Today marks six months until the release of My Second Impression of You! Earlier this month, I asked my Instagram followers to vote on which behind-the-scenes information to share about the book first. They chose book inspiration, and I gave newsletter followers a sneak peek in my March issue. I’m going a bit more in-depth in…
YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN DELAYED Book Club Kit
A few years ago, my son started a book club with some of his elementary school friends. Each month, they’d pick a book to read, then they’d decide on snacks, questions, and activities for the meeting. It was a lot of work figuring out what would best go with each book–and also entertain eight 10-…
Publishing Behind the Scenes: Pass Pages
I can’t believe it’s already February! Your Life Has Been Delayed has been out five months as of yesterday, and we’re a little more than seven months out from My Second Impression of You. I hope you caught the cover reveal for My Second Impression of You a couple of weeks ago. I’m so in love with…
MY SECOND IMPRESSION OF YOU Cover Reveal!
It’s cover reveal time! I’m so thrilled to share the cover for my sophomore novel, MY SECOND IMPRESSION OF YOU. From the moment my editor at Bloomsbury shared the first concept sketches from artist Jacqueline Li, I was in love! (And you should totally go check out her other work on her site, www.jacqln-li.com.) I’d…
EVERY OTHER WEEKEND Plus A Few Other YA Books You Should Read
Review time! My schedule got a bit crazy toward the end of 2021 (not even going to get into why), so a couple of these reviews are actually holdovers, but I didn’t want to miss out on covering them here on the blog. It’s quite a variety, from contemporary young adult to contemporary with a…
Publishing Behind the Scenes: Copyedits
Happy New Year! I can’t believe my debut year is already over and we’re now into 2022, when my second book will release. Each step of the process makes it feel more real, like this past Friday, when my editor sent me the clean copyedited version of My Second Impression of You. It was so pretty…
What I Read in 2021
Happy New Year’s Eve! I thought long and hard about whether to do my annual favorite reads post this year, and when it came down to it, I just couldn’t choose a top 10. I read way too many fantastic books this year, and the majority of them were by my fellow debut authors. BUT,…
Publishing Behind the Scenes: Line Edits
Happy December! My latest newsletter is out today, and I’m continuing the series I started last month going behind the scenes of publishing with book edits. Moving on from developmental edits, this month I’m talking line edits! While developmental edits look at the big picture plot, character, and overall changes that need to be made, line…
NOT HERE TO BE LIKED Plus A Few Other YA Books You Should Read
Happy Thanksgiving week! What are you thankful for this year? My debut group, #the21ders, held our monthly Twitter #debutauthorchat yesterday, and the topic was Gratitude. You can check out the chat here if you’d like to learn about some of the fantastic middle grade and young adult books that debuted in 2021 and what we…
Publishing Behind the Scenes: Developmental Edits
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you may have seen my After the Book Deal posts back in 2019. As I have some new followers both here and for my newsletter (which is out today), I’m revisiting the topic of what happens behind the scenes when you’re working with a traditional publisher….
How NaNoWriMo Shaped My Writing Process
One of the most common questions I receive from readers and at events is about my writing process. I don’t remember exactly when I started writing my first middle grade book, only that I started querying it in 2011. It could have been 2009 or even 2008. The reason I don’t know is that it…
TOKYO EVER AFTER Plus A Few Other YA Books You Should Read
Happy last week of October! I can’t believe how quickly the month has flown by. I’ve been able to do some more reading lately, and it’s quite a variety. Today’s roundup includes young adult romance, fantasy, paranormal, and suspense. So hopefully something for every reader! TOKYO EVER AFTER by Emiko Jean is one of those…