The Debutante Ball, established in 2007, is a group blog for authors making their debut in the literary world. We are now in our twelfth season of celebrating up-and-coming authors. Former Debs include bestsellers in the genres of women’s fiction, mystery, literary fiction, nonfiction, young adult, and more. Click on any of the photos above to learn about The Debutante Ball Class of 2019 and their books. Read about the bestselling…
The Alpine Path
Those of you who read my post last week may remember that most of it was reminiscing about my childhood love for L. M. Montgomery’s heroine, Emily Starr, and how my obsession with her eventually inspired me to write the book that is now my debut. Since this week we’re all blogging about “the path to publication,” I titled my little piece with one last reference to Emily….
Choose Your Own Adventure: Two Stories About the Querying Process
This week for The Debutante Ball, we’re sharing our journey to getting a literary agent, so I dug through the archives of my email outbox so you can experience truly and authentically the real realness of my querying process, before I landed the book deal for THEY COULD HAVE NAMED HER ANYTHING. WARNING: THERE ARE TWO PARTS OF THIS BLOG POST. THIS IS STORY #1. Read this story to be…
Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes
A couple months back, I had my first (and so far only) viral tweet: Last year, on the eve of my 33rd birthday, I filled 3 pages of my journal despairing over whether I should just give up on this whole writing thing This year, on the eve of my 34th, I’m headed to the bank to deposit the first advance check from my book deal Keep going. — Layne…
Attacus Atlas & Other Inventions: A Circuitous Route
A Circuitous Route: The reflection of the world is blues, that’s where that part of the music is at – Jimi Hendrix I have no way to express how stunned I am, sitting here today, holding my newly hatched ARCs. It is surreal to see this book in galley form, it is surreal to see my family hold my debut novel in their hands. By all accounts I should…
From Aspiring to Published: A Story in Three Scenes
Scene: Dusk. Tucson. 2011. I’m walking along the Rillito River path with my not-yet-wife, crossing under the Campbell bridge just as the bats begin to flicker around us, high-pitched clicks barely audible over the hum of passing cars. The heat hasn’t yet begun to dissipate and we’re still months away from rain, so the guano has accumulated in thick lines across the asphalt and its smell is a punch that…
[News Flash] September 16, 2018
Congrats to Amy, winner of last week’s giveaway of The Child Finder, the acclaimed novel by Rene Denfeld! And thank you so much to yesterday’s guest, Lori Rader-Day! If you haven’t already, enter the #DebBallGiveaway to win a copy of Under a Dark Sky. You can enter by sharing our post on Facebook and/or retweeting the following tweet: 💫🌟 A MURDER MYSTERY GIVEAWAY! 💫🌟 RT this interview with award-winning author @LoriRaderDay…
Interview with Lori Rader-Day and Under a Dark Sky Giveaway
CONGRATULATIONS to author Lori Rader-Day, whose book, The Day I Died, is the 2018 winner of the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original! I’m so pleased to welcome Rader-Day back to the Debutante Ball. For those of you who’ve been following us for a while, she really needs no introduction. Rader-Day was a deb back in 2014, and we have since hosted her a few times, celebrating every…
The Book Within A Book
I’m not sure how old I was the first time I tried to read Anne of Green Gables, but I must have been too young. I was vain as a reader, always showing off by trying to read far above my age level, reading classics with a view to bragging about having read them. I didn’t get very far with that first attempt. Anne has a long…
Carlos Santana Got Me To Write A Novel, Basically
I remember listening to Santana’s “Maria, Maria”, and wondering what the hell kind of Latina I was for not being more like HER. In college in Southern California, I even used to think: she’s not far from me now. She’s out there, falling in love in East LA, and here I am, earning a college degree and making passes at men outside my family’s income bracket. That gap between me and…
Main Character Seeking Plot
My writing ideas tend to start with characters, and that’s especially true for Temper. The main character of Temper came into my life years before I wrote the book. In fact, she started out in a different book entirely. Back in 2012, I wrote my first-ever novel during National Novel Writing Month. It was a silly, trashy story set in a dystopian version of Chicago, about a Shakespearean actress recruited to seduce…
