anyway, because of Memorial Day and jury duty I may not be around much next week so I hope you all have a great week. May agent offers and book deals abound!

What's the best book you've read so far this year?

Spread the Awesome: When You Reach Me

A few weeks ago Elana Johnson had this great idea to have a day celebrating the books and authors we love. Today is the day. A bunch of bloggers will be highlighting favorite authors and a lot of us will be giving books away (some people even have SIGNED books to give!) Go check out Elana's blog for a complete list of participants. With so many giveaways the odds are in your favor to win a book or two. And who doesn't like free books?

For me choosing a favorite book is like choosing a favorite child. I just can't do it. So instead I chose a recent read that I really enjoyed: Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me.

I am not too good at book reviewing, and I really don't want to give anything away (there story has some great surprises), so I'll keep this short and sweet. This was an awesome read--well written, page-turning, and sweet. I was engrossed from beginning to end. It was brilliant, and you don't have to take my word for it, it won the Newbery. Um yeah, that means a lot of other people thought it was great too.

Read it.

I'll be giving away a copy. To win it all you have to do is:

1. Follow this blog

2. Leave a comment telling me about a book you love

I'll pick the winner Wednesday morning. If you comment before midnight on Tuesday, you'll be in the running!

We're doing a blog chain so you can check out all the Spread The Awesome posts if you want to. Next up is Windy Aphayrath. She's highlighting Elizabeth Scott and she's giving away SIGNED books. Enjoy!

And the Winners Are...

Terri Tiffany, Aik and Roni!!! YAY for you! I'll email to get addresses and I'll try to get you're books in the mail ASAP.

Thank you to all of you who entered, blogged, tweeted, etc. You rock.

I'll have another book giveaway in two weeks as part of Elana Johnson's "National Hug an Author Day." It's going to be May 3 and lots of people will be giving away books that day. Stay tuned for more information.

I'm back to my regular blogging schedule now, so I'll see you Wednesday!

Come on Down and Win a Book!

I'm back from blog vacation! I've missed everyone, and I apologize for how absent I've been for the last few months. I'm ready to jump back in to the blog world and I thought I'd start with something fun.

One year ago today I sent the first query for my middle grade novel, Underground.

So to celebrate one year of being serious about my writing, returning to blogging after a month long hiatus, and having more than 200 supporters on the blog and on Twitter I've decided to give some books away.

Since I'm a bad decision maker, and I don't want to continue agonizing over what books might appeal to all of my blog readers, I've decided to leave it up to you.

So this is how it will work.

1. Tell me in the comments what book you've been dying to read and/or own. (I don't have access to any awesome ARCs, so make sure it's been released, okay?)

2. Follow this blog

3. Tweet or blog about this giveaway and tell me in the comments and I'll give you an extra entry

Do this before Sunday, April 18th at midnight EST. On Monday, April 19 I will randomly select 3 winners announce them on the blog and send them the book they chose.

That's it. Easy peasy right?

I'd also like to say thank you to all of you who follow, read and comment here. I've been amazed at how supportive this community has been since I started blogging 7 months ago. You make it fun--thanks for that. I look forward to catching up with everyone over the next few weeks.

*Yes it is open internationally! If you win I'll send you the book of your choice whether you live in Ohio or Australia.

This Is A Contest You CAN'T Miss

I'm supposed to be unplugged this week. Unfortunately, this week has turned into a crumby week for writing, so I'm pushing back my unplugged time until next week.

And this is good, because I need to tell you about this totally awesome contest at Elana Johnson's and Shelli Johannes-Wells' blogs.

This is the kind of contest I would have LOVED to enter before I got an agent, because you can win query critiques (and partial critiques) FROM AGENTS.

I don't know about you, but when I was writing my query letter I would have done just about anything for some professional advice. I think they are giving away 6 different agent critiques(just kidding, between the two of them they are giving away 8 agent critiques-WOW) so there are many chances to win (plus, while I'm sure there will be hundreds of entries, there probably won't be thousands like Nathan Bransford's contests. The odds will be pretty good.)

I'm sure 90% of you already follow Shelli and Elana, but I'd hate for the other 10% to miss out on this opportunity.

You need to follow both blogs to enter (which you won't regret--they are both must-reads in my opinion). And they even have cool prizes for the already-agented, so you should enter too.

So I'll ask you, if you could have any leg up before you query (a referral from a client, a query critique by a professional, a conference pitch session with your dream agent, etc.), which would you choose?