TAKEN releases, Edgefest, and Dusting Off Old Projects
I’m sure many of you noticed that on Tuesday, Erin Bowman’s Taken released. Erin is a dear, dear friend of mine, and it feels like forever that we’ve been twiddling our thumbs and waiting for her book to launch. I mean, I read an almost finalized version back in January of 2012, and I’ve had to bite my tongue to NOT spoil this awesome story for new readers. (BECAUSE THE HEIST IS JUST SO COOL!)
But now Taken is out. Now Erin’s fabulous hero, Gray, can entertain the rest of the world as much as he entertained me.
Erin (a.k.a. Ders, a.k.a. Donatello, a.k.a. Black Bandanna Badass): I just KNOW Taken will captivate the world, and I am so honored and pleased to be your friend. I’m so glad we could share this seemingly long and epic journey to publication–and it’s only the beginning!
For those of you who haven’t yet entered in my Taken giveaway over on the Pub(lishing) Crawl blog, be sure to head over there and sign up–and to also wish Erin a happy book birthday (though now it’s more like the book birth-week). And there’s also a sneaky second giveaway for Taken happening on MY website, but you’ll have to find it to enter. 😉
Also, Erin is hosting a pretty rockstar giveaway herself. It’s called the #TakenWithTAKEN giveaway, and you can read about here and enter until 4/30/2013.
Plus, if you’re in the Dallas area next weekend (4/27/2013), Erin and I will be doing a signing TOGETHER! Along with 8 other authors, we’ll be selling and signing books at Edgefest. I seriously cannot express how excited I am about this event.
Now, to quickly answer a reader question before I sign off:
Are there any stories you’ve written in the past, unpublished ones, that you’ve thought about dusting off and working with again?
YES! Actually, my YA mystery (with the horrible working title, Purely Platonic) came from a TERRIBLE short story I wrote with the same name! It was about two best friends who fall for each other. Of course, almost nothing else is similar…except maybe the age of the hero and heroine. Otherwise, names and settings and situations have all changed. Still–the initial spark came from that old (and I mean oooollllldddd, like early high school) story.
As for other old projects (i.e. written prior to Something Strange and Deadly), I might one day go back to them. There are one or two WIPs that weren’t so bad…Of course, what’s bad about them is the genre. Two were dystopian/post-apocalyptics (one that I wrote in 2003 and another in 2007), and that market is totally over-saturated now. I also had a few bad epic fantasies and then a contemporary romance (adult). The romance actually has potential, but since that isn’t really a market I want to crack into, I’ll probably never go back to it. Oh, and then there’s all my fan fiction. But that’s definitely not gonna ever be used. 😉
To be honest, most of my writing prior to Something Strange and Deadly was bad and self-indulgent. I wrote purely for my own pleasure and escapism–I never tried to learn craft or write for publication until 2008. I feel like that was when my writing actually became something of quality, and I have so many current WIPs (how many did I list last week? 7? Plus an eighth I started last Friday…) that I think I have more than enough to work on for the time being.
But who knows? Maybe like Purely Platonic, one of my old stories will spark something new. 😉
You tell me: have you ever dusted off an ancient project or used an old WIP to start something new?
April 19, 2013 @ 7:10 pm
I read an ARC of TAKEN and ohmygosh– it really is that fabulous! I love love love loved it.
I’ve never dusted off an old project, but there’s one that I look back on with fondness. Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll use elements of it again. Maybe. Or maybe not. I’m fine with leaving it forever in the dust. It’s the manuscript where I grew from a wannabe to someone who actually had a chance, so it could be that the fondness I feel for it came from my growth, not the fabulousness of the book. Someday I may have to read it again just to see. 🙂
April 20, 2013 @ 3:20 pm
I have that same MS–the one that was my first from being a hobby writer to wanting to write for publication. It’s BAD, but man, I learned a lot from writing it (and revising it). I’m afraid to even pick it up and read it…:P
April 20, 2013 @ 12:28 am
Thank you for the TAKEN love, Sooz! I can’t believe it was well over a year ago that you first read! That was when I first joined PubCrawl…and when we started chatting. Crazy how fast time went. <3
April 20, 2013 @ 3:19 pm
<3 <3 I KNOW. It's weird to think we were just becoming BFFRs a year ago too. Yay for Pub Crawl bringing us all together!!
April 20, 2013 @ 12:35 am
OMG I have been all over your site and can’t find the other Taken giveaway! I am so bummed. I did enter your other giveaway for it though. I have entered about 13 other giveaways for it, plus others for gift cards so I could buy it but no luck so far. I have been waiting forEVER for this book to release, but I can’t afford it! I fell in love with the cover and the synopsis the first time I ever saw it. I don’t think I have ever wanted a book more. Oh well…hopefully I’ll be able to have it in my hands soon!!!! I’m going to keep searching your site, I guess!
April 20, 2013 @ 3:18 pm
Ack! I’ll give you hint: the giveaway is behind a link that looks like a picture (up in the header)…Sorry to make that so hard to find!!
Fingers crossed you win!! Or that some $$ comes your way to buy it. 😉
April 20, 2013 @ 11:31 pm
Wow – that is incredibly creative! Not to mention, a great way to get people to read your other sections of your site and blog posts. I have now read every blog post from the last month, plus your Home, About Me, Book, Links and Contact sections. I don’t know how I missed that link.
By the way, your series Something Strange and Deadly looks awesome. I think I read somewhere that the series started off as mystery but is turning more into an epic? That sounds incredible.
April 20, 2013 @ 6:45 am
I dusted off a project I began last August – my first pantsed project 🙂 Really enjoying it to be honest. It’s a breath of fresh air from my other project where it felt like I was pulling teeth to get words written….definitely need some space from that one.
Hmm….there is a fantasy short story I wrote in grade 9 that definitely had a spark. I could imagine going back to that and trying to develop it into a novel. But for now, loving my pantsed project.
Loie xx
April 20, 2013 @ 3:21 pm
Ahhh, it’s those sparks in old project that can start something new! Like my YA contemporary from an old short story–it’s the spark that inspired me again, even though the new story is SO COMPLETELY different. 😀 Happy writing with your pantsed project–I’m so glad you’re loving it so much. 😀
April 20, 2013 @ 2:50 pm
I’ve dusted off an ancient project. Nano ’08 ended up getting mashed up with a then-current WIP, and it blended together beautifully last Nano. It took about 2 drafts and 80k to figure I was actually writing 3 novellas – one for each character (sometimes I hate being a pantser). The plus side for 80k worth of stuff is that I end up with all three stories have at least been started.
But I do have this novela idea I wrote when I was 15 – vampires meets fight club. I still have the 10 pages I wrote in my classes. Maybe one day when I’ve got nothing else on my plate.
April 20, 2013 @ 3:22 pm
Ohhhhh, that’s kinda high concept, isn’t it? Vampires + Fight Club–I love it. Sounds super gritty. 😉 What a cool idea for 15–jeez!
April 20, 2013 @ 3:27 pm
It was supposed to be gritty, to 15 year old me. I read it a year ago, wasn’t as bad as I expected! I was obsessed with Anne Rice and Chuck Palahniuck novels in the day (scary to think that was 10 years ago). Didn’t know the first thing about writing a novel, just that I wanted to write one.
April 22, 2013 @ 3:18 am
I have yet to return to a past WIP and do some more work on it. I don’t know if I ever would, to be honest, as I wrote most of the old ones when I was in a very different head space. (This apparently does not apply to fan fiction, as I’ve done that multiple times!)