I’d also like to give a shout out to my publishing-mates Alexandrea Weis with Lucas Astor and Mary Ting for their wins in the Horror: Supernatural/Paranormal (Blackwell) and Science Fiction: Post-Apocalyptic (ISAN) respectively.

This is going to be an incredibly short post, because I have some dancing and skipping around the room to do while marveling over the shiny new gold sticker my book can now wear.

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In 7th Grade Revolution, Selena Woodham is the girl wearing the heels. She is the fashionista of the crew and wouldn’t go out of the house without her heels. But, perhaps a little predictably, while tromping around a tunnel in the dark, she breaks a heel.

     “Ow.” Ahead, Selena stumbled and James caught her before she fell.
     The gang stopped.
     Selena leaned against the tunnel wall and pulled off her shoe. “My heel broke.”
     Pfft. Of course, it broke. Heels weren’t meant for walking through tunnels with uneven terrain and potholes. Now they’d have to listen to her whine about her broken designer shoe and she’d complain about not being able to walk when one leg was four inches higher than the other one.
     Her lips skewed to the side. “Well, it won’t do me any good this way.” She raised the shoe over her head and whacked the heel against the tunnel wall. She gripped the heel and ripped it off. “There.” Selena slipped the now heel-less shoe on, and the other off.
     She whacked the unbroken shoe against the wall a few times until the heel twisted. Then she wrenched it and made herself a pair of flats.

For signed copies of 7th Grade Revolution or to purchase the playing cards, click the Revolution Merchandise button.

Now Available:
Print:  Amazon  |  Barnes and Noble  |  Powells  |  Book Depository
All available Ebook Retailers

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True darkness is not something we experience often in our current existence. Headlights and taillights add to the beams from the light stanchions on the road. Indoors at night, there is the glow from the alarm clock, or the blinking of the phone, or even an air purifier emitting a blue glow. These days we have light pollution from all the artificial light sources.

Imagine walking through a hand-hewn tunnel with the light of a single torch to see by. I doubt much could be seen ahead as the tunnel narrowed.

     The tunnel narrowed and Curtis’s arm jogged against hers (Rhonda’s) as they walked.
     “Sorry.”
     “It’s all right. Getting tight here.” She took her eyes off the ground for a second and her cheeks burned when he smiled at her. Good thing he couldn’t see her cheeks turn red in the dim light.
     Their voices bounced eerily through the tunnel, echoing against the rock. She wouldn’t want to be down here alone. Scary.
     Curtis stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Single file ahead.”
     Rhonda turned. With the light from the torch playing over their faces, it reminded her of evil witch and wizard cartoons when they stood over a flickering cauldron. Dennis and Maddie brought up the rear, and they were virtually silhouettes with the occasional gleam when the light touched on their hair. “Do we want to turn some flashlights on or light another torch?”

For signed copies of 7th Grade Revolution or to purchase the playing cards, click the Revolution Merchandise button.

Now Available:
Print:  Amazon  |  Barnes and Noble  |  Powells  |  Book Depository
All available Ebook Retailers

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As much as I’d love to have that straight open run toward a goal — a kind of see it and achieve it situation, there is value to overcoming the obstacles in our path along the way. With every obstacle or misstep, we learn more about who we are, and how important the goal is for us. If things are too easy, did we set our sights too low? Did we truly earn the accomplishment? Maybe I’m perverse, but I tend to value the things that were harder to achieve.

A rope ladder leading into a tunnel running under the school. The thrill of taking the next step along the way to finding the artifact. But then, a simple slip of the foot …

    Rhonda put her foot on the first rung and slowly lowered herself to the second. At this rate she’d take a few minutes to reach bottom, so Dennis worked on untying the knot to remove the cord. A little difficult to do one-handed. He rested the torch against the floor to use both hands.
    Rhonda yelped. The ladder twisted and swished while she clung to the rope, one leg dangling.
    Dennis dropped the torch. “Hold on.” He grabbed the ladder to steady it. The rope tugged against his grip as Rhonda twisted first one way and then the other. The sway slowed and finally stopped. “I’ll keep a grip on the rope. Make your way down.”

For signed copies of 7th Grade Revolution or to purchase the playing cards, click the Revolution Merchandise button.

Now Available:
Print:  Amazon  |  Barnes and Noble  |  Powells  |  Book Depository
All available Ebook Retailers

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The 7th Grade Revolution blends an actual classroom experience with history and plain-old made up fun. All my projects are special to me, but when I think of this one, I always think about the fun I had writing it. At the time, I needed a bit of a break from my normal, emotional-laden fare, and wanted something to have fun with. I found it.

I tend to hop around categories since I write from Children’s Chapter Books through Young Adult and have recently started working on my next foray into the Middle Grade arena with The Star Warriors and the Secret of the Red Key, so it was nice to have my head fully in Middle Grade mode when I received the message from my Lit Manager, Italia Gandolfo, that we needed to put a package together (most of which had already been put together long ago, but needs to be tailored to the request) complete with promo image. Thanks to the wonderful talents of Michael J. Canales of MJC imageworks we soon had a fantastic promo image and one I couldn’t be happier with. It captures the elements and flavors of the book in a way I would never have been able to explain. Even down to the images of the kids. This isn’t a final book cover, only a promo image, so things don’t need to be exact, but as soon as I saw the image, I knew exactly who those kids were in the context of the story. So my little author heart is content.

So we hurried up and got my baby all dressed up for the prom and sent it on its way, and now we wait. And while we wait, I turn my focus back to what I need to be working on … my current WIP … and occasionally think about possibilities and what they would be. Whether this particular prom works out for this project or not, I do hope to have good news soon concerning The 7th Grade Revolution I can actually share. Until then, I am HAPPY to share the promo image.

The post All About What I Cannot Say appeared first on Be the Cat.

***ANNOUNCEMENT***

An interruption to #RevisionFest2013 has been called to bring you the following diatribe:

This morning I was flexing my fingers, getting ready to dive into the mountain of revisions awaiting me, when I saw a tweet float by in my stream. And I couldn’t let it go without comment. (And yes, the reason I was on Twitter was to state that #RevisionFest2013 had begun.) Normally, I watch tweets float by and can let them go, even when I feel the person is expressing a viewpoint different to mine. Because that’s what makes the world turn. Every person is entitled to their opinion and are free to express it. Just as I am free to disagree … which is what I did in this case, as you can see from the tweet conversation to the left.

The tweet that started this rant (in case you have difficulty reading in graphic form): Here is the book poster I have in my room. “Books everyone should read.” I’m done with most of the “non-girly” ones. I did try to let it go, but the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. I’m not going to rehash my response on Twitter, but two things bothered me about the post. First — the obvious issue with “non-girly”. It is 2013 and we still haven’t gotten beyond denigrating things because they are associated with girls. Which is depressing for us as a society. When roughly half the population is disparaged for something out of everyone’s control, because not one of us chose to be born a girl or boy, and for those who might think I’m on a “man-hate” rant … I hear almost as much gender disparagement from women as I do from men. It’s what we’ve been taught. And it’s time to break through the barrier and realize regardless of whether born male or female, what matters is what we accomplish with our lives.

Am I saying there are no differences between men and women? Certainly not. There are differences. What I am saying is the differences don’t make one better than another. Why don’t we refer to things as boyly, since we have no problem classifying things as being girly? And back to the books, I have never seen a book with a gender. Ever. The purpose of a book is to be read. Period. They don’t come with a security system designed to only allow the “right type” to read them. No one has to go through a certification process aimed at determining whether the book is the “right” material for them. Whether they are worthy of reading it. Nor should there be a capricious determination based on genetic sex on whether the book should be read.

And how do we categorize books for targeting a specific sex anyway? Start with the protagonist? If male then it’s for boys … if female, it’s for girls? Where does that leave us with books like Animal Farm and Watership Down? Do we assign the pigs to the boys pile and the rabbits to the girls (because obviously bunnies are fluffier than pigs, so more girly, right?)? And what in the world do with do with Winnie the Pooh, that silly ol’ bear? Boys, because Pooh Bear belongs to a boy? Oh, but wait, stuffed animals are more a girls realm, aren’t they? (In case you missed it, sarcasm is dripping off those words.) Newsflash! — Books don’t care whether you are a boy, a girl, the abominable snowman, or an alien. Books are there to be read by anyone who finds them fascinating.

The second thing that bothered me about the post was the pride it showed in having read most of the books. Having read the majority of the books on the poster IS an accomplishment, and one any person should be proud to make. And yet, instead of making a simple statement of pride, it was tarnished by forcing stereotypes onto a list of great books. Which is sad.

Update: The educator did come back and state the quote was from a student. And left the question of Pride and Prejudice? I did respond it was not apparent in the initial post the quote was from a student. And I still take exception to the thought that books are gender specific. If we take a gender specific approach to reading, we’d all be much poorer for it. Books classified as being for boys or girls hurts society as a whole by not only perpetuating stereotypical roles, but cutting readers off from a wealth of experience.

Click the picture below to bring up the poster of titles.

The post Book Genders appeared first on Be the Cat.

Rusty photo © Wrangel
Background photo © David Coleman

I’ll admit it … when reviewing the stories I was planning for Diary of a Misfit I realized I needed a few lighter stories to balance out some of the heavier topics included in the collection and the first thing that popped into my head was an entry about Rusty. *Sigh* Rusty is the sort of character writers fall in love with. He waltzed into the story during Nowhere Feels Like Home, unexpected, larger-than-life, flawed, and irresistible. And not only irresistible to me, but to Sarah and Katie as well. And since these are excerpts out of Katie’s diary, I knew she wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to write about the most romantic thing she’d ever seen in her life (followed of course by lots of exclamation marks)

Before Rusty had revealed himself to me, I had been getting snippets of what looked like a near rape scene involving Sarah. I knew what I was getting was something out of Sarah’s past, when she was Katie’s age, and it bothered me on a couple levels. The first level was that I had never gotten the sense from Sarah that she had been through that type of experience, and I felt like I should have known before. And the second level was that while I may write a rape scene at some point in my writing career, I really didn’t want it to happen in this series. But as a writer, I follow the path I’ve been shown, so I tucked the scene away and forged ahead, happy not to be at that point in the story, because I knew it’d be a difficult scene to write.

Then Rusty showed up and I knew he was the guy in the scene, but I couldn’t believe it. While he definitely had a dangerous side to him, his feelings about Sarah were pure. Well, as pure as a teenage boy’s can be. As we got closer to where I knew that scene fit, I became more concerned because I really liked Rusty, and it would make the scene even more difficult to write. Until I finally had a clear vision of what actually happened. The way I had seen the scene before was through Matt and Mark’s eyes, and what they saw looked a lot worse than what had happened.

Teaser: A ghost from the past makes an appearance as a marine recruiter, and Sarah and Katie are swept away.

Diary of a Misfit is available now for Kindle. A portion of the proceeds from Diary of a Misfit will go to the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth.

The post Diary of a Misfit – There’s Something About Rusty appeared first on Be the Cat.

Photo credit: © Drew Herron

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve had my head down, working away, and, except for the occasional outburst on Twitter, have even kept my socializing to a minimum (and those who know me, KNOW how I love to socialize.) But BECAUSE of my dedication to getting things done (okay, so the muse has been threatening me), I was able to announce my involvement in the Story Chairs project a couple days ago and NOW I get to share with you another project I’ve been working on

Diary of a Misfit

The idea for Diary of a Misfit started when my character, Katie McCabe, wanted to start blogging; the topics were situations she felt strongly about and the types of issues which happen throughout the course of the Misfit McCabe series. After she posted a few, I realized these were topics she would have journaled about in her diary … and Diary of a Misfit was born.

For me the short collection is akin to the extras at the end of the blu-ray or DVD. There are some scenes I knew about, but couldn’t put in the book, like Tim’s Shiner because they happened before the series starts, as well as a merging of real life into the world of Katie McCabe. And there are author notes scattered throughout, giving a bit of additional insight. I am proud of this collection, perhaps in part because I never thought I had it in me to write short fiction, and because it has a unique blend of elements.

And one more thing, before my taskmaster puts me back to work on the next project (announcement coming soon… I hope) with this short collection I wanted not only to give extras to my readers, I wanted to also give back. So, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth—an organization with an emphasis on youth suicide prevention. Too many teens have lost hope, and lives are cut short before their time. We need to help.

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I had the great pleasure to be part of a promotional effort just prior to Christmas organized by Jillian Dodd. Jillian had an idea to gather 99 authors together to join forces to promote 99 books all for 99 cents. Jillian’s plan not only included step-by-step instructions for developing a plan for marketing, sample tweets & Facebook posts, but she also planned to include fabulous prizes for bloggers who helped to spread the word as well as readers. It was a WIN-WIN-WIN experience for all involved.

During the December 21st sale, ten of us made the top 100 in the Kindle store. The majority of us sold hundreds of books and saw our rankings soar. Many were in the top five of their specific category genres. We occupied eighteen of the first 21 slots on Amazon’s Movers and Shakers list. We were excited, and readers loved getting a deal on quality e-books and the chance to win fabulous prizes.

An event such as this takes a lot of planning, tireless effort, and the skills of a good field general to keep everyone on track and marching in the same direction. Sometimes a quiet, private thank you doesn’t seem enough. We authors wanted to show our appreciation, but what was the best way? Author Charles Sheehan-Miles came up with the idea of a coordinated “thank you,” from authors and bloggers on the same day. A surprise for Jillian, because everyone loves surprises. A public thank you to a wonderful lady. So the public salute:

THANK YOU, JILLIAN DODD

You are a very special lady. It was a wonderful experience and I hope to be able to participate with the wonderful authors who were involved in the event again in the future.

She’s the author of the young adult Keatyn Chronicles. Book one, Stalk Me, published in August 2012, has 139 reviews with an average of 4.5 out of 5 stars. Book two, Kiss Me, published November 2012, already has 157 reviews with an average of 4.8 out of 5 stars. Also by Jillian Dodd, That Boy, with 141 reviews with an average of 4.5 out of 5 stars, and the sequel That Wedding, 64 reviews, 4.7 out of 5 stars.

It was such a great experience and Jillian was so fantastic, I’d like you to meet her as well. To do so, just visit one of the sites below:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

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From the mobile unit of ZSC Commander-in-Chief Juliette Terzieff:

After months of anticipation the day has finally come when we can release the cover art for Undead Uncensored, the second Zombie Survival Crew anthology. This year’s anthology is a vibrant collection of short fiction, poetry and non-fiction pieces designed to help you get your zombie freak on and prepare for what we might all face if the zombipocalypse hits!

Undead Uncensored features the work of yours truly alongside other ZSC Commanders actor Michael Rooker, award winning author LK Griffie, and authors Jinxie G, R.C. Murphy and Amy Sundberg. ZSC crew members including Wendy Sparrow, Jessica Capelle, Robin Sellman, Amber Revelt, Stephanie Allen, Christopher De Voss and many others contributed their artistic endeavors to this creeptastic collection!!

Undead Uncensored is already available for pre-order here and orders will begin shipping on December 1, 2012.

Now without further ado… (yes, you can stop holding your breath now)

The cover for Undead Uncensored

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Photo of Tim: © Alptraum | Dreamstime.com
Creek Photo: © David Coleman | Dreamstime.com

In a Read it before you can buy it measure, I’ve decided to post a few snippets from the companion book to the Misfit McCabe series I have been working on. The title of the eventual book is Diary of a Misfit and will be available in ebook only (or at least that’s the plan for now). I am concurrently working on the companion book and One Way Ticket Home which will be the fourth book in the series.

Anyway, while working on the stories, which will be parts of Katie McCabe’s diary, giving a little of the background which doesn’t actually make it into the novels, Katie’s thoughts on some of the things that happen in the books, as well as her thoughts on current events.

Tim’s Shiner is a glimpse into the past with Katie and her best friend, Tim Lawrence and gives some insight on Tim’s family situation. I’m going to post the first couple paragraphs here, and then provide a link to the full story (which is 3,100 words, so short and quickly read).

When her best friend Tim shows up on her doorstep with a black eye, Katie McCabe teases him for being a klutz, until she learns the horrifying truth.

Tim’s Shiner

I ran into my room and dove on the bed. How could I be such a horrible friend? My eyes traced the whorls in the ceiling support beam as tears welled. I hammered my fist against the mattress. Frustration and rage made me want to scream, but if I did, Timmy might hear me. And that would make things worse.
     Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply. As I forced the air out of my lungs, I grabbed my diary from the nightstand and sat up. Maybe writing everything out would help.
     Today started off like any other day. But it might have ended as the worst day in all my twelve years….

* * * * *

“Katie, hurry up!”
     Most people knocked on the door, but not Timmy. When we had plans, he’d stand on the grass outside my room and yell.
     “The fish’ll be takin’ a nap if you wait much longer.” He held both our fishing poles and the can for worms.
     I poked my head out the window. “Keep your pants on, why doncha? I just hafta get my shoes on.” Scrambling to the closet, I shoved my feet into sneakers, and headed out the door, laces flopping with each step. I yanked the front door open and a blast of heat barreled in. Another scorcher, but summer would be over too soon, the weather would cool, and we’d be stuck inside.

Link to the Complete Story: Tim’s Shiner – Absolutely Free!

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****Drumroll Please****

I’m very pleased to announce that Tattered, the third book in the award-winning Misfit McCabe series, will be free through Amazon.com for Kindle Thursday, August 23rd and Friday, August 24th. So pick up your copy and enjoy the read. And once you’ve finished it, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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