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I’ve written eight novels and the idea for all but one of them started with me thinking, “Ooh, what if there’s this girl who….” (the first is about a boy so I thought, “what if there’s this boy…”). I take that spark of an idea, let it germinate in my mind for days or weeks, then form a story around that initial idea.
As of about 7pm last night, the first draft of my next book is with my first reader. Yes, that first reader is my mom, but she’s an excellent proofreader and catches inconsistencies. Of which I fear there are a lot.
When I first get an idea for a new novel, my mind is in overdrive. Ideas come to me rapid-fire and I take notes haphazardly in an effort to get it all down, either in notebooks, stickies, or my phone’s note app. Then I transfer those scribblings into a word document and organize them into character development, backstory, and the story itself.
I’m super excited to be doing the YA Scavenger Hunt again. It’s fun to get to know new-to-me authors and check out their amazing books. This year there are at least 17 authors I’ve never met, including Kathleen, featured below, and LM, who I’ve linked to at the end of this post.
I’ve always loved sports. Give me something physical and I’m there. I’ve tried pretty much every sport under the sun, and since I’ve skied since I was five, writing about downhill skiing made total sense. But that was The Slope Rules, the first book in The Rules Series. For The Trail Rules, I decided to write about mountain biking because many skiers and snowboarders bike in the off-season—never mind the fact that the riskiest maneuver I’ve tried on my bike is hopping a curb into oncoming traffic.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Now imagine there’s a huge elephant in this room and you were told you had to eat it. Do you start with an ear? The tail? A toenail? It’s gross, I know, but you’ve gotta do it.
Today’s the day! After months of hard work, The Trail Rules is now available! Perfect fans of outdoor adventure, swoony kisses, and figuring out who you are.
Junior year’s looking up for sixteen-year old Mike. Her new BFF isn’t a sadistic control freak, her boyfriend adores her, and she’s learning to bike in the mountains without decapitating herself on a tree. But she needs to decide if she’s going to continue to be a follower or step out of the shadows and find her own trail.
As an author, it’s customary to thank everyone who helped your book get from a spark of an idea to a finished book. Typically listed under a heading called Acknowledgements, authors thank readers, friends and family, editors, agents, pets, high school English teachers, and that one guy who said I’d never write a book and ha ha! Look at me now.
But I digress.
The other night my husband and I went out to dinner, as married people do, except we pretended we were on a first date. We asked questions that, after almost five years of marriage, you should already know—what’s your favorite food, what do you like to do when you’re not working, where would you love …
Any writer will tell you that writing isn’t the hard part*—it’s starting. There’s always one more load of laundry to change, one more meal to prep, one more notification to respond to. Getting your butt in the proverbial chair can sometimes take longer than the actual writing session. Which is why I was nervous when I finished one first draft and shifted gears to publish my upcoming book.