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…
Writing
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…
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…
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…
5 Months to Release: Why 1995?
It’s March 24, which means we are now at 5 months to the release of YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN DELAYED. I can’t believe how fast time is flying by (pun totally intended ☺️). I’ve been counting down the months leading up to release with behind-the-scenes information about the book. In case you missed any of…
6 Months to Release: All About Research!
It’s Feb. 24, which means today marks six months until the release of YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN DELAYED! I’ve been counting down the months leading up to release with behind-the-scenes information about the book. In case you missed any of the previous features, they included: 9 Months to Release: Playlist 8 Months to Release: The…
8 Months to Release: A Title Story!
Merry Christmas to those of you celebrating today and tomorrow! Today marks eight months until YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN DELAYED releases, and I promised that each month on the 24th leading up to release day, I would share behind-the-scenes information about the book. Today I thought it would be fun to talk about the title…
After the Book Deal: Copyediting Fun!
It’s been a while since I’ve given an update on YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN DELAYED. I think I’ve mentioned here on the blog that the book is now coming out Aug. 24, 2021. (I have, right? I’ve kind of lost track of this whole year… ) Anyway, you can even pre-order YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN…
Another Draft in the Books: Take That, 2020!
When I jumped back into drafting this manuscript a few weeks ago, I didn’t expect to finish this quickly, but here we are! At 56,229 words, it’s much shorter than I was shooting for. This means I only added about 25,000 words to the existing partial manuscript I drafted and rewrote several times last year,…
An Update on the Book I Attempted to Pants
I’ve been writing novels for many years now, and over time, I’ve discovered what works well for me. At the same time, I also know that as a person who really likes systems and schedules, sometimes I need to be flexible and try new things. My usual system for drafting is to create an outline…
Chop Chop: A Revision Tale
Last month, I posted about how I had finished my longest draft ever, ending up at 90,983 words. Quite honestly, I had no idea how I had written that much. Even before I started reading through the manuscript, I was sure it was too long. So I went into my initial editing round with the…
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