2016 in Review

imag0831_burst002_cover — Here you go, 2016, have some lobster Jello…and two of the books I worked on this year.

Let’s do this again (here’s 2015, 2014, and 2013)! In the past 12 months, I have done the following things:

With Genevieve, I finished/edited/released Earth Bound, wrote/edited/released A Midnight Kiss, wrote Star Crossed, and knocked out a big chunk of Fly Me to the Moon 6. Whew.
On my own, I finished a secret thing. I should have an announcement about it soon. (And it is EXCITING.)
I finished another secret thing, which led to signing with an agent. I am currently ripping this secret thing in half, which is a pain, but when I’m done, I’ll have two books.
Total words written this year: somewhere between 150K and 200K.
I read 70 new to me books for my Goodreads challenge. (Plus re-reads, beta reading, current events, and student papers. My eyes consumed a lot of words.)
I ran a 5K. Jogged, really, but still: did not walk.
I started playing the piano again.

In 2017, Genevieve and I will probably release two Fly Me to the Moon books, and I’ll have at least one thing on my own. Here are some of my other goals: I want to get Deidre a manuscript she can start shopping. I want to finally do some self-publishing on my own. I want to run another 5K but faster. I want to write damn good books. I want to credibly play Bach.

This has been a breath in, breath out year, but one paragraph, one measure, one step at a time, I’ve gotten through it. Here’s hoping 2017 is productive and joyous.

(And not to be all self-promo-y, but if you’re looking for a New Year’s Eve read, may I suggest Round Midnight?)

Things I Really Liked in 2016

Poor 2016, so maligned, so deeply sad. A prelude to tragedy, perhaps. But–in an utterly selfish way–it was a decent reading/listening/viewing year for me. I don’t write proper reviews on the blog. It feels a bit weird. I have strong opinions, and I often share these on social media and in real life, but if I’m not willing to be critical, then it feels wrong to write formal squee! reviews. So this isn’t that, it’s just a list of things I really liked.

Some of these are late 2015 releases that I didn’t consume until 2016, but most are from this year. I tried to stick with things that were, in my opinion, under-buzzed; things that, in other words, you may not have heard of. A few big books/movies/etc. slipped in anyhow. Cheers, and tell me yours (or link!) in the comments!

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Happy Holidays

plate of cookies, cocktail, and Christmas tree — butter crispies and cocktail

The fictional people in my head tend to stick around even when their books are published.

Like today, I suspect Millie and Parker would host a Chrismukkah event with Alyse and Liam and Lydia and Michael. They’d drink a lot and debate the election and laugh and cry and open presents and watch their children play. (And then Lydia and Michael would go home and toast their child-free state.)

I suspect Christmas would be a big deal for Joe and Frances given their pre-Christmas engagement. (Ditto for Greg and Betty with New Year’s Eve.) Joe would give Frances a new diary and they’d listen to Perry Como. Anne-Marie would cook something elaborate, and Margie Dunsford would throw an epic holiday party with lights on her tiki torches and green and red drinks and a Jello mold.

I’ll have a proper year end wrap-up post soon, but wherever you are and whatever you’re celebrating, I wish you joy in 2017.

Art, Bare Life, and Fragmented Identity

(This post is for a friend who’s contemplating how the self can be divided between being an academic and writing fiction; it started as an email, but I’m publishing it here to balance out all the promo I’ve posted lately.)

Several years ago, I was half-finished with my American studies dissertation, and I requested a meeting with a literary theory professor to discuss an idea I had for a chapter revision. Specifically, I wanted to apply Giorgio Agamben’s theory of the politicization of bare life (as articulated in Homo Sacer) to an obscure periodical novel published in 1857, a book set during the American Revolution but which clearly comments on the run-up to the American Civil War.

Agamben is concerned with how bare life has been consumed by political life. He locates the dissolution of this divide in concentration camps during the Holocaust, when the bodies of inmates become sites for what he calls the state of exception. What happens in the camps is extra-judicial, outside even humane comprehension, and nothing like bare life is possible there. The only possibility for resistance Agamben imagines is refusal. In saying no (or better yet, “I would prefer not to” as Melville’s Bartleby does) we stake out ground for bare life.

There’s a lot of overlap with Agamben’s argument, Foucault’s theory of biopower, and Habermas’s discussion of public sphere theory, and also with the feminist critique of the personal as political, the work of scholars on the economics and culture of slavery, etc. I suspect that in the nineteenth century–when in an American context we moved from merchant capitalism to industrial capitalism and when the space between citizen and consumer identities blurred–bare life became impossible.

Why am I telling you this story? Well, because something else was burning a hole in my backpack during that meeting: a signed contract with Carina/Harlequin to publish The Easy Part series.

Continue reading “Art, Bare Life, and Fragmented Identity” →

Buy This Book

As you probably know, my critique partner is Genevieve Turner. We’ve been working together for four years and we write books together and she’s one of my closest friends. So I’m super duper biased when it comes to her books. But you should read her Forever a Soldier, which released today. And I’m not just saying that because the cover looks like this.

soldier-cover

The heroine is a graduate student, specifically a historian doing archival research, and her fears and worries and the details of her life are so accurate. And the hero is gruff and wounded and delicious. I absolutely loved this book.

So again, me = biased. But if you haven’t read Genevieve’s contemporaries, it’s a great place to start. I’ve dropped the blurb and the buy links below the fold.

Continue reading “Buy This Book” →

Round Midnight Release Day!

MidnightKiss copy

Round Midnight is here! This is boxed set includes the Fly Me to the Moon Christmas and New Year’s Eve novellas, A Midnight Clear and A Midnight Kiss. It’s available at Amazon, iBooks, B&N, and Google Play (it’ll be at Kobo soon). Those links are all ebook, but you can get it in print too. Here’s the short description:

A pair of holiday romances featuring a romantic sailor, a duty-bound admiral’s daughter, and a Christmas miracle and an uptight pilot, a jilted southern belle, and a New Year’s Eve kiss.

These are both swoony mid-century courtship stories; it’s the book version of a hug and a spiked hot chocolate. The world needs some of that right now.

VOTE

If you’re in the United States and you can, please vote. As I said in the afterward to Party Lines, Michael and Lydia–probably my personal favorite couple from any of my books–would want you to. If you’re not certain where your precinct is or what’s on your ballot, Google will help you (search “where is my polling place” or “who is on my ballot”). Yay, democracy, y’all!

ETA: oh, and if you need a distraction, A Midnight Clear will only be free for another week. Joe Reynolds would be happy to keep you company while you sit up late waiting for election results.

Things to Know Before Your First Book Signing

screen-shot-2016-11-06-at-5-11-17-am

As I mentioned, I recently participated in my first reader event/book signing/talking to real live people book event.

I survived. Since making conversation with total strangers, let alone selling things to them, ranks somewhere after dental work on a list of things I enjoy, this wasn’t a given. But after the first hour or two, it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. Here, however, are some things I wish I had known to do.

Bring something to cover your spot with, such as a tablecloth or fabric. The tables at this event were draped, but one white table after another is monotonous. I’m going to hit the fabric store to look for a few yards of a retro print (maybe something space aged?). I won’t even bother hemming it (not that I can sew!); just folding the fabric and having it under my books would have helped brand me and differentiate my space.
Get your stuff off the table. I did print a flier with the Fly Me to the Moon series covers, one-sentence blurbs, and prices and put it in a cheap frame, but beyond that, my plan was to have piles of books sitting there with some little cards sprinkled around. One of my kind CRW chapter mates had some extra book stands she was nice enough to lend me, thus saving me from this fate. I will absolutely find some stands before my next event. I will also reconsider the flier design and focus on something with several large graphics and no text.
Flip some of your books over. Because people might want to read the blurbs, use the book stands or multiple piles so that the backs are displayed too.
Consider how people will pay you. I knew that some of the CRW members had Square Readers and were willing to share, but I didn’t consider the possibility that potential buyers might hand me cash (how would I make change?) or want to write a check (does that require me to give them my legal name so I can cash it?). If you’re planning to do a lot of reader events or signings, investigate getting a Square. And in any event, have some small bills on hand if people want to pay with cash.
Get some swag. You will not sell a book to everyone who stops to speak with you, so bookmarks, download cards, postcards, and business cards are good things to have. Other swag is too of course: it helps make your table extra appealing and can help you sell books. (Several of my chapter mates had things like, “if you buy two books, you get X,” which was a great idea.) But paper goods are cheaper for you and easier for people to stow in their purses and bags.
Have a pen. In the event that someone does buy one of your books, she’ll probably ask you to sign it. So make sure you have a nice pen.

I’d love to hear more about book signings and reader events you’ve attended–either as a reader or a writer. What else should I do before my next event to make it more successful?

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