First, the sale:
For two days ONLY - September 16th and 17th - all three books in the Moonlit Trilogy will be available for Kindle for $0.99 each!! That's the whole trilogy for less than $3. Then books 1 and 2 (Moonlit and Windswept) will spend a few more days at deeply discounted prices, and Wildwood will stay at $0.99 for at least another week. (Get them here: http://www.amazon.com/Jadie-Jones/e/B00ECVQ9T4) The listings on my author page my not reflect the actual price, but fear not! Each book's kindle listing will show the reduced price!
Want to know why? There are a few film industry insiders interested in taking Tanzy's story to film.
I would love to see what these books "look" like through someone else's eyes. I would do a happy dance to end all happy dances. And as the "film treatment" for Moonlit is being reviewed, we need two things: chatter and sales.
That's where you come in.
I need help spreading the word. I like to give stuff away. It's a beautiful combination.
Prizes up for grabs:
* $50 Amazon Gift Card
* $50 Barnes and Noble Gift Card
* The Moonlit Trilogy in signed paperbacks with a swag pack
* One signed canvas print of a Moonlit Trilogy cover of your choice.
* A page from the original, handwritten first draft of Moonlit, signed and framed. (If this does make it to film, that would be pretty cool to have!)
How you can enter: Use the Rafflecopter form below to enter for a chance to win these prizes! This giveaway begins 9/16/15 and ends 9/23/15. Winners will be notified by 9/25, and have 72 hours to claim their prize before new winners are drawn. No purchase necessary for entry!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Thank you for all of your support over the past three years. This has been an incredible ride!
Monday, September 14, 2015
Saturday, August 8, 2015
Editing Wildwood - aka - Nanowrimo in reverse
For those of you who have never participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month,) the idea is to write a complete first draft of a novel, or at least 50K words of one, in one month. It is HARD, and, to date, I've never succeeded.
So what does this have to do with Wildwood, book #3 in the Moonlit Trilogy? Well, the draft I submitted to my publisher was 156,000 words, and I knew in my soul that it was the best story I'd ever written. It's my favorite piece of the trilogy. My editor agreed: do not, under any circumstance, touch the plot, she said. And then she said: But I need you to cut 57,000 words. Minimum. Really, it'd be better if you could find 60,000 words to cut.
Sixty. Thousand. Words.
Or, NaNoWriMo in reverse.
When I first sat down to tackle this edit, I thought: I can absolutely do this. No problem. I'm wordy and I know it. I can clean this up in a single pass. So I painstakingly evaluated every word, tightened up sentences, cut an expository paragraph or lines three and four of a description here and there. And at the end of the first pass, I had cut 6,000 words. I had also taken two weeks to do it.
Editing a 75,000 word story like Moonlit and Windswept took every brain cell I had. Once I realized I was essentially editing them BOTH size-wise, I buckled down, glared at my screen, and launched into pass #2.
I started seeing some serious word-loving habits. Like descriptions. Boy-howdy do I love to word-draw. Three paragraphs of artsy, flowery page-decor became a sentence or two bold, direct strokes.
I'm a transition-junkie. I quit cold turkey, cutting their heads off whenever I saw them peek up at the bottom of a paragraph. CHOP CHOP CHOP. And boom, without the transition present, the paragraphs flowed BETTER, because if the writing is tight and the motion is streamline, a transition becomes a speed bump.
Full-body feels. This probably accounted for 25,000 words. And I don't mean the way a "feels" moment pulls at a reader's heart strings. I mean the way every single action pulled at every single possible part of my main character (although hearts, centers, stomachs, guts, middles, and mouths seem to be favorites of mine). I shouldn't tell a reader how my character internally responds to a positive or negative moment because the reader should experience the moment without me telling them how to do it.
And, last and certainly most painful for me, expository paragraphs. I love to sink into a scene and roll around, like a dog on a carpet, feet in the air, tongue out, just *feeling* it. Inviting a reader into a character's head space for a good long time. Like a page. Maybe two. I caught myself skimming these words and sections I was sure I loved, and why? Because sure they were pretty but they didn't affect the story in any way so I didn't need to change them so why look at them.
Wait, what?
If a sentence does not affect the plot or the character, if the plot and the character are exactly the same on the other side of the sentence as they were before it, then what was the point of the sentence? The idea of a story is to keep the action and characters in motion. You know what dogs do after they roll all over the floor? They take a nap.
And there was my other 35,000 words.
Finally, one month, 60,000 cut words later, edits for Wildwood were done. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, and taught me some invaluable lessons about the way I write, and how to make it better.
Wildwood now has a release date - September 22nd, 2015, and one truly amazing cover.
I can't wait to see what y'all think of the conclusion to Tanzy's story, and my new, lean, action-packed story-telling skills.
It's been one helluva ride.
Thank you for coming along.
So what does this have to do with Wildwood, book #3 in the Moonlit Trilogy? Well, the draft I submitted to my publisher was 156,000 words, and I knew in my soul that it was the best story I'd ever written. It's my favorite piece of the trilogy. My editor agreed: do not, under any circumstance, touch the plot, she said. And then she said: But I need you to cut 57,000 words. Minimum. Really, it'd be better if you could find 60,000 words to cut.
Sixty. Thousand. Words.
Or, NaNoWriMo in reverse.
When I first sat down to tackle this edit, I thought: I can absolutely do this. No problem. I'm wordy and I know it. I can clean this up in a single pass. So I painstakingly evaluated every word, tightened up sentences, cut an expository paragraph or lines three and four of a description here and there. And at the end of the first pass, I had cut 6,000 words. I had also taken two weeks to do it.
Editing a 75,000 word story like Moonlit and Windswept took every brain cell I had. Once I realized I was essentially editing them BOTH size-wise, I buckled down, glared at my screen, and launched into pass #2.
I started seeing some serious word-loving habits. Like descriptions. Boy-howdy do I love to word-draw. Three paragraphs of artsy, flowery page-decor became a sentence or two bold, direct strokes.
I'm a transition-junkie. I quit cold turkey, cutting their heads off whenever I saw them peek up at the bottom of a paragraph. CHOP CHOP CHOP. And boom, without the transition present, the paragraphs flowed BETTER, because if the writing is tight and the motion is streamline, a transition becomes a speed bump.
Full-body feels. This probably accounted for 25,000 words. And I don't mean the way a "feels" moment pulls at a reader's heart strings. I mean the way every single action pulled at every single possible part of my main character (although hearts, centers, stomachs, guts, middles, and mouths seem to be favorites of mine). I shouldn't tell a reader how my character internally responds to a positive or negative moment because the reader should experience the moment without me telling them how to do it.
And, last and certainly most painful for me, expository paragraphs. I love to sink into a scene and roll around, like a dog on a carpet, feet in the air, tongue out, just *feeling* it. Inviting a reader into a character's head space for a good long time. Like a page. Maybe two. I caught myself skimming these words and sections I was sure I loved, and why? Because sure they were pretty but they didn't affect the story in any way so I didn't need to change them so why look at them.
Wait, what?
If a sentence does not affect the plot or the character, if the plot and the character are exactly the same on the other side of the sentence as they were before it, then what was the point of the sentence? The idea of a story is to keep the action and characters in motion. You know what dogs do after they roll all over the floor? They take a nap.
And there was my other 35,000 words.
Finally, one month, 60,000 cut words later, edits for Wildwood were done. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, and taught me some invaluable lessons about the way I write, and how to make it better.Wildwood now has a release date - September 22nd, 2015, and one truly amazing cover.
I can't wait to see what y'all think of the conclusion to Tanzy's story, and my new, lean, action-packed story-telling skills.
It's been one helluva ride.
Thank you for coming along.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Augusta Literary Festival - AKA my first attempt to travel with two kids
I'd like to start this post with a little diddy about how my experience at the Augusta Literary Festival concluded. The festival was drawing to a close. My husband was holding our 4 month old baby with one hand and helping me pack away odds and ends with the other. My 4 year old daughter was helping herself to leftover candy. She looked up at me and said: "Momma, why does one of your earrings have a hole in it and the other one doesn't?" I figured one of the earrings - dangly loopy silvery things - had become hooked on itself some kind of way. I reached up to feel for both. I was wearing two completely different earrings, and had been All. Day. Long. And that, in a nutshell, is what it's like to tour with small children in tow. Hey, at least they were both silver. (Can you spot the difference in the picture at the end of this post?)
A more extended version of events:
We arrived in Augusta on Thursday night. I checked in with the front desk at the hotel and then shuttled my sleeping children from the car to the room using half-ninja-half-mama-grizzly tactics to scare would-be noise away. My four year old slept between my husband and I on a king size bed, some how turning perpendicular, where-upon she began making snow-angels in her sleep.
On Friday I was scheduled to attend a round panel discussion with the other four finalist for the Frank Yerby Award for Fiction. We asked Siri how to get there. Dear Siri sent us to the wrong place five times, after which I spied the little yellow house I saw on the festival website, told my husband to stop the car in the middle of the road, leaped out, and ran to the front door. There was a piece of paper on the door. That's never a good thing, never: congratulations, you found the right place! And this was no exception. The panel had been moved to a different building. I had the name but no map and not the foggiest idea of how to get from here to there.
Then an angel appeared: a woman in her car called out to me (I don't know if I was radiating desperation or just looked really, utterly lost). She was part of the award panel and told me where the discussion had been moved to. I thanked my lucky stars I'd opted to wear boots instead of heels, and ran across a field and three parking lots, arriving at the panel sweaty, but on time.
The panel discussion was freaking amazing. There's really no other way to describe it. We clicked and bantered and dove in and swam around. We challenged each other. We supported each other. I would do it once a week if I could. This is where I first met fellow writers Amanda Kyle Williams, C. Michael Forsyth, and Kimberly Teter. Meeting these people made the entire trip worth it, and the festival hadn't started yet.
Amanda Kyle Williams won the Yerby Award - and she absolutely deserved it. She is witty and razor-sharp. Her book - Don't Talk to Strangers - is book three in her Keye Street series. I'm reading book #1 - The Stranger You Seek - right now, (because I'm one of those OCD types that has to read series books in order even if they're all stand-alone) and it has the most chilling opening I have ever read. Hands down. No contest. Put it on your to-read list right now. Right. Now.
Me, I'm happy to be a finalist, to have earned some bling for the Moonlit cover, to be counted among heavy-hitting company, and to own all three of Amanda's books. Signed. Boom.
While I was at the award ceremony, my husband took our girls to Outback to attempt dinner single-parent style. He was brave, and he went down fighting, but that ship sank hard, fast, and loud. He wound up tossing dinner in to-go boxes and wrangling our tiny circus back to the car as fast as possible. Once I came back, I helped him get both girls asleep, and then ate my dinner perched on the hotel toilet so I wouldn't wake our baby, who bursts to waking at the slightest sound. Proof positive mashed potatoes are the bees knees - no matter what temperature they are or where you are when you eat them. Bonus: they're super quiet to chew.
.
At last - Saturday - the actual Literary Festival portion of events. The venue was beautiful, the organization spot-on, and the support was fantastic. Writers, if you have a chance to attend this festival, I highly recommend it. The 2015 group of authors was one of the most interesting, engaging, benevolent group of people I've been a part of. Aren't we a snazzy group?
And then came time to pack up, and my daughter pointed out my earrings, and I was so freaking tired, and still kind of giddy that Amanda Kyle Williams stopped by my table and snagged a piece of chocolate and laughed at my one-liner, that I shrugged and kept packing. At least I have big hair. Earrings are more like a glimmer, an after thought, a peekaboo behind a curtain of brownish. Like I said, at least they were both silver.
A more extended version of events:
We arrived in Augusta on Thursday night. I checked in with the front desk at the hotel and then shuttled my sleeping children from the car to the room using half-ninja-half-mama-grizzly tactics to scare would-be noise away. My four year old slept between my husband and I on a king size bed, some how turning perpendicular, where-upon she began making snow-angels in her sleep.
On Friday I was scheduled to attend a round panel discussion with the other four finalist for the Frank Yerby Award for Fiction. We asked Siri how to get there. Dear Siri sent us to the wrong place five times, after which I spied the little yellow house I saw on the festival website, told my husband to stop the car in the middle of the road, leaped out, and ran to the front door. There was a piece of paper on the door. That's never a good thing, never: congratulations, you found the right place! And this was no exception. The panel had been moved to a different building. I had the name but no map and not the foggiest idea of how to get from here to there.
Then an angel appeared: a woman in her car called out to me (I don't know if I was radiating desperation or just looked really, utterly lost). She was part of the award panel and told me where the discussion had been moved to. I thanked my lucky stars I'd opted to wear boots instead of heels, and ran across a field and three parking lots, arriving at the panel sweaty, but on time.
The panel discussion was freaking amazing. There's really no other way to describe it. We clicked and bantered and dove in and swam around. We challenged each other. We supported each other. I would do it once a week if I could. This is where I first met fellow writers Amanda Kyle Williams, C. Michael Forsyth, and Kimberly Teter. Meeting these people made the entire trip worth it, and the festival hadn't started yet.
Amanda Kyle Williams won the Yerby Award - and she absolutely deserved it. She is witty and razor-sharp. Her book - Don't Talk to Strangers - is book three in her Keye Street series. I'm reading book #1 - The Stranger You Seek - right now, (because I'm one of those OCD types that has to read series books in order even if they're all stand-alone) and it has the most chilling opening I have ever read. Hands down. No contest. Put it on your to-read list right now. Right. Now.
Me, I'm happy to be a finalist, to have earned some bling for the Moonlit cover, to be counted among heavy-hitting company, and to own all three of Amanda's books. Signed. Boom.
While I was at the award ceremony, my husband took our girls to Outback to attempt dinner single-parent style. He was brave, and he went down fighting, but that ship sank hard, fast, and loud. He wound up tossing dinner in to-go boxes and wrangling our tiny circus back to the car as fast as possible. Once I came back, I helped him get both girls asleep, and then ate my dinner perched on the hotel toilet so I wouldn't wake our baby, who bursts to waking at the slightest sound. Proof positive mashed potatoes are the bees knees - no matter what temperature they are or where you are when you eat them. Bonus: they're super quiet to chew.
.
At last - Saturday - the actual Literary Festival portion of events. The venue was beautiful, the organization spot-on, and the support was fantastic. Writers, if you have a chance to attend this festival, I highly recommend it. The 2015 group of authors was one of the most interesting, engaging, benevolent group of people I've been a part of. Aren't we a snazzy group?
And then came time to pack up, and my daughter pointed out my earrings, and I was so freaking tired, and still kind of giddy that Amanda Kyle Williams stopped by my table and snagged a piece of chocolate and laughed at my one-liner, that I shrugged and kept packing. At least I have big hair. Earrings are more like a glimmer, an after thought, a peekaboo behind a curtain of brownish. Like I said, at least they were both silver.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
What's in a name? More than I thought.
I'm working on a new manuscript - a new adult, chick-lit novel with a paranormal twist (of course!) I have a basic outline of the plot. A fun, spunky secondary character is taking solid shape. The love interest's voice is clear and strong. There's just one tiny, itty bitty piece of the puzzle that I'm missing: the main character. More specifically: her name.
Right now I'm calling her Natalie. She's already been Hannah, but that name was so wrong I couldn't bare to keep typing it. Neither name belongs to her. They're just place holders until I finally figure her out. She's polar opposite from strong, visceral, impulsive Tanzy, or at least the Tanzy she becomes by story's end.
I haven't bonded with my new cast of characters to the extent of the bond I formed with Tanzy, Jayce, Vanessa, Asher, and Lucas. And how could I? I first met Tanzy back in 2009 - and back then her name was Holly. Then Rynn. And then a Google search for name meanings unearthed the perfect fit: Tansy (I swapped the S for a Z) which is a Greek name, and means "immortality". Once I figured out her name, the rest of her became more obvious. And as she developed, the plot became richer and deeper.
Here we are, six years later, and I'm roughly five rounds of edits away from saying a final farewell to these characters who have become utterly authentic in my head, and who helped me fulfill a dream.
For now, it feels like my new main character and I are sitting across from each other on a first date. She's only letting me see the surface. Her smile is practiced. Her manners are on point. I haven't figured out what's really going to brass her off yet. And until I know what she cares about - what she deeply, wholly, irrationally defends - this new story is going to be just as skin-deep.
I think it's going to take the entire first draft to figure her out. I hope I do. Without her, the story will have no heart, no organ beating meaning and purpose and cohesiveness to the other parts. So who are you, not-Natalie, not-Hannah? One thing's for sure. You are not a cheap date.
Right now I'm calling her Natalie. She's already been Hannah, but that name was so wrong I couldn't bare to keep typing it. Neither name belongs to her. They're just place holders until I finally figure her out. She's polar opposite from strong, visceral, impulsive Tanzy, or at least the Tanzy she becomes by story's end.
I haven't bonded with my new cast of characters to the extent of the bond I formed with Tanzy, Jayce, Vanessa, Asher, and Lucas. And how could I? I first met Tanzy back in 2009 - and back then her name was Holly. Then Rynn. And then a Google search for name meanings unearthed the perfect fit: Tansy (I swapped the S for a Z) which is a Greek name, and means "immortality". Once I figured out her name, the rest of her became more obvious. And as she developed, the plot became richer and deeper.
Here we are, six years later, and I'm roughly five rounds of edits away from saying a final farewell to these characters who have become utterly authentic in my head, and who helped me fulfill a dream.
For now, it feels like my new main character and I are sitting across from each other on a first date. She's only letting me see the surface. Her smile is practiced. Her manners are on point. I haven't figured out what's really going to brass her off yet. And until I know what she cares about - what she deeply, wholly, irrationally defends - this new story is going to be just as skin-deep.
I think it's going to take the entire first draft to figure her out. I hope I do. Without her, the story will have no heart, no organ beating meaning and purpose and cohesiveness to the other parts. So who are you, not-Natalie, not-Hannah? One thing's for sure. You are not a cheap date.
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