Winner of the First Official Classy Author Giveaway!

Ho-Hum. I'm a little bored without a post today, so I thought I would do something perhaps even more awesome than post -

FINALLY GIVE AWAY A BOOK BY BETH REVIS
as I promised you I'd do in the First Official Classy Author Giveaway a week or so ago.

Wheee! Here we go!



And the winner is...drumroll please...REBECCA!!!!

Who said,

I love Beth Revis! She is super-awesome and so very accessible and friendly to her readers. :o)

Yes, yes she is. Congratulations, Rebecca! I'm going to email you to get you your book ASAP.

As always, THANK YOU to everyone who commented and entered!

Writing Hotness

I read a lot of YA novels where the heroine is described as beautiful and body-perfect, and the hero is some combination of gorgeous and devastatingly handsome, with a big helping of rippling abs on the side.


Now, I like reading about beautiful people as much as the next person. (Hello, RORY. Mmm.) But I'm with Beth Revis here - it's not the physical descriptions that make characters hot. In fact, in my writing, I try to  describe the beauty and brawn only as much as necessary.Only I know exactly what my characters look like in my head. 


Why? Because what's attractive to me may not be attractive to someone else.  And, in most cases more importantly, the way a character acts speaks louder than how a character looks.


Remember your first love? Junior high crush, high school boyfriend, college sweetheart? Remember how AMAZING and PERFECT he was? Remember how it felt to hold his hand, to kiss him, to hear him say "I love you?" And, now that you think back on it, remember how maybe his skin wasn't perfect, or he had kind of a weird haircut, or he was a little too short for you to wear heels when you went out, or maybe his jaw and stomach weren't so chiseled? 


And, most of all, remember how he was the CUTEST GUY EVER?


(Yeah. Me too.)


I guess my point is this: Non-gorgeous, non-buff people fall in love every day. They enjoy making out and...other stuff...just as much as the hot people. And to them? The people they're in love with look absolutely, totally, wouldn't-change-a-thing perfect. 


Most importantly, I don't for a second want one of my sweet teen readers to think that because she's really tall, or has frizzy hair, or wears a size 18, or WHATEVER, that she's not every bit as desirable as the heroine in one of my books.


(And that, watching all the sweet Buckeye couples striding through campus hand-in-hand, way more of them look like this:

Than like this:

And that, no matter what they look like, their love story could be absolutely incredible.)


See, at the end of the day, jaws and muscles and tallness and jeans size are all pretty irrelevant - the only thing that I care about is that my readers know how the characters see one another. Are they attracted to each other? Does the hero think the heroine is beautiful? Does one character want to rip the other's clothes off?


If we agree on the answers to those questions? I've done my job. 


Now! For the fun part (for me at least...)
I want to introduce you to two characters in my WiP, ONE. 


Here's how I describe Leni, short for "Helen":
She is beautiful, the sort of beautiful that knows it can stop anyone in his tracks. She’s tall, with strawberry blond hair so brassy-bright it almost glows, and curvy. Her skin is kissed with gold, then dotted with a spray of freckles.

She looks like the freaking sun itself blew kisses at her. She is the kind of girl that guys like Elias want to be with, always are with. She is a prize. 

And here's Daniel:
Daniel, nearly as tall as Elias, sits at the concrete table with pebbled legs, and looks up from his textbook, jerking his chin up in greeting again. His hair is jet black, and his skin is the color of cinnamon mixed with coffee. His eyes are black, too, but they flash fiercely when they look at me.


Those are pretty much the only physical descriptions of them in the book.


Now, here's part of a scene I wrote between them that does not appear in the book. (Let's just call it character study, okay?)


Slowly, Daniel turns his head to me, and I laugh out loud, then  throw my arms around his neck. His arms circle my body in response, and joy and excitement flood me all at once. I pull back just enough to look at him, and he whispers, "You did it. You really did it."


"We did it," I say, and the joy of it all propels me forward, and I crush my lips against his. I pull back after a second, cheeks flushing crimson, and look down.


I can't believe I did that.


I freeze, wait for him to stop, to push away, to finally tell me after all these years that he doesn’t feel the same way. But he deepens the kiss, takes a deep breath in through his nose, pulls my body closer to his.


Daniel's hands tremble against my waist. My breath shudders out of my chest. The space between us, or what's left of it, is so charged that I can hardly believe this is real.  It must be a dream.  It must,  it must,  and if I don't wake up now,  my heart will fly out of my chest and drag me out of sleep.   


But then his lips move to each of my eyes, then my jaw, then my neck, and I know that my heart couldn't possibly go faster than it is now. Yet he's still kissing me, and my body still aches to be even closer to his. 

Now. Do you have a picture of these two in your head? Yes? Good. So do I. One of the below pictures matches up with my idea of each of them, but any could work given the descriptions.

So, take a look.What do Leni and Daniel look like TO YOU?

The First Official Classy Author Giveaway

Happy Monday morning, everyone! (did you see how I tried to get myself psyched for the week by being all chipper right there? I'll let you know how it worked.)

It's time to finally announce the winner of my giveaway of Lauren Myracle's SHINE. If you didn't hear the story behind this giveaway, please take a moment to hop over to the post and check it out.

There were twelve entries, so your chances were awesome. Here's the number I drew:



And here's the comment that went with it:


Congrats, Heidi! I'm so excited for you to read SHINE. Email me your address to I can get a copy to your Kindle or your doorstep, whichever you'd like.

Now, for a REAL post.

I got into an email discussion with some of my critique partners last week about some authors we "know" via their blogs and Twitter presence. Some authors act like normal people and sometimes normal celebrities (I'm allowed to use oxymorons at 5:30 AM!), and then some authors?

 Class. It. Up.

I mean, seriously. Can't you think of at least one or two authors that you admire not only for their mad writing skills, but also because of how utterly and completely CLASSY they are?

Well, I can. And I'm going to practice my one most important author skill right now and kick off a giveaway series that celebrates classy authors.

First up: Beth Revis!

Here's Ms. Revis. She looks up to you. Seriously. She says it on her blog.
(And I got this picture over there, so it's totally not creepy.)

Beth Revis is the New York Times Bestselling author of ACROSS THE UNIVERSE and its sequel A MILLION SUNS, out January.

*Gasp* That cover gets me every time.

Ms. Revis gets Classy Author status in my book for a couple of huge reasons. First, because of her responsiveness to her fans - both via Twitter and Blog comments. If I tag her in a tweet, she always, always, ALWAYS responds.  She's stopped by this little old blog to comment when I've mentioned her or a topic she's passionate about ("Delighted to Be Devastated," go check out her comment!) She answers questions from regular fans on her Tumblr all the time.

And this brings me to mention her crazy-inspirational support of the writing community. 

On a personal note, when I started querying, I dropped her a line on Tumblr to ask for a one-line pep talk. She wrote me a SPEECH. And this was before I had a Tumblr account, so I was basically just some anonymous freak writing a Book Full of Crazy for all she knew, and she spent fifteen minutes of her busy famous life replying to me.

Classy. Class-y.

As if stuff like that isn't awesome enough, she also provides inspiration for the writing masses. (And we are. Masses.) This summer's WriteOnCon featured Ms. Revis giving the most inspirational writing speech I've ever heard, in which she showed off all NINE of her "drawer novels" and told us to never, ever give up.

See, even though Ms. Revis is a New York Times Bestselling Author, and she doesn't really need to interact with the handful of random twitter or blog fans, and most certainly has already paid her dues to the writing community...she keeps going anyway. Keeps going with the "thank you"s and support.

 And if that doesn't make her a Classy Author? I don't know what does.

So! To celebrate Ms. Revis and the sheer awesomeness of her books (I devoured both ATU and the ARC of A MILLION SUNS Penguin so kindly sent me - they are beautifully written and completely emotionally captivating - )

 I am giving away a copy of either ACROSS THE UNIVERSE or a pre-order of A MILLION SUNS!!! 


To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment below. You get an extra entry for following the blog and for tweeting about it - if you tweet, please include this text:

I entered to win a book by @bethrevis in @LeighAnnKopans' Classy Author giveaway! http://tinyurl.com/8xgtjxo

And let me know if you are a new follower and/or tweeted. Duh.

Even if you don't feel like entering, go tweet at @bethrevis and let her know how classy she is. Obviously, she deserves it.

Good luck everyone! And, as always, THANK YOU for reading!

An Important Author Lesson to Learn RIGHT NOW

You are learning the most important lesson you need to be a published author right now.

Right this moment. Whether you're just beginning your very first draft ever, going through the critique process, beginning to query, or deep in the query trenches, you need to focus on learning this lesson right now.

How to say, "Thank you."

Because an author's platform is so very much anchored in cyberspace, she has more opportunities than ever to say "Thank you."

 It's a phrase that is no longer confined to the acknowledgements section of a published book. Every person who reads your book, every tweeter who tweets about it, everyone who recommends it to a friend or does a blog post mentioning it, is making your success as an author. And each of those people deserves a "thank-you."

I've seen authors act with so much class in this regard, it's not even funny.

Elana Johnson has commented on this little blog a handful of times, and given me a heart attack each one. Beth Revis has commented, too, and she even gave me a pep talk over at Formspring when I started querying. (Yeah, it took me a day or so to get over the shock of that.)
Brodi Ashton and Gennifer Albin have deigned to tweet and Facebook with me. (eeep!)

These ladies don't have to do that. But they do, because they are smart (and sweet.) They get it. They know that if they're going to be successful each individual reader has to be treated like she's worth her weight in gold. And so they do it.

I will read and cheer on any book they write, ever, from here unto eternity. Just because they've done this.

By now, it might go without saying, but I've also mentioned some authors via Tweet or blog, in a non-crazy way, mind you, who have acted exactly the opposite of classy in this regard. Just the other day I tweeted that I pre-ordered a book, mentioned the author, and she didn't tweet back! Needless to say, I'm far less likely to read their future work, and if I do read the book, I'm less likely to look kindly on it. (I mean, seriously? How much time and energy does it take to respond to a tweet from a fan to say "thank you?") 

Anyway. I figure I'd better get this skill down cold right now. Saying "thank you" like it's your job should come naturally to any published author because...well...IT IS YOUR JOB. So here we go.

To the online writing community:

• Thank you for writing such informative and inspirational blog posts, to help me improve my craft and knowledge base about the industry.
• Thank you for throwing amazing conferences like WriteOnCon and contests like "An Agent's Inbox" and "Mystery Agent" to help the pre-agented get more exposure and give our queries a greater chance.
• Thank you for hosting bi-annual networking campaigns to connect us with other writers like us.
• Thank you for commenting on my blog, and letting me know that you value what I have to say.
• Thank you for keeping track of my WiP and being such amazing cheerleaders in my writing process. Ditto for queries.
• Thank you for being a real-time writing-and-query panic support group via Twitter and email.

To my critique partners:

• Thank you for reading my horrendous drafts and ten incarnations of scenes I just can't get right. And not minding a minute of it.
• Thank you for endlessly brainstorming what must seem like minute, trivial character details and plot points with me. And not minding a minute of it.
• Thank you for giving me loving lectures on the accuracy of science in my books, birth control, and query panic, and not thinking less of me afterwards (and, if you do, not telling me about it.)
• Thank you for drawing pictures of my characters, and making me cry.
• Thank you for telling me when a song makes you think of my book, and making me cry.
• Thank you for sending me care packages with inspirational notes, and making me cry.
• Thank you for loving my book and its characters almost as much as I do. That's what I call belief in something, and it's powerful stuff.

To the agents who have asked to see more of THE TRAVELERS:

• Thank you for spending any of your valuable time considering my work.
• Thank you for being unafraid of a brand-new writer.
• Thank you for continuing to read when you run across the occasional mistake or pet peeve.
• Thank you for any feedback you (might? hopefully?) give.
• Thank you for giving me a chance.

To anyone who has ever asked to read my book, just because you thought it sounded awesome:

THANK YOU.

Just...thank you.

Okay, your turn to practice! Who do you want to say "thank you" to? Or, what is another important authoring lesson we can learn before we're agented or published?

The Disastrous Kiss

I love a book with just enough romance - give me a great fantasy, dystopian, or sci-fi with a driving romantic subplot and I am yours forever.

Of course, that's the kind of book I want to write. I'm not sure if I succeeded, (I mean, I think I did, but who am I to say?) but I wanted romance to be just enough of THE TRAVELERS to make hearts melt, but not so much that it was the whole story.

As I was reading ACROSS THE UNIVERSE by Beth Revis, and I had a lightbulb moment - one of the most awesome devices in a romantic subplot is something I'm calling "The  Disastrous Kiss."

Everyone loves a good near miss, but there are only so many times an author can pull that sucker before I start rolling my eyes and either flipping to the end of the book or wanting to throw it across the room. Probably the latter.

 Because, here's the thing. You know that character 1 and character 2 are Meant to Be Together, you know they're going to hook up eventually, so how many near misses can you use as conflict to draw out the tension? Not that many.

But The Disastrous Kiss? That's pure gold. There's just something incredibly heartwrenching and exhilarating about it, because you know in your heart of hearts that these two are Supposed to Be Together, yet the disastrous kiss is so horrifically AWFUL that you really don't see how they're going to overcome this most romantic of obstacles.

I really can't explain it any further than that without showing you an examples, which you may consider spoilery. So, warning - a pretty disastrous excerpt from ACROSS THE UNIVERSE after the pic. (It's in bold, so you can scroll through it to the rest of the post if you want.)

This kiss still could end in disaster.*

From ACROSS THE UNIVERSE by Beth Revis: 

And then - I'm not sure how it happens - but she takes a step closer and I take a step closer, and then we're both just entirely too close. 
And there is nothing between us but rain.
Then there is nothing between us at all.
My lips melt into hers. A drop of rainwater slips around the edge of my mouth, and then her lips part, and so do mine. The raindrop falls on my tongue, and then it's lost on hers. 
My body is drenched; I should be cold. But the warmth of her fills me.
My arms snake around her body, pulling her hard against me. I want to crush her into me.
I never want this to end.
And then -
-She's pulling away.
She's stepping back.
Her fingers are on her swollen lips.
Her eyes are wide and sparkling.
Raindrops drip down her cheeks, but it's not rain, and for the first time, I taste salt on my tongue.
"It's always in the rain," she murmurs. "With Jason, too."
And whoever this Jason is, I want to kill him.
"I'm sorry, she says, taking another step back. "I never meant to - 
And no, no, it's not supposed to be like this.




See how that just - ?  Oh my - excuse me - I'm a little breathless from my heart being torn out and thrown on the floor.


There's not really a Disastrous Kiss in THE TRAVELERS. (There's kind of a sad one, but it's not a disaster by any means.) But I learned my lesson. If I can throw a disastrous kiss into ONE anywhere, at all, I've gotta do it.

So...yeah. I already wrote one for ONE. And even though it's one of my darlings, it has to stay in that MS in some form or another. Critique Partners, you've been warned. I'm holding on to this baby with an iron grip.

What's your favorite Disastrous Kiss? Do you have one in your MS?


*Photo credit: www.atomicmonsters.com*

Free Fallin'

I guess I always knew it, deep down.

Between listening to Brodi's Interview and reading Beth's post yesterday, it really hit home.

The Travelers is probably not going to make it to publication. 

This is not self-deprecating - I now know that first novels are an exercise in pouring a story out from beginning to end, on falling in love with characters and  writing and rewriting until they read on paper just like they look in our heads.

CC Nathan Rupert

But most of all, for me at least, it's proving to be an exercise in letting go.
Hearing those ladies' voices yesterday allowed me to finally close The Travelers file on my computer, and to delete the 17 (yes, seventeen) drafts from my Kindle.
That is, until an agent asks for revisions, (see how I just slipped in that cheery little bit of positive thinking?), because we all know how I love the Revision Rush.
I'm not giving up on The Travelers - not by a longshot. I'm still going to query it, because I believe in the story and the characters and I think that the writing is solid. I do. 
(Please let some agent somewhere love Nik and Davis as much as I do and give them a chance.)

But. I am, slowly but surely, realizing - that novel does not define me as a writer. This is not a one-shot deal. That first novel was training wheels, and it did a really awesome job. It might get rewarded for its work with its own hardcover binding one day. Or it may not. And that's okay.

Now, here's my real problem: I don't know what to do next. 
I'm dying - DYING to write.  Here are my options:

1. Sequel to The Travelers. I already have a basic plot outlined and a bunch of scenes (10 K worth) written, just because I can't get the story/characters out of my head.

2. Shiny New Idea #1 - A murder mystery with light paranormal overtones (that is not vampires, werewolves, faeries, shape shifters, zombies, angels, demons, or anything like that.)

3. Shiny New Idea #2 - A kickass, tech-y dystopian (I know, dystopian is over) that is a retelling of an old-school legend. (think Tristan and Isolde. But it's NOT Tristan and Isolde.)

4. Shiny New Idea #3 - A story about misfit superhero kids, but not like x-Men at all - actually, the opposite. Kind of. I promise, it's not tired.

I feel like I'm free-falling, and I'm a little panicked about it, to be honest. I've been spending time every day with the same beloved characters for EIGHT MONTHS. I miss them, and I need new ones. Or old ones. If I'm being honest, I'm still obsessing over the sequel to The Travelers, but I know writing sequels is a stupid idea before you even have an agent (ahem.)

So, not that I'm going to depend on it, but just for fun - if you were me, what would you do? I need to feel driven, I need to throw myself into something new. Which would you pick?



Photo credit Colin Wu under Creative Commons License, copyright 2010

Friday Obsessions

Everything I was obsessed with this week. 
(I'm trying out an easy Friday meme, let's see if we like it.)

First! Beth Revis, her writing-advice prowess, and most especially her breathtaking book.


Second! The song of the same name, sung by Fiona Apple, blasted at full volume, while driving on the highway (but really it's good anywhere.)

Third! (I'm not going to clutter this one with words)


(I need my smelling salts. Stat.)
(Guess which team I'm on. Wait, everyone already knows.)

Have an awesome weekend, everyone!

Delighted to be Devastated (Crit Diaries)

cc Phil Gilbert

PSA: I seriously THANK GOD for the day that Gina agreed to read my atrocious first draft. She has been my biggest cheerleader on this project, and if I ever make it to publication some day, she'll be a huge part of the reason. She's not mean, beastly or monstrous - she gave me just the critique I needed. And she rules. Okay, on with the show.

My post from yesterday about my unflappable crit partner, Gina, garnered a couple of concerned comments. "Don't change your story just to please people."

I'm here to assure you - I didn't. Example? Sure.

There's one particularly evil character in my first (I know, never-gonna-be-published, blah blah) novel.
Gina said she wasn't buying it. That character isn't evil. Not in the least.
I could have made the character nice, which would have made Gina happy.
But that's not the story I want to tell.  I just knew - KNEW - this character was going to have to be pretty nasty. Be redeemable in the next book, (ha!) maybe, and even a little bit in this one - but NASTY. It was going to be key in a couple of other character's developmental arcs, and I just couldn't sacrifice it.
So I talked with Gina about it (clarification - I have never actually talked to Gina.) and she helped me figure out how to make this character a little more contemptible (G is still not happy with this whole aspect of the story, btw, and for now I don't care.) 


This is crit that helps. This is crit that makes us grow. It is collaborative, it listens, it discusses, it challenges.
It is two-way. TWO WAY.
When Gina brought up a problem with my story, it was because she was invested in it, invested in me. She wants to read it, and she wants other people to read it, the way I see it. She wants the story to be its best.
Writers, would you have it any other way?

My author crush Beth Revis wrote an incredible post on this today, complete with a diagram, for those of you who like that sort of thing (I do.) I'm printing it out and tacking it on my wall.

It's not just true of writing, you guys. It's true of life. Criticism stings. We've all gotten it, in nice ways, in not-so-nice ways, in ways that make us cry but end up being good for us. (Oh, hey, High Holidays sermon.)
But if we hear it right, if we respond to it right, if we use it as a challenge, it make us grow. And isn't that an incredible thing?


(Now, do me a favor and go shine some light into Gina's Revisions Cave.)