Kiss of Fire, Rebecca Ethington

Imagine Twilight if Edward was the only one in his family who was trying to be good. In fact, imagine if Edward's father killed humans for fun and would do anything  to control  his place of power, and that Edward was fighting to keep a semblance of his humanity, even as his father made him do horrible things.

Now imagine that  Edward and Bella had known each other their entire life. Imagine that they were friends first, and that falling in love was a process forged in solidifying experiences. Imagine that they earned the powerful love that they have.

Imagine if Edward wasn't a sparkling vampire, but a hot wealthy rugby player with brown curls, and the ability to heal or destroy. Imagine if Bella was a bullied beauty, hiding behind hoodies and trying to stay invisible. Imagine she had her own magical secret, a secret that'll end up killing her.

Now change the names to Ryland and Joclyn, give them a ton of character growth, and take away the cliched happy ending.

And what you have is Kiss of Fire by Rebecca Ethington.

Here's the goodreads link. Here's the amazon store link.

 I've known the author of this book for a long time. We met as Sophomores in High School, and Becky was beyond kind to me. That's the word for Becky, kind. We made secret Star Wars handshakes, wore the Disneyland shoes, and hung out in the drama room belting out Styx and Queen. ( For those of you who've read the book, I'm not saying that I was the inspiration for Joclyn's best friend Wyn. I'm thinking it, but I'm not saying it.)

:)

We'd sort of lost touch when she emailed me to ask if I'd be a beta reader for her.  She decided to make a copy of this book for her Grandfather for Christmas, and wanted to get her "little book" ( Becky's words not mine.) out there in case other people might want to read it too.

When I read her rough draft, I was blown away. This wasn't a little story, it's a freaking gem. A freaking gem that grabs you by the eyelids and pulls you around until at the end you're an emotional wreck. It's brilliant and beautiful, and kicking butt in sales. This "little" book has been on Amazon's top thousand for weeks now. It's having the kind of success that I hope and pray that my little book will find too.

Because...

Oh yeah, by the way, I'm publishing Funny Tragic Crazy Magic.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

(Launch date March 23. More details to come at my NEW Website www.boekwegbooks.com, or on facebook @ .facebook.com/SheenaBoekwegYAAuthor. Like if you'd like.)

With that self-promotion put aside, let's talk more Kiss of Fire. See, my friend Becky is a huge example to me on what to do, not just as a writer and in self-publishing, but also as a classy human being. Never more so than now.  She just announced on her website, rebeccaethington.com, that for all the month of February she's donating $1.00 from each copy sold to the Alzheimer’s Association (alz.org).

Like I said, she's kind.

Please read and support this book. It's going to be huge.
~Sheena

In Which I Get Good News...

Thursday. Last Thursday.

I'll set the scene for you. 

We received an offer on our house the day before, and after 21 showings I was ready for the whole "Let's sell the house!" phase of my life to shift to a "Let's go have our teeth pulled!" phase which  seems less uncomfortable.

 On top of the worry about where we would live if the offer was accepted, and the worry that the offer would fall through, two weeks before I had decided I wanted to self-publish FTCM.  I had a deadline I wanted to launch the book, and I had to get the final comma/grammar check done that Thursday, in order to  start selling by the deadline. 

I was really, really, close. Everything was formatted, and my husband designed this amazing cover for me.

Full size so you can appreciate the gorgeousness.

We were 99% ready to go, and I was so excited.  So that's where I was last Thursday. Final formats for my book interrupted by checking real estate websites to find the dream house. I was in a happy cheerful land of my own making, lazily skipping along to the blissful sounds of my girl Beyonce.

Then I checked my email. I saw, through the great deals and updates for blogs I follow, a return submission from Angry Robot books. After checking out a few emails, I clicked on it, expecting the rejection.

Dear Sheena, I read in a sing song sarcastic voice that seems to make the sting of rejection hurt less. Thank you for submitting a sample from Funny Tragic. 

This is where it got weird.

 I enjoyed what I read, and would like to read more.

Wait, what? I asked, taking a break from my sarcastic inner voice. I sometimes get so into the weird voice, I don't fully catch what I read. I reread the first few sentences again, and then went on.

Please send the full novel to...

Wait....What?!

I read the entire email once more and then jumped away from my computer. I stood there, looking at the computer screen, frozen like a twitching bunny in front of a semi.

I called my husband, who asked, "What does this mean about self publishing?" I stood there, trying to remember how to speak English. "We do this first." I answered eventually. 

I called my mom and screamed at the phone when she didn't pick up. Then I emailed my Proser buddies, told Facebook, and Hatrack, and basically every person who could possibly care that a publisher enjoyed what they read and wanted to read more. When we found out the counter offer on my house fell through, I was buoyed up by the brilliant balloon that is "I enjoyed what I read and would like to read more." that I don't care if I have to clean the house for 21 more showings. 

I didn't think that it would happen. I had given up hope.  Now this random positive email doesn't mean that they'll publish my book, but it does give me my hope back.

Hope is scary.

I think self publishing is a brilliant way to get a book out to new readers. It's fun to have full control over your book, over the design, the formatting, the approval. And I'm married to a marketing/ graphic designing/ brilliant man who helps me format, and designs beautiful covers for me. It makes sense, for me, to self publish. It seems logical.

But dreams aren't logical. Dreams have their own timing. And no matter how scary, how much logic you can put between you and your dreams, you just have to do it anyway.

Speaking of which, check this link for fraggles, Ben Folds Five brilliance, and the best pep talk I can come up with via the internet.

I'm still dreaming.

~Sheena

What I'm working on now: Ironwood letters. For serious.

Getting Personal

Trisha made a great point about internet safety in her last post, so in response, I'm going to share the most personal experience I can think of.

Take that, common sense.

:)

When my husband and I were trying to conceive baby number three, I discovered failing at getting pregnant is the worst pain I've ever felt. It took us so much longer than I expected to get pregnant, and that expectation made failing at it every month much worse.

Trying to get pregnant took over my life. I counted the days religiously. I didn't take ibuprofen for months, just in case. I white-knuckle exercised, trying to lose weight before the baby came. Every month I had this hope that strangled me when I found out that yet another month had passed, and another hope had died.

The hope was crushing, and became too much to handle.

About that time, I received an email from Nanowrimo. Two years before I had tried Nano, and failed at 7,000 agonizingly slow words. I had a miserable time with it. The next year I tried again for 50,000 words, and barely wrote 3,000 words all month. 

I wasn't about to try and fail again. But I decided late that October,  I needed the escape that only comes from following around a spunky teenage girl and her love interest. I decided I would throw myself into the story, and take a much needed break from trying to get pregnant. 

I would write this story for me. I swore on the first page- breaking my own rules, I wrote make out scenes which still make me blush, and I put in illogical systems of magic. I didn't care. No one else would ever read it. This story was mine, and I wasn't sharing.

November first I wrote more than 11,000 words in six hours. There was something about Larissa's voice that felt familiar, and right. Some of my best writing yet, I've found, came out of Larissa's voice. I became obsessed with the love story. More than anything though, I found the escape I needed.

Cover made for fun through
myecovermaker.com 

I found out I was pregnant on page 230, but I couldn't let the story end. FTCM had become something bigger than a personal vacation. I believed in the story, in my writing, in my characters, and I felt I owed it to them to finish. Which I did on the third to last day of November. 

FTCM, to this day, was my favorite writing experience. I would leave my desk with my heartbeat racing, and my fingers twitching, ready to get back to the keyboard. It gave me so much joy, so much freedom, so much escape. 

But most of all, it gave me my little boy.

Second drafts, querying agents, maybe even self-publishing if all that doesn't work out, is the effort I'm trying to put in to give that story it's due. I'm trying to pay it back, and pay it forward, for anyone else who needs an escape.

And that's why I write.

~Sheena

What I'm reading now, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

What I'm writing now, Hatched (Second Revision) Chapter Ten.

Sheena's book

FUNNY TRAGIC, CRAZY MAGIC is the un(TRUE) story of Larissa Alvarez, a sixteen-year-old girl who only cares about magic because it can make her look pretty.

Her mother owns the only surviving copy of the Killing Runes, powerful runes fought over for centuries. When the Grandfathers set a trap to steal the Killing Runes, they destroy everyone in Larissa's family, except Larissa. As the only sophomore invited to an important party, she refuses to stay home to watch her five-year-old sister, so she isn’t there to protect her, or die alongside her.

With her family gone, and the guilt of her little sister's death on her shoulders, Larissa vows to steal her mother's notebook back, no matter the cost. She finds an ally in the boy with no boundaries, Joe Penrod, a lost mage who knows less about magic then she does, and finally becomes the witch her mother always wanted her to be. Just too late for her mother to see.

Along the way, she realizes that her new ally Joe is the unknowing tool of the men who killed her family, and that by falling in love with him, she's heading toward tragedy.

Or treason.

FUNNY TRAGIC, CRAZY MAGIC 65,000 word YA Urban Fantasy