A FREE eBook and a Little More Sex and Violence

It's like a game of hide-and-seek. Where's Megg? Why does she keep popping up and then seemingly disappearing?

If you're on Facebook with me, you know a bit about what's been going on in my real life, yanno, the one I live when I'm not writing.

Here's a basic breakdown:

September 2012 - the toilet in my kids' bathroom overflows, causing MAJOR damage in my house. We're talking months of construction. Oh, and we also had to pick up our new puppy. Great timing. I spent the next three months basically living in the basement as our house was being reconstructed. Who knew a toilet could do so much damage?

January 2013 - My hubby, who has a history of back problems and one spinal surgery already under his belt, re-injures his back. Weeks of therapy didn't help. He ended up in the hospital for a double spinal fusion. It wasn't that simple, though. Due to the pain medication he was on, he couldn't drive for almost two months. My life was turned upside down as I played the role of single mom and caregiver (no complaints, just the facts).

This lasted through March. I had about 60 days of quiet where I published Shucked, a contemporary YA novel I'd had bouncing around my head for years (it's a miracle I got any writing done during the time).

May 2013 - We got some news about our kids' private school that caused us to put our house on the market so we could get into a better public school district. Anyone who's tried to sell a house in this market knows how stressful that can be. And the CLEANING, OMG, I had to make the house we'd built and lived in for 11 years look like something out of a magazine.

The house sold. The first day. For cash. But we had to be out in two weeks. TWO WEEKS. Oh yeah, and the hubby was still in recovery from back surgery so it was up to me to pack everything by myself. Did I mention I had only two weeks?

From June 10th - July 5th we were basically homeless. On the weekends we lived with my parents an hour away and during the week we lived in hotels near my hubby's job and my daughter's swim team. My computer was in storage and, really, who can write on an iPad in a hotel with two stir-crazy kids? Not me.

Here I am, August 7th, the house is 90% put together. I (finally) find myself with time and the mental capacity to sit down and write. Five days of drafting and I've written 6,709 words. I know my output will at least double when the kids go back to school. The story is flowing and I'm letting my imagination run wild. It's an exciting time.

The next ebook is a high fantasy, similar to the others I've published, but this one is an adult fantasy, not YA. That means a little more sex, a little more violence, and no love triangles. lol

I feel like I'm making a comeback. I was never totally gone, but, to be honest, I haven't been as committed to work as I should have been for almost *shudders* a year. I can't believe it's been that long.

So here's the good news. The SCBWI-Illinois reps have asked me to be the regular self-publishing columnist for the Prairie Wind. I'm really excited!!!

To celebrate, I'm giving away one of my ebooks to anyone who is signed up for my newsletter by August 21st. All the details will be in the newsletter I send out, so if there's a book of mine you haven't read yet, sign up!

Thanks to all of my fans for sticking by me over the last 11 months. My life has been a roller coaster, but knowing I had all of you waiting on the other end was a big motivator to never give up on my writing career!!!!!

XoXo,

Megg

Fear and Loathing in Writing

Want to hear my take on writers getting easily depressed? Head over to Author 2 Author, my group blog, and check it out. ;)

Fear and Loathing in Writing

Cover Reveal, Part Deux

Here's the second piece of the cover of my next book!!!! I hit 10,055 words this morning. :)

Failure & Falling with Style

Do you remember that scene in Toy Story when Buzz Lightyear swears he can fly and he demonstrates it for the other toys. Woody gets angry and says, "That wasn't flying! That was falling with style."

Falling with style is something I aspire to do. Look, I fail. All. The. Time. I'm sure I fail at something every day whether it's hitting my word count, cleaning, or being a good mother and/or wife.

Yesterday was a particularly difficult day for me. There's some stuff going on in real life (boring, you don't even want to know), but I find my heart and my mind pulling me in two different directions. I know my mind has the facts right, but heart just won't listen.

The same thing happened to me with writing recently. Two completely different books. Two directions. But I can only move forward with writing one at a time. (I could probably work on both, but I'm sure that would impede my creative mind since I'm tend to immerse myself in writing projects.) I made a decision. Then second-guessed it. Then made it again. Then second-guessed it. Then, yesterday, made it again. Each time I made the same exact decision, too!

I guess this is why people have affairs. Why people switch jobs for no real reason. Why people do all the crazy things they do. Their heads know the truth; their hearts see the dream. Somehow we have to find a way to reconcile all of these things and move forward.

So while I know I'll continue to trip and fall, I also have to remind myself that getting up is the best thing I can do. Because if we can't fall with style, then we just become pathetic heaps on the ground.

I don't want that. Do you? So, I'm only going to allow myself one viewing of one of my favorite depressing songs (I'm a redhead, so this one is close to my heart).

XoXo,

Megg

INDIEpendence Day: An Interview, an Author, and a Magic 8 Ball: Shari Brady

Read through for a giveaway at the end!!!!

It's been a long time since I've done an interview in this series. The Indelibles are celebrating INDIEpendence Day by giving over our blogs to deserving indie authors. Today I'm featuring the incomparable Shari Brady.


MJ: Tell me a bit about your novel, Wish I Could Have Said Goodbye, in your own words - not the official synopsis.

SB: Wish I Could Have Said Goodbye is a story about how Carmella D'Agostino struggles with her grief and guilt after losing her older sister to addiction, and the steps she takes to overcome her fears and find the courage to love again.

MJ: Did you pants or plot while writing your first draft?

SB:  plotted and improvised.

MJ: What’s your next release going to be?

SB: All the World's A Stage is a humorous novel about Gabrielle, an aspiring actress and expert Tarot card reader whose life is perfect and going right along as planned. But when her mother is injured in a car accident, and her best friend's ex-boyfriend flirts with her, Gabi's neat and tidy life begins to unravel.  Release date:  March 2013.

MJ: Now for the fun stuff! If you were trapped on a deserted island and you could only bring three books, what would you bring?

SB: The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Stephen King's On Writing.

MJ: Who is your celebrity crush?

SB: That's easy.  Phillip Phillips :)

MJ: What is your favorite color?

SB: Red

MJ: What do you wear when you write?

SB: Sweats, a t-shirt and one of my favorite fleece zip up sweatshirts in the winter, drawstring shorts and t-shirt in the summer. (I have to be comfy at my desk)

MJ: What’s your favorite vacation spot?

SB: Isle of Palms, South Carolina (near Charleston).

MJ: Now, I need YOU to ask ME a question about absolutely anything under the sun. It has to be a yes or no question and will be answered by my  10-year-old’s all-knowing Magic 8 Ball! The question can be serious or silly - it’s up to you.

SB: Do you believe in pet psychics?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

MJ: Funny, I didn't even know that was one of the replies my Magic 8 Ball could make. Verrry interesting. Of course it doesn't surprise me that M8B believes in pet psychics, since, after all, M8B is psychic too.

Thank you so much, Shari, for stopping by my blog today! I'm reading Wish I Could Have Said Goodbye right now and LOVING it. :D

Check out the rest of the featured authors below, but first, enter the contest to win one of two ecopies of Wish I Could Have Said Goodbye.


a Rafflecopter giveaway
Interviews: 

Disappearing Act

I've had a difficult time, professionally, the past two weeks. There were some developments that made me seriously consider turning my back on my career. I don't think their exact nature is important, because what's damaging to one person would make another shrug their shoulders and walk away.


After multiple distressing things happened, I broke down and had a long cry. My husband reminded me that writing was never about publishing for me. I wrote because I needed an outlet. I'm an emotional person. I feel things very deeply. I'm not clinically depressed, but I've had my moments where I thought I might be able to understand what those who live with depression feel. I'd venture to say we've all had those moments.

Most of you know this (it's not a secret), but Megg Jensen is a pen name. I could so easily walk away from this career and never turn back. Few people would even know. Heck, most people in my real life don't know what I do. Those who do often treat it as a joke - like "give the cute little girl a pat on her head for writing a cute little story."

It would only take a few keystrokes and "Megg" would be gone.

In the last two weeks I've had to deal with some major shit. It's not even anything that will affect my sales or really anything that most of you have heard. It's behind-the-scenes junk that life occasionally doles out.

Yet it has made me doubt myself. Doubt my writing. Doubt my decision to self-publish. Doubt every single publishing decision I've made since December 2010.

On the other end of this doubt is a pinhole with a tiny light shining through it. That light is my imagination. No matter what anyone lobs at me, they can't break my imagination. It's always there, winking at me, telling me stories, forcing the most ridiculous ideas into my head. I know that my desire to spin a story will always be there. It's the one constant in my life.

Since the beginning of time, humans have told stories. Whether whispered over a campfire, glyphs drawn on the walls of caves, or a brilliantly illuminated medieval manuscript, one thing holds true - our lives are beautifully enhanced by narrative. I just happened to be one of those souls driven to share mine.

So whether people want to hurt me so bad that they hope "Megg" might disappear or be ashamed of self-publishing, I have to remember that little light at the end of the tunnel. It's not about the end of the race, it's about the experiences we have along the way. Life will not always be easy. People will not always be kind. Life will never be perfect and complete.

I just have to be the truest version of myself. <3

Self-Publishing, The Hunger Games, and Selling Out

(Cross-posted from my Author2Author blog post)

What do self-publishing, The Hunger Games, and selling out have in common? A lot more than you might think.

I fully admit it - two years I ago I would have told you self-publishing was for failures (or small churches and historical groups looking to publish their own histories for a limited audience). I would have rolled my eyes and told you that I would never, ever consider self-publishing because traditional publishing was all that mattered.

2012 Megg would like to tell mid-2010 Megg, "You're a sheltered, close-minded idiot."

Self-publishing is a different beast than it was ten years ago. With costs at practically nothing, anyone can slap anything they want up on the web. But here's the kicker:

Those of us that want to succeed will work our asses off to make sure our product is the best we can make it. We will work hard to promote ourselves. We will recognize writing and publishing as two separate businesses, leaving the emotion for the first draft and implementing the business sense on the publishing side.

Source: http://bit.ly/J6EYWJ

This is where I think The Hunger Games steps in as a great analogy. Katniss and Peeta taught us that even though we're forced to play a rough game (I think everyone would agree that traditional publishing isn't for the weak), we can find ways around the strict rules. We can find fans (in our case, readers) who will support us. We can win and change the entire game in doing so.

This is what self-publishing has done. The game isn't over, far from it. We're just rewriting the rules and gaining the respect of our readers at the same time.

But sometimes with winning comes change. I won't get into the plot lines of Catching Fire and Mockingjay because I know not everyone on the planet has read them (you should if you haven't). Sometimes an indie gets the notice of the big boys. If traditional publishing comes knocking, should a self-pub give them the finger and move on?

No.

Now some self-pubs might call me a traitor for that. Too bad.

In my viewpoint, moving from self-publishing to traditional publishing isn't a crime. I also don't look at self-publishing as a stepping stone to traditional. I see a new model of publishing emerging.

Authors, like myself, can now weigh the pros and cons of deals and we can decide whether to accept or reject them.

It's not about who holds the power. Moving from self to trad is simply coming to a mutual decision about whether or not an author's work is something that will resonate with a wider audience.

That's it. It's not about who's better than anyone else. It's simply a matter of pure economics and the flavor of the day.

If I was offered the right traditional publishing deal, would I take it? Depends on the terms, really. I'm open to exploring any option. I'm also open to walking away from something that isn't worth it. It isn't my goal to tell people, "Ooooh, I got a trad deal." So what? If the deal isn't worth my time and money (because I'd be giving up a lot in royalties to take a trad deal), then I am okay with walking away.

Publishing is a business that provides people access to a form of entertainment. It is not here to fulfill an author's wildest dreams. The reading public does that. If a reader can escape through your book, then your wildest dreams have been fulfilled. If your only concern is seeing a copy of your book on a shelf at Barnes & Noble, then you're not looking at writing the right way. Writing is a creative outlet for those of us with wild imaginations and good grammar. There simply isn't room for all of us on the shelf at your local bookstore.

And guess what? That's okay too.

How I Find Time to Write

You may wonder why I've been so quiet on my blog lately.

My kids went back to school (yay!) a couple weeks ago and I've been using the so-called free time to get back to work on my novels.

Here's what my day looks like:



6:20 - Wake up, make breakfast, make sure the kids are up, eat breakfast, clean up, make lunches, yell at kids 600 times to keep moving, get dressed, and leave to take the kids to school.

8:30 - back home ... only for a moment because someone left something they need immediately at school. So I get it, curse under my breath, and drive back to their Catholic school with a smile and a sparkle in my eye.

9:10 - back home ... time to write workout. Let the dog out, wait for him to do his business, and let him back. Run down in the basement and remember I had to return Sex and the City back to the library, so watch Regis & Kelly instead. Curse through the whole workout.

9:45 - back upstairs, drink two glasses of water, and time to write check my email. Curse a little more at all the messages I have to reply to and blog posts I have to write.

10:30 - feeling slimy, so I drag my butt upstairs to shower. Ahhhh....no cursing here.

11:00 - dressed and ready to write make my lunch because I'm starving. Then curse because I just realized I could have written for half an hour. See, I have to stop at 11:30 because...

11:30 - time for The Young & the Restless (hey, don't judge - this is a perk of being an at-home mom)

12:30 - time to write read more email. Curse even more, this time in Gaelic.

1:30 - got through the email just in time to write leave to pick up the kids from school.

2:30 - I'm home with the kids. There is no time to write until tomorrow.

Yeah, this is how my first week went.

Today I:

~ Got the kids off to school and checked email while I ate breakfast
~ Worked out & checked email while on the ellipitcal; showered quickly
~ Wrote for two hours
~ Ate lunch while watching my soap and checking email
~ Wrote for an hour
~ Picked up the kids

Nearly 4,000 words down and very little cursing. BAM! Hope to finish Severed before the end of the month.... :D

Exceeding a Goal & Setting New Ones

When I decided to self-pub, I worried about sales. A LOT. I worried that my  mom would be the only person to buy my book. I worried no one would ever find my novels and I would be a sad, pathetic failure.

Luckily, someone (not my mom) bought my book on the first day it uploaded to Barnes&Noble. I hadn't announced it was there and I still have no clue who that person was, but wow, what a mental boost.

Success stories swirled in my head: Amanda Hocking, Joe Konrath, John Locke, LJ Sellers. I never once thought I'd be in their ranks. Did I want to be? Sure. I still want to be a famous rock star too, but it's not like I'm focused too heavily on it (particularly since I can't sing).

My goal all along has been to be a solid midlister - never a superstar. I wanted to build a solid fanbase of readers who like what I write. Simple? Ha, well, not as simple as it might seem.


Over the first month, a number appeared in my head: 1,000. I wanted to sell 1,000 books. That, I decided, would be my goal.

Well, earlier this week I surpassed 1,000 sales. It took me nearly seven months, but who cares? I DID IT! 1,000 paid sales of my books. It's unreal.

Now that I'm on the other side of 1,000, things don't look too awfully different. There's no BMWs, no champagne and caviar parties, no afternoons lounging by the pool while I watch the pool boy from the corner of my eye.

I'm looking forward. I want to be like my friend Sarra Cannon who has sold over 35,000 books. 35,000. Makes me seem like small peanuts, but it also reassures me there's a market out there for kick-ass YA novels. (You'll read more about Sarra on my blog in a few weeks - she's amazing and I know you'll love her as much as I do.)

Someone, who shall remain nameless, suggested I shouldn't tell anyone that I just hit 1,000. Why? Because there are authors out there doing better than me and some people might assume I'm not good enough because I'm not among the elite.

I call foul on that. There will always be someone better than me at everything I do. That doesn't mean I shouldn't celebrate what I have accomplished. Let's all stick our our tongues at that person and blow!!!!




 My eyes are focused ahead. I have great things in the works - new YA fantasy novels, a MG fantasy, a contemporary YA, and a series that will make you question everything you believe in. As for a sales goal, I'm now looking towards 5,000 sales. It could happen next month (yeah, right), or in two years, but I'm not giving up until I get there.

Thanks for riding this crazy roller coaster with me!!!!

Worshipping at the Altar of Technology

O. M. G. I am soooooo glad someone invented the computer. If I had to use a typewriter to write Severed, I probably would have quit being a writer.

I'm having a blast writing, but I'm a little bit all over the place. I think this happens with pantsers like me. Since I don't have a plot line in my head, my characters tend to have conversations and experiences out of order.




I'm like Dug in Disney's Up. "Squirrel!"

The moment I think of another place for my plot to go, I make a note in my manuscript and start a new chapter.

For instance, last night I started on what I affectionately call Chapter Sexy (I don't number my chapters until the end). I was totally getting into it, but then some of my characters started having a conversation - one that really should take place earlier. So instead of carrying on with Chapter Sexy, I'm working on this very important conversation. How important? This convo explains why the book is called Severed. So yeah, totally important, and trumps working on Chapter Sexy.

Back to the typewriter. When I was little, I had trouble operating scissors. I may be the only child in the history of the world who couldn't use scissors. My school even had to give me special scissors because I couldn't use the normal scissors properly. To this day I have no idea why (note to self: call Mom). Right, so if I had to use a typewriter, and I wrote out of order, eventually I'd have to use a pair of scissors to cut the paper so I could tape it together in the proper order. Luckily I am quite proficient with tape.

Did it really take all of that for me to get back to my point about the typewriter? Yeah. Maybe the original point should have been about scissors, not typewriters.

You see why I write the way I do? This is how it all comes out. It's a wonder my books make any sense by the time I'm done! This is also why I do very little public speaking because I talk the same freaking way.

"Squirrel!"

C-ya. ;)