I! Am! Sparta! (well, my brain is)

As I'm typing this, my brain is fighting me on every word (literally...I've written and deleted this first sentence three times.). It keeps grabbing hold of the letters and refusing to let them out. It has unleashed a full-on assault, complete with spears and swords and 300 Spartans ready to give their last breath to win.

And why, you ask, has my brain turned on me over the mere attempt to write a blog post? 

Because it wants me to focus on the two WIPS currently fighting their own war in my head. Which brings me to today's post (funny how ironic that is, huh?)

About a month or so ago, I wrapped up final edits on Blood Awakening, the second book in my Blood Prophecy trilogy. (No clue what I'm talking about? Check out book one here). It was a great feeling knowing I was finished, because my publisher had tasked me with some huge changes (like...cutting out entire chapters. Chapters, people!). At first glance, it seemed insurmountable. But, like all us writers, I buckled down and did the work--and the book, in my opinion, is much better for it. After I was done, I rewarded myself by taking a week off from writing  and doing nothing but reading (I can almost hear writers past gasping from beyond). I devoured several books that had been perched on my TBR shelves during those 7 days, letting my mind cleanse itself from the stress of revisions it had been under. It was, in a word, awesome.

That mini-vacay helped me return to the trenches ready to fight. I had to dig into the first book of my second contracted series, which is due in December, so I had no more time to waste. I was stoked to create this dystopian world that had seized my thought process about six months ago, to flesh out the characters that I so vividly saw in my head. I eagerly sat at my computer and opened up my .doc, my fingers aching to begin.

And, as luck would have it, those characters? That world that wouldn't let me leave only a few months ago? Yeah, they were MIA. Nowhere to be found. Gone. And in their place were some new characters, a new world, a new idea. And this idea forced me to write it. It, like my brain at the beginning of this blog post, had its own set of eager Spartans ready for battle. And these soldiers even had shields to block those dystopian words from getting through. And spears. And swords. 

And an even bigger need to win.

Thus began the battle still raging in my head. It isn't a battle of good vs evil, of light vs dark, of Spartans vs Persians. No, it is a much worse battle.

A battle of me vs me. A battle that no matter the outcome, I know, deep down, I will still come out a winner.

That doesn't make the overall war any easier, though.

What about you? How does your mind cope with dueling ideas? How do you handle that internal writerly conflict?

Hard Work and Inspiration

By Dan Haring

Full disclosure: I'm not a huge White Stripes fan. I like a few of their songs, but have never really gotten into them too much. But a friend recently passed this video on to me, and not only does it give me extra appreciation for their music, it gives me a lot of respect for singer(/songwriter/guitarist/etc) Jack White.


He talks about dreaming of being able to record an album, dreaming of being able to play on stage. Once he finally achieved those things, he could have probably had a long, lucrative career coasting along, making so-so music and relying on his earlier hits to make up for later mediocrity.  Instead, he came up with a unique way of keeping the hunger there, of keeping the immediacy. He limits himself. He makes things hard to do when performing live. Little things that no musician of his stature should have to endure, he endures. And he does it to keep things raw and fresh and real.

So...this all relates to writing, right? I think it does. I'm going through a revision right now, and I'm coming to realize sometimes I just coast by. I write something that's adequate and move on because it would be too hard to stretch and try to go down a certain road. But when I do that I end up leaving so much behind that could be better.

Doing hard things makes us better, and working hard makes us better.

As Jack says, "Inspiration and work ethic ride right next to each other...Not every day of your life are you gonna wake up and the clouds are gonna part and rays from heaven are gonna come down and you're gonna write a song from it. I mean sometimes you just get in there and just force yourself to work and maybe something good will come out."

Good will come of it, but we have to push ourselves. It's the difference between telling an adequate story and an exceptional story.

Which one do you want to tell?

Do Giveaways Work?

by Michelle Gagnon

Figment.com has just announced a contest to celebrate the release of my YA debut DON'T TURN AROUND. In keeping with the theme of the book, they're asking for a story about teen rebels with a cause, in 1,200 words or less. The winner will receive a 13 inch MacBook Pro (a computer that features prominently in the storyline, since it's sort of a "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for teens"), and a signed copy of the book.

I'm really excited about this (especially since, for a refreshing change, this time I won't be the one paying for the grand prize!) However, I wonder...do giveaways really lead to more copies sold?

For my second book, BONEYARD, I held a Kindle contest. Anyone who signed up for my newsletter got their name thrown into the hat (mind you, this was for the Kindle 1, which as a brand spanking new device retailed for $450).
That was, to date, my bestselling novel.
But I was hesitant about repeating that particular contest-after all, signing up for my newsletter didn't necessarily translate to purchasing the book; and many might simply unsubscribe as soon as the contest ended. (For the record, I didn't experience an unusually high dip in subscribers in the aftermath). Plus, it was a lot of money to spend without a quantifiable return.

So for my third thriller, THE GATEKEEPER, I decided to take it up a notch. I offered a MacBook (paid for out of my own advance) to anyone who could answer two easy questions about the book.
I received a decent number of entries; certainly not as many as with the previous contest, but a respectable amount. To enter, a reader needed to provide the names of two specific characters, in response to a fairly simple question for anyone who had read the book.

But some people literally sent a full roster of every character in every single one of my novels. One woman emailed me directly twenty times over the course of a day, listing two characters at a time (a few of whom weren't even from any of my books), asking repeatedly, "These two names? What about these two?"
When I gently pointed out that randomly throwing names at me wasn't really keeping in the spirit of the contest, she got huffy and fired off a nasty email about how spoiled authors were, and how this was the only way she could get a new computer. Plus, she wasn't a big reader in general, and found it unfair that she be asked to read something in order to enter a giveaway.

*Sigh. The entire experience ended up leaving a bad taste in my mouth (not to mention a dent in my wallet). So for my fourth book, I skipped contests entirely.

I had no idea that Figment was going to be running this contest until it posted; I love the idea behind it, though. Especially since Figment serves as a virtual writing community. And I'm terribly flattered that they're offering such an amazing, generous prize.

But will it translate into sales? Hard to say. I know the old 50% marketing adage (half of what you do will work, but chances are you'll never know which half). But it's a source of perpetual frustration for every author--where do you concentrate your marketing time and money, especially now that there's such a huge array of options? Hemingway never had to deal with Twitter (although I suspect he would have been fantastic at it, with his knack for sparse prose).

So what do you think? Has a giveaway ever persuaded you to purchase a novel you never would have picked up otherwise?

In which I've already done the talking!

Every so often I do one of these interview things and then totally forget about it, and then a Google alert (yes, I use Google alerts. I admit it. But that is a good topic for ANOTHER day) pops up and tells me something has been posted about me online. Sometimes those are good things (like nice reviews), sometimes those things suck (like suck reviews), and sometimes there are awesome little professionally edited videos from interviews of the past.

So here are two that turned up this week. These were filmed at the Writers' League of Texas* conference back in June and are through a group called Author Learning Center. The Author Learning Center has gobs of these fantastic videos online (the vast majority of which are other people, not me!).

I'm sure none of you guys will enjoy watching these as much as my mom, but still, here they are for your viewing pleasure.  :)


Here I am talking about how I used to be an engineer (and trust me, I totally still think like one).



And here I am talking about the wonderful, beautiful thing that was Tor buying my YA novel, SOLSTICE (Tor Teen, June 2013).



*The Writers' League of Texas is a great group and totally worth joining if you live in or around the Austin area.