Happy 2014!

Is it already 2014?! Really? Well, shut my mouth. I have to admit, I always look forward to every new year because those previous years typically find me wanting and not as happy as I wish I had been.

Naturally, I have to ask myself what I hope to accomplish this new year. What will make me happy this time? I'm really hoping to finally publish an ACTUAL novel this year--for real. I need to finish writing my initial draft and do and receive all kinds of editing for it--but this year--I want to be able to put the book out there in the world to be read by real readers.

Maybe I'm not ready for this step just yet, but it's not like I'm going to publish the story today. It's not even finished. I'm hoping that by the time the book is ready, I will be ready along with it. If not, I'll just have take the plunge, anyway.

A Happy New 2014 to everyone! Along with myself and my own desires for the new year, I hope you all set your sights on accomplishing what you truly want for your own definition of happiness. Or, at least, like me, you can get started on your journey.

Peace.....

New Creepy Hollow Ebook Covers!

If you're a fan of the original Creepy Hollow covers, you'll be pleased to know that the print editions of the books are keeping those original covers. But the ebooks are about to get a facelift! Here are the brand new covers!

THE FAERIE GUARDIAN
Amazon | Barnes&Noble | iTunes
Protecting humans from dangerous magical creatures is all in a day’s work for a faerie training to be a guardian. Seventeen-year-old Violet Fairdale knows this better than anyone—she’s about to become the best guardian the Guild has seen in years. That is, until a cute human boy who can somehow see through her faerie glamour follows her into the fae realm. Now she’s broken Guild Law, a crime that could lead to her expulsion.

The last thing Vi wants to do is spend any more time with the boy who got her into this mess, but the Guild requires that she return Nate to his home and make him forget everything he’s discovered of the fae realm. Easy, right? Not when you factor in evil faeries, long-lost family members, and inconvenient feelings of the romantic kind. Vi is about to find herself tangled up in a dangerous plot—and it’ll take all her training to get out alive.

THE FAERIE PRINCE
Amazon | Barnes&Noble | iTunes

The magical world is a dangerous one...

THE FAERIE WAR

Amazon | Barnes&Noble | iTunes

The fate of the fae world is in her hands...

A little bit about Rachel ...

Rachel Morgan was born in South Africa where she spent a large portion of her
childhood living in a fantasy land of her own making. After completing a degree in genetics, she decided science wasn’t for her—after all, they didn’t approve of made-up facts. These days she spends most of her time creating fictional worlds for young adults. When she isn't writing, she's reading (duh!), catching up on addictive TV series, and baking things that almost always include chocolate. Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Creepy Hollow website

Rachel's Facebook page has recently reached 1000 likes, and she's holding a giveaway to celebrate! You can enter by filling in the Rafflecopter form below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Which Story to Write?

I don't know if very many other authors or would-be authors, like myself, have this problem as I do. Do you find yourself in this scenario?

You think of a great idea for a story that seems unique and you get excited about it, telling others about the idea and they agree it is something they'd love to read one day. So, you start writing it and you don't get very far with your first draft before you realize your brain just won't conjure up the creativity needed for you to keep going.

You bang your head against the wall to see if that will jog the creative juices, but it is of no avail. You cannot, for the life of you, get this story off the ground. You have no choice but to put it away and think of something else entirely to write next.

My current writing project seems to be fine, so I don't think this is an issue for me right now, but this has been how my year as a writer has gone until recently. I started out writing a Young Adult high fantasy about winged people until I realized the story was boring me to tears and sounded as flat as a plank. Then, I started a sci-fi apocalyptic story about cyborgs and destructive robots only to not be able to think of what to actually write. Then, a zombie apocalypse novella that somehow got away from me and I don't even know how that happened.

I was starting to think something was seriously wrong with me because I couldn't finish anything. I still might have this problem, but I can say that I feel my current YA vampire historical novel is a project I can at least finish in the first draft stage. I have the motivation to do it and am truly loving to write the characters. Finally, although it's likely it won't be finished until next year. So, I will have spent one full year not getting a first draft finished. 

I shake my head at myself, but I wonder how unusual is this for authors. Does this happen to anyone else? I really don't see authors admitting this, so it makes me feel like it's just me who has ever gone through this. I hope I'm not the only author who struggles with picking the right story to focus on and has to sift through quite a few to land on the right one. Surely, the norm is not to come up with the perfect idea out of the blue and just sit and write the story until it is done. That would be a little too perfect for this imperfect world, right?

Do you ever struggle to find the right story to focus on? 

Magna's Plea by Cherie Reich Release

A princess will rise and challenge Fate. 

While her father, brothers, and people fight against the Kingdom of Apentha, tenacious eighteen-year-old Princess Magna can only watch the destruction of Amora, her besieged city and kingdom. Her mother, Queen Vyvian, has refused to allow her heir to join the fray. 

But Magna won't take no for an answer. She seeks out an end of the war from Prince Cyrun of Apentha, their prisoner. If she can't persuade him toward peace, then Amora may fall. 

This short story prequel includes a sneak peek of Reborn, Book One of The Fate Challenges, forthcoming May 2014. 

YA Epic Fantasy
The Fate Challenges #0.5
A 5500-word Short Story

Best of all, you can download this short story for free at Amazon / Nook / iTunes / Kobo / Smashwords / Goodreads and read online at Wattpad.

Cherie Reich is a speculative fiction writer living in Virginia. For more information about her work, please visit her blog and website.

 

The Faerie War by Rachel Morgan, the third book in the Creepy Hollow series, releases today!

It's party time!!! 

Today is the official online release of Rachel Morgan's third Creepy Hollow novel, The Faerie War. After that cliffhanger at the end of the second book, fans can finally find out what happens to Violet and everyone else in Creepy Hollow. If you'd like to get your copy, you can find it at the following online stores, plus a few others:

Amazon US | Amazon UK

Barnes & Noble

iTunes

CreateSpace (print)

There are seven other teaser images displayed on various blogs today. If you'd like to see them, you can visit the following fabulous bloggers:

And there's a major giveaway going on!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Insecure Writers' Support Group (#9)

Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is a really awesome meme that you should be doing along with the rest of us writers. Unless you truly are happy with your writing and don't feel the need to vent about your insecurities because they don't exist for you. But, really.... Don't they?  
IWSG is hosted by Captain Ninja Alex at his blog, Alex J. Cavanaugh.

As some readers of my blog may already be aware, I've had problems crashing and burning when it comes to my writing in the recent past. It has not been pretty nor fun. I had gotten to the point where writing was so painful, I began to really dislike it and prefer doing anything else besides. And I want to do this for a living!

I had to do some realizing about why this was happening to me, since it hadn't ever happened before. So, I let this issue percolate in the back of my mind for a while, as I tend to do when trying to do damage control in my life (when am I ever NOT doing damage control?!).

I found a book on how to become more prolific (The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: [...] by Hillary Rettig) and the section on perfectionism really stuck out for me. I definitely needed to get over my perfectionism issues and just let myself write crap when composing my first drafts. Why I wasn't doing this, I'm not sure. I just didn't want to make mistakes, period. But, I realize now that it's okay to make them when first writing a draft, and even afterwards. I think I made an important breakthrough there.

But, that was hardly all I needed to do. I still felt very stuck and very unhappy when writing. Just my perfectionism alone wasn't all that was stifling me, clearly. I thought more and more about what made me love writing back when I was doing it for fun. And, something I had heard J.K. Rowling say in an interview once about why her Harry Potter books are so popular popped into my mind and wouldn't leave: she said, according to thousands of fan letters, it had to have been the characters she created that made her books endearing.

I thought about all that I had been writing since I wanted to write with the intention of publishing. It wasn't that I hated what I had been writing. It was that I wasn't writing characters that I could fall in love with anymore. That was the difference. It all occurred to me after figuring out that I used to write characters that made me love to write about them, and I had somehow, without realizing, stopped doing it.

When I love any book I read, truly love it, it's always, always, always because there's at least one if not more than one character in the book that I liked a lot, or even loved. That's it. That's why I read and that's also why I write. I'm a character-person above everything else.

I decided to zero-in on my newest characters in my current work-in-progress to ensure they were making me find them endearing. With a little effort on my part, I've been writing better characters, at least as far as I'm concerned, and really loving to write again! 

In the end, I don't even care if my characters don't enchant anybody else. Maybe everyone else will find them boring--who knows? For now, they need to be right for me and make me happy. All I've been wanting is to love writing again and I had to rediscover what it was that made me love it in the first place. Now, if I could only make myself remember this in the long run......

 

My Post-It Notes Novel

As a writer, over time, I've only gotten weirder. I've gotten to the point where I can't finish any draft I start and have now resorted to writing my novels on Post-It Notes just so I can have the story organized and out of my head.

I discovered this idea from reading Roz Morris' novel, Nail Your Novel: Why Writers Abandon Books and How You Can Draft, Fix and Finish with Confidence. I have to say, so far it's actually working! I'm about half-way finished writing up all the different scenes and snippets I want to include in my first draft. Half-way! That is so big for me. It's odd, but I really feel like I'm writing the manuscript already, even though I'm not literally doing that, yet. But, composing a cohesive, viable story is half the battle.

What I love most about this little tactic is that I can add and remove scenes so incredibly easily. I'm figuring out what works and what doesn't long before any prose is being typed up in "stone" on that computer. I realize I have a huge dislike, or dread for trying to find something I wrote within a sea of literally thousands of words in order to axe it, add to it or move it around. Of course, this has to be done during every author's editing phase, but at least I can do some of that axing, adding and moving before those scenes ever gets lost in that abyss known as a Word document.

Life made easier! That's progress for me. I've been in a horrible writing slump lately and this is really helping me to move past it. I never thought I'd actually be writing an entire novel on Post-It Notes, but now I can see myself doing this with every story I write from now on.


Have you ever tried anything off-beat or bizarre in order to get out of a writing slump?

Cover Reveal: The Faerie War by Rachel Morgan

Sorry I've been so MIA for the past month. I've been battling some problems with my health and it's made it hard to have energy for blogging. 

Anyway, today is the day to officially reveal the cover for the third book in the Creepy Hollow series by Rachel Morgan, The Faerie War. And, a very beautiful cover it is....

 

The fate of the faerie world is in her hands...

Title: The Faerie War

Series: Creepy Hollow, Book Three

Author: Rachel Morgan

Cover Designer: Morgan Media

Publication Date: Oct 2013

Add on Goodreads

Find the Creepy Hollow series on Amazon

Insecure Writers Support Group (#8)

Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is a really awesome meme that you should be doing along with the rest of us writers. Unless you truly are happy with your writing and don't feel the need to vent about your insecurities because they don't exist for you. But, really.... Don't they?  
IWSG is hosted by Captain Ninja Alex at his blog, Alex J. Cavanaugh.

This month, my writing insecurity might be a bit unusual. I really don't know what to make of this one. My current manuscript is sort of forcing me to write it in an uncomfortable manner. 

I know--how can a manuscript make you do anything? It sounds preposterous, but my current WIP just won't let me actually plan it out before I write it. My usual way of writing is to mostly plan the entire story, sometimes as I go, but I "pants" very little of my stories. But, this one. This one. Will not formulate in my head before I sit my butt down to write it. I can only say that this is terrifying!

I'm not a "pantser" so this is really new and very strange territory for me and I can't understand why this story is behaving this way. It's like it's a jumbled mess of raw materials strewn about all over the place that is expecting me to just stick everything together at the last minute into an organized structure. I don't even know. It's all abstract. It's an abstract story in my head that has no shape or form, but it's there somehow. I don't even know how to explain this.....

Anyway, are there any pantsers out there who can give me some advice? I'm so freaked out that I'm going to end up staring at a blank page with absolutely nothing coming to mind. I mean, how can I write when I have no idea what to write beforehand? 


How do you usually write your fiction? Have you ever tried a method opposite to your usual and learned to be comfortable with it?

  

This Post is Dedicated to...Nobody

 

This is sort of an op-ed piece I decided to write today. I've had this subject on my mind, lately, and being an avid reader, how could I not? I see it so often....

 

Have you ever wondered why authors write those little one-line dedications at the very beginning of their novels? You may very well BE one of those authors dedicating a line to someone you deem special enough to have made writing your entire novel worthwhile.

I don't have anything against authors who like to do this. After all, show me an author who doesn't do this in their books. It'll be hard to find one. But, I personally can't understand why practically every author perpetuates this practice. It seems rather pointless to me. 

Consider that an "Acknowledgments" page gets included in just about every book along with this dedicatory page and I am really left scratching my head. Why bother to write some sentimental line to your dog or your mom when you've just spend a page-and-a-half thanking everybody under the sun you've ever known plus the kitchen sink? It's completely redundant. 

I know--it's a tradition and one that's been around for centuries. I looked it up, although I can't seem to find out why this tradition started. It just seemed to have popped up one day and never looked back.

I promise I won't judge you for keeping this redundacy alive, although you could avoid it by just not writing an Acknowledgments page. You know, pick one and not both! But, even if you insist on doing both, I won't hold it against you. I'm cool with people doing what they feel they have to do and one sentence is hardly anything to lose sleep over. 

But, I don't think I'll be joining this long-standing bandwagon. I feel the need to go against the grain and leave this little one-liner out of my future published novels. Acknowledgments will be plenty, since I see that page as being essential. What book can be made without tons of help from tons of people? But, why should any one person or animal or cosmic phenomenon get the sole dedication for any book I write?

So, what's your take on author dedications? I'm really curious as to what other people, especially authors, actually think of them. I'll admit, I laugh at the funny ones. If it's funny, I might just think it's worthwhile, after all. 

  

Cover Reveal: Men of Foxwick by Cherie Reich

Hey, everyone! I've got a special book cover reveal today. Cherie Reich's Men of Foxwick is now available for purchase as an ebook in any one of your favorite ebook retailers. Thus, the cover can now be unveiled to the world!
 

Yay, awesome cover! I can tell you, I was one of Cherie's beta readers for this short story collection and I could BARELY say anything about it because there were no flaws. Just perfect little stories that made the editing easy, but confusing because I felt so silly for not being able to suggest any changes. But, hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it....


Onto the business at hand.... This fantasy short story collection features five men from the Kingdom of Foxwick.

A blind teen seeks a place in the kingdom. A dragon seer journeys to Wintermill to spy on the queen. A sword master’s worst fear comes true when he fails to protect the royal family. A king falls in love with an herb witch, but will she feel the same way? A hunter will rise to the challenge to hunt down a man-eating monster.


To purchase: Amazon US | Amazon UK | Smashwords | Kobo | iTunes | Nook

For more information about Men of Foxwick, please visit Cherie Reich’s blog. Also, Cherie has a special announcement for her email newsletter subscribers. Click here to sign up for her updates and receive a coupon for a free copy of Women of Foxwick.


Congrats to Cherie! 

The Faerie Prince Blog Tour: Author Interview with Rachel Morgan

BLOG TOUR

Hey, everybody! The totally fabulous Rachel Morgan, author of the Creepy Hollow series, is joining me on my humble little blog today. She is celebrating the recent release of the second book in her Creepy Hollow Young Adult novel series, The Faerie Prince. If you haven't picked up a copy of the first book, The Faerie Guardian, you are missing out! Make it so, people (you know who you are)....

Shall we begin?

Me: First of all, you’ve likely been asked this question for interviews before, but what inspired you to write the Creepy Hollow series?

Rachel: It was the name, Creepy Hollow. It just popped into my head one day, and I kind of came up with the story to match the name. In my head, the name Creepy Hollow conjured up a magical forest inhabited by all kinds of beings and creatures. That morphed into a more specific idea about kick-butt magical characters who protected humans from dangerous magical creatures. Finally, these guardian characters became faeries.

Me: That's awesome! Do you have a special interest in faeries and fae?

Rachel: When I was little I believed that faeries were real. I made special little gardens for them outside, and I wrote letters to them (and I believe my mother/grandmother wrote back on behalf of the faeries!). They’re probably the first magical creature I knew anything about, and I’ve always loved them.

Me: Wow, that's amazing. I'm sure I didn't even believe Santa Claus was real when I was little.... But, back to your novels. What I really like about your books is that they are very distinctively YA. Why do you, as an author, like writing YA?

Rachel: I like the YA years because that’s when characters

are growing up and figuring out who they are. They experience so many ‘firsts’, and everything is more exciting, more of a big deal. There are also more rules to break when you’re not yet an adult, and breaking rules is fun to write about ;-)

Me: Yes, yes it is. I like the main character Violet’s love/hate relationship with her childhood friend Ryn. It really seems like something that could progress into might-actually-like-him territory. Does their relationship have a real life source of inspiration, or is it just a fabulous imagination on your part?

Rachel: No real life inspiration, just my fabulous imagination. Haha! And probably a whole lot of stories I’ve read and movies I’ve watched all mixed into one. I love those kind of relationships where people have known each other for so long that they know almost everything about one another.

Me: I know I love the relationships with lots of friction! Okay, explain to us a little bit about what your faeries are like and why they are tasked with becoming Guardians. 

Rachel: My faeries are not tiny things that fly around with wings and wands. They’re human-sized, they have modern magical techniques and devices, and they can kick serious butt. Just like in the human world, faeries can be a lot of things when they grow up. Those that choose to be guardians are the ones that want to protect humans (and other fae) from all the dangerous magical creatures that inhabit the fae realm.

Me: Noble faeries. Who would have thought? Only a clever person like you.... So, how many books do you intend to write for the Creepy Hollow series?

Rachel: With Vi as the main character, there will be three novels. But I’m not opposed to future novels set in the same world with possibly some of the same characters (I may already have vague plans for said future novels ;-) ).

Me: I sure hope so and would love to see many more books.... So, you’re a self-published author, as I hope to be one day, too. Why did you decide to go down this publishing route rather than hunting down an agent?

Rachel: It all started off with my curiosity about digital publishing and wanting to try it out for myself. Along the way, I’ve accumulated other reasons for wanting to remain an independent author: I get to have control of most aspects of the publishing journey; I can get my books to readers far quicker than a publisher could; the royalty percentage is much higher; and I’m sure there are other reasons! 

Me: Oh, you bet there are! These are all the same reasons I'm drawn to self-publishing, too. I like retaining ownership over things I've worked hard to obtain, or create, for that matter. 

Thanks so much for your time, Rachel, and good luck with the launch of The Faerie Prince! 

Purchase The Faerie Prince

Amazon US | Amazon UK

Barnes & Noble

Apple iBookstore

CreateSpace (print) 

Author Bio

Rachel Morgan was born in South Africa and spent a large portion of her childhood living in a fantasy land of her own making. After completing a degree in genetics, she decided science wasn’t for her—after all, they didn’t approve of made-up facts. These days she spends much of her time immersed in fantasy land once more, writing fiction for young adults.
 

The Creepy Hollow Series

Amazon | Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Book Trailer

Rachel's Links

Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Google+

Insecure Writer's Support Group (#7)

Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is a really awesome meme that you should be doing along with the rest of us writers. Unless you truly are happy with your writing and don't feel the need to vent about your insecurities because they don't exist for you. But, really.... Don't they?  
IWSG is hosted by Captain Ninja Alex at his blog, Alex J. Cavanaugh.

I really need another IWSG....

Lately, I've come to realize that I simply don't enjoy writing anymore. I used to love it, which is why I do it. I used to love crafting a riveting story and making my characters say and do incredible things! But, nowadays, I just want to do anything other than put my butt in a chair at my computer and actually write.

I still love the aspects that I used to love about story-telling. Creating characters and worlds for them to live within is just as exciting for me still as it is for you fellow writers. But, it's the pressure of trying to make this a career and be serious about it that's sapping all the fun out of writing for me these days.

I'm not sure when this happened, but I only realized it recently. It could be that I've been unhappy like this for a couple of years, but wasn't perceptive enough to sense it. It is so much harder to write for serious than it is for fun. I'm not necessarily about to throw in the towel, but I just have to be honest about how un-fun this whole fiction writing thing actually is for me. 

I also figure I could be unduly unhappy because my confidence in my writing took a steep nosedive when I received a very, very insensitive critique from a former critique partner. After reading those comments, I actually DID give up my writing for a little while. Thankfully, my writing partner encouraged me to get back in the saddle again and I eventually did. 

But, I don't think I've ever recovered from that nightmarish critique. I still can't to this day write anything without being terrified I'm going to mess up and write terrible things, or make all those same mistakes I made according to that former crit partner. I write slow and spotty and can't seem to make myself sit in my chair and just let the words flow out of my fingertips. I'm lucky if I can write even a few days each week. I've written only 25,000 words since this year began.

So, I don't know what to do to regain my confidence. Nothing I do seems to work, although I can't say I've tried everything. I don't even know what to do other than to keep on keeping on as best I can. Mostly, I want to LOVE writing again, like how I did when I used to write for fun and not seriously. Is that even possible again? 


Do you still love writing, even though you have to be a serious author these days? Have you ever lost your confidence and regained it somehow?


 

WIP IT GOOD Blogfest

The WIP IT GOOD Blogfest is a one-time blog meme opporutnity for authors to share some information about their current manuscript Works-in-Progress. Hosted by DL Hammons & Elise Fallson.

I know I keep doing blog memes on this blog and I'm so sorry, everybody! One of these days I'll have original content again--I swear. 

In the meantime, I decided to do this fun blog meme at the last minute because I am a bad blogger and can't come up with blog content to save my life. But, at least this is something, right? So, I will answer the questions pertaining to this meme about one of my many unfinished WiPs (and I have several, but this one I'm currently working on). This is my newest one.


1. WIP Title:

Rise of Iron (1st book in a planned series)

2. Word Count (projected/actual so far):

8,212 actual words written thus far. Should be topping out over 100,000 by the time it's finished.

3. Genre:

Young Adult sci-fi apocalypse with some fantasy elements. 

4. How long have you been working on it?

I think since last month, April 2013. 

5. Elevator Pitch (if you came across an agent in an elevator ride, what couple of lines would you use to summarize your book?):

A teenage girl saves a man's life by turning him into a machine (a cyborg) so he can eliminate all the evil robots destroying the entire city of Los Angeles. 

Yeah, that's basically what this wacky story is about without all the frill and fluff of language!

6. Brief Synopsis:

Mindy Collins refuses to leave the city even after the metal has come to life and has already destroyed most of Los Angeles. She chooses to stay and fight, but she's not strong enough on her own. When she saves a man's life after being nearly killed by one of the cities many living metal robots, she has no choice but to recreate him into a living robot, too. With the strength of ten men, he's the only hope the city has of actually exterminating the conscious steel that is determined to wipe out all organic beings on Earth. 

7. Are you looking for a Critique Partner?

No. Have that squared away already.

8. Are you looking for a Beta Reader?

Yes, if anyone is interested! I'm open to having more than one.


Anyway, this is what I'm working on right now. It's coming along slowly, but I guess that's how I work. I find I need at least 9 months to create an entirely new world before I feel l've got it all figured out. So, I'm still conjuring my story and world building and will be for some time to come. 

What are you writers currently WIPping?

 

Matching Music

Today's post is just something to post in the interim of waiting for the next IWSG post for June. I'm starting to like that meme......

Since I struggle for what to blog about I figured I'd post videos of songs that I like to associate with my current work in progress, which I'm calling Rise of Iron. It's an apocalyptic (NOT post-apocalyptic) Young Adult sci-fi with a fantasy-ish element to it.

It takes place in Los Angeles, California in the heart of the city. I don't normally like urban areas, but L.A. has always been special to me for some reason (it's the nearest one to me). Big cities are so full of people, they tend to take on a life all their own, don't they? The streaming cars on the highways can be likened to the blood coursing through our veins, keeping us alive. It's like big cities are very large, living organisms, so my story takes this a bit literally. *wink*

Anyway, here are some tunes I like to listen to as I write it! 

 

    

Celebrate the Small Things! (#2): Editing Edition

"Celebrate the Small Things" is a blog meme hosted by VikLit at Scribblings of an Aspiring Author

I've got another small victory to celebrate this weekend.... I'm so, so tired--just exhausted--because I finally finished a two-week intensive edit of my manuscript! 

I've been working on Camy Tang's (aka The Story Sensei) Deep POV Worksheet and I can tell you it. Is. Brutal. But, I highly recommend it to every writer no matter your experience level because I'm positive you will see your writing in a whole new light. I'm seeing just how shallow my POV has been all this time, and even how shallow a lot of the writing is from novels I've been reading lately. 

I never even got to the last tip, #8, because I just can't even understand it all that well and I figure I'll have to try it out during a future editing round. I need to rest and let my critique partners look at my WiP for now.

It's a small accomplishment, but feels like I just dug a tunnel through a mountain. Whew! I'm really happy, but I hope I get faster at this with some practice......


What small thing are you celebrating this weekend? 


Join the "Celebrate the Small Things" Blog Hop Every Friday! 

The rules are simple: you post something small you'd like to celebrate - tidying that cupboard, finally getting to the gym. You join the linky list. You hop around other people's blogs and say YAY and CONGRATS and join in the happy feelings.  
 

Insecure Writer's Support Group (#6)

Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is a really awesome meme that you should be doing along with the rest of us writers. Unless you truly are happy with your writing and don't feel the need to vent about your insecurities because they don't exist for you. 

But, really.... Don't they? 

IWSG is hosted by Captain Ninja Alex at his blog, Alex J. Cavanaugh.

This month for IWSG, I'm going to vent about something that has been nitpicking at my sense of security (what little there is). 

I write Young Adult fiction--that's how I roll. I read it like it's going out of style (it ISN'T, trust me). It's in my bones to create stories about young people on the verge of becoming adults. Maybe it's because I simply refuse to think of myself as being any older than 17 and I've been thinking that way since I was...17. I'm just an old kid, not to mention a lot of adult fiction--a lot--feels too adult for me.

My fear is that I'm getting too old to be authoring books for teenagers anymore. This year, I'm going to turn 20 years older than the age I've been mentally stuck at for 20 years! All I see out there in the pantheon of YA writers are a bunch people much closer to their teens than me. Am I doing something strange here?

I'm not concerned that I'm out of touch with the teenage mentality. I'm more concerned because I am still in touch with it and, societally-speaking, really shouldn't be anymore. I guess I feel like some out-of-place person trying not to be too tragically unhip, but failing because I ain't gettin' any younger. (Do you guys even know what tragically unhip means anymore?)

Should authors move on to writing adult fiction because they have become too old to write for teens? Does that even happen? I don't see any 70-year-olds tearing up the NYT best seller list with their latest teen craze. Despite this, I want to write YA. I don't want to write for adults. Adults don't need anything from me. I feel like I have more to say to the youth of the world and I love how fresh every adult experience is to them. 

Don't hate me 'cause I'm old.......

What do you think? Is it weird for older adults to write for teens? Are we too out-of-touch for YA?