This week, we take a brief hiatus from our traditional Saturday Guest Author posts in order to introduce you to the new class of Debutante Ball authors. Drum roll, please… Mondays: Cass Morris Cass Morris lives and works in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia with the companionship of two royal felines, Princess and Ptolemy. She completed her Master of Letters at Mary Baldwin University in 2010, and she…
I’m having trouble finding the words for this last post, so I’m going to steal a few from Amy. She wrote in her post yesterday, “With gratitude, sadness, excitement, and pride, I say goodbye to the Debutante Ball.” Yes, yes, yes, and yes. I’m grateful for this experience, I’m sad to let it go, I’m excited for the new class of Debs and for a new chapter in my own…
Publishing Caged Eyes has changed the surface of my life as dramatically as the events of the actual memoir. When you stand in your authentic truth, powerful things happen – hard things, sad things – but ultimately all positive. I have no idea how many copies I have sold, and frankly, I try hard not to care. As an author, those numbers matter, but as an advocate, they are completely…
My 2017 reading list has been a lot like that old song: “Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other is gold. A circle is round, it has no end. That’s how long, I will be your friend.” But of course in this instance, I’m talking about book friends. I relish returning to the books which have moved me in the past. Two of my new…
This week we’re blogging about our second book efforts. I’m here to weigh in as the Deb Ball Team slacker! Yes, I’m the only one of the five who does not have a second book in at least a completed draft form… …and I’m okay with that. I’ve already written a few times here about my struggle to write my follow-up memoir to Caged Eyes. I believe in this second…
I wait all fall, winter, and spring for summer. I watch the snow melt on the peaks just west of my house, waiting for the days when I can go on high-country trail runs or climbs without bringing snow shoes and avalanche beacons. I recognize I’m extremely privileged to take off for weeks at a time in the summer to camp and run in the mountains. For me, summer means…
What would a Wednesday post be without my usual memoirist tilt on the Debs’ topic? This week we’re writing random fun facts about ourselves, but since, as a memoirist, I have so many opportunity to talk about the details of my life, I thought it would be fun to instead FABRICATE! Novelists get to make crap up all the time, but I am extremely shackled to telling the truth. Not…
Calling Debut Authors! Now Accepting Applications for the 2018 Debutante Ball! Read this post to learn more. Hurry! THE DEADLINE IS JULY 28! This week we are writing about what we’ve learned in our debut year and what advice we’d give to forthcoming authors. My advice is simple: find the joy in this journey. One of the most surprising things about being a debut author is that in some ways, the stress is…
Well, I’m feeling quite smart at the moment. At the beginning of the year, I made a resolution to NOT write my second book, my follow-up memoir (the recovery half of the the ordeal I wrote about in Caged Eyes, centered around my journey to climb Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks). It turns out it’s super easy to keep resolutions which are a commitment to NOT do something difficult. Actually what I…
Look, y’all, there are already enough pressures put upon authors. Don’t heap onto that pile needlessly, okay? I didn’t have a “launch party” per se; I had a hometown reading at my favorite local, independent bookseller the week Caged Eyes released. I kept it simple: One of my fellow Deb Ball rock stars helped me create an image to spread the word on Facebook (Thank you, Jenni!!). Because they were…
