Monday Answers

(Announcement: I am signing tomorrow, Tuesday the fourteenth, from 6-8 PM at the Oceanside CA Barnes and Noble with the lovely Nancy Holder, author of the Wicked Series and Crusade and about 500,000 other books.  She is awesome.  I am good at signing with awesome people.  You should come.)

How are you this lovely Monday Morning?  I'm fabulous, thank you for asking.  I'm excited about the cover for Corsets and Clockwork (please see next post), and I have three free hours today to spend on my ILLICIT MANUSCRIPT THAT I AM CHEATING ON WORK I SHOULD BE DOING WITH mwa ha ha ha ha ha.  Ahem.  My friend Natalie Whipple recently said that sometimes you need to cheat.  I agree with her now.  It's easy to get so caught in the editing or working-on-things-you-need-to-be stages that you lose some of the love and joy of writing.  Nothing like a forbidden, pointless first draft to remind you why you love writing again!  (The answer is: BECAUSE YOU CAN WRITE FLIRTING SCENES AND EXPLOSIONS ALL IN THE SAME MANUSCRIPT, THAT'S WHY.)  (And because it's something that no one is waiting for or wanting to read or even knows about, so there's no pressure.)  (Well, no one knows about now it except you, my thousands of blog readers.  But you won't tell, will you?  Of course not!)

Ahem.  Moving on to answer some of your questions!  Thanks, as always, to those who asked them.

Jamie asks, I know Paranormalcy is the beginning of a trilogy (yay!), but when you first wrote it was it a stand-alone?  I always hear "Make sure even if you're writing a series that the 1st book is complete"...but how do you do that and still leave the story open for more books?

Ah, an excellent question.  While I knew very early into writing Para that I wanted it to be a three-part story, I also knew that, as an unpublished author with no track-record, I had better write a book that could stand on its own if a publisher didn't want to risk immediately buying the sequels.  This happens quite often.  Or, a publisher will buy the book plus an option book--not stating what the option book is.  So you could happily write the sequel and...it could get rejected and they could expect a different book from you.  It happens.  It sucks, but it happens.

So, I made sure there was a complete story arc for the first book and that, if no sequels ever sold, it wouldn't be one of those horrible books that doesn't end.  But...I also built a world and plots big enough that they could easily fit two more stories within the framework.  And I made sure that I had several subplots and small mysteries that were never addressed.  This way the ending felt like an actual ending, but there were many, many threads to carry over into the next book and the trilogy as a whole.

I think it's also very important to have dynamic, real characters who can use more than one book to go on the emotional journey they need to.  That's why Evie's series is three (and ONLY three) books.  It's a three-part journey for both the plotlines and Evie.

Fortunately for me, as soon as editors started reading Para they started asking if there were more books planned, and we got to say, why yes, yes there are, would you like to buy them, too?  And even more fortunately Erica and HarperTeen said, why yes, yes we would!  And we were ALL happy with this arrangement.

To sum up: Series are fabulous but never guaranteed.  Your focus should always be on writing the best (and most complete) first book you possibly can.

Small Review (after writing one of my favorite reviews ever) asks, What part of Paranormalcy (a scene, a character, etc) was your favorite to write?

I always, always, always love writing flirting scenes.  It gives me an excuse to go crazy with the clever dialogue, which is one of my favorite things to do.  So pretty much any time Evie and Lend are talking.

I also really love writing scenes with Reth in them.  I enjoy writing villains more than pretty much any other type of character.  You never know what he's going to do!  And he's so aggravating and pretty and insane!  But he's NOT insane, you just don't know why he's doing what he's doing!  Except I, being the omniscient author, DO know why he's doing what he's doing, which makes it even more fun.

To sum up: I like flirting and I like power, apparently.

Falen asks, After you wrote Paranormalcy, did you feel/know it would be THE BOOK which would be published?

Absolutely...not.  I wrote Paranormalcy while THE BOOK was on submission to editors.  And while I thought, "Gosh, I really have something special here!" that was pretty much the extent of it because THE BOOK was going to sell at any moment.

Except when it didn't.

So, no.  I always knew Para was special, but I firmly believe there is no such thing as THE BOOK unless you are Stephenie Meyer, which none of us are because that would be weird unless you ARE Stephenie, in which case why are you reading my blog??  You probably don't need any advice from me.  Also, want to blurb my next book?  Call me.

Jeigh asks if I can give any pointers or tips on writing a strong query.

Yes.  Go to the "Search" box at the top left of this blog.  Type in "query."  Read everything I ever wrote on the subject, including some terrible poetry.  Then go to Nathan Bransford's blog and read some advice that is actually helpful.  (Just kidding, I do have some helpful things--I did a query workshop that might have some good pointers in it, as well as posted my own query that landed my fabulous agent Michelle Wolfson.)

Further advice: Make sure your query has a voice and life and doesn't read like a dry plot description, and don't worry too much about the bio unless you have pub credits.  Nobody cares--and that's a good thing!

Leisl asks, Aside from writing an awesome book, what things do you feel are the most efficient use of time in marketing your book?  What things did your publisher do to market your book?

For me, personally, the best marketing tools I have are the ones that are not marketing tools.  You're reading one of them right now.  If you follow my inanity on twitter, that's the other one.  But, again, they work because I neither view nor treat them as marketing tools.  I do it for fun, and people read them because they're fun, and then those people (those wonderful, incredibly intelligent and attractive people with superb taste) like what they read and decide to give my book a shot, too.  I honestly think without my blog and twitter following I wouldn't have hit the NYT list.  (Have I told you thank you lately?  Because seriously.  Thank you.)  (Also, keep in mind that this blog is over three years old.  I've been keeping it for a long time; you don't get a readership as awesome as mine overnight.)  (*pets readers* *flatters some more* *still does not send out Christmas cards to anyone*)

My publisher did an amazing job of getting my book (pre-publication) to independent booksellers and the big chains, as well as getting it a lot of exposure among librarians and book bloggers.  Word of mouth sells books, and HarperTeen did a fabulous job getting books to the mouths that make the words.  (Yes, I am an eloquent writer, aren't I?)

People can't buy a book they don't know about, plain and simple, and HarperTeen and I both did our best to let people know about it in the ways we can.

Also, I hired a thousand sky-writing planes to make clouds in the shape of Tasers on release day.  You saw that, right?


And that'll do us for today.  The rest of the answers coming tomorrow, along with MORE BLATANT FLATTERY of you, my physically attractive and wonderfully witty readers.  Because you deserve it.