Beauty in all things - joy and hardship

Yep, prepare yourself: it's time for a philosophical post as I look back at the last year.

 

It has been quite the year, both personally and professionally. It's had some ups, and boy has it had some downs. We lost Josh to cancer, my sweet little dog was killed by a deer, I decided to part ways with my agent, I spent months writing, revising, and querying, I completed 2 half-marathons--meeting my goal of finishing in under two hours--but hurt my knee so I had to stop running for months. I got rejections. LOTS of rejections. And more.

 

I've been low, very, very low. There have been a lot of dark days in 2012.  

 

But I've also had some amazing highs--there is so much beauty in my life. Out of pain and sorrow can come the sweetest joy. They say that you can only experience happiness in relation to how much sorrow you've experienced. In other words, the more bitter your trials, pain, and sorrow, the more sweet your joy and happiness when blessings flow in.

 

I have three amazing children, when there was a long, dark period of my life when I thought we would never be able to have more children. I was able to put on my "dream" butterfly-themed 1st birthday party for my baby girl--the baby girl I wasn't sure I'd ever have. I have an amazing, supportive husband who ALWAYS believed, even when I was at rock-bottom--and who loves me no matter what. I have family and friends who are there for me, supporting and loving me, every step of the way. I could go on and on.

 

And as far as my writing goes, I never gave up, and eventually... The sun finally broke through the clouds. I've had the same quote at the top of my blog since I began it years ago.

 

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." - Eleanor Roosevelt

 

I have clung to that hope, to those dreams, to that elusive future for SO long.

 

Just last week, I was driving home from taking SonB to preschool, and as I turned into my neighborhood, I saw this spectacular scene and had to stop to take a picture. It had been a dark, gloomy start to the day, fog obscured the sun all morning. But by afternoon, the light began to break through as the fog dissipated. And this glorious view was mine to enjoy for a brief moment as I drove home. It was pure luck, and perfect timing, that I happened to see this. Within a minute or less after stopping, the fog and clouds had moved, and even though it was still pretty, it wasn't stunning like this one moment had been when you could see the sun's rays shining down. For just that brief minute, the fog and the sun lined up perfectly to create this moment of breathtaking beauty.

Life is a lot like that. When you look for the beauty, you'll find it. Even if it's just one brief, glorious moment--a result of a little bit of luck, and maybe even some perfect timing.

For a year full of ups and downs, it is definitely ending on a major upswing. I feel like right now is one of those moments when the sun's rays are bursting through and a bright, new future is finally in reach.

The future has never looked brighter, and I can't wait to share all the good things in store with all of you--my loyal friends, family, and followers!

I hope that as you look back on this year, you can also see the beauty despite any pain or sorrow or struggles you may have endured. And I hope that you never stop believing in the beauty of your dreams!

Friday Four or Five

It's been a while since I did this, so let's give it a shot this week!

1. Baby Girl LOVES green smoothies. Whenever I have one, she runs up with her sippy cup and says, "pease? pease?" and if I don't immediately help her get some, she starts crying, and sometimes even resorts to banging me with her cup. That girl really loves her food. And drinks. Even the healthy stuff.

2. SonA stayed up reading Julie Berry's SPLURCH ACADEMY: Rat Brain Fiasco under his covers with a flashlight a couple weeks ago (he shares a room with his brother so he was trying not to wake him up). He read the whole book in one night! If you knew my seven-year-old son, you'd know how awesome this was. He's suddenly turned into an avid reader--staying up every night reading under his covers. I love it!

3. When I was his age, I would read until eleven or midnight almost every night, and sometimes until one or two in the morning. I've always been an avid reader, so it makes me that much happier to see him enjoying it so much now.

4. I finally bit the bullet and created an "author page" on FB. Right now I feel like a poseur. "Hey, come like my author page because hopefully I'll have a book published soon!" But, you never know. Maybe I'll have good news to share sooner than later. I certainly hope so!

5. SonA is obsessed with River Monsters. He's home sick from school with strep throat (probably going to have to get those tonsils out over the Christmas break, if the surgeon can fit him in...) and he's watching it right now. He also loves Swamp Wars and World's Deadliest. Despite all of that, he still really wants a pet snake. It's scary how much he reminds me of myself as a child. (Yes, I loved nature shows, and yes, I wanted a snake.)

So those are my random thoughts for the day right now. What's on your mind today? Spill it in the comments! And happy weekend everyone!

Best Writing Advice

Today you'll find me over at YA Muses talking about the best writing advice I've ever received. This was a hard one to narrow down, but ultimately I kept coming back to the same thing. Want to find out what I had to say? Hop on over and find out!

Thanks to the lovely Veronica Rossi for asking me to be a part of the blog! If you haven't read her book UNDER THE NEVER SKY yet, you better go do it right now. It's good, you guys. Like INCREDIBLY AMAZING GO-BUY-IT-RIGHT-NOW good.

Gorgeous, right? So original and wonderful, go forth and buy and read.

And hope you'll go over and check out my guest post and comment, so I don't feel like a total loser who doesn't have any comments! :P

Double the Awesomeness

It's been a busy week for my amazingly talented friends, so you get a double helping of excitement in this post:

First up is the book launch for Ally Condie's final book in the MATCHED trilogy: REACHED!

 

 My friend Stacey (who runs the My Pile Of Books blog) and I went to dinner first to celebrate my signing with Josh--yummy food and a wonderful friend = so much fun!

 Then we headed up to the launch party for Ally's final book! Ally is such a humble, kind, amazing person. It was so surreal to stand there in line, staring at the box set of all THREE of her books, and thinking about how far she's come since I first met her four and a half years ago, when I got to read MATCHED for the first time. It couldn't have happened to a better person. So happy for you Ally, hope you have a great time on tour! For an awesome recap of the night, check out Stacey's blog post HERE.

 They even brought the big bubble from BEA for us to get our pictures in, so here we are, trying to break free!

 Oh no! The Society took Stacey, now I'm all alone in the Uprising! If you don't already follow Ally, here's the link to her blog as well.

Okay, so that was awesomeness part the first. Ready for the second??




Feast your eyes on this:

My friend Jenn Johansson's book cover got revealed today! Isn't it totally creeptastic?? Scary and yet beautiful (those eyes!) all at once. It's perfect! Congrats Jenn! To learn more about her book and to follow her (both of which you should do RIGHT NOW) go to her blog HERE.



And now, for anyone still reading this... a BONUS bit of awesomeness:

Yep, that's Michael Phelps. My hubby got to hang out and chat with him last week on a business trip. Rough life, huh? Yeah, I agree.


Any exciting awesomeness going on for you or your friends this week?

Traditional picture

It's tradition to take a picture of an author signing their agency agreement, right? (Even if it's the second time?) So here I am, all grins, signing away!

It's just been over a week, and I already adore my agent. (Can I say that about my agent if he's a guy? Well, I do. And don't worry, SHH totally approves.) (For any new followers SHH = Super Hot Hubby.)

Josh is basically a ninja. Actually, he literally is a ninja--he has a second-degree black belt. But he's totally a ninja agent, too. I'm so excited to see what we are able to accomplish together!

I have so many things to be grateful for this month, and having signed with Josh is definitely one of the things at the top of my list, along with my beautiful family, and a roof over my head with electricity, running water, and heat.

What are you grateful for right now?

EVERBOUND!

Today is a very rough day for so many people, I thought I'd post about something happy to help take our minds off of it for just a moment. Feast your eyes upon this:

Isn't that cover to die for?? I just love the covers of Brodi's books.

And I love her books even more. (Which is always a great thing when you're friends with the author--to truly, madly, deeply love their books.) ;-)

I was lucky enough to nab a copy of EVERBOUND in a local ARC tour, and I devoured it in one day (I drove my three kids up to Idaho that day, so that's really saying something that I squeezed it in). And for all of you Cole fans out there? Let your little hearts start racing right now, because you get TONS of Cole in this book. And even those haters out there, you might start rethinking your feelings about him...

I don't want to be spoilery, so I won't say much more except to tell you that you should definitely put this on your TBR pile or go pre-order it right now. Brodi did an amazing job with her sequel, and now I'm dying for the last book! (Can I somehow bribe you to let me read it? Chocolate covered cinnamon bears? Gluten-free Thai food??) Ah, well, can't blame a girl for trying.

Great job, Brodi!

My thoughts and prayers are with all those struggling right now back east, I hope you all stay safe, dry, and healthy--and that the recovery process from this devastating storm can be as quick and painless as possible for as many as possible. <3 p="p">

News! (And it's mine this time)

Wow. I'm not going to lie, there were times over the last nine months when I really thought I'd never get to write this post. Those of you who have followed my blog for a while probably noticed that in February, I quietly took the name of my agent off of my bio. I never made a public announcement that I had decided to part ways with her, but I'm sure most of you have figured it out by now. It was a gut-wrenching decision, and one it took me a looong time to make, for many reasons. The biggest being that she was so nice, and had worked hard on my behalf, and still believed in my books. But sometimes, things just don't work out the way you hope, and over time, you realize that even though you're both nice, professional people, you aren't the best match to be working together. But it was so hard to actually do it--especially because it had been so hard to get an agent the first time. I had really amazing family and friends (some who had been where I was and things worked out great for them the second time around) that encouraged me, and believed in me.

So I did it. I wrote her and waited my thirty days and then I was officially un-agented again. I was freaking out.

And then I started querying. I got requests. I started to feel hopeful. Until the rejections came in. Ouch, those really hurt. Especially when I'm questioning myself the whole time: why did I do this? Why am I querying agents again when I could be on sub with editors?? And the rejections were all the same: your writing is excellent, this story is great, but the timing is wrong.

In the meantime, we had a terrible tragedy in our family. Again, for all who've followed me for a while, you'll remember what happened at the end of February (right when my thirty days were almost up): we lost Josh to cancer.

I was in a dark place. I was full of grief. The stark reality of death for someone so young was hard to bear. But out of that grief came two books: I started them within a week of each other, but ended up putting aside the fantasy (which is what I usually write to some degree), and focused on the light sci-fi (something I'd never attempted before), because I thought the timing might be better. I finished that book, revised it, and when it became clear the book I was querying was just not going to make it because the timing wasn't right, I switched and began to query the light sci-fi one, FINDING JANE.

I got requests. LOTS of requests. I got such amazing feedback, but after four months, still no offers. During that time, I was trying to write the fantasy, but man... that book just didn't want to come out. As the months wore on, I was as low as could be. (You may recall a post or two about that, and me trying to overcome it.) I have hit rock bottom quite a few times on this LOOOOONG journey of mine. And every time I think I can't get lower. But then I do. But everytime, not matter how bad it is, I somehow drag myself up and keep going. This last time was the closest I've been to actually quitting. To walking away--forever. But I didn't. As I wrote about in September, I kept going, and I finished my fantasy, DAUGHTER OF WAR.

I sent it out to beta's. I waited. I read my feedback. I made myself think about it, mull it over, and then attack my revision with everything I had. I knew this book was special. I knew it was the best thing I'd ever written, and I needed to do it justice.

When there wasn't anything else to do to make it better on my own, I knew it was time to start querying. That was Monday of last week. On Tuesday night, I queried an amazing agent who requested the full in ten minutes. I was cautiously excited.

And then. The NEXT DAY--only about fifteen hours later--I got an email from this agent. I pulled over to read it (I was on the way to drop my son off at preschool). And I started screaming, laughing and crying all at once. We spoke that night and I was just blown away by her enthusiasm and love for my book.

But there were also other agents who had it, and who ended up interested in my book. I'll be honest, I've dreamt of being the girl with multiple offers from agents (it didn't happen the first time). It was so exciting and wonderful--but it was also SO hard. I really loved more than one agent, and I was so torn. But I knew after speaking to one particular agent that he was the right choice. Everything just clicked when I spoke to him and in our subsequent emails.

So it is with great excitement and happiness that I get to announce that I am now represented by the amazing JOSH ADAMS of Adams Literary!!!

This is has been such a long journey, and ended up in such a whirlwind this last week, my head is still spinning. But I am so excited for this new direction in my career and for all that lies ahead. I can't wait to share DAUGHTER OF WAR with you all--hopefully sooner than later!