Debut – The Debutante Ball

Learning all the things you never thought you had to learn, or debuting in a pandemic.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

I simply can’t believe it’s been a whole year. This week, we’re talking about what we learned as a Debutante. To be honest, this entry was hard to write, because my expectations about what I thought would happen this year debuting Architects of Memory and what actually did happen were so incredibly different. Like Pluto-versus-the-Sun different. When I applied to be a Deb, my release date was January. I was…

The Goddess Twins, OUT NOW, a Summer Vacation Read

Thursday, May 21, 2020

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As a kid, I absolutely adored reading for pleasure! When school was out during the summer, my very favorite thing would be getting a fat stack of books from the library and diving into new worlds like a solo adventurer. The phrase ‘summer reading’ brings up the fond memory of our local library’s annual summer reading contest. Each year, the Mt. Healthy library held a scavenger hunt style reading competition,…

Novels arrive precisely when they mean to.

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

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I’m turning forty this year. And when you’re a middle-aged mom writing science fiction at four in the morning, it’s hard to look at all the startling young ingenues in their adorable city apartments, writing life-changing novels, getting MFAs, doing interviews with Lithub— —Let’s just say that I’ve been there. I understand. I thought my life was over in my early thirties when I turned out a truly awful epic…

No longer such a perfect day

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

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Back in August, we Debutantes got together over video-conferencing to work on the list of topics we wanted to talk about this year. Some of these topics were developed in previous years by other Debs. Some, we came up with on our own. None of them were developed with a global pandemic in mind. This week’s topic is “A Perfect Day,” which I’m finding hard to talk about now that…

Being unrealistic for my debut year

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

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My problem, friends, is that I’ve spent too much time being a realist. I was realistic about my prospects when I graduated college, and instead of throwing myself into writing novels, I became a journalist. Instead of going out to LA to pursue a film career, I took the more realistic path of starting a local company that produced weddings, corporate video and commercials. I’ve been a realist all my…

Fight or flight, fear and failure

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

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Do you want to know my number one writing fear? Writing this blog entry. Ha, ha. I’m mostly kidding. I have panic disorder, so “confronting my fears” is something I do with a lot of preparation and self-care. However, I feel like I might share my number one writing fear with pretty much every debut author who ever waltzed on to the scene, so I don’t feel alone in this….

Introducing Kathleen West: Author of MINOR DRAMAS & OTHER CATASTROPHES

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

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I’m delighted to introduce the new social media maven for the Debutante Ball, Class of 2020! Please welcome and meet Kathleen West, whose debut novel Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes will be out from Berkley (Penguin Random House) on February 4, 2020. Kathleen is a writer, teacher, reader, and semi-professional minivan driver. A life-long Minnesotan, she holds degrees from Macalester College and the University of Minnesota. She currently lives in Minneapolis…

Why I’m Choosing to Celebrate They Could Have Named Her Anything

Thursday, August 15, 2019

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Publishing They Could Have Named Her Anything has already been more satisfying than I could have ever expected. I worked with a phenomenal illustrator to design the cover, deepened my work and artistic vision with my fantastic editor at Little A, got invited to panels with my literary heroes, and have read GoodReads reviews of my book that are lovelier than I could have ever imagined. And this month, I’ve already…

What’s Important

My book is out tomorrow. My book. Is out. Tomorrow. That is a weird thing to say. A weird thing to type. A weird thing to think. Just two years ago, I was writing The Perfect Assassin. I was carefully setting goals and timelines and getting up early and writing during naps and writing in the middle of the night – forget about sleeping when baby sleeps: write when baby…

Monday, March 18, 2019

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5 Resolutions for @Only_Mama’s Debut Year

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

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Finish the first draft of my novel. (OK, second draft, but that’s only because the real first draft was so terrible it demanded an entire rewrite.) I love writing fiction, however, it’s way harder for me. I’d like to be halfway decent at it, and the only way to do it is to read more great fiction and write more fiction. Which means I am allowed to read a lot…

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