THE WALLED CITY's release day!

The day has finally come: THE WALLED CITY is out in the world!!!!

The emotional journey to this book has been, well, pretty much a roller coaster. I started writing it in October 2011. It was the book that pushed me into new depths as a writer. It is the book of my heart. (If you want to know why, go to Nova Ren Suma's blog. I explain all.)

My parents surprised me with this amazing print of THE WALLED CITY's original cover.

I then went to Barnes and Noble to get my first proper glimpse of THE WALLED CITY in the wild.

There were a lot of glimpses!! It was all over the store!!

I signed a lot of stock.

It even has ITS OWN STAND. (Am I dreaming? What is this? WHAT IS THIS???)

*hyperventilates*

If you want to get it online, Barnes and Noble has great deals on it.  My local indie, Blue Bicycle Books, is also selling signed copies.

To those of you who have been reading this blog since THE WALLED CITY was a wee "Cutthroat Novel," thanks for sharing the journey with me.

THE WALLED CITY author copies

Guys, guys, guys!!!

I got my author copies of THE WALLED CITY today!!! And they're so shiny! I woke up my husband so that he could get me opening them on video.

Just over a month left to go! Don't forget you can pre-order for half off at B&N right now. And if you wanted a signed copy then go on over to Blue Bicycle Books and they'll hook you up!

THE WALLED CITY has a cover!

And you can see it in all of its glory here.

You guys I FINALLY get to show you the cover of THE WALLED CITY. And it's the most gorgeous thing ever! It was designed by Mark Swan at http://kid-ethic.com/ under the creative guidance of the Little Brown team. I'm so in love!!

But, I'll let you go to the post and see for yourself! Also there's an ARC up for grabs!

going global

So my manuscripts have been doing a bit of international traveling!

THE WALLED CITY has been picked up by France (Jean Claude Lattes), Germany (Rowolht Verlag), Norway (Cappelen Damm) and Brazil (Editora Schwarcz)!!!

France and Brazil also picked up the sekrit duology scheduled to come out a year after THE WALLED CITY.

So many beautiful and wonderful places! I'm beyond excited at the thought of having my words translated so international friends can read them! AND I'm excited to see different countries takes on the covers (though the US one is AWESOME (sadly, can't share yet)).

being a tease

Guys, I just saw cover mock-ups for THE WALLED CITY and oh-my-goodness if they're not wicked gorgeous!!!

So far glimpsing covers for the first time has been my absolute favorite part of being an author. I've been super lucky in that department. It's really amazing and surreal to see something from your head expressed in a visual art form. The Walled City is also an incredibly rich, visual novel, so the cover artists had a lot to draw from.

BUT... I can't show you yet. :( Secrets must be kept. Anticipation must be built. All that jazz.

Rest assured, as soon as I can share I'll be plastering it over the rooftops.

I am now just over the halfway point with ALL THAT GLOWS 2 edits. So far it has involved a lot of loud techno music, munching on mallowpumpkins, researching Arthurian legend and trying to find someone who speaks Manx. But the beastie MS keeps growing. Every time I cut words I add about double. Like that monster Hercules had to fight that keeps growing heads.

And, baby-squirrel update, Phil has thrived at his new wolf-hybrid-less house! In his short squirrel life he has traveled to Virginia AND been to church. Needless to say, I'm quite glad I decided to pick him up from the side of the road and give him a fighting chance.

I'm taking a day off of revisions (All That Glows sequel!), so instead of cleaning my house I've decided to slink back to this blog with a life update.

Where have you been the past one and a half months, Ryan? What have you been doing all this time when you could have been typing letters into the white blog box?

Good questions, interwebs. Good questions.

Writing wise I've been juggling projects (which is hardly new, I might add). THE WALLED CITY has been sent off to copyedits, I added about 15,000 words to sekrit novel (with the help of one of the best pumpkin spice lattes I've ever had*), and dove into revisions for my second Faery novel.

I can smell autumn from here...

As for the rest of the non-writing time:

The husband and I photographed an engagement shoot with a couple who pilots Black Hawks! Ridiculously cool!

 After five years of eating on the couch, we bought a dining room table!**

I rescued a baby squirrel and named him Rackety Sam. I gave him to another foster mama who does not own a wolf-hybrid who named him Phil.

The other reason I passed Rackety Sam/Phil off to a foster mama is because we went to Turks and Caicos for a scuba diving trip! I'd never been diving before, so I had to get scuba certified while I was down there.

All you see is blue...

Some of the prettiest waters I've ever seen.

Of course, when you're a writer, you never really leave work behind. I had one last round of THE WALLED CITY edits to get through in my temporary office.

The dives themselves were amazing! I saw sea turtles, reef sharks, stingrays. I also got stung by fire coral, which was substantially less awesome. On the flight home we had another unexpected surprise. Our layover in Miami was not two hours long, but twenty-four hours long. We made the best of it by going out for Cuban food:

Seafood Paella

We got home from the trip and I found a package from my editing team at Little, Brown by the door. This beauty was inside:

It's a nautilus necklace! This particular seashell plays an awfully big role in THE WALLED CITY. So this is an incredibly thoughtful gift! I've pretty much been wearing it every day!

And I can tell you up front that these next few months will be just as busy. YALLfest is coming up!!! Yay!

Also! If you want to enter for a chance to win an ALL THAT GLOWS ARC, there's a giveaway going on at Goodreads right now.

*legit. If you're ever in Charleston in the fall, visit the Orange Spot Coffee Shop. They'll hook you up.

** We're real adults now. If you couldn't tell.

breaking radio silence (aka a post of excuses)

So. It's been a while.

I have excuses! I swear! And photographic evidence to back up ALL of them. In fact, maybe it's just better if I let the images do the talking. (A picture's worth a thousand words, right?)

About a month ago I got this in the mail:

First pass pages for ALL THAT GLOWS! For those of you who don't know what FPP are, they're pretty much the final chance the author has to go through the manuscript and change things. It means reading your story for the *^%$-teenth time searching for typos and things you want to change.

BUT when you get to that last page you're DONE!!! And you have a brick of paper that could probably kill someone if you dropped it from ten-stories up.

So, lo and behold, my first completed novel:

About 24 hours after I slipped the death-brick FPP back into the mail, husband and I got on a plane and skipped the country for two and a half weeks. I plan on doing a more extensive post on this once the photos are edited (though this could be a while). But here's the outlined version:

We hung out with my husband's side of the family in Bolivia for a week and a half (his sister lives down there.) We went to the jungle and tramped around looking for anacondas and fished for piranha. And I realized my lifelong dream of seeing a wild capybara! (They're the cutest giant rodents ever!)

Then we scuttled on over to Peru and did a 5 day trek in the Andes around Machu Picchu:

We also got stalked by llamas.

Then I came home to a round of revisions for THE WALLED CITY! AAAH! You guys, I'm so excited about this book I can't even--

Here's my handy revision map. I just finished them up on Saturday.

Meanwhile, during my break from the revision cave, I moved my baby brother into college!!! He's all grown up now. Or at least, he's now responsible for his own diet and schedule! It was so weird being back in a dorm on move-in day. You could smell the sad and excitement and now what the heck do I do oozing from each freshman's room. Don't worry, kids. You're about to start one of the funnest, free-est times of your life!

And then there were a few boat breaks. Where we taught wolf-dog how to swim.

We also determined he's about twenty times the size of a Maltese. (And still growing!)

So yes. That's what's been happening while I've procrastinated posting.

Hopefully the silence won't be so long next time!

NEWS! (of the great persuasion)

I've been sitting on a bundle of good news for a quite a few weeks now, and today I finally got permission to spill it all.

So. Here's the spilling.

If you're a regular reader of the blog you've probably heard me talk about Cutthroat Novel once or twice. The project I started writing in October 2011 (there's even video proof: Cheating on my WIP). It was such a different story, so unlike anything I've ever seen on bookshelves, that I wasn't really sure if writing it would pay off. But, the world and the characters and their story took my heart and never really gave it back. I believed in the story so much that I even left my former agent (who didn't think she could sell it) and found new representation.

Tracey Adams at Adams Literary believed in Cutthroat Novel just as much as I did, and we sent it out into the world. With fluttering wings, hopes and hearts.

And guess what? It landed.

Alvina Ling at Little, Brown (both the editor and the company are people I've been wanting to work with for a long time!) bought THE WALLED CITY, which they're going to publish in Fall 2014. (Which means I have two books out next year!! *nervous gulp*)

But wait! That's not all! Little, Brown also bought my next two-book series! (Which I am SUPER stoked about.) And THE WALLED CITY has already been picked up by the UK with Orion Children's Books/Indigo.

Phew. That was a lot of spilling. 

You guys, I am so SO happy that I get to share THE WALLED CITY with you. It is without a doubt the book of my heart. And I'm so glad the world will get to see it!

You can read the official write up of the deal here!

You can read the official write of the UK version of the deal here! (<--I talk a little more about the project in this version. Plus my UK editor has some very nice things to say about the book!)

PS: If you're on Goodreads, you can add it here!

the next step

As some of you more attentive people might have noticed, the "repped by" portion of my bio has gone through a slight change.

There's a saying that goes through the writer's blogosphere a lot: that an agent/author relationship is very much like marriage. Basically at the heart of this phrase is the idea that you and your agent have a complex and complicated relationship that should be evaluated for its long term productivity.

Sometimes, when you sit back and evaluate, you realize that you and your agent don't have the same ideas/visions/goals. This will not work in the long run.

And when that happens, you have a very tough decision to make.

There was no bad blood in my decision to leave my first agent. It happened on very friendly terms, due to creative differences. I wish her all the best. She will always be the one who plucked me out of the slush pile and broke me into this wild and crazy world that is publishing.

Going back into the query fray was terrifying and scary. My previous two rounds of querying could be described as the following: Grueling. Blood-bath. Nail-biting. Long suffering. Awful. Desperate.

But apparently I didn't have too much to fear. This time was much, much different. The entire process, from first query to signing, only lasted 3 weeks. And in the end, I had six offers to choose from.

So I'm thrilled and happy and proud to announce that I'm now working with Adams Literary, who reps some really amazing authors like Veronica Rossi and Megan Crewe. I've only been official "theirs" for a few days,  but I have a feeling it's going to be a perfect fit. :)

a portrait of insanity. i mean--revisions.

Two words have never felt so good. Seriously.

I know I'll be back to it in a bit, but for now, I'm celebrating the end of six very long weeks.

I've been through several rounds of revision already with so many different projects, but every time feels like the first. So I'm partly writing this road map to remind myself of the process.

Day 1: Edit letter arrives in your inbox. You're utterly excited to finally read it. About ten words into the letter your excitement starts to curdle. Die. Instead the panic starts to rise as you start reading all of the impossible things your agent/editor thinks need to change. Doesn't she know they're essential to the plot?! You talk on the phone with agent/editor and realize that they aren't as essential as you thought. You repeat the mantra writing is all about killing your darlings over and over again in your head to psych yourself up for the gargantuan task ahead.

Days 2 and 3: *commence utter panic, chocolate binge and denial of reality*

Day 4: Okay. You can do this. Breathe and repeat after me. You. Can. Do. This.

Day 5-Week 2: You start deleting scenes (between tears and more chocolates) and writing new ones. You have no idea if you're making it better or utterly destroy any semblance of bookness it had.

Week 3: You stop and reread through everything you've done (about 100 pages deleted/rewritten). Hey. It's not so bad. It could even be good. It might even be... *gasp* better? Could your agent/editor actually be right?

Week 4: You thought you would be done by now. But you're not. Your manuscript is starting to resemble a half-creature. More minotaur than centaur. But if it were a centaur, it would be the ones from Harry Potter and not those floofy pony creatures from Disney's Fantasia films. No. Your manuscript is gnarly. And it bites. And it might shoot poor unaware wizarding students if it had the chance.

Week 5: Your manuscript is looking better, but you, dear writer, have gone downhill. You've been living off coffee and whatever meals your poor husband decided to scrounge together for you. You've hit the wall. The point where even a few days off can't recharge your writing batteries. Week 5 is a beast.

But then... you reach Week 6.

Week 6: There's a light! A light at the end of the tunnel! You've just read through the reworked part of your manuscript (yet again) and lo and behold, it's actually a cohesive story! (It happens every time but it still feels like a miracle). Spurred on by this success, you work extra hard to cobble those last few scenes together. And before you can even start to second guess yourself you cram it into an email to your agent/editor and press SEND. After blinking at the screen in disbelief for several minutes you get up from your computer and look around at the chaos of your house. You walk straight to the kitchen and pour yourself a glass of wine.

And that, my friends, is what revision is like for me. And it sounds terrible, but I wouldn't trade this job for the world.

the busyness of life

Fall is busy.

Which makes Ryan a terrible blogger. The busyness also addles her brain a bit, which is why she's now referring to herself in the third person. Alas.

Which I will now stop doing because it requires too much brain power for my addled brain.

Because I'm insane and I really want to take big and expensive trips all around the world, I have not one, but two other jobs I maintain aside from writing big, fat books. I also try to have a semblance of a social life. And settle in to my new house. So when revisions roll around combined with all of these other things, I have a minor panic attack and then sacrifice my blog posts as a result. So I'm sorry. You have fallen victim to my insane schedule.

BUT I'm starting to see the light at the end of the revision tunnel, which is always a good thing. (Generally it means I have about a week or two left in the process.) 

To destress I've been painting furniture. It helps. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the paint fumes. Or the very bright colors. 

The colors go into my grand scheme to give my new house pops of cheer and bright. (Yay!)

I also had a friend show up today to help me paint:

He meandered into my yard and helped by bounding around, wagging his tail and looking generally cute until his actual owners arrived and took him away. I have a feeling I'll see him again, since I've seen this particular pup roaming the streets of our neighborhood before. He must be a jailbreaker.

Other than paint I've been on the road a bit, going to weddings as both a photographer and a guest. While in Richmond I stopped here:

And bought a book just because I loved its cover. A good enough reason, right?

I've also been enjoying the colors of fall. Leaves. All things pumpkin. Cool air. I LOVE this time of year.

What has everyone else been up to? Is fall just as busy for you guys?

why novel writing is like giving birth

During the past month I've come to a singular conclusion.

Writing books is like giving birth.

I've written several books. I have never actually birthed a child. But hear me out.

The other day I was moaning and groaning about my current WIP to my tireless, stalwart husband who hears me moan and groan about these things quite often. In one of my more drama-queen moves, I threw my hand over my brow and said, "This book is trying to kill me."

Then, after a wave of deja-vu, I sat up and said, "I'm pretty sure I've said that before."

Lo and behold, I did. Turns out Cutthroat Novel was also trying to kill me. Which is why I nicknamed it Cutthroat Novel in the first place.

It's funny, because even if I try really hard, I can't really remember how terrible and brutal those first few months with Cutthroat were. But according to le blog, they were. While in the midst of the rough draft throat of LUMINANCE HOUR 2, I have come up with a theory. Writers only write second novels (and third and fourth and etc), because they forget what an utter, terrifying, agonizing process writing an entire novel is. Just like women have more than one child because their brain blanks out on how painful the actual labor was.

Why did I choose this profession again?

Just kidding. Just like the mothers always tell me, the end product is more than worth the pain it costs. I just have to keep reminding myself that as I keep sweating away!

excuses and recipes.

Happy Friday, loyal readers! You're probably wondering why I haven't been posting quite as much lately (or not, but I'd like to assume you are).

Well, truth be told, I've been swallowed in the revision cave again (this time for Sekrit Project/Cutthroat Novel!), which means that I don't have much leftover creative energy to dedicate to my blog. Plus there's real life: ie. moving from an apartment to a house. Cleaning.

Every time I sit down and stare at this blank box, that's exactly what my brain looks like too! But not to fear. I'll be finished with revisions next week, and this will hopefully leave me with enough excess creativity to entertain you here!

I did try out two new recipes last week though. Both of which are superb! The first is a recipe from The Pioneer Woman. A southern classic: Chicken and Dumplings. Made with Apple Cider!!! Soooo good!

Source: thepioneerwoman.com via Ryan on Pinterest

The second recipe is a bit healthier and so, so delicious. It tastes very Mediterranean. Chicken patties with a mint Greek yogurt sauce. Yum. You can make them by themselves or eat them with pita bread. Delicious either way.

Source: veryculinary.com via Ryan on Pinterest

intuition: the difference between flexibility and roadkill

My new writing goal: revamp Cutthroat novel by the end of the summer. I've had all my wonderful betas and critiquers get back to me with feed back, and after compiling all their comments and adding some of my own, I have 463 comments to address while whipping it into "letting my agent see it shape."

Ack.

I think though, that I'm getting to a better point when it comes to mentally handling critiques and revisions. To create anything worthwhile you have to be flexible, willing to listen to others and willing to change things that need to be fixed.

There is however, a fine line between being flexible and being roadkill. I probably won't take every single suggestion that my betas give me. And I shouldn't, because different people will often have vastly different opinions when it comes to a character or a plot line. It's up to me to figure out which comments will make my piece stronger, etc.

And sometimes that job is hard enough to make my head hurt. I can't always describe how I determine this. Mostly it's a matter of intuition. Of feeling in my core whether or not it's something that will make my story shine true.

Anyway, this is me rambling. Here. Listen to a song by the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs that I'm currently obsessing over:

where i gush about Avengers and certain songs

Happy Tuesday. What have you guys been up to this week?

I finally "finished" CutthroatNovel last Friday. It's sitting pretty at about 82,000 words. It's also snuggling up to some beta readers at the moment and I'm keeping my distance for a bit. This means I have a spot of free time, a spot I've been thoroughly enjoying for the past few days. 


I've also been discovering some wonderful new music and treating myself to a movie or two. Last week husband and I went to see The Avengers (a bit late, yes, but to be fair we've both been a tad busy!). When I first heard it was coming out I must admit I wasn't tugging at the bit to see it. Superhero movies (while good) have a terrible habit of becoming predictable/repetitive.


But-- The Avengers was magic! Really. Joss Whedon captured my loyalties long ago with Firefly and Serenity (only one of the best sci-fi works of all time...), and it was a big selling point for me that he'd written/directed Avengers. It shone through majestically in the movie. There were kickass women. Clever quips. Wonderful inter-character relationships. Fully realized arcs for the wide array of characters (I can't even imagine how much creative coordination that took).


I walked out of that movie theater wanting very badly to be a superhero. Which means, of course, that Joss Whedon did his as per usual fantastic job. Stuff like that makes me want to write for television/movies. Maybe one day.


Let's see. Music. Here's some of the songs I've had on repeat for the last few days:

Hem - Half Acre

Iron and Wine - Boy With A Coin

If you like them, go buy them!! Good music deserves good money (plus I want these wonderful artists making MORE fabulous music).

two things

1. Today I'm over at Krazy Book Lady's blog giving my two cents about traditional publishing vs. self-publishing (I've done both!). So go on over, check it out, comment. Etc!

2. I'm on the last and final scene of CutthroatNovel! (AAAAH!) And I stumbled across this video in a bit of my research. I've always been curious about what American English sounds like to foreigners. Harsh? Flowy? Turns out it's a bit of both:

An Italian guy produced an entire song that sounds like English but is actually gibberish. Listening to it is odd, because you feel like you should know what they're saying.


Okay, back to finishing this draft!

almost there.

As predicted I reached 80k today. And over. But the story isn't quite finished yet.

If I could describe how it feels... well, I tried scouring Pinterest for pictures people clawing through deserts and dying of thirst. But Pinterest is not a place of suffering. It's a happy place. With pictures of wine coolers and lovers leaving a pairing column of footprints as they saunter down the beach.

So yes. It feels like being a dehydrated man, inching his way painfully toward an oasis. Pull by pull. Grain by sandy grain.

Tomorrow then.

tally

So. The week is over. Words have been written.

Here's the tally: 12,451 words this week.

Which is about 2450 words a day.

I could hardly believe this myself really. Hopefully I can keep up the pace. If so then I could have the rough draft of CutthroatNovel finished in two weeks.

The key word here is hopefully.

I'd like for this to be true, because I have so many other looming projects that I'm afraid if I don't push through with this rough draft I won't get it done for a long time. So that's the goal. Finish CutthroatNovel. And make it good.

I'm really excited about this one guys. Really, truly.

full time! (at least for now)

Remember when I tried to do that whole 2k-a-day challenge thing? How I got through it and decided that  pushing myself so far kills that little thing called creativity (which is a pretty necessary qualification for this job). Since Monday I've found myself in the amazing and fortuitous position of being a FULL-TIME-WRITER!

Commence Confetti!!

It's only temporary, since, unfortunately, bills do not stop coming but book advances do. However, I fully intend to take advantage of these next two months. In the past three days I've discovered some things. Mornings at the preschool were by no means utterly exhausting, but they did take a mental toll that adds up to about 1000 extra words for me! I've written just about 6000 words since the beginning of Monday morning! Which is really good for me. Let's hope this is a steady trend and not just an outlying spike in creativity.

I've spent the past few weeks immersed in the world of Cutthroat Novel, which is coming along quite nicely. I hit the 50k mark today, and according to Maggie Stiefvater's post 80,000 Words of Fun, Fun, Fun this is the point in the draft where the story feels neverending. I'd have to agree. I only have 30k words to wrap up THIS ENTIRE PLOT? AAAAGH!

Anyway, I can't really say much about Cutthroat Novel, except that it's vastly different from other stuff I've written. But I can show you a few pictures that have helped me form this world on my Pinterest board for Cutthroat Novel.

thoughts on summer

Today is the first day of summer. I regard it as extra-special because it's the first "free" summer I've had in several years. I've always found it a bit cruel to condition children for 22 years that they have 3 months out of the year to do whatever they want, since the other 60 years of their lives are doomed to summers spent in offices. Making money.

I don't, however, support the idea of taking kids' summers away. (As they tend to do in South Korea). I lean more on the side of the fence of giving adults their summers back. The way the Europeans do. Two weeks of vacation a year is not enough. Especially if your job is of the soul-sucking/soul-crushing nature.

I'm also of the opinion that people should throw graduation parties when they're 4 years out of school, to celebrate surviving four years in the "real world." Because there are many, many times when I think that slogging through the mundane of work and bills is harder than school. Sure, there are no tests and papers in the real world, but there's generally no ultimate frisbee in your yard or all-you-can-eat cafeteria buffet lines in your kitchen.

I think people deserve parties for surviving their first 4 years out of school!

So anyway. I plan to make the most of my "free" summer (it's technically not truly free since I'll be writing full time, but it feels like that anyway). I'm hoping to finish Cutthroat novel (It's at 47k today!) by August. We'll see! And make it to the beach at least a few times. Of course.