ENDLESSLY Catalog Copy and Contest

I just realized that I haven't ever put up the catalog description for ENDLESSLY! So, here you go:


Try as she might, Evie can’t seem to escape her not-so-normal past. And what was supposed to be a blissfully normal school break is ruined when a massive group of paranormals shows up at her house, claiming that Evie is the only one who can protect them from a mysterious, perilous fate.


The deadly war between the faerie courts looms ever closer. The clock is ticking on the entire paranormal world. And its future rests solely in Evie’s hands.


So much for normal.


With a perfect blend of humor and suspense, Endlessly is everything readers could dream of in a conclusion—and the unexpected twists will keep them guessing until the very last page.

The nice thing about these is I don't write them, so I don't feel like a braggart over that last paragraph.

Guys, I'm kind of excited for you to read this book. I think it's the best of the trilogy (sorry, Super and Para! I also love you! But this one has EVEN MORE UNICORNS) (and selkies) (and Reth) and I can't wait for you to see how Evie's story ends.

And...since I happen to have several ARCs just lying around, hoping for good homes, how about a contest for your very own signed advance edition of ENDLESSLY? I'm going to make this one a little bit harder for you. But only a little bit. Here's what you have to do:

Somewhere (facebook, twitter, your blog, tumblr, etc) where people who are not me can see it, I want you to say which type of paranormal creature you'd like to be. For example, "If I were in Kiersten White's PARANORMALCY series, I'd want to be a gremlin, because acidic spit would totally come in handy when creepy guys try to kiss me." 

Or, "If I lived in the world of PARANORMALCY, I'd want to be a sylph because even though no one knows what they are and it kind of sounds like a disease, they can fly." 

Or, "If I could be any supernatural creature, I'd want to be a faerie from Kiersten White's series, because then I could date Reth without losing my soul."

But of course coming up with your own; those are just examples.

You don't have to give me the link. If you comment and say you did it, I believe you. (I'd also love you to paste what you said in the comments so I can see them all!) The goal is to get word out about the series to people who aren't as clever as you are and haven't read my books yet. You are so much cleverer than they are! You should share your cleverness. (You're also better looking, but they can't help that so we shouldn't be mean about it.)

Steps, as a refresher: Post somewhere which supernatural creature you would want to be from my series, or even which one you'd like to see in ENDLESSLY. (Kraken, anyone?) Comment on THIS POST and tell me you did it. Deadline is Wednesday, March 7th. Open internationally.

And...THREE WINNERS. Yup, there are three chances to win! So go forth, declare your supernatural creature preferences proudly, and then comment to enter!

Things Kiersten Likes Right Now

Let's do an edition of Things Kiersten Likes Right Now.

LIKE:



We saw this with the kids over the weekend. Nobody is making animation like Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. Such gorgeous, thoughtful storytelling. They aren't afraid to take their time with stories and explore the sheer joy of a visual medium. My kids loved it, I loved it.

If you are a storyteller, I highly recommend watching films from other countries. There is a very American format of storytelling that we see in films, and it's easy to start thinking that is the ONLY way to format a story. It isn't. Branch out in your viewing a bit and explore other methods of getting from Beginning to End.

(Plus, I have to admit that when I was a little girl I used to look at the world and imagine I was only a few inches tall and figure out where I'd live and how I'd get from place to place. Hello, movie made just for Childhood Kiersten.)

LIKE:

TIGER LILY, by Jodi Lynn Anderson. Please don't yell at me for talking about it this early (it doesn't come out until July), but I wanted to before I forgot. A darling friend at HarperTeen knows that the online influence measurer Klout has deemed me influential in all things Peter Pan (umm, no, I don't understand either), and so she sent me this.

I was more than a bit wary, since I don't like versions of Peter Pan stories that make them HAPPY HAPPY ADVENTURES! Not really faithful to the spirit of J.M. Barrie's brilliant (and dark) novel PETER AND WENDY. But Anderson did not disappoint. Narrated by Tinkerbell and following the love story of Tiger Lily, fiercely independent misfit, and Peter Pan, the boy who would never grow old, this is a book about the joyous agony of heartbreaks and tiny betrayals that mark the path from childhood to adulthood. A sense of impending doom pervades the whole thing (it's about childhood, after all, and childhood is nothing but doomed in every single case), but it's so very thoughtful and readable and interesting. I loved it.

Speaking of doom,

LIKE:

THIS IS NOT A TEST, by Courtney Summers, also not out until June (I'M SORRY, OKAY?). I will say right now: swearing, sex, violence, etc. It's a zombie apocalypse novel, after all. Do not give it to your eleven-year-old. Do not expect to read it and have pleasant dreams. (The only books that have ever directly seeped into my dreams while reading are Carrie Ryan's zombie apocalypse series and this book. Well done, ladies.)

If you want to see how to write a broken, bleak, emotionally damaged narrator who still remains sympathetic and does not grate on the reader, study this book. It asks the question I think all end-of-the-world stories should: If EVERYTHING is dying around you...why fight so hard to live? The prose is spare and perfect, the narrative voice expertly and devastatingly captured.

Speaking of devastation,

LIKE:

Look, objectively I don't think they're that good. But the fact that you can ONLY get them a few months of the year makes me want to buy them every time I see them. Principle of scarcity in action! Curse you, Cadbury, and your stupid eggs.

LIKE:

Quit dragging your feet. Just watch it. The first season is on Netflix. This and Sherlock have been my favorite series of the last few years. Oh, yeah, watch Sherlock while you're at it.

LIKE:

Sleep. Also not having migraines. Both of which I intend to do more of.

And the Winner Is...

Suz, who pulled out some classic Elizabeth Barret Browning. Always a good choice!

I so enjoyed these entries, from classic poems I know, to ones I am glad I now know, and most especially to those original pieces of writing the brave among you posted! WELL DONE. You all put my high school poetry to shame. (Also, did anyone catch my dad's vaguely naughty entry? DISTURBING. I mean, umm, adorable. I mean...hi Dad! I love you.) (Also, did anyone see that VIVIAN wrote a poem about Evie and Lend?? Viv, that was so sweet of you, considering the whole coma thing.)

If you did not win (which if you are not Suz you didn't, I'm sorry, I hate contests and I never win, either), never fear! There will be another one soon. And only five months until ENDLESSLY is available in all its finished-copy glory!

Since we've already done love poems, next time maybe I'll make you kiss someone to enter...

*remembers twelve-year-old fans* *imagines the angry parent emails*

Nevermind. I'll make you platonically express hormone-free friendship. Or something.

A Very LOVEly Contest

UPDATE: THE CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED.

Oh, hey. Remember how I have ARCs of ENDLESSLY, the last book of my first trilogy? Yeah, I remember that, too.

They're so lonely, sitting in a box in my office. All of that pretty purple with NO ONE to enjoy it! So, how about a contest? Yeah, I thought so.

In honor of Valentine's Day, the entry is very simple: a love poem, in the comments. It can be an original or it can be a (properly credited) poem you've always loved. ENDLESSLY deals a lot with the idea of how far someone should go to save a relationship--how much is too much to give up. I take this topic pretty seriously. I know I'm writing about teens, but fact of the matter is I chose to be with someone forever when I was eighteen. I did not take that decision lightly; I've never had a moment's regret.

So, in honor of first loves, last loves, loves that are somewhere in between, GIVE ME SOME POEMS!

One entry will be randomly drawn to receive signed copies of all three of my books (PARANORMALCY paperback, SUPERNATURALLY hardcover, ENDLESSLY advance copy). Open internationally. One entry per person, though bonus good contest karma to those who blog, tweet, facebook, tumblr, skywrite, etc about the contest.

DEADLINE: Wednesday, February 15th, 12 noon Pacific Time.

How do I love thee? Let me count the entries...

UPDATE: THE CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED.

The Post Where I Explain My Crazy

So, remember that time yesterday I finished writing the first draft of a new book I had started exactly a week before?

Yeah. I remember that time. So do my fingers. And my wrists. And my incredibly messy house.

I never know quite how to explain these things. I am aware that I make writing look a bit like MAGIC. I sort of wiggle my fingers and POOF! A NEW BOOK EXISTS! Which is true, sort of, and also very not true.

Most of the time writing for me is work. It's work I am passionate about and that I love, but I have to carve out the time for it, I have to set goals for myself so that I actually meet them, I have to make my friends hold me accountable. Like any self-employment, it's about discipline, and most books, most writing, most editing is a force of will. I will finish this chapter. I will have a completed manuscript done by [x] date. I will do another read through even though I never want to see those pages again.

ENDLESSLY was a hard book to write. I was not in a happy place, and I did. not. want. to write Evie's rather perky voice. So I set ridiculous, insane word count goals for myself. I made Shannon Messenger and Scott Tracey, two author friends, have competitions with me every single day so I would have an external motivator. I needed to write the book, so I sat down and I wrote the book.

And you know what? It's probably my favorite of the three. There are parts of that book that are magic. And even if it didn't feel like magic while I was writing it--it felt like a whole lot of work--the magic found its way in anyway. When I was listening to Neil Gaiman speak last fall, he said the days when everything flows and the writing is easy and the days when everything is hard and he has to force it all look the same in the finished draft. (Of course he said it more eloquently and with that accent and that hair, so please just imagine it that way.)

In the comments of the last post, Gennifer Albin asked, "Do you feel like you refilled your creative well when you just let the voice drive you? I'm hard at work on the book I owe my editor, but it's slow going and frustrating, and there's this other book that keeps popping into my head. I keep wondering if maybe I need to write it to remember why I like writing, because navigating sequel-writing is proving frustrating."

I honestly don't know. I don't usually allow myself to cheat with other ideas. When you are slogging through a difficult sequel, pretty much any idea sounds more appealing. I think it's because a new idea is pure potential. Sequels have a good deal of pressure associated with them, and you're working in a voice and a world the rules of which you have already established. There is less room for the sheer giddy PLAY aspect of a new idea. But I know myself, and I know that most of those ideas I think would be so much more fun crap out at about twenty pages.

But this time something happened that made it impossible to work on the sequel I was writing that day. (It was a traumatic event that ended up being fine, but left me really shaken and unwilling to deal with the themes of that book.) I needed to cleanse my palate, so to speak, and so I wrote the sequence that had been playing in my head. And I knew that this idea, this voice, was probably going to be one of the magic ones. So I let myself go crazy.

But not too crazy. Because I knew I could write it fast, and that I wouldn't be taking too much time away from the things that should have been slated before it on the work calendar. If this book had been a matter of committing months, I would not have pursued it. I would have taken notes and tucked it away. Fortunately I know myself and I knew that I could chase this, that it would be worth it, that losing myself in the mad giddy rush was okay because I would not be lost too long. I knew I would be cranky and obsessive, I knew when it was over I would crash. I accept it as part of my writing process, just as I accept those books that take consistent, determined work.

So, I don't know what to tell you. Sometimes taking time away from a project can refresh you and let you go back to it excited. Sometimes it can remove you even further from it and make more difficult than ever. Sometimes the writing is magic, and sometimes the writing is work, but our job is to put in the time we need to so that when it gets into the hands of readers, it always reads like magic.

No pressure.

I Have No Words Left for a Title

So, in the week since I last posted I went ahead and wrote a book.

You know. Start to finish. A whole book. One of those things.

It's number ten for finished drafts. Ten books. Wow.

You will excuse the choppiness of this post. I wrote 60,000 words in seven days. I need to go to the store and stock up on some more; the word cupboards are quite bare.

I don't say this to brag. It's crazy, even for me. Only two of my ten manuscripts have been written comparably fast--PARANORMALCY and MIND GAMES. Both came to me in a deluge, the stories spilling out as fast as my fingers could manage.

SUPERNATURALLY, ENDLESSLY, Isadora's book, and the sequel to MIND GAMES I was working on (before this story descended like a swarm of locusts onto my brain) all took significantly longer. I had to set aside time to write. I had to force myself to plot, and work at it, and be disciplined enough to choose to get the writing in instead of napping or watching television or sitting on the couch staring at the wall.

But sometimes I get an idea and a voice that demands I do nothing else, and I have learned to oblige. My kids get to watch a lot of movies, and my friends ask if I've been sick, and I do not sleep and I forget to eat and the days pass in a mad blur with one foot in this world and the other foot in a world that exists only in my head.

Have you ever tried to stand with one foot shoved into your own head? IT ISN'T EASY.

Anyway. Now comes the crash where I sink off the story high and begin to wonder if I was out of my mind to think it was as special as I felt like it was when I was writing. I have pages of notes on what I already know needs to change, and I'll start at the beginning and read through and make those changes and hopefully find something magical.

This all has to be done quickly, of course, because locust-swarm-books are inconvenient things and I have copyedits for MIND GAMES needing to be done and a few other very pressing projects waiting, not to mention the book I am actually supposed to be drafting right now.

I used to do a sum-up of books when I finished. I'm not sure how to do that with this one. It's a strange book. I hope it will be the Mysterious Fourth Book of my most recent deal with HarperTeen, but you never know. All I will say is:

Plus this:

Plus imperialism and sexism and romance and a mathematician heroine. Do with that what you will. I will be over there. Asleep.