It’s not quite done yet … but I was too excited to wait.

I cannot recommend this workshop highly enough. A MUST for serious YA authors!

The winners have been drawn and contacted via email this morning! Thank you to everyone who entered!!!

I just felt like checking in with everyone. I’ve been so MIA from my blog, and in some ways that’s been tremendously freeing, and in others, it’s been a little sad. I remember when I blogged every single day of 2013 (even in the midst of writing Truest, querying for it, sending it out on submission, etc.), and I wonder how in the world I managed it. These days, once a week is all I can muster.

One of my favorite bloggers does this feature, “If We Were Having Coffee,” where she just shares heart-to-heart with her readers, and that’s the tone I want to take with this post. You, me, sitting down with ceramic mugs instead of to-go cups because we’re planning to settle in for a while.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that Mill City Heroes is being a beautiful beast right now. I turned in a really, really rough draft to my editor back in April, right before I closed on my house, and it was really liberating to send such a messy draft to my editor. She replied how much trust that showed, and it’s true: I do trust her. She is so amazing. The original draft she saw of Truest was the very best I could offer on my own, but looking back now? It was maybe at a 6 or 7 on a scale of 1-10. Now, after Jill’s help? It’s at an 11. Not because of me. Because of Jill. So, I’m trying to have faith that we’ll work that same magic on my next manuscript. But it’s still so early in the process. We decided to switch it to a dual point of view, and that meant I spent July generating new content (about 35k words!). I am really excited about the new content, but now that it’s time to smooth it all out into a cohesive novel, I’m nervous.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I’m getting so excited (and quite nervous) for the publication of Truest. It’s about three weeks away now. Remember that I got my book deal at the end of 2013– when there were ninety-three weeks to go till publication. In some ways, it still feels sort of far off. I haven’t figured out yet what I’m going to read at my launch party (you should come), what I’ll wear, or how I’ll sign books. But then again, I just got my first copy of Truest— a bound hardcover with a beautiful spot-gloss title and embossed front cover– in the mail, and it was like whoa. This is a real thing. I sat down with it that night and read through a ton of it. A couple things I had changed at the last minute, so reading those scenes was like reading something I’d never seen before. So crazy. And it was really weird to stumble across a line of dialogue and think, “Oh, I don’t like that ‘but’ it starts with … alas, it’s too late.” It’s weird after revising it since January 2012 to no longer have that option, you know?

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that my house is coming together. It’s looking beautiful in some places and totally messy in others. My basement, which will be my new office library, is still a haphazard mess of boxes upon boxes of books because I’m having a whole wall turned into a giant bookcase and it’s not done yet. But it’s close. The contractor tried to deliver half of the pieces this week and … they didn’t fit around the corner in my basement. So now he has to disassemble them and then assemble them actually in my basement. It’ll be okay. It just slowed the process down.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I fluctuate between having tremendous confidence and none. Zilch. Nada. Tonight I read this essay by Mindy Kaling about how you have to earn your confidence with hard work. Believe me: I have worked hard. SO hard. So where is my confidence? Where is the entitlement, lol? I have busted my butt, and yet, I still doubt myself at every corner … and even in the straight chutes. My therapist and I have been working toward ending my therapy in 2015, but sometimes I’m just not sure how that will happen or if it’s a good idea.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I had my Goodreads page redirected automatically to calmingmanatee.com. Bad (or even semi-bad) reviews haunt me for a week, and I just didn’t need that. So now, if I try to look up my reviews, I end up with a big ol’ manatee offering to brush my hair and get some wine. Too good.

If we were having coffee, I’d ask you what you’ve been up to this summer, what the highlights have been, what you’re looking forward to this fall, what you’ve been reading lately that you’d recommend, and how you manage to find confidence. Why don’t you start with these things in the comments?

Thanks for listening, everyone.

Check it out! ❤