Reading With Great Interest

I still need questions for Michael and Leesie's Q&A next week. Let's see. Monday I announce the big contest, Taken by Storm goes on sale for $0.99 and Unbroken Connection and Cayman Summer will be free. Tuesday Michael chats. Wednesday is the Epic Promo 50 Blog Blitz! Don't you love the banner? Thursday, Leesie visits, and Friday is Michael's Birthday party! Who is bringing the balloons?

Now, onto the next chapter from "Storm's Story."

Reading with Great Interest
originally posted July 3, 2008, on my original website


So where were we? I was living in Lausanne, Switzerland and had requests from Lexa and another editor for Taken by Storm.

I sent my sweet novel, weighing in at 87K words, off to Lexa and the other editor and then tried not to think about it. I immersed myself in revising my historical novel, My Only Love. I figured maybe I’d hear back by early February. Razorbill had actually read this novel before when another team managed the imprint. That time it took nine months for a definitive, “not right for our list,” to get back to me.

Lexa wrote me a few days before Christmas. I saw her email in my inbox, and my stomach knotted up. It’d just been two weeks. Rejected for sure. I know the signs.

But no. Phew. She just wrote to say she and her boss were reading it “with great interest,” and could they have an exclusive until they decide. She said she’d be in touch after the holidays.

Of course. And after the holidays,  January 9th, 2008, to be exact, Lexa e-mailed me that she wanted to call me. Editors don’t call you to reject you. They don’t even call when they are willing to look at your novel again if you make changes they suggest. They only call to make an offer.

I was busy the next day, didn’t check e-mail until late in the afternoon, freaked out, wrote her right back. Waited up late (I was in Switzerland--six hours ahead of Eastern time) until I knew she’d left the office. The next day was Friday, the minutes ticked by so slowly. Finally it was 3:00 PM. She’d be in the office. I hung out by the phone. No call. Then it was time to go get the kids. I was dying. Rushed right home. No call.

Shoot. It was 6:30 PM, and I had to go with my husband to lovely evening at the home of one of the senior Swiss church members in Lausanne. I left the phone with Rachel, my daughter, and told her exactly what to say if Lexa phoned and to call me right away.

The gathering  was lovely. Lots of charming Swiss Mormons to visit with, delicious food, wonderful countryside setting--it was all lost on me. Jumpy. Nervous. Totally unable to focus.

We finished eating, and my cell phone rang.

“She called, Mom. She called. She’s going to be at her office for another two hours.”

We couldn’t just rudely walk out. We waited until nine--forty excruciating minutes, and then made our excuses and thanked our hostess and RAN!

Here's some photos of our neighborhood in Lausanne. We lived in the village of Paudex. I can't find a shot that has a photo of our actual villa jumelle (translation: duplex). These were all taken on a walk around the neighborhood! Yes, it was beautiful there.

The Mormon Angle May Pose a Problem

Questions, questions! I need questions for Michael and Leesie's Q&A next week. Of course, Michael and Leesie will answer questions if you ask them Tuesday, July 17 and Thursday, July 19 when they visit, but they would love to have a few ahead of time. Just leave them in the comments below.

Now on to the next chapter of how Michael and Leesie made it onto the shelves and into your hearts. It sort of amazes me that a mere seven months after I sent the manuscript to Lexa, I was writing about my visit to New York and the ARCs going to press. 

"The Mormon Angle May Pose a Problem"

from "Storm's Story," Jun 27, 2008, my original website


I feel like I was in NYC a thousand years ago, instead of just a couple of weeks. We’re still in transit. Last week I got to go to BYU’s Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers Workshop. Excellent. Check it out. They hold it every June. [It's no longer held at BYU, but it is still excellent.]

It’s was a lot of fun to visit Penguin, meet Lexa’s publisher, Ben Shrank, and talk to their publicist. And Lexa and I got to go to lunch and have a good chat. [This was the famous chat where Lexa told me they wanted me to write Unbroken Connection for different characters. I refused. And that led to Sing me to Sleep. Blessing in disguise?] The galley copies, officially titled, “advance reader copies,” have gone to press. [See? I'd never even heard of an ARC!] Now all I have to do is write my dedication and acknowledgements. Such a miracle.

This whole thing has been a miracle.

Miracle that I wrote this novel. Miracle that I didn’t give up on it. Miracle that I found Lexa in Paris. Miracle that she bought it. Oops. I’m wrecking the story. But you know she bought it.      

She fell for Michael just like I’d hoped. I sent her the query and then settled down to finish the revision. I queried a few other likely prospects I dug up, too. It usually takes a couple months to hear back. Often times, much longer. I heard from Lexa the very next week. Here’s her e-mail:

Hey Angela!

I really enjoyed reading this sample.  Your writing is terrific--
evocative, rich and accessible too.  I showed it to my boss and he also
liked it.  I should warn you: I worry the Mormon angle may pose a
problem here.  But that said, we definitely want to read the whole
thing-- so could you please send?

Thanks, and happy Friday!
Lexa

Terrific!!!!  Worry??  But, still TERRIFIC! And those magic words the unagented, unpublished author lives for, “read the whole thing.”

I wrote back:

Dear Lexa,

Happy Friday indeed!  Thanks so much for your kind words. I'll have this revision slicked up by the end of next week and will fire it off to you then.

I understand your hesitation re the Mormon stuff.  I appreciate your honesty. I know it is a tightrope. That's why Michael is the main character and handles the bulk of the narration. (I have a version completely in his voice.) All my mentors at Vermont College and critique buddies were not Mormons. I had a lot of valuable guidance on how to write this so it entices rather than turns off readers. All Mormon girls outside of Utah end up dating non-Mormon guys. I've tried to make my depiction of a relationship between a bereaved atheist guy and a Mormon girl who thrives on divine guidance as honest and realistic as possible. I ruthlessly cut anything that sounds preachy. I want Mormon and non-Mormon girls, alike, to fall in love with Michael and relate to Leesie.

But, I can talk about this forever. (I wrote my VC critical thesis on the subject.) Far better to show you. I'll send you my "Lexa-ized" revision ASAP.

Bisous,
Angela

Against all odds, I got a second request for TAKEN BY STORM from another editor that same day. I finished the revision and on December 6, 2007, sent my precious baby out there to face the storm.

My Query to Lexa

I got carried away today buying all kinds of great swag for our big 10th Anniversary Contest next Monday. It's less than seven days away now. I bought T-shirts, posters, key chains--even a tote bag. Nothing that will melt (like last year and my beautiful M&Ms for the Michael + Leesie Forever Contest). You're going to love it all.

On Tuesday, I'm holding a Q&A with Michael. On Thursday, Leesie will stop by to answer questions. I'm taking questions now! Just pop one in the comments of a post this week, and I'll get it to him.

I wrote this the night before I met with Lexa and her boss at Penguin in New York City. We were in transit from Switzerland to Singapore. What a meeting that was.

My Query to Lexa
from "Storm's Story," Sunday, June 15, 2008

We said farewell to Switzerland yesterday. Our lives are packed in a container, sitting on ship in Hamburg, Germany--waiting to sail to Singapore. I’m in Manhattan and up in the middle of the night with jetlag, despite Marriott’s marvelous bed, staring out the window at Times Square. The gigantic screen is literally in my face. What a change. We’ve got one day here, and then on Utah to get my daughter settled at BYU. She’s psyched. I am, too. I’m meeting with Lexa and her boss in a few hours. I hope I make sense.

So back to my story. Sorry to leave you hanging. I was home from Paris, full of revisionary direction and hope. All the editors who spoke emphasized they wanted to fall in love with our character, fall in love with our story from the first page.

That’s quite a shift. I’ve heard so many lectures on naughty characters, characters with problems. YA literature is full of lost souls with chips on their shoulders. And, all that still has a place, but in the post-Harry Potter world we’re living in that’s reeling from the impact Edward Cullen is still having on YA readers (and every other female in existence), more than anything else, reader’s want to fall in love.

I thought about Lexa while I revised my first chapter. She was the reader I wanted to woo. So I rewrote Michael’s opening dive log with her in mind.

Here’s a taste of Michael.

The dive starts perfect. Perfect water. Perfect sky. Perfect wall. The ocean, warm, flat, perfect. I leave my wetsuit drying on the Festiva’s dive deck. Saltwater slips silky over my skin like Carolina’s caress.

Geeze, I miss her. Caroleena. She insisted on Spanish pronunciation. I thought this trip would help, but I can’t forget lying in the sun, curled together, my face lost in her thick black hair, holding on. Three months. Every day. More when she felt like it. I always felt like it, but I didn’t want to use her.

She dumped me on my butt when I took off to dive all summer at the condo. I wanted to bring her to Florida. Keep her close. Keep her safe. But she had to stay in Phoenix and work. Her family’s got nothing. And Mom flipped when I mentioned it was a shame the sofa bed in the living room would be empty. Dad was cool with it. He’s cool with everything. It should have been Carolina and me all summer, diving.

The creep b-ball jock she’s with now is after one thing, as much as he can get. Possessive, too. Freaked when I called her from the Keys. And when we were all back at school, she wouldn’t even look at me.
Dad knew something was up, let me cut a week for the club’s annual “hot deal” hurricane season trip.

So, I’m scuba diving my brains out, free diving whenever I can get a spotter, trying not to think about that jock pawing my Carolina.

Love. Makes me crazy. All of it. You get so close, like she’s part of you. And then she’s gone. You ogle the smiling waitress on the boat, who has your girl’s hair and wears a loaded bikini top and a sarong slung dangerously low. You appreciate the view while she serves you a virgin pina colada, but you still ache inside because now you’ve got a hole in your ribcage that won’t fill, a gash that heals way too slow.

Salt water’s my therapy of choice.


I gave Michael more and more romantic troubles. Then revised the free dive scene at the end of the chapter until it was as vivid as I could get it. Here it is. He's free diving with his mom spotting him.

Here he is again:


I grin and give her a saltwater kiss on the cheek before I move out along the line stretched between the buoy and raft, positioned so I can dive straight down the wall. I float on my stomach, blow through my nose to clear my mask, shoot a spout of water out of my snorkel, and inhale—fill my gut, hold it a few beats, then blow it out nice and slow, expelling CO2, the waitress, Carolina, Mandy, even Mom, through that handy tube stuck in my mouth.

“Take it easy, this morning.” Mom treads water instead of taking up her spotting position. “Don’t go too deep.”

I keep venting, soaking up the blue world under me, eager to immerse myself in it again.

“No black out today, okay?” She says that every dive. I was ten that one time. Get over it.

A pair of painted angels drift over the top of the wall, their fins waving in time to my slowing heart beat. I blow up my chest and gut, nine more mesmerizing cycles.

Mom maneuvers into position, face down on the other side of the line.

I advance to super vents, stretch my head back so I can drive air into every chamber of my skull and torso, filling my throat and nasal passages, again and again until my fingers tingle perfect breathe-down. O2 maxed, totally zoned.

I inhale one last time, packing every crevice, and then pack more air, and more. Mom bumps my leg. Doesn’t matter. I’m Mr. Zen of the Deep. Nothing can penetrate this lean mean free diving machine.

I slip the snorkel out of my mouth, bend at the waist, kick my massive free dive fins skyward and shoot down through the water. One kick, two. My buoyancy slides negative at fifteen feet. I streamline it, conserving my hoard of O2. Don’t need to kick now. Pinch my nose and clear my ears—easy. I zoom past the top of the wall, equalize my mask, glance at the dive computer strapped to my wrist, seventy feet, clear again, eighty. The deeper I go, the faster I fall. I blow past ninety. Hit a hundred before I know it.  The water’s so kicking clear.

I pull up hard, flip so my head points skyward, and work my fins to stop sinking. I want to celebrate.

Kind of a deadly idea. A massive crab, all blued-out, sits in a crevice sliced into the wall. He waves his claws in my direction. It took less than a minute to get down there. I have plenty of oxygen packed in my body, but I need it all for the ascent. No time for underwater fans.

I begin kicking for real, powering my giant fins back and forth. Don’t go anywhere. Freak. Ditch my weights? No way. Dive won’t count. My depth gauge reads 99 feet. Good. I’m moving—just doesn’t seem like it. I paste my eyes to the blaring pink triangle that is Mom and kick harder. Ninety feet, eighty.

I make the top of the wall with upward momentum. Acid scalds my leg muscles. My lungs weep for air. Still, I don’t chuck the weights. I keep eye contact with Mom so she won’t think she has to save me and wreck this dive. My chest vibrates with the effort of holding onto the last dredge of O2. My legs get stiff. I force them to keep wafting my heavy fins back and forth.

The drowsy warmth of blackout creeps over me at fifteen feet, but I don’t give it any room. I blow my CO2. Positive buoyancy propels me to the surface. I blast through, plastering Mom. She squeals.

My starving lungs kick back mounds of fresh salt air.

“Your lips are blue, baby.”  Her eyebrows draw together.

I suck O2 to my brain and stick my computer strapped wrist in her face.

107 feet. Perfect.

Then Michael and his mom have a big fight. She's freaked that he dove that deep and refuses to keep spotting. He wants to dive again. Then the warning siren on the dive boat rings and the chapter ends with his mom saying, "They don't blow that thing for nothing."

I got a query put together by mid-November, fired it off to Lexa, and started praying. Seriously praying.

Editor Hunt

I was so busy organizing the Anniversary Blast and working on my website creating new pages for events calendar, presentations and school visit  pages that I didn't get to blog here. I have no idea how many days left until it all kicks off. 

Oh, the countdown gadget says 9 days left. Did you get your own countdown gadget? Talk about fun. I should make one for all my deadlines!

Naiche at the BookGirlReads had a blog post up about the Anniversary Blast before the ink on my email was dry. I was so touched by her kind words. She made me want to stay up all night, every night writing an amazing new book that will sell immediately so my loyal readers can have a new book from me this year. Or, blog another book. I loved blogging here with all of you chiming in every day. 

But, I do have two amazing new YA novels that you will love already written. My agent will find the perfect editor for one or the other or both soon. It's worth the wait. I promise. You will adore them. 

I'm hearing from more and more of our old friends who want to be part of the party. Thanks so much. It's not too late to arrange an interview or blog post for your readers. Let me know if you didn't get my promo email about the celebration, and I'll send it to you.

Here on the blog, I'll be running special features all week:

July 16th  - Contest Kick-off. Kindle promotion starts (free Unbroken Connection and Cayman Summer, and Storm's new Kindle ebook for only $ 0.99)!

July 17 - Q&A with Michael! Drop by and ask your questions. He'll answer them all. (Taking questions now! Leave them in the comments section, and I'll make sure he gets them.) 

July 18 - Cut Scenes Revealed. 

July 19 - Q&A with Leesie! (Taking questions now!) 

July 20 - Happy Birthday, Michael! Drop in for ice cream and cake and receive a .jpg of Michael's first words. Contest and Kindle Promotion end at midnight.

Phew! Add in all the stops I'll be making on YA blogs and a big 50 blog blitz through Reading Addiction Blog Tours on Wednesday, and it's going to be a week to remember. 

Speaking of remembering. Here's the post I wrote about my editor hunt. It's just missing one picture:

I give you, my rejection letters. 

Three and a half years worth. This doesn't include the emailed ones. Or the one I received in the mail the day of Taken by Storm's release. Editors don't even send emailed rejections any more. If you don't hear back in a specified amount of time, usually six months, it's a no--which makes an agent even more vital today. Unless you're crazy and write books on blogs! Or you go the indy route--which isn't as easy as it sounds. 

Enough dithering. Here's the post I promised you yesterday. I make no promises for tomorrow!

 

Editor Hunt

from "Storm's Story," Friday, May 23, 2008, from my archived website

Lexa and I just negotiated the final line edit changes and TAKEN BY STORM has gone off to the copy editors. Ah, the joy of having my own brilliant editor, at last. [Oh, how I miss her!]

Editors are almost as elusive as that other mythical creature in the literary world, agents. My editor search was long, trying, and wearing. Our move to Switzerland just before I graduated from Vermont College, didn’t make it any easier. I sent out lots of queries, got back some requests. I got close several times only to be disappointed. I have a long list of editors who would love to see other projects from me, but passed on this one.

One editor asked me to rewrite my he said/she said dual first person novel, entirely in Michael’s point of view. A sliver of hope. Hooray. Of course, I did it. She didn’t quite like that and suggested another revision. She missed elements from the earlier version I sent her--especially the “dive log” journal entries I’d used for Michael’s voice. She suggested I try using a mix of the dive logs entries and third person. I was skeptical, but went ahead. Unagented, unpublished. What else could I do? 

Her response was, “the third person is a little stiff.” Well, duh. Especially when paired with the intimate dive logs I’d created for Michael’s story. She’d expressed interest in another project, so I played nice. (You have to always play nice, no matter how grumpy you feel.) [Me? Grumpy? Never?]

I tried to set TAKEN BY STORM aside and finish the requested project, but I couldn’t leave it broken like that. I went to a conference in Munich that featured Markus Zusak (THE BOOK THIEF). He spoke about gleaning the gems from our failures and trying again and again until it works--revising hundreds of times if need be. I took his advice to heart. [I adore him!]

I knew Michael’s dive logs were my gems. I also loved Leesie and Michael’s instant message chats. I decided to try to transform my manuscript into a collage novel, also known as documentary novel. I had Michael’s entries figured out. I pulled the instant message dialogue out of the text and wrote more and put them back in as “ChatSpot” transcripts. Leesie is a poet, so it was a natural step to turn her prose narration into poems. And “Leesie’s Most Private Chapbook,” was born. 

I had a collage draft done when I went to Paris SCBWI’s Sequester at the Abbaye Royaumont last (2007) November searching for revisionary inspiration. 

The Abbey where I met my editor, Lexa Hillyer then of Razorbill

I filled up on the writerly wisdom the gathered editors and lecturers had to share. I had a twenty minute conference with Lexa Hillyer of Razorbill, and she gave me some great, practical direction. Lexa is brilliant with romance structure. Her enthusiasm and excitement for my story energized me.

I went home and got to work. Again.

 

Enter Leesie

Twelve days until the ten year anniversary celebration kicks off. Taken by Storm's Kindle version is now live. Everything's falling into place. I'm announcing the contest Monday, July 16th. I've enlisted bloggers across the globe to spread the word. I'd love to visit as many blogs as I can that week. And I've got a 50 blog promo blitz running on Wednesday. Twelve days until the party starts. I hope you'll all be there.

I wrote the following post in 2008 just after I finished my second revision for my editor at Penguin. Oh, my. I've got some stories to tell you about that, too. All in good time.

from "Storm's Story," Tues., May 13th, 2008, my original website

Now, where was I? Leesie. Full name--Aleesa Hunt. Poor Leesie. She had a rough time coming in to her own. She started out getting saddled with way too much me.

Every character I create has a part of me in them--my emotions, experiences, understanding, and imagination. That’s all I’ve got to work with.  But a character that is too much the author can’t become a unique individual and grow with the other characters. Autobiography isn’t fiction.

When Ron Koertge (STONER AND SPAZ), my first advisor at Vermont College, commented that, “a sharp young editor in her black DKNY dress isn’t going to warm to this,” unless I gave Leesie more backbone and spunk, I got busy and changed her up. I gave her a retro leather jacket that the most styling girl in my Seminary class wore to church. Then I gave Leesie long, gorgeous hair--like my sisters had. And most of all, I stopped trying to force all my most hideous high school experiences on her in the first thirty pages.

She stayed a Mormon, though. Ron encouraged that from the very beginning, and I’m grateful. If I know anything, I know Mormon teenagers.

As I’ve matured as a writer, I’ve come to believe that writers do much more than write what they know. They write what intrigues them, what they love, what they believe, what they are passionate about. For me, that’s my faith.  I don’t write about my faith. That doesn’t work in fiction. I write from my faith. Mormonism forms my artistic core--the well I draw from. With an LDS character, I can go really deep. Give my readers an intimate journey of the challenges she faces when she falls in love with a boy outside her faith.

And I’d set myself a much harder task than I realized with Michael. Sure, I know lots of scuba talk and can stuff his mouth with that. I have the voices of my teen sons in my ear. But how could I even begin to fathom the intimate workings of an elite breathe-hold diver who survives a hurricane that kills his parents? A sexually experienced guy who believes in the ocean instead of God?

The more I wrote and revised, listened to mentors, critique pals, and editors, the closer I got to Michael. My editor helped a lot, too. I think I’m finally there.

Grandma Poem Confession

I just heard from Amazon that Taken by Storm's Kindle conversion is done!! Hooray, hoooooray!! It's THIRTEEN days and counting until my big Tenth Anniversary Celebration, and it would be a huge flop without that new Storm ebook. Panic. Prayers. More panic. More prayers. It seems those panicked petitions for divine intervention worked. The new, READABLE, Kindle ebook will be live on Amazon in 12 hours or less. Cue "Celebrate good times, come on!" from KC and the Sunshine Band. (Best dance song everrrrrr!)

But now I can relax and countdown the days with more reminiscences from "Storm's Story" from my old website that sadly passed away on Saturday.

Before I go on to the next post from my website, I have a confession. A story I've kept to myself. I left Vermont College in July 2002 with another piece of the mosaic that became Taken by Storm. I had a rough draft of a poem tucked in my files that recorded a sacred experience I had late one night in my tiny VC dorm room.

The heart of the Vermont College residency experience is workshop. The students are placed in groups of about 15-20 and are required to submit around 20 pages for critique. Two faculty members are assigned to each workshop group. Each workshop session, groups critique two writers. It's not a hostile time for people to show off how brilliantly they can tear apart someone's work. It's an intense, creative session when all these wonderful writers use their brilliant minds to help you make your piece the best it can be. Writing is all about revising, revising, revising. This kind of feedback and is rare and invaluable.

For my first workshop, I submitted the opening chapters for Time Assassins (now titled, Slipped, and on submission at several publishers). It's a YA romantic adventure now, but back then it was written for middle grade boys. I didn't even know what YA was. 

I'd given the main character panic disorder, and the group agreed it didn't fit. The main character was traveling in Switzerland with his outrageous Aunt Wiggy (who, by the way, now stars in the middle grade boy book I just finished--The Order of the Flick). Louise Hawes--amazing author and teacher who co-led the workshop with Sharon Darrow--wanted to know why I'd thrown something so serious into the mix. 

I told them about my grandmother on my mom's side who suffered from panic attacks and rarely left her bedroom, let alone the house. She was Valedictorian of her class at Ricks Academy and a vivacious, fun mom until her third child was born. 

Mary Hunt Raybould, my grandmother. Isn't she beautiful?

Then she, as my mother always used to say, "got sick." She went to the state mental hospital, an expensive sanitarium in California, and then back home to her bedroom where she ruled from her bed. Her mother, my mom's grandmother, moved in to look after the children. Louise Hawes challenged me to write about that.  

That night my brain wouldn't turn off. As I went over and over comments and suggestions people had made and prayed and pondered about the direction I should go, I felt closer to my grandmother than ever before.

When I was a child, Grandma Mary was a sick old lady in a nursing home or a mental hospital or another nursing home. We lived far away, so I didn't visit her often. But I inherited the family histories she'd gathered (maybe wrote) and loved her for passing all those pioneer stories down to me. I lived far away when she pass away and didn't get to attend her funeral.

As I thought about her and the talents I'd inherited from her, a vision of Grandma opened in my mind. Perfect. Glowing. Beautiful. She blessed my efforts and then left. Overwhelmed. I reached for paper and scribbled.

I no longer have the rough draft, but the poem survived and became Leesie's heart and soul. I built scenes and conversations and more scenes around that poem. For years it was the only poem in Taken by Storm. It was pivotal in Michael and Leesie's relationship. I decided Leesie had to be a poet, so I could incorporate my grandma poem into the story's mosaic--which, eventually, led me to collaging the entire manuscript and writing all of Leesie's narration in free verse poems.

Two years later I graduated from Vermont College just weeks after we'd moved from Canada to Switzerland. My family wasn't able to attend the ceremony. I walked across the stage to receive my degree while a VC faculty member read Leesie's words, "Happiness flowed out of her, filled me up. Tangible--like you could pour it from a pitcher." Tears filled my eyes. My Grandma Mary was with me again.

In honor of my Grandma Mary and the continuing inspiration she is to me, here is Leesie's grandma poem, "She Comes to Me," from Taken by Storm, Chapter 10, "Unfuddled."

She Comes to Me

I lie in darkness
spent of tears,
tired of sleep,
close to soft memories
alive in her fuzzy sweater
draped on my chair.
I wrap my heart
in pastel patchwork
pieced by her hand,
my tired mind, empty,
open--

The night erupts into flowing
white glory:

She comes to me,
a pure and shining presence,
knocking on my soul,
defogged, unfuddled,
reveling in perfection,
spilling joy that
embraced my sorrow,
she smiles
and waves
farewell.

This summer I'm turning to my mother's story. After years of researching, I finally have the key to it. I'm excited and know my grandmother, from the other side, will be there when I need her again.

Upcoming Promotion!

I wanted to let you all in on a big promotion I'm running July 16th-20th. To celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Michael and Leesie's first words on my page, I'm having a big contest and offering the new Taken by Storm Kindle ebook for only $ 0.99! And for that week only Unbroken Connection and Cayman Summer will be free on the Kindle.

I'd love to have your help! Those of you who have your own blogs, comment below or drop me an email if you'd like to be involved. You guys love Michael and Leesie more than anyone else. I hope you can help me share the love.

One thing, though, that makes me a little sad. In order the offer Cayman Summer free on Kindle, I have to take the finished manuscript off this blog. You'll no longer be able to read it free here. New readers can go back and follow the progress of the first draft, post by post.

I'll get back to recounting Storm's story next week. I promise. Thanks for your continued love and support.