A happy ending
On Friday YA Misfits is going to post an interview that they were kind enough to conduct with me. One of the things they asked me was whether I considered any of my books my special babies. I told them I have two, neither have sold, but my fingers are crossed.
I just sold one of them to Simon & Schuster.
If you've been following my blog for a while, you will recognize it as The Book I Love So Much That I Will Just Die If It Doesn't Sell.
It's a New Adult paranormal romantic comedy called Levitating Las Vegas. What it's about:
Nothing up her sleeves...or so she’s been led to believe.
Showgirl Holly Starr is sick and tired of assisting her dad, a celebrity magician, in his Las Vegas casino magic show. As soon as he keeps his promise to her and shares the secrets to his tricks, she can break out on her own. But can she really make it? For years Holly has taken medication to stave off crazy hallucinations that she can levitate objects. Just when she thinks she’s ready to make a career and a life for herself, her medicine-and her luck-run out.
Elijah Brown suffers from a similar delusion-that he can read minds-and he’s out of medicine too. Determined to save himself and his old flame Holly, he kidnaps her and takes her straight to the source, a town high in the Rockies where their medicine is made. What they discover there leads them to suspect their powers are not imaginary after all...and neither is the intense attraction they feel for each other.
They make a pact to stick together as they return to Vegas to confront the people who kept them in the dark so long. But soon they’re pitting their powers against each other in a dangerous world where the nightlife is seductive, domination is addictive, the sex is beyond belief...and falling in love is murder.
What is New Adult, you may ask? Well, the upper age limit of YA typically is the end of high school or shortly thereafter. The heroes and heroines of adult romance novels are usually no younger than their late 20's. New Adult covers the ground in between. This is a new term because it's a new market--driven, I think, by the fact that former avid readers of YA are growing older, entering college or the job market, and hungering for books about them.
I'm thrilled to tell you that Levitating Las Vegas will be published by Pocket Star this coming February! It will be available as an e-book only, and there are a couple of reasons for this. One is its genre. New Adult is still relatively untested, and paranormal isn't something I've done before. If the publisher doesn't print the book, they avoid some risk, because printing is expensive. The other reason is that sales of my previous novels have been very e-book heavy, so everyone figures that's the format most of my readers will want.
Now, if you hate e-books, I hear you. I prefer print myself. If a book I want is published as an e-book only, though, I will still buy the e-book. I know some of you won't. I hope you will bear with me until my next books come out, because this is the only one planned as an e-book exclusive. And if the publisher sees that demand is great, of course they will print it, because publishers are in the business of giving readers what they want. That's what happened with The One That I Want, and though I'm not expecting this to happen again, I would love for all my books to be available in formats that everyone prefers.
And so, with a final OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE IT, I will close by saying that Levitating Las Vegas was the book I wrote for NaNoWriMo in November 2008. If you're considering doing NaNoWriMo yourself, you might be amused at my experience, which is archived for you on this very blog starting here. You can scroll through the days--keep hitting "next day" at the bottom. You can tell I was really beside myself because of all the dreams I'm reporting (I almost never remember my dreams). You can also tell I am dedicated, because I finished the book during the Alabama-Auburn game. There aren't 30 reports because I got pretty desperate toward the end and stopped checking in. But I provide a wrap-up of my experience on December 1.
Yes, I added 47,000 words after NaNoWriMo was over. I revised the book many times, and it took almost 4 years to sell. But in the end, perseverance, my love of my own writing (because if you don't love it, how can you expect anyone else to love it?), my brilliant literary agent Laura Bradford, and the exquisite taste of my editors at Pocket Star (joking! not really!) came through for me. And there is nothing I love better than a happy ending.
I just sold one of them to Simon & Schuster.
If you've been following my blog for a while, you will recognize it as The Book I Love So Much That I Will Just Die If It Doesn't Sell.
It's a New Adult paranormal romantic comedy called Levitating Las Vegas. What it's about:
Nothing up her sleeves...or so she’s been led to believe.
Showgirl Holly Starr is sick and tired of assisting her dad, a celebrity magician, in his Las Vegas casino magic show. As soon as he keeps his promise to her and shares the secrets to his tricks, she can break out on her own. But can she really make it? For years Holly has taken medication to stave off crazy hallucinations that she can levitate objects. Just when she thinks she’s ready to make a career and a life for herself, her medicine-and her luck-run out.
Elijah Brown suffers from a similar delusion-that he can read minds-and he’s out of medicine too. Determined to save himself and his old flame Holly, he kidnaps her and takes her straight to the source, a town high in the Rockies where their medicine is made. What they discover there leads them to suspect their powers are not imaginary after all...and neither is the intense attraction they feel for each other.
They make a pact to stick together as they return to Vegas to confront the people who kept them in the dark so long. But soon they’re pitting their powers against each other in a dangerous world where the nightlife is seductive, domination is addictive, the sex is beyond belief...and falling in love is murder.
What is New Adult, you may ask? Well, the upper age limit of YA typically is the end of high school or shortly thereafter. The heroes and heroines of adult romance novels are usually no younger than their late 20's. New Adult covers the ground in between. This is a new term because it's a new market--driven, I think, by the fact that former avid readers of YA are growing older, entering college or the job market, and hungering for books about them.
I'm thrilled to tell you that Levitating Las Vegas will be published by Pocket Star this coming February! It will be available as an e-book only, and there are a couple of reasons for this. One is its genre. New Adult is still relatively untested, and paranormal isn't something I've done before. If the publisher doesn't print the book, they avoid some risk, because printing is expensive. The other reason is that sales of my previous novels have been very e-book heavy, so everyone figures that's the format most of my readers will want.
Now, if you hate e-books, I hear you. I prefer print myself. If a book I want is published as an e-book only, though, I will still buy the e-book. I know some of you won't. I hope you will bear with me until my next books come out, because this is the only one planned as an e-book exclusive. And if the publisher sees that demand is great, of course they will print it, because publishers are in the business of giving readers what they want. That's what happened with The One That I Want, and though I'm not expecting this to happen again, I would love for all my books to be available in formats that everyone prefers.
And so, with a final OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE IT, I will close by saying that Levitating Las Vegas was the book I wrote for NaNoWriMo in November 2008. If you're considering doing NaNoWriMo yourself, you might be amused at my experience, which is archived for you on this very blog starting here. You can scroll through the days--keep hitting "next day" at the bottom. You can tell I was really beside myself because of all the dreams I'm reporting (I almost never remember my dreams). You can also tell I am dedicated, because I finished the book during the Alabama-Auburn game. There aren't 30 reports because I got pretty desperate toward the end and stopped checking in. But I provide a wrap-up of my experience on December 1.
Yes, I added 47,000 words after NaNoWriMo was over. I revised the book many times, and it took almost 4 years to sell. But in the end, perseverance, my love of my own writing (because if you don't love it, how can you expect anyone else to love it?), my brilliant literary agent Laura Bradford, and the exquisite taste of my editors at Pocket Star (joking! not really!) came through for me. And there is nothing I love better than a happy ending.