SHARDS, an illustrated BREAKING GLASS preview: download it for free. Win an arc of Breaking Glass plus other cool stuff...

Sneak peak inside:

BREAKING GLASS GIVEAWAY:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giveaway items:

(1)  custom pendant like the one pictured on the book cover

(2) signed ARCS

(1) original work of Breaking Glass related art created and signed by me.

 

Let me know what you think!

Bear with me as I clear out the cobwebs

Some of you may have been wondering if I tripped and stumbled into a black hole. Well, I did sort of. Partly because it was the end of the semester and I had a bazillion work related things going on, and the other part was because I was furiously polishing my just completed WIP, which is now a finished novel out for query.

Hurray, you say? Congrats for finishing? Hmmmm. There is no one happier than me when I am revising and editing a manuscript I love.

I HATE letting go.

What's even harder is sending the poor baby out into the world. And that is what has been going on. LIFE AND BETH, my YA contemporary fantasy is on the dating circuit. She's all grown up and trying to meet her perfect agent. She's actually out on dates as we speak. Without a cell phone.

Okay--enough silly metaphors. I have issues. Issues that have NOTHING to do with this industry because I have nothing but admiration and respect for the agents and editors who slog through thousands of manuscripts. At my job we just had to look through about fifty resumes and the amount of people who send to the totally wrong position is astounding. So pity on the agents.

That being said, my issues have nothing to do with those good people. It has to do with me. I need to move on. Like any good parent, I have to cut the apron strings and let my baby find her own way in the world.

Good luck, Beth (my mc). I hope you find true love!

That being said, it's time to get to work on the next WIP!!


And now for some cool news. Next week I am guest blogger on Michelle McClean's website!
Be sure and stop by!

Portrait of a teen reader: Meet Allison

Some teenagers read only when forced (by gunpoint sometimes.) Some read in spurts, like my 14-year-old daughter who can sometimes read 100 pages a night, and then not pick up another book for a month.

And then there is my daughter’s friend, Allison. I have rarely seen Allison without a book, whether she’s on the soccer field (at half-time, of course) or hanging out with the girls. Usually when we see each other we get this crazed gleam in our eyes and gravitate toward each other; two obsessed book freaks. The other girls, my daughter included groan; there they go again! Allison and I are always exchanging books. I have two of hers now! (and I think she has a few of mine—I tend to lose track).

I thought it would be fun to share some of Allison’s thoughts about books and reading in general, since she is an actual, real life teenager and a member of our target audience.

Welcome, Allison! Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I'm 14 in 9th grade. I play soccer, I like swimming, hanging out with friends.


How many books would you say you read a month?
I would say I read at least two books a month.


When did you become the voracious reader you are today?
The first books I was really into was the HOUSE OF NIGHT series. It was about the time when TWILIGHT was not really popular (two years ago). My sister was reading TWILIGHT and kept telling me how great it was, so I moved onto my next series. Then I didn't read anything for a while. I sort of read the IMMORTALS books, but just as something to read until the next book of HON came out. Then I started talking to Lisa who introduced me to the UGLIES series and the MORTAL INSTRUMENTS series. Now I'm waiting for the next book in most of those series, and reading the Sookie Stackhouse series (the books the show True Blood is based on)


What’s your favorite genre?
My favorite genre would be fantasy, supernatural, teen romance.


Is there any particular book that sparked your interest?
The Mortal Instruments is by far my favorite out of everything I’ve read.


Do you prefer series or stand-alones?
I definitely prefer series over stand-alones.


What do you look for in a book? What keeps you reading?
In every book I’ve read there is always forbidden romance, so that really gets me interested. I like books that keep me guessing and really pull me out reality.


Do you have a favorite book?
My favorite stand alone book is WALK TWO MOONS. That book has no out of the ordinary characters and no real twist, but something about it makes me want to read it over and over again.


What kind of book would you like to see on the shelves in the next year or so?
I’m really looking forward to the next book in most of the series I’m reading. Maybe a new kind of genre altogether that doesn’t have any super natural beings.


Do you ever think you might want to write as well?
I would love to write a book someday but I don’t think it would be any good.


Thank you for stopping by, Allison! And let me let you in on a little writer's secret: None of us are any good when we start. You just need a story to tell and the courage (or insanity?) to keep writing. With each book we get a bit better. Some of us even get published. And we are always afraid we aren't really any good. But that never stops us from writing. So be brave and give it a go! If you start now, imagine how good you'll be by the time you graduate high school!

Buzz Time—YA author Leah Clifford and A TOUCH MORTAL

Well it's that time again when I shamelessly plug another writer pal (and her fabulous mega-agent Rosemary Stimola whose semi-accurate likeness you will find on this blog about two posts back).

I *met* Leah Clifford online almost three years on the Querytracker forum when there were maybe about fifteen of us originals. Back in those days, I knew her as Gypsygurl. (actually, she' ll always be Gypsygurl to me. Its her brand name). I've been familiar with this manuscript from its earliest days, and right from the start it was clear to me Leah was a brilliant writer with a big future. If she was a stock, I would have invested for sure!

Ever since Leah told us QT-ers back in December that her book had sold, we've been sitting on this fabulous news-so now it's time to shout to the world about Leah's book A TOUCH MORTAL, due from Greenwillow in Winter 2011. I love typing that title. As a self-proclaimed title freak I think it rates a perfect 10.

Anyway, here's the blurb about Leah's sale in Publisher's Marketplace.

YA Rebels vlogger Leah Clifford's A TOUCH MORTAL, the first in a planned trilogy in which a seventeen-year old doesn't remember the details of her final hours, but now, she's a Sider, a lost soul trapped between the living and the dead; endowed with a special power no Sider ever had, she is pulled into a feud between Fallen and Bound Angels which will reveal the truth of her death and alter heaven and hell and everything in-between, to Virginia Duncan at Greenwillow, in a good deal, in a pre-empt, in a three-book deal, the for publication in Winter 2011, by Rosemary Stimola at Stimola Literary Studio.
rosemary@stimolaliterarystudio.com

Okay. Now I hand the mic over to Leah. If you'd like to really meet Leah, you can check her out on her vlog, YA Rebels http://www.youtube.com/user/YARebels or follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/leahclifford.

Leah, aka, Gypsygurl, can you tell us a bit about your background?
Sure! I'm an Ohio girl born and raised, with a few great escapes in there. I lived in Colorado for a few years and worked as a flight attendant for a few more, so I went through a period where I was constantly on the move. Before that, I attended a community college where I took some creative writing classes, but other than that I have no "formal" training in writing.

How long have you been writing? Is A TOUCH MORTAL your first book?
I've been writing since I was very young, but only writing for publication for the last few years. A TOUCH MORTAL is not my first book though. I have a trunked novel that is an adult paranormal, but it's pretty awful. When it was finished I queried a bit, but knew I could do better, so I pulled the manuscript and started on the YA novel that grew into A TOUCH MORTAL.

Tell us a bit about the main characters in A TOUCH MORTAL.
My main character, Eden, is so much fun to write! She's snarky and sarcastic, a girl who can hold her own against the boys for sure. She lives in NYC and runs the Manhattan crew of Siders (see PM announcement for what they are). There are also the Angels. One of them, Az, is Eden's ex-boyfriend, who she's on the outs with...though he's determined to change that.

Are any of the characters based on actual individuals?
No, they're all fiction.

What inspired your book?
So, remember that stint at community college I mentioned above? Well, in one of those creative writing classes, I had a story due. Actually, it was late. And I had NO IDEAS. I ended up writing a short story about teens watching a jumper on a building ledge. It wasn't like anything I'd ever written before, and for years I wondered why they were so cavalier about the whole thing. The novel grew from that original short story.

Can you tell us a bit about your road to publication? What obstacles did you face? I started officially querying in January of 2009 and by February I had received four offers of representation. I'll be the first to tell you I had NO idea that was gonna happen. After a period of freaking out, I had a phone call with each agent and went with Rosemary Stimola. We went out on submission, but the responses we received seemed confused in the first pages with the world building. I'd never written YA, and never fantasy, so my world building skills weren't the best then. REVISION TIME!!! I took a few months, added another 100 pages and 20,000 words and we were ready to go out again. The offer came two weeks later.

Tell us something about Leah Clifford we'd never think to ask about?
One of my favorite things is the antique Royal typewriter I own. It still works but needs a new ribbon. Someday, I want to type a rough draft on it (probably for a short story lol). You can see it behind me in most of the Rebels vlogs (I'm Thursday).

Thanks for the interview, Lisa! And thanks for being there every step of the way!
The QT crew rocks!
(yep, they do!)

Interview with Anne Spollen, author of The Shape of Water

Anne Spollen, author of last year's The Shape of Water and the forthcoming Light Beneath Ferns, has been kind enough to visit here. I guess she could tell how wildly obsessed I've become with her writing and wanted to speak for herself! I hope my enthusiasm rubs off on some of you. And PS...Anne snuck in a little question for me at the end.

I am almost done reading Light Beneath Ferns and I am loving it. As Anne herself states, it is quite different from "Water". She says it is less lyrical, but I have to say—Anne's incredible poetry comes right through. I told Anne that readers of her book might also enjoy a book by Laura Whitcomb, entitled A Certain Slant of Light, a ghost story with a lyrical twist.

Now I will step aside, and let Anne take it from here...


Tell us a bit about your background and what you've been up to lately.

I was born in Staten Island, NY, and went away to New Paltz, NY to attend college. After I met my husband there, I stayed and became a high school English teacher. I also taught in the English department at SUNY, New Paltz while completing my Masters in English literature. I stopped teaching when my first son, Christopher, was born. I had always written, so I began writing poetry while he napped. By the time his brother came along 26 months after him, I stayed home full time and worked on poetry from time to time. I had very little time as I had had two kids in two years and my husband and I didn't have anyone nearby to help. So writing time was pretty scarce. When I did have time, I wrote and published poetry regularly. Then I moved on to longer poems that became short stories. I felt pretty happy when I began publishing short stories on a regular basis. Eventually, one story wouldn't stop. By that time, Christopher was in the fourth grade and that story eventually became the Shape of Water.

Lately, I've been teaching online Spanish classes and English classes at a college. I am, of course, working on a YA book and a new middle grade book. An "adult" book is in the distant future.

Your first book, The Shape of Water has a strong connection to place, a seaside community in Staten Island, one of the boroughs of New York City. Can you tell us how you came to set your story there?

Well, I grew up in Staten Island right on that beach that Magda inhabits. The setting was already in my mind; I imagined nothing to create that setting. One day I got the image of a girl standing on the beach, looking out at the water. I recognized the beach, but not the girl. The image kept recurring, and when I sat down to write about what I saw, I saw fire behind the girl. Magda just sort of told the story to me. Writing that book, not to get too Shirley MacClaine-like, but it was a lot like channeling.

I think Magda taught me exactly how important setting is to a story. I couldn't imagine her (or her mother, even though you never formally meet her) anywhere but on that beach.

Are there any specific biographical elements in The Shape of Water, or are they more abstract? Although I never suffered such loss as Magda, I also experienced feelings of isolation growing up in suburban Long Island. I thought perhaps it was your intention to express those feelings and how a person can work their way out of them.

My mother still lives near that very beach on Staten Island. I did lose my dad less than a month after I turned 13, so I probably drew on some of those feelings. I don't think when we write we are entirely in control of what goes on the page. Or maybe that's only my experience.

I do believe that every teenager has feelings of isolation as s/he goes through adolescence. Or every thinking teen (I don't know anything about those outgoing, super athletic kind of teens --) The teens who write to me say, "You got it right; this is how I feel right now."

I think the loss of the parent serves as a metaphor for that loss of navigation we all feel as we realize that life will not continue the way it has through our childhood, that very soon, we will have to do things that are difficult and confusing - and we will have to do them alone.


Are there any other insights you'd like to add about this book? (Can you tell I'm kind of obsessed with this book?)

Lol, I'm obsessed with books pretty often, too. I think you pretty much got them all in your review, Lisa. Probably the strangest element to this book is that I felt, as I said, that I wasn't in control of the writing; the characters were. Mrs. Fish, in particular, was not supposed to play as large a role as she did. In fact, I edited out quite a bit of her conversation before sending it out, and she still would easily be considered a character.

Your latest book, Light Beneath Ferns is quite a departure from The Shape of Water. Can you discuss this with us?

I deliberately wanted Light Beneath Ferns to be different from The Shape of Water. I didn't want anything to do with the ocean, or fish, or a dreamy kind of girl. Elizah is a stronger girl than Magda; she is fine with being alone, and Magda clearly was not (she may not have wanted peers either, but she clearly suffered the absence of her mother). I also wanted to be less lyrical. It's difficult for me because I started out as a poet, and I admit to loving language over plot (there is not, on the whole, too much plot development in poetry). I do love creating images and evoking atmosphere; it's not unlike casting a spell. But you don't want to end up writing the same book in a different setting.

Second books have it tough. People are expecting the first book in a new cover. I think writers should have range. And Light Beneath Ferns is meant for a younger audience than Shape of Water.

I was criticized fairly frequently in Shape of Water for being too lyrically dense, having inaccessible passages, and creating language that was too lyrical for teens. (I should add that I got a lot of praise for Shape of Water, too, but that was pretty common criticism) LBF does not have these characteristics; I wanted to create a stronger voice, a stronger female character and not worry so much about the language. I think each book teaches the writer something new. From LBF I learned more about voice.

What was your road to publication?

I wrote for tiny publications with pictures of draft animals on the cover out in the Midwest when I began. Editors would force me to work on maybe the two last lines of an eighteen line poem seven times. I think that's paying your dues. I never got paid; but a wonderful thing happens: editors solicit you. I was enormously flattered by this in my twenties, even though non-writer friends would look at me like I had just grown an anterior head. "You mean, they asked for a poem, and they aren't going to pay you? Why are you so excited?" Well, because someone had read and LIKED my other poems enough to contact me. I started getting well-known in the literary journals and by the 90's, I was getting a little bit better known for fiction. Of course, having a new baby in 1998 sort of put the brakes on. Then I was home with three kids all under six, so things slowed down. I wrote maybe a page or two a week. When Emma was about two, and napped, and both her brothers were in elementary school, I began trying to write at least every other day. I went back to short fiction, but they kept growing longer and longer. Becoming a novelist surprised me, but it's one of those lovely surprises in life.

Any advice to striving authors out there?
Yes, don't take advice. Sit down and write what feels and is true. Nothing else matters.

Tell us something about Anne Spollen we might not expect.
Even though now I'm the mom who always has a year's supply of children's vitamins in the kitchen cabinet, and carries Neosporin, clean socks, cough drops, juice boxes and healthy snacks, I used to do incredibly risky things as a teenager. Not the kind of things you might be thinking, but more like taking a rowboat under the choppy waters of a New York City bridge, driving a car across an icy pond, and seeing if you really DID get detention for flipping off a substitute teacher (you do). I think it's because I did those things and I had so little fear of consequences at that age, that I stalk my kids. I KNOW what's in their genes; unfortunately, it has become apparent to me that nature, at least in our household, is overriding nurture. But I don't think people expect that a bookish mom who writes careful novels would have had such a wild spirit as a teenager.
And that's a good segue way to close this: people almost never ask me why I chose to write YA as opposed to say mysteries or romance novels. I hold a not-so-secret conviction that somewhere, inside all of us, we are still recovering from middle school. That's why we, as adults, can connect so instantly to teen fiction. I also secretly believe that YA writers (and possibly their editors) suffer from this malady more than the average person. Just saying...

Now Anne turns the tables on me:

And Lisa, one question for you: You are a YA writer. Can you tell your blog readers just the tiniest bit about your writing? (Can I guess that it's lyrical?)

Ah! Well, I do strive for lyrical. As a trained artist, I guess my writing springs from the visual. I struggle to describe the scenes I see in my head. I'm still trying! I guess, Anne's skill with language is the ideal I aspire to. My writing is a LOT wackier and I live in a crazy magical place where angels pop out from behind trees. I'm trying to ground myself a bit more.


I have now adopted Anne Spollen as an official Lisa Amowitz muse. And to think, if not for a random comment on a blog, I might have missed this literary gem.

Thank you, Anne! See you on the best-seller list! Be sure to visit and catch up on our Shape of Water discussions.