And the Winner of Our Spread the Awesome Contest Is....

We briefly interrupt our Author Spotlight Week to announce the winner of my Spread the Awesome contest!

Our handy number generator at random.org picked our winning number which belongs to....(drum roll please).......

Zoe Courtman Smith!!!!

Congrats Zoe!! I'll be sending you an email shortly to get your addy and verify the prize you'd like.

Thanks to everyone who entered and thanks for helping to Spread the Awesome!

Please scroll to the previous post to see the kick off to our Author Spotlight Week - an interview with the fabulous Cole Gibsen!

Author Spotlight Week - Interview with Cole Gibsen

I first had the pleasure of meeting Cole three years ago when I joined the brand new Querytracker site and found the forum. She is one of the most talented and all around awesome people I have ever had the opportunity to meet and I am very proud to call her a friend.

Cole recently had some very good news to share - her novel Katana will be published by Flux in early 2012! I have been privileged to read this book and cannot wait for it to hit the shelves!

To kick off our Author Spotlight Week, I asked Cole to answer a few questions for us about herself and her writing.

MM: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? 

CG: Always. Unfortunately, I had a step-dad who was fond of telling me how stupid I was so I didn’t believe I could do it and never tried. Lucky for me, when the economy started to sour four years ago, my small business folded. I know that sounds like a bad thing, but being jobless gave me the opportunity to really think about what I wanted to do with my life. It was the kick in the pants I needed to pick the pen back up.

MM: What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?

CG: How therapeutic it is! My husband says he can always tell when I haven’t written in a few days because I’m on edge. (That’s a nice way of saying I’m a Snarky Von Crankypants.) When this happens, he kicks me out of the house with my laptop and coffee money. (I’m a very lucky girl.)

MM: You recently sold your book, Katana, in a two-book deal with Flux. 
Congratulations!! Can you tell us a little about your book?

CG: Thank you so much. I’d love to! KATANA is the story of Rileigh, a seventeen year-old girl who, after surviving an attack in the mall parking lot, gets possessed by the spirit of a fifteenth century samurai warrior. When a lover from her past life appears along with a mysterious enemy, her problems only increase.

MM: Who is your favorite character in the book, and why?

CG: Oh wow. I don’t know that I have a favorite because I love them all. Even my villain holds a special place in my heart. If I have to choose, I guess I’d say Rileigh because she’s sarcastic, addicted to shoes, and can disarm an attacker wielding nunchaku with a window squeegee.

MM: LOL Sounds like my kind of girl :D What about you? Who is Cole Gibsen ? What do you love to do, besides writing?

CG: Uh, I don’t think there’s enough room on the internet. LOL. But seriously, I’m a hopeless nerd. James Marsters touched my hand at Dragon Con and I almost died. I can talk comics with the best of them and spot all the inaccuracies in any Marvel movie. I love to sew and quilt. And I’m a diehard Harry Potter fan. There’s a group of us that dress up as characters from the movies to attend the HP premiers. This year I’m working on Bellatrix’s dress. It. Will. Be. Epic.

MM: Okay, seriously, I wish I lived closer to you because I would so be right there with you! :D Tell us a little about finding your agent and your road to publication –

CG: I can tell you it was a lesson in patience. It took two novels, two years, and over a hundred rejections before I landed my agent, Chris Richman. From there it took another year and several revisions before we landed our deal with Flux. Totally worth the wait!

MM: What was the hardest part of this journey for you? The easiest, or most fun?

CG: The hardest part, but also the most gratifying, was overcoming my own self-doubt and proving to myself that I could write a novel and get it published.
The most fun has been meeting all these incredible writers online and at conferences. I’m very lucky to now have friends across the country and even around the world. Writers are amazing people and I’m blessed to have so many in my life.

MM: What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

CG: Hmmm…I guess I’m not too quirky in that department. I do, however, always wear my noise reduction headphones and if a caramel frappuccino is within arms-reach, that’s even better!

MM: Thanks so much for the interview and for being our Spotlight Author this week! And congratulations again on your sale!!

Cole will be with us all week, so come back tomorrow for a few words of Gibsen wisdom :D

Linkage!!! If you'd like more information on Cole, please check out her links.

Cole's Blog
Cole's Website
Cole on Facebook
Cole on Twitter
Awesome Cole Youtube Video

Friday Funnies

 Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

-Louise Brook

When you catch an adjective, kill it...An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.

- Mark Twain, in a Letter to D. W. Bowser, 20 March 1880

Stay tuned next week for our Author Spotlight Week featuring the utterly fabulous Cole Gibsen!!

Thirty-three Word Thursday :) - A Good Reason NOT to Write for a Trend

It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: After a heavy rainfall, poems titled "Rain" pour in from across the nation.

~ Sylvia Plath

WIP Wednesday

Oops, it's Wednesday. LOL Oye, real life getting busy :)

Well, quick WIP update....I'm loving outlining...but I'm not so sure it works for me. But I want it to - badly. I spend a good 8 months on revisions after the initial 2 or 3 months of writing draft. I do NOT want to spend an entire year on one manuscript anymore. But outlining seems to kill the drive to write the story.

So, I have two options at the moment.

1. Word vomit draft one and then outline during the beginning of the revision process (thanks for that term, Elana LOL). This option is what I'm leaning toward as it will allow me to get the story out but still organizes things in time to be efficient in the revising arena.

2. Continue trying to outline before draft 1. This one I'm not so sure about. However, my fabulous crit partner and agent buddy Christine recommended an outlining book that is on its way to my house as we speak. I will give it a shot, 'cause hey, I'm will to try just about everything once :)

So, for now, no progress on the fiction WIP. The NF book is getting much closer to being done but work stalled out for a week or so as I dealt with some Real Life stuff. IF I can get all my ducks in a row here, I should be done with revisions on that this week and then will just need to finish up the 4 new chapters we are adding (and they are, thank goodness, at least partially finished).

Then, manuscript off to my editor and I can focus the summer on fiction. Woohoo!

How about you all? How are your projects going? Have any of you tried outlining to find it just doesn't work? Do you outline at all, during any stage of the process?

Ten Word Tuesday...Times 3...Plus 3 or 4 More :D

I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame because praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers.

~ John Berryman

Spreading the Awesome - P.C. and Kristin Cast

The fabulous Elana Johnson decided to Spread a little Awesome, and invited a few friends along  :) Today is Spread the Awesome Day. Basically, I and many other writers will be singing the praises of one of our favorite books and its author. We will link our posts so you can follow through the most awesome Recommended Reading List ever. Speaking of which, be sure to head to Shelli Johannes-Wells blog for her choice of Awesome.

I cheated a little and chose a series instead of just one book - The House of Night series, by P.C. and Kristin Cast.

My very sweet stepkids got the first three books for me for Christmas 2008. I had them done in a day a piece and immediately ordered the rest of the series. A.W.E.S.O.M.E.

At the time, I was very new to YA and MG writing - the Twilight series was about all I had read of the genre. So opening the first book of the House of Night series was a new YA adventure for me.

I found a fun world where vampires are a part of normal society - still a little feared, mistrusted, "different", but it is a world where the best and brightest actors, artists and scientific minds are vampires - where being a vampire is a genetic trait - where you are marked as a teenager and sent off to a private vampire school where your body may or may not accept the change into adult vampirehood.

The series follows Zoey Redbird, an exceptional fledgling who exhibits powers and abilities (along with wicked awesome tattoos) far beyond her years and experience. Throughout the series, Zoey learns the meaning of true friendship, love and betrayal, sacrifice and service, and fights the forces of pure evil.

She is supported by a seriously awesome cast of secondary characters including several love interests to literally die for, a cowgirl best friend named Stevie Rae who becomes a whole new type of vampire, and the resident witch with a B, Aphrodite, who you can't help but love.

It's a wild ride and an awesome fun read. With incredibly beautiful covers :)

For more information on P.C. and Kristin Cast, visit their website. P.C. has written many other novels in addition to the House of Night series, which she co-authors with her daughter, who also has several solo novels. For more information on the House of Night series, visit the site devoted to it HERE.

And now for some fun stuff....I couldn't very well tell you how awesome this series is without giving you a chance to own part of it for yourself!

GIVEAWAY TIME!!!!!

Just fill out the form below, hit Submit, and you are entered! I'll take entries for the next week, until midnight, Sunday May 9th. Our grand prize winner will be announced bright and early Monday morning, May 10th.

Since some of you may have read all or part of this series and some of you may be newcomers that would like to start it, I'm going to give you a choice of prizes :D Click on the titles for the book summaries.

Prize Choice 1: Book 1 of the House of Night series - Marked

Prize Choice 2: Book 7 of the House of Night series - Burned (just released!)

Prize Choice 3: The Triple Moon necklace, created for the House of Night series

If you have started the series and are somewhere between books 1 and 7 and would like another one instead, just choose either one of the book options in the form below. I'll double check with the winner what book in the series they'd like to have. :)