Sunset from Gate’s Pass, Tucson.How has it already been a year? How has it only been a year? I feel like I’ve been on this ride for the better part of three years. As I step off and let the new, refreshed crew on, my legs are still shaking a bit but I’m all excited to go again – and soon. Unlike before, when I was waiting in trepidation, like in…
I’m so excited to welcome the multi-talented and amazing Stephanie Burgis to the Ball this week! Stephanie grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, but now lives in Wales with her husband and two sons, surrounded by mountains, castles and coffee shops. She writes fun MG fantasy adventures and has published five so far, including The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart (Bloomsbury 2017), The Girl with the Dragon Heart (Bloomsbury 2018) and the Kat, Incorrigible…
This week we’re talking about launch parties and swag: what we did, what worked, what didn’t. Fun fact: I didn’t really do either. Not so much because I didn’t want to, but because my book came out in March and I had started a new, fulltime job in January. On top of that, the toddler decided early 2019 was a great time to start fighting sleep and I was working…
Today we’re delivering an extra, special edition of our Sunday News Flash to introduce our new Debutante Ball Class of 2020! We are so excited for the new Debs to take over in just a few short weeks and share their amazing books with you. So without further delay please join us in welcoming: Lisa Braxton, THE TALKING DRUM (Inanna Publications, May 2020) Yodassa Williams, THE GODDESS TWINS (Spark Press, May…
My second book will be out in just over three months. I’ve been lucky in always knowing what my Book 2 would be – lucky in already having written it before I even knew there’d be a Book 1 and 3. In a way, I feel like I got to skip happily right over yea olde Book Two Syndrome – And land face-first into Book Three Syndrome instead. But this…
I’m so excited fellow fantasy author and agent sibling and all-around Excellent Human Being (TM) Breanna Teintze to the Ball this week! Breanna Teintze writes novels with magic and explosions (well) and gardens (badly). She lives in Idaho with her husband, where she homeschools her three kids, polishes swords, and perfects her eyeliner. Her debut novel, Lord of Secrets, is the first in the Empty Gods series from Jo Fletcher Books, and…
This week we’re celebrating our fellow deb Stephanie’s release of THEY COULD HAVE NAME HER ANYTHING! A heartfelt, warm, and occasionally disturbing literary novel about family, racism, and dreams – those both fragile and terrifying. This is the story of a teenager caught between two worlds – her close-knit family in Queens and her private school full of rich white girls swimming in privilege they can’t even see. As one…
I don’t have a trunk or a drawer of manuscripts that will never see the light of day so much as I have a giant sinkhole of ’em, all at various states of decaying into one another. Whenever I’m asked about my previous books, my first books, my works in progress, my works never finished, how many I wrote before I won the proverbial Author Lottery, I think about this…
This week we’re talking about bloopers or other mistakes uncovered during the writing/rewriting/revising/editing/proofing process. My bloopers are pretty mundane things that tend to look like one of two situations – Situation 1. Editor: Uh, this thing here doesn’t really make sense. Me: Oh, that’s probably because it’s referencing something I cut earlier. Let’s cut this, too, just to be sure! or Situation 2. Me: This is a cool thing! Me,…
This week we’re talking about deleted scenes or pieces we cut from our novels and why we cut them. Funny thing, though, is that I don’t really have any deleted scenes for The Perfect Assassin. I have scenes I wrote in earlier drafts that don’t exactly show up in the final version, but often they’ve been rewritten and tweaked and repurposed through the process, steadily morphing from one thing to…
