Wilderness Survival Tips

The Wild. It's big, it's beautiful, it's scary, it's exciting - and NIGHTSHADE is out in it.

Penguin thrilled me by printing special edition ARCs for the ALA Midwinter meeting and giving them out to conference attendees. I'm just starting to receive tweets and notes from the lovely people who got a copy and are reading it, which is so freakin' amazing I think my head might explode. Thanks so much to those of you who've written to tell me how much you love NIGHTSHADE!!!

Since the book is in the Wild, I think it would be wise to establish my author's guide to wilderness safety (a.k.a blog rules now that NIGHTSHADE is circulating).

ANDREA'S WILDERNESS SAFETY GUIDE (New Blog Regulations)

Be prepared. [To bite your tongue - NO SPOILERS]

NIGHTSHADE is full of twists, turns, shocks, and head-spinners. Please don't ruin the experience for anyone else by posting questions or comments that reveal the plot. Any spoilery comments will be eaten [deleted].

Respect wildlife. [Be nice to other books]

As NIGHTSHADE peeks out of its den and makes its first forays into the deep, dark woods there are many other critters on the same journey. Writing books is a labor of love (and pain) and taste varies widely. When commenting, it's fine to say "NIGHTSHADE reminded me of, or it creates excitement like," but please don't trash other authors or books by way of trying to give me a compliment. That only makes all the woodland critters sad.

Don't feed the animals. [Be nice to each other]

Along those same lines, please keep comments respectful. Good books should engender strong reactions. That's great! But please respect your fellow writers, readers, and the blogging community by playing nice at all times. Which means:

NO

YES

If you wander off the trail, call the Ranger outpost. [Ask the author!]

Although I will patrol the blog for spoilers, I'm always happy to answer plot/character/world questions via email. So if you do want to discuss/ask/learn more about NIGHTSHADE and think you can't ask here, please send a message to andreacremerwrites (at) gmail (dot) com

Most importantly, enjoy the spectacular (I hope) sights and sounds!

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this was a small, special run of ARCs. Official ARCs will be printed this spring, and at that time I host contests/giveaways - I can't wait!

Get What You Give

There are some very interesting ongoing discussions by Authoress and Screaming Guppy about writing rule breakers. The points made by these two astute bloggers are informative and important, if unsettling.

And my naive little self can't help but be a bit shocked. Why are writers trying to skirt the protocol of querying/publishing?

I could understand if the "rules" asked you to hand over your first born a la Rumpelstiltskin, but Authoress gives aspiring authors wonderful venues to learn the craft AND the chance to show their stuff off to Secret Agents. She's doing the writing world a great service - so I had an eye-bulging episode when I heard she'd had entrants who cheated on the contest rules.

These sad, sobering tales of evil shortcuts is even more shocking to me because I've found the writing community to be such a cooperative and welcoming one. When I hear horror stories about authors forcing manuscripts on agents at conferences or submitting blanket queries addressed "Dear Agent" I wonder who these folks are. Certainly they aren't the wonderful writers I've met in the blogosphere and at conferences.

Real success in this endeavor isn't about cutting corners and getting ahead, it's how much we learn from each other and help our fellow writers traveling on the same road.

A few bad apples should not be allowed to taint our beautiful word orchard. At the end of the day writers, agents, publishers are all on the same team with the same goal.

Team: Book Love
Goal: Get more great books out into the world

Time for campfire songs! Or even better, Beaker doing torch.