Cover and Trailer Reveal!! Lisa Amowitz's BREAKING GLASS

I know we usually have some Friday Funnies on Fridays, but today is a little special :) I am very pleased to take part in the cover and book trailer reveal for my dear friend Lisa Amowitz's upcoming debut novel, BREAKING GLASS. I had the pleasure of reading this book this weekend and it was AWESOME. Without further ado, here is the incredible cover and trailer :)

(and p.s. Lisa is not only an amazing author but a very talented artist as well. In fact, she creates covers for several publishers and was able to do her own cover. I've got to say - this is one of the best covers I've seen. Love it!)

Le Blurb:
On the night seventeen-year-old Jeremy Glass winds up in the hospital with a broken leg and a blood alcohol level well above the legal limit, his secret crush, Susannah, disappears. When he begins receiving messages from her from beyond the grave, he's not sure whether they're real or if he's losing his grip on reality. Clue by clue, he gets closer to unraveling the mystery, and soon realizes he must discover the truth or become the next
victim himself.


 

BREAKING GLASS is coming from Spencer Hill Press next spring! Congrats Lisa!!

Proud to be a Bookworm but...

I could use a maid LOL

My poor hubs cringes whenever I pick up a new book, especially if that book is the first in a series, because he knows nothing is going to get done until I'm finished :D I do try to do the "one more chapter" thing, but often I "one more chapter" myself into the wee hours of the morning, unable to do anything, including sleep, until I've read every last word :)

I guess as addictions go, it's not too bad. My starving and naked family might disagree though (as they kick a path through the destroyed house) :D

I've learned over the years that if I have anything I need to accomplish, I must do it before I start the book. I catch up on laundry, dishes, spruce up the living space, and do whatever else needs doing, and THEN I sit down and lose myself in the pages. I will take cooking breaks, but I'm usually stirring whatever's in the pot with one hand and holding the book with the other :D

How do you deal with your bookworm tendencies?

Friday Funnies

Make Believe Wednesdays

Today I'm over at fellow Entangled author Rachel Firasek's blog talking about all my favorite childhood make believe games :) Come visit me!

What were your favorite make believe games?

To Ode or Not to Ode...

So, I've been mostly focused on fiction lately and have completely neglected my poor poetry book :) But an email from the ever awesome Christine Fonseca has it on my mind again. She asked about odes, a poetic form I generally steer clear from because every source I've consulted lists a different set of "rules" for these babies. Which bugs me :D

However, in speaking with a few students and parents, it seems these are still regularly taught in language arts classes (though again, I'm not sure who is teaching what because other than saying that odes were "usually" written in praise of something, I've never come across two sources that give you the same set of instructions on them, and every class I've taken teaches them differently. If at all. The seminar I took in grad school barely touched on them).

But this has me curious - what are the main forms they are teaching in school these days? For which forms are you googling for help? I know my writing blog still regularly gets hits on the how-to write a sonnet and heroic couplets posts. All you teachers/parents/students - what forms have you googling for instructions?

My book, Poetry Pointers, so far contains chapters on two dozen different poetic forms. But I want to make sure I'm covering the ones everyone will need :)

Friday Funnies

(seriously, why do they do that?!)

(I probably shouldn't be laughing at this as hard as I am...especially since my dog is 

now edging away from me and eyeing me suspiciously LOL)

Today...

I'm over at OA - come see me!

Also, happy 11th anniversary to  Mr. McLean :D Love you honey :D

Tagged! Lucky Sevens Game :D

The lovely Christine Fonseca tagged me for the Lucky Sevens Game so I thought I'd play along :D

The rules for the Lucky Sevens Game are these:
1. Open the document for your current MS/WIP
2. Go to page 77 (or page 7, dependent on the post)
3. Go to line 7
4. Copy the next 7 lines (sentences or paragraphs) and post them exactly as they are written. No changing or cheating!
5. Tag 7 authors and let them know.

Fun! Well, since I'm just about finished with round one of edits on TREASURED LIES, I'll use that ms :) So...here is page 77 and 7 lines starting with line 7 - update: Page 77 is the end of a chapter and only has one line on the page LOL

So, I'm going to have to bend the rules a tad and go to page 76:


Shock ran in icy waves down her spine. Sympathy for the boy he was and fear of the man he’d become warred inside her. But Min bit her lip, knowing he wouldn’t welcome her pity. And she refused to show her fear. She glanced at him. He stared right at her, tensed as if for a blow. One he must have endured a thousand times over.

And for my Lucky Seven Tags:

1. Kristal Shaff
2. Katrina Lantz
3. Amparo Ortiz
4. Cari Quinn
5. Lindsay/Isabella Morgan
6. Cole Gibsen
7. Bethany Wiggins

It's Revision Time :)

Well, I got my edit notes the other day and I was happy to see they weren't as bad as I'd feared :) I actually really enjoy revising. Major rewrites can be stressful (I'm in the middle of that for my current WIP) but just regular old revisions....love 'em :)

Maybe because they are less about getting the story out and more about polishing the story. I've got something to work with and I just need to go layer by layer to make sure everything is as it should be.

Right now I'm working on the little stuff - the line edits and minor tweaks. This is often something I'll save for the end, however I need to pare down the word count a bit, so I want all the new stuff in there so I can see exactly how much I need to cut.

So, little stuff up first. Then the big edit I need do do (some tweakage on the setting and background). And then...time to murder my darling a little bit and trim some wordage :) I think I've actually gotten pretty good at this. Oh, there are a few scenes I'd fight to the death to keep. But then again, those scenes are scenes that work well in the story, scenes that I made SURE worked well :)

For everything else...well, I've gotten good at loping anything from words to massive chunks of manuscript. I save it all in a file, just in case :) but it doesn't bother me so much anymore.

How do you edit? Do you go through the manuscript and do it all at once as you come to places that need work? Or do you do things one at a time (going through the ms with one edit in mind and changing everything pertaining to that particular edit before moving on to another one)? Is it hard for you to cut things?