Angie Frazier

I can share my cover!




And here is another gorgeous sight (imo):




Ahhhh. ARCs.

I think it's finally time to start thinking about an ARC giveaway contest and fun Everlasting swag...

It's good because:

1.) I have my ARCs!!! They were waiting for me in a rain-soaked Scholastic box on my front step when I arrived home today from preschool duty. But thankfully, the ARCs were nice and dry and PERFECT!!! I can't wait to share them with you :-) As soon as I get the thumbs up from Scholastic...

2.) My younger sister had her little girl this morning via scheduled c-section, and both baby and mama are doing great! Now I have four nephews and three nieces (don't worry, not all of them are my younger sister's children. I have an older sister too!).

3.) I'm seeing New Moon this weekend with my hubby, my friend and her husband. Yep. We're double-dating it this Sunday at noon. That's right. Matinee baby!

4.) I have my ARCS!!!

5.) I have my ARCs!!!

As you can probably guess, I'm not going to get any freelance work done today. I'll be too busy gazing at my ARCs ;-)

Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!

I have stacks of books scattered throughout the house.

My husband has stacks of car, motorcycle, and truck magazines--in the bathroom.

He has not read my book. He didn't even know the title of it when it sold. He didn't know my main characters names or what the book was even about. Books were as foreign to him as exhaust pipes, oil changes, and transmissions are to me.

But thanks to The Hunger Games, I have seen a rare and beautiful sight: my husband sitting with a book. Reading. When he was done with it, we actually discussed the book. It was so strange to talk fiction with him. He declared it "all right," and when I asked whether he was Team Gale or Team Peeta this was his response: "Peeta? The guy bakes bread. Who'd choose him? Gale can at least hunt."

Now why am I thanking Suzanne Collins? Because the other day I saw that Catching Fire was missing from my OSHA-condemned tower of books. :-)))

I've been pretty MIA from the blogging scene lately, mostly due to the crazy amount of a.) freelance work and b.) research for my current WIP. Because freelance is the bane of my existence, I choose to focus on research for this blog post :-)

How much is too much?

This second book in my middle grade Suzanna Snow mystery series is set in 1905 Boston. I don't know why I do these things to myself. Why can't I just set a book in present day southern New Hampshire, a place and time I'm very familiar with? Research would not be nearly as daunting.

But for this book I need to know the layout of Boston's streets, it's buildings, its harbor front. I need to know what kind of work there was to be done in the harbor, what trolleys looked and sounded like, what the air smelled like. I need to know what kind of clothes people wore then, how they socialized, how they earned a living, and how much that living was. I need to know about the social classes, what girls studied in finishing schools, if they wore uniforms or not.

See? Lots and lots of stuff. And not so terribly exciting either :-)

But when do I stop researching and just start writing? I'm about nine chapters in and find myself stopping here and there to find the answers to my questions. But I'm wondering: keep writing and deal with the details later, or take the time to research and smooth out flaws now rather than later?

Sigh. Back to work...

A little while back I posted about classical music and asked for your favorites. I finally started putting together a playlist and wanted to share what I have so far. Some of these pieces, like Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saens, and Chopin, are perfect for the paranormal/historical/romance YA percolating right now. Dark and gloomy and dangerous ;-)

Chopin: Nocturne No. 2, Op. 9 in E flat Major

Rachmaninoff: Prelude in C sharp Minor, Op. 3 No. 2

Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61a

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43: Variation 18: Andante Cantabile

Camille Saint-Saëns: Le carnaval des animaux “Aquarium”

Puccini: Nessun Dorma

Vivaldi: Concerto for two violins in A minor, Op. 3 No. 8

Here's the moody Rachmaninoff piece on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSO6dfTgVOY

Getting emails from my BFFs two little girls! Well, not so little anymore at ages 9 and 7, I suppose. My friend set up supervised email accounts for them. They emailed me to ask me what I wanted for Christmas. I just about cried when I realized the little baby whose diapers I used to change was emailing me. Whoa. 

My 5 Randoms pal, Susan Colebank's new YA book, CASHING IN is out today! Happy Book Release Day, Susan! 


The Shaws have won the lottery. One point six million, to be exact. But does money bring happiness? Depends. For someone other than Reggie Shaw, maybe. But when you have a compulsive gambler for a mother and mediocre grades and best friends in the middle of a break-up and no kind of future mapped out, money is just one more complication.

Don't you want that bag on the cover?? I know I do ;-) Find out more about Susan and her book(s) here.

Look what I found! I showed it to my husband and he just didn't get the awesomeness. But I had a feeling some of you would.

The Pride and Prejudice Board Game!

Players choose a couple and race to the chapel to get married, traveling through town and countryside and answering questions about the book! How much fun would this be? :-) I have no one who would willingly play it with me, but I could always find a way to force someone to. 

These last two days have been fantastic days for book progress. First the awesome cover jacket (still super sekrit, sorry!), then some more great news (not sure if it's super sekrit, but just in case...) and now Amazon is showing Everlasting as available for preorder!

I'm not sure where the book summary came from...it seems to be a mix between the flap copy and some something that was in my original query letter...hmmm... But that's OK! 

Hope everyone has a great Halloween! 

I needed to link this short story, simply because it succeeded in giving me goosebumps. Maurissa Guibord has posted this short spooky tale on her blog: The Rustling of Dead Things. 

And I *hate* numbers. Seriously, I avoid math like I would a zombie. But this article in Publishers Weekly was packed with percentages that sparkled like Edward, thus capturing my attention. 

Examples:

"In the fiction/fantasy/sci-fi segment, where most sales in the YA category fall, we expect nearly 13% growth in 2009, reaching $744 million. By 2013, sales in this segment are anticipated to hit $861 million, a 30.6% increase over 2008."

In a teen survey "respondents reported that they are avid readers during the summer, with 41% reading more than 20 books during the vacation months, 26% reading 11–20 and 18% reading six to 10 books."

"We asked teens how they like to interact with their favorite authors. More than eight out of 10 (85%) visit the Web sites of their favorite authors for information about upcoming titles, and 65% would like to interact with an author at an in-store event...Social networking sites like Facebook, Good Reads and My Space come in at 19%, lower than we expected."

and finally:

"...book copy was the most important factor that would make teens pick up a book. A stunning 91% saw this as the most important influence. The cover was important to 79%. The next most important influence, with 77%, was familiarity with an author's previous work; 74% were looking for the next book in a series. For 73%, the title was important."

(note how I included colors to make the percentages more appealing. Did it work? Hope so.)

A few nights ago I sent Book #2 to my editor. I started writing it the month after my first book sold--about a year and a half ago now. I was terrified to write it, constantly wondering if it would be good enough. Now that I've revised it on my own and with the help of my agent and my trusty critique partners, I'm happy to say something I never thought I would: I like it even more than the first book. 

I can't believe I'm saying it, but yes, I love the second Everlasting book. The characters all deepen and become more complex; the story gets darker and delves more into the paranormal side of the plot; the new journey across the Indian Ocean and into Egypt was so much fun to research and write; and there's a love triangle. Anyone who knows me will understand how much I love a good love triangle ;-)

But now that I've sent it off to be ripped to shreds by my fab editor, I feel restless. I know I'm avoiding the second Suzanna Snow book, but I'm not sure why. I think maybe I need to get out Everlasting mode and maybe read a good MG mystery. Any suggestions? 

PS: I just read a pdf file of Stephanie Burgis's A MOST IMPROPER MAGICK and it was fantastic!! This book is going to be a huge hit!

Come have a look-see! AngieFrazier.com

My oldest daughter lost another tooth yesterday morning! She has been waiting for this sucker to come out for weeks now. When it finally did, the look of wonder on her face was priceless. But then she came home from kindergarten and this conversation happened:

A: "Mommy, is the tooth fairy just make believe?"

Me: (quickly imagines self wringing the neck of the little kid who spoiled all the tooth fairy goodness for my 5 year old.) "What??? Who told you that?"

A: "No one told me. The computer lab did."

Me: "Huh?"

A: "We were taking a test on the computer and I needed to drag all the make believe things into the castle, and there was a fairy there."

I could nearly see the forked road right there before me. Take the road of reality? Or keep on down the one of imagination and dreams?

I decided to talk about imagination, and believing in the things we can't see, and how much more fun life is when we can do that, etc... The thing is, my 5 year old really, REALLY wanted to believe in the tooth fairy. I could see the relief in her face when I told her that it was okay to have fun and believe in fairies and in lots of things she can't see.

So, the question is, am I doing her a disservice by encouraging her to believe in something she will inevitably find out really *is* make believe? Or would the disservice be *not* encouraging her to believe it? I think it's a fine, very tenuous line.

But this morning when A woke up and found a dollar and some gum, she shouted with such excitement that I knew, at least for the moment, I'd made the right choice.

One of the books I'm most excited for in 2010 has a book trailer!



My entry for the A Most Improper Magick book tralier competition. Read the rules and enter at http://www.stephanieburgis.com/competition.php

Ahhhhh, Maine.

The weekend retreat was amazing. It was a rainy few days, which was perfect for writing. On top of nearly finishing my self-imposed revisions on the sequel (sending to editor soon--eek!), I got the chance to catch up with some truly inspiring writers. We talked books and writing, ate way too many carbs and cheese, drank plenty of wine, danced to The Black Eyed Peas with pirate bandanas on, and to top things off, buried a rubber skeleton outside for birthday-girl Robin MacCready (the retreat hostess and Pirate Queen) to dig up in the dark...good times :-) 

In about two minutes I'm hopping into my car and heading up to Maine for a writing weekend. For a few days I'll be surrounded by other writers, lots of food and wine, maybe an eye patch or two...these pirates know how to have fun :-) I'll bring back pics! Have a great weekend everyone!

 I talk about cheating on your current manuscript and how to fight the guilt!

http://thefiverandoms.livejournal.com/16649.html

I'm back from New York where my friend and I spent the weekend touring wineries along Cayuga Lake in the gorgeous Finger Lakes region. Even if you don't drink wine, there's something alluring about the vineyards here. The rows of grapevines, the breezes off the lake, the slope of the land leading down to the shoreline. If you do like wine, it's even more alluring :-) At each winery we tasted about six kinds of wine, a nice mix of reds and whites, though New York's vineyards are pretty dominated by sweet wines and my friend and I definitely prefer dry. But we managed to buy a bottle we loved at each winery :-) 

My friend Lynne and I at the first tasting (yes, I know. First tasting and we look like this? Dangerous.)

One of my very best critique friends has just set up her blog here on LJ!

Maurissa Guibord is an amazing writer and critique buddy. Her first novel, WARPED, (Delacorte, 2011) is pure awesomeness. Unicorns, magic, a hot, arrogant boy, a used book store, a feisty heroine, an evil sorceress, time traveling made possible through a tapestry...

Yep. Awesome. Go friend her!