Friday Obsessions: Snow, Crit Projects, and the Kindle

Before we begin!
Some housekeeping.

First up, there's an amazing literary/writer's auction happening over at Write Dreams to benefit Donna's Dream House, which helps KIDS IN THE HOSPITAL, so, you know, it's really important. Anyway, someone set fire to it right before Christmas, those jerks, and now Donna is trying to rebuild so that sick kids can hang out with their families a little more while they're staying in the hospital.

So if you have some extra holiday cash lying around and want to use it for a good cause and get writing help from the pros as a really nice bonus, GO BID!!! (Remember, they're bidding in pounds, so...yeah. Do your conversions.)


Second! The winner of the Brodi Ashton Classy Author Giveaway is.....

COREY WRIGHT!!!

(I swear to you I did the random draw and whatnot, but I'm too lazy to do the screenshot, etc, so you'll just have to believe me.)

Who said, "In a weird way, stories like Brodi's are so satisfying to hear. Insofar as, here is someone who really *wants* it. Who works for it and keeps at it because it's what she's called to do, not just because it's something to do. And it's a fantastic light to the rest of us who struggle with the rejections and the self-doubt and the looming fear of the not so great What If." 

To which I say: Damn straight. Congrats, Corey! (Though, I can't for the life of me find your email address, so shoot me a message with your address and whether you'd like EVERNEATH on Kindle or in hard copy, okay?)


Okay. Now, on with the obsessions!

Everything I was obsessed with this week.
Because I know you want to know.


1. The Forecast.

So, right now (5 AM on posting day,) the weather looks like this:


Which...okay. Whatever. I just pretty much HATE this whole "ten degrees and cloudy" nonsense if the weather's not going to oblige and at least give us some pretty snow to look at. So every morning these days I'm going to weather.com and just hoping....

Well, guess what I saw this morning!!!


Which pretty much has me doing this:


Yep. Even though it won't shut down work or school, or really even accumulate that much, I love a good Shabbat snow. So pretty to watch, so nice to curl up with a great book. Which brings me to....

2. Crit Projects LYM and TB
As soon as I finish pushing through this revision high on ONE (yes, ba''H, ptuh ptuh ptuh, my CPs helped pep talk my sorry behind through my revision wall from last week and I'm ALMOST DONE) I'm spending ALL WEEKEND with books from members of the team. I'll probably finish in-lines on Gina's fab new YA romance.

You need to be jealous - because my goodness is it ever romantic. Fellow LYM team member Marieke compared Gina's writing to Sarah Dessen's, and I agree, not because I've ever read Sarah Dessen, but because her writing made her famous and Gina's gonna have the same situation.

And then - did I mention? - I snagged (okay, obtained through endless month-long harassment) a very early copy of TB, which is about TIME DRAGONS I mean HOLY GEEZ, you guys - from Jamie Grey. And you guys, the writing is SO BEAUTIFUL and the characters? Love them. So I get to finish reading that and send my comments this weekend too.

Cannot. Wait.

3. My Kindle 
Call me snobby or elitist or a Hater of Paper Books, but I'm in love with my Kindle. I wouldn't get NEARLY the volume of reading or writing (yes, the Kindle is an IMMENSE help to my writing, I'll do a post on it) without my baby in her sweet eggshell-blue case.


My Kindle, tag-teaming it with my netbook to edit ONE.

Plus, when I send ONE to the Kindle, it looks just like all the other books that are actually published by People Who Publish Things. At I'm not gonna lie, that's a rush.

Okay, your turn!!! What were YOU obsessed with this week?

Classy Author Giveaway: Brodi Ashton

Wheeee! I love Classy Author Giveaways, but I might love this giveaway's author even more! It's....drumroll please....

BRODI ASHTON!!!

*confetti*

*excitement*

*dancing*

You guys, this author classes. It. UP.

First reason I love Brodi Ashton - She's a freaking INSPIRATION. A reminder to never, ever give up. Here's her summary of her publishing journey, divided into prefaced sections by me:

Brodi queried something like a hundred agents to secure rep for her first book, finally found an agent, yay! And then it didn't work out.

1. Wrote a book.

2. Edited that book.

3. Queried agents

4. Received about a hundred rejections.

5. And one offer of representation.

6. Revised the book with the agent.

7. Submitted the book to publishers... and...

8. Got rejected by every single one.

9. Wrote another book.

10. Revised that book.

11. Sent book to agent, who didn't love the book.

12. Parted ways with agent.

So what did she do? Girlfriend pulled herself up by her bootstraps, took her new awesome book, and found herself another agent. After another hundred queries. 

13. Queried agents again.

14. Received almost a hundred rejections again.

15. But also received 9 offers of representation.

16. Signed with my agent.

17. Revised my book.

And guess what that agent was able to do with the kickass book she wrote for him to sell. No, just guess.

He sold it. Within two days. At auction. (Like a mofo.)

18. Submitted the book to publishers.

19. Accepted pre-empt from HarperCollins after only 48 hours on submission.

So, in summary, Ms. Ashton's here to teach us: You think that rejection's the end of the world? It's not. Your book failed on submission, and you don't know what to do? Well, you're a writer. Write another book. Your agent doesn't like your new book? Find another one. Earn your own darn book deal, because no one else is going to do it for you. 

She's awesome like that. 

But inspiration alone does not a classy author make. 

She also Pays it Forward.

First of all, Brodi is open and honest about her publication path with the writing community. Her blog's one place to start to find out about it all. Beyond that, she spreads her special brand of "never-give-up" type of love to the aspiring, unagented, and unpublished everywhere.

 She spoke on this episode of the Appendix podcast about persistence, and she's all over Twitter with the cheerleading and encouragement. If you ask her a question, she'll answer. If you mention her or her book or her awesome book trailer, she'll have a conversation with you about it. If you're frustrated and she catches your tweet, she'll jump in waving pompons.

 I've even  heard of her doing critiques of queries and first pages for the unagented, (nope! Not me...) even though she SO doesn't have to do that. She's so in touch with the raw feelings of being in drafting, or revising, or querying-land, even though her ship sailed from there awhile ago, and doesn't mind commiserating with writing commoners. (Not that she would call us that....)

So, for all these reasons and more....let's give away a copy of Brodi's debut novel, EVERNEATH, which releases on January 24!

Here's a summary from Amazon:

Last spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath. Now she’s returned—to her old life, her family, her boyfriend—before she’s banished back to the underworld . . . this time forever. She has six months before the Everneath comes to claim her, six months for good-byes she can’t find the words for, six months to find redemption, if it exists.

     Nikki longs to spend these precious months forgetting the Everneath and trying to reconnect with her boyfriend, Jack, the person most devastated by her disappearance—and the one person she loves more than anything. But there’s just one problem: Cole, the smoldering immortal who enticed her to the Everneath in the first place, has followed Nikki home. Cole wants to take over the throne in the underworld and is convinced Nikki is the key to making it happen. And he’ll do whatever it takes to bring her back, this time as his queen.

     As Nikki’s time on the Surface draws to a close and her relationships begin slipping from her grasp, she is forced to make the hardest decision of her life: find a way to cheat fate and remain on the Surface with Jack or return to the Everneath and become Cole’s queen.

Um....WOW. 

So, who wants to spread the word about  an ultra-classy author by winning a copy of her debut?

(Yeah. I know you do.)

To enter for the giveaway, leave me a comment below saying something sweet about Brodi or EVERNEATH or any other author you think is classy. 

Want an extra entry? Tweet about it and link up below. 

Want an extra extra entry? Be a follower of this here blog. New or not, I love you all. (But tell me if you are, because I can't keep track of my three little in-person responsibilities, let alone all 135 of you who were following before this went live.)

Good luck! You guys rule.

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!