Everyone who has been following this blog knows that I am not a geneticist. Or a scientist of any kind. I’m a fifth grade teacher. Therefore, in order to make my main character, Paige, believable as a preeminent geneticist on the cusp of a major genetics breakthrough, I had to do a lot of research. First, I read some books. Three were heavily influential in the development of both…
How To Love Researching Your Novel
Most of the time—to my surprise—I look forward to writing my weekly post for The Debutante Ball. This week, however, I dreaded it. This was for two reasons: first, last week’s post on the differences between the expectations and realities of publishing a novel completely drained me; and second, on today’s topic, I got nothing. Well, almost nothing. We are supposed to be writing about research: how much we did,…
Research in Memoir
On the one hand, it’s easy to discount the need for research in memoir. I mean, who knows your life better than you do? There was actually a good bit of research that went into crafting Girlish. I spoke at length with my siblings, various family members and had many conversations with both my childhood friends and some of my parents’ friends. I read a lot of memoir and poetry…
Finding the Details that Fill a World
I. Love. Research. I mean, if you’ve read From Unseen Fire, you could probably guess that. As much as I’m a writer, I’m also a historian. It was my second major in undergrad, and my Master’s degree certainly relies heavily upon it as well. I live with my head as much in the past as the present, and while it’s not always the Roman past, for the past seven years,…
[News Flash] July 22, 2018
Thank you so much to yesterday’s guest, Terese Mailhot! If you haven’t already, enter the #DebBallGiveaway to win a copy of Heart Berries. You can enter by sharing our post on Facebook and/or retweeting the following tweet: Interview with Terese Mailhot and GIVEAWAY for Heart Berries https://t.co/TBI42cy6jg pic.twitter.com/DHXpxl7XLl — The Debutante Ball (@DebutanteBall) July 21, 2018 News from the 2018 Debs: Julie Clark had a full week of book…
Interview with Terese Mailhot and GIVEAWAY for Heart Berries
I am so excited to welcome Terese Marie Mailhot to the blog today, and introduce her and her searingly beautiful memoir to the Deb community! About Heart Berries: Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman’s coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder…
What Do We Want? Success! When Do We Want It? Now!
I had the great good fortune to meet a group of wonderful veteran YA authors about a year before my book came out, and their greatest advice to me was to manage my expectations. Very few people hit the NYT list, and those that do get there because of publisher buy-in and enormous marketing campaigns, a thing The Diminished was never going to have. My friends told me to set reasonable goals,…
Julie’s Five Minutes of Zen
I am the queen of low expectations. Especially in publishing. But I’m also a believer in setting your intentions, because the universe is listening to what you put into it, and is ready to give it back to you. Did I expect my book to hit the New York Times bestseller list? No. I knew early on The Ones We Choose wasn’t going to get the kind of push…
The Top Three Things That Surprised Me About Publishing A Novel
This week we are talking about the differences between expectations and reality when it comes to traditionally publishing. I’ve compiled a run-down of my top three surprises regarding the process but if I had to sum up my debut publishing experience in one word it would be this: intense. The doctor in me feels compelled to point out that my limbic system took a beating this year, whirling around in…
If You Can Visualize It, It Can Be Yours—Or Maybe Not
I held a story in my chest and this story breathed when I breathed, and it flowed through my veins and pulsed with my heartbeat. I couldn’t shut it off. Everything else I tried to write was colored by it. My story needed to be told, so I put it down on pages and it became a book, and then I didn’t have to carry it any longer. As I…
