When I was doing one of the rewrites of Giftchild
That writing exercise is here. Spoilers abound, so if you haven’t read the book, I suggest you do that first. For those of you who have, this takes place as Rodney is leaving Penny on the bleachers.
The post is password protected. The password is spoilers.
Last spring I gave a lecture to Brandon Sanderson’s BYU writing class. It’s now up on YouTube, and you can watch it here:
I recommend all of Brandon’s class series videos. He’s a fabulous teacher.
My new release GIFTCHILD
I first had the idea for the book when I was looking at an adoption website. I was linked by a friend who had just launched a profile there–a friend who had gone through years of infertility and the pain of not knowing when or if she and her husband would ever be able to have a child. She wasn’t the first friend I’d watched go through this, and the number of profiles on the website attested that she was far from alone.
The profiles for prospective adoptive families were lovely on the surface. Some of them already had older children, and some did not. All were trying to put their best selves forward, presenting beaming photos of family celebrations, in the hopes that a birth mom would pick them to adopt her baby.
But despite the best efforts of the families, the profiles didn’t feel happy to me. When I looked through them, all I could see was the pain. Of course they tried to sound hopeful, but behind the hope was a thinly-veiled ache at the trauma they’d been through–the inability to have the children that they so wanted to have. I was familiar with the pain, not personally, but from the experiences of friends. And I thought back to propaganda I’d seen about how wonderful adoption was, and while I believed that was true in a way, it also felt true to me that every single person involved in most adoptions will experience profound pain. The birth mother at separation from her child. The adoptive parent at the uncertainty of ever being able to have a child. The child at separation from his or her biological parent. Adoption may be a wonderful solution, and is certainly a miracle in many cases, but the problems it solves are heart wrenching, and the whole process is far from simple.
I wanted to get at that pain. I wanted to explore it. So I did what I always do when something disturbs me. I put a teenager in it, and wrote a book.
That first draft was about Penny and her sister, who desperately wanted to adopt. In later revisions it became her mother instead, because it was more powerful for Penny to live inside the problem, and a mother-daughter relationship has many more complications than a sibling relationship.
But as I worked through revisions, something happened that never happens to me. I’ve never been the writer whose characters take over and do things I don’t want them to. Quite the opposite–I’m painfully aware that if I want my characters to do something, I have to motivate them all on my own. But this time, one character overstepped the role that I’d originally intended for him.
Rodney wanted the story to be about him.
Here’s the thing about birth fathers–they are so often overlooked, both socially and legally. Clearly not every birth father cares and is involved, but perhaps more of them are than are often given credit. Here I was doing the same thing–I needed Rodney to provide the child for my book, but the more I wrote about him, the more his relationship with Penny became the story.
And so, I had to rewrite it again, putting my high concept idea into the background, and letting Penny and Rodney be the core of the novel. I’m so very glad I did. Rodney and Penny’s romance story is my favorite thing I’ve ever written. It exists, like its concept, in a messy space, full of hurt, but also of love and hope.
I hope that you’ll share it with them.
To celebrate the release of Giftchild
Thanks to everyone who has been spreading the word! Every bit helps!
My contemporary YA novel, GIFTCHILD, officially releases today!
You can find it on Amazon in both paperback
AND, if you buy the paperback today, you can use the Amazon code HOLIDAY30 to take 30% off. (This works on any one book today on Amazon. Just saying.)
I am so excited to share this book with you. Over the next few weeks I’m going to be blogging about the idea behind it, and the drafts that went into it including some deleted scenes. But for today, I’m just going to leave you with the cover and the blurb:
Penny adores her best friend Rodney. He’s always there for her, and she knows they’d be the perfect couple—except that they’re still in high school, and she’s watched too many friends go through painful breakups. Besides, Penny has bigger things to worry about—like her mother, who desperately wants to have more children.
After an endless string of miscarriages and failed adoptions, Penny’s mother is ready to give up hope. But Penny has the perfect plan: if she gets pregnant, she can give her mother the baby she’s always wanted. Penny’s sure this is the right thing to do, but only after she sets her plan in motion does she realize that sex will change her relationship with Rodney—in ways that she never expected. And the more she tries to fix things for her mother, the more she risks losing everything she wants for herself.
All Penny wants is for the people she loves to be happy. So why isn’t anything going the way that she planned?
Want to win a copy of GIFTCHILD ahead of release? Enter this giveaway through Goodreads, ending next Monday!
Giveaway ends November 24, 2014.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Today I’m happy to present to you the cover of GIFTCHILD, my new contemporary YA novel, which will be out, possibly as soon as next week:
Release dates with indie books are a little rough–as I don’t control when the online store will actually post the book. But it’ll be out for sure by December 1st, and probably sooner. Stay tuned!
What’s it about? Nice of you to ask!
Penny adores her best friend Rodney. He’s always there for her, and she knows they’d be the perfect couple—except that they’re still in high school, and she’s watched too many friends go through painful breakups. Besides, Penny has bigger things to worry about—like her mother, who desperately wants to have more children.
After an endless string of miscarriages and failed adoptions, Penny’s mother is ready to give up hope. But Penny has the perfect plan: if she gets pregnant, she can give her mother the baby she’s always wanted. Penny’s sure this is the right thing to do, but only after she sets her plan in motion does she realize that sex will change her relationship with Rodney—in ways that she never expected. And the more she tries to fix things for her mother, the more she risks losing everything she wants for herself.
All Penny wants is for the people she loves to be happy. So why isn’t anything going the way that she planned?
Today I received the copy edit for my next novel, GIFTCHILD. This means we’re just weeks away from the book finally being available. The cover is nearly complete, and the back copy is in final revisions, and I’m so excited to share. Of all the books I’ve written (and there are many), this one is my absolute favorite. I hope you’ll love it as much as I do.
With indie publishing release dates are a bit sketchy, but I’m expecting to release the book near the first week of December. But if you want to be sure not to miss it, please sign up for my newsletter. I promise not to spam you, but you might also get the first look at the cover, before it’s released to the public.
If you like mysteries, check out Maryanne Snell’s Mystery’s End
It’s a parlor room type mystery set in the 1920s in a fictional house very much like the Winchester Mystery House. If you’ve never been there, you should go. But read the book first, because it’s delightful. This should be no surprise, as Maryanne is one of the coolest people ever. Don’t believe me? She talks about her own book (among other things) here.
Congrats on the debut, Maryanne!
Available Now:
Amazon: Kindle Edition
Amazon: Print Edition
Amazon: Print Edition
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