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Erin of Reinventing Erin interviews me.

Today represents Day Two of my blog-tour sojourn over at Reinventing Erin. Yesterday, I guest posted about the fears I had when the e-book was published, and today Erin’s been kind enough to interview me about my novella Beware the Hawk.

Who is Erin, you ask? Erin is a classmate of mine from the Fairfield University MFA program who is a long-time blogger. She’s a non-fiction writer, but she talked to me even though I was one of the unruly fiction types.

Check out her site. You’ll be happy you did.

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After a brief hiatus, the blog tour for my novella continues.

The Beware the Hawk blog tour continues today over at Reinventing Erin.

It’s been a few weeks since I had a guest post, but now it’s time for Round Two!

The delightful Erin Corriveau invited me return to her Defining Moments series with a guest post. I’ve already guested on this series (I posted about having two names) and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, so I was pleased when she asked me back. My defining moment this time? The moment my book went up for sale on Amazon last month.

I decided to use the guest post to talk about some of my insecurities, because although the publication experience was amazing and positive, I still found that I was battling my fears on the day my book came out. That’s not what I expected to happen; publishing a book was to me as getting married is to a Disney princess.

You know, I publish a book, live happily ever after, and  nothing bad ever happens to me again. Except that’s a silly expectation.

So head on over to Reinventing Erin today and check it out. Also, tomorrow, she’s posting an interview we did about the book, so come back tomorrow and take a gander at that, too!

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A little accountability please: New Year’s resolutions, month one.

It was not my intention to post this evening. I had instead planned to kick up my heels at the casino, but I’m killing off the remainder of the cold that was bugging me at the beginning of the week, so I’m home, hanging with Phyllis. I was berating myself for for not updating my blog enough when I realized that whoops, it’s the fourth of February, and I completely forgot to check in with my progress on my New Years goals.

Now’s as good a time as any. It’s that, or watch The Hunt for Gollum again, and I don’t know if I can stand to watch fake-Aragorn whisper any more lines while he stares moodily into the camera. Here we go:

Finish the second draft of my novel by April. Well, I don’t know if I’m going to make the April deadline, but I’m sure as hell going to try. I have my copies of my first draft, and they’ve been given out to one of my writing groups. I also have my office mostly prepped for the writing/revision marathon that’s about to begin. All I need is to spend a day reading through my own first draft.

Get it sent to agents before summer. That will depend on how the revisions go.

Send out at least three short stories. I have sent out exactly no short stories, but I have workshopped one, and I plan to re-tool it and submit it to my next writing group. Then it’s getting sent right out.

Read one novel a month in 2012. I’ve read two since January 1: The Fellowship of the Ring and a novella, Jack the Theorist. So that’s one and a half. I’m finishing The Two Towers right now, and then I’m taking a Tolkien break to read Carry-On, a novel by Chris Belden, an MFA colleague of mine.

Make at least $20 off a piece of fiction. I may have done this already. My book Beware the Hawk was released last month, and I know some people purchased it, but I won’t see a royalty check for a while, so I have no idea if I’ve made $20 or not. Right now, it’s enough to know that I’ve made even one cent off my creative work. Until now, I’ve been paid in writing credits, contributors’ copies and warm fuzzy feelings.

I also set myself to work on two of my big conflicts, which I will write about in detail at the end of the year.

The conflicts were my feelings about my faith and my issues with anxiety. I did a little bit of brainstorming about the faith issue, but I was forced to begin work on the anxiety issue after a panic attack in January. Right now I’m sporadically reading a good book about dealing with anxiety in a conscious way, called The Mindful Way through Anxiety, but I still have a lot of work to do, if I’m going to be ready to write an essay at the end of the year.

So that’s that. Stay tuned for more Beware the Hawk-related posts soon. I have a guest post interview coming up in the next week, and I’m hopefully going to have more blog tour dates to announce soon!


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Guest blog on Word for Words, and the winners of the giveaway.

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Alas, Spy Week has come to a close, but what a close! Today I did a guest post on Word for Words, the blog of fellow Fairfield University MFAer Adele Annesi. It touches on the worries I had about my first published book being genre fiction, especially right after my graduation from an MFA program which teaches the art of writing literary fiction.

Head on over and check it out, and then stick around to check out Adele’s blog. Also, take a peek at her short story “Last Kiss Before Customs,” recently published in Midway Journal. Adele writes quiet, poignant fiction, and it’s always satisfying for me to read what she writes.

Now – onto the winners of the giveway. Here’s the deal. I am off two copies of Beware the Hawk to people who told me yesterday about the most ridiculous thing they’ve had to do for work. I did the drawing this afternoon, throwing the names of the four entrants into the only hat I own that resembles a fedora. And here are the winners:Beware the Hawk giveaway winners.

That’s right! Dreampeddler, whose name is Jodie, and who once cleaned hotel rooms for a year and a half at an establishment where the other maids called her Katie (and the management made her clean the bathrooms with only the dirty towels) wins, as does Discourse in C Sharp Minor who spent her first day on the job filming a lecture on “nitrogen-pooping nematodes.” I love how excrement is a part of both the winners’ stories.

Our other two contestants were Cheese-borrowing Erin and Schnauzer-beard blow-drying Elizabeth.

Winners, please shoot me your emails and I will send you your prizes. And if one of you already has a copy and would like to cede your prize and give it to a contestant who doesn’t have the e-book, please let me know.

Thanks for playing!

 

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Ending Spy Week with a bang. And by “bang” I mean “giveaway.”

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Beware The Hawk novellaOr more in keeping with my character’s dilemma, I’m ending Spy Week with a crunch.

Remember when I said I was having a hard time telling people what my book is about?  I’ve had to summarize my novella a lot of different ways since then, but if you get right down to it, it’s basically about a girl who is having a really bad day at work. A bad couple of days, actually.

So here’s the deal. If you’d like a copy of Beware the Hawk, leave a comment telling me about the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever had to do for work. And then ‘like’ my Facebook page, because I’m needy.

This contest will be active all Friday. Then I will put all your names into a fedora and pick two at random. I will send those winners copies of my e-book.

And if you’re not into all that? Click here to watch another spy with issues.

Also, I’m still hanging on for more beard submissions, folks. But I do have some awesome beard pictures that were sent in to me, so I will be posting about that later today.

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Day three of the blog tour and my first review ever.

Day three of the blog tour takes us back to Wordvagabond, where I got my very first book review from the proprietess, Ally. I’m not gonna lie – I’ve been nervous about this aspect of the blog tour – knowing that your work is going to be reviewed is an exciting and scary feeling. It’s a little like having stage fright, except you’re home, on your couch, not on a stage you can flee, and the audience isn’t in front of you, it’s scattered all over the place. This review, however, gives me courage to face future reviews. Check it out.

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Spy week and day two of the blog tour at the Book Den.

The book release so far has been a thundering success. I have gotten so many kind comments, people telling me that they’ve bought the book, people sharing information about my book and folks requesting signed Post-Its. (I’m still doing that, folks! Send me your addresses and I will mail you a signed Post-It. Because that’s how I sign an e-book, and because I love you.) Also, my publisher has declared the entire effort to be a  (Facebook) event – Spy Week. That’s pretty awesome.

So, what’s up next for Spy Week? Well, the book tour continues with a guest post over at the Book Den, a book site that features many dark and interesting books. (Seriously, I’m sharing space with at least five books about zombies. That’s pretty cool.) My post is about the value of authors revisiting old work. Check it out and then stick around to check out the rest of the site. Just watch out for the zombies. They might getcha.

 

 

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The book is out and the blog tour begins at Word Vagabond!

Hi everybody! So, it’s my official release date today – the long-waited 17th and I can finally consider myself a published author.

If that weren’t exciting enough, today my blog tour kicks off! I was interviewed last night by the awesome Ally Arendt over at WordVagabond, and the questions were quite comprehensive. We covered everything from the first book I wrote, to the first book I loved, to the differences between writing for a newspaper and writing fiction.

Head over to WordVagabond and check it out!

Thank you Ally, for taking the time to interview me. Also, I want to thank a lot of other people, because I’ve been touched by all the support I’ve been getting.

I belong to a large and wonderful community of friends and writers, and people have been so generous. I want to thank everyone who shared my links on Facebook and Twitter, and everyone who clicked a ‘like’ button on my numerous statuses on Facebook and Phil Lemos for including me in his blog post today.

I also want to thank everyone who’s bought the book. I really, really hope you like it.

 

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Virtual book signing

News!

The official release date was tomorrow, but I’m told that my  book, Beware the Hawk, is already available on Amazon.*  There will still be a lot of hubbub tomorrow – I’m starting my blog tour over at WordVagabond and the book will be available at Vagabondage Press (no relation), but this is like a soft opening.

Signing Pen

A mentor gave me this pen to use at my very first book signing. I was bummed that I wouldn't be able to use it - until now.

So, for those who have asked, Beware the Hawk is an e-book. This is awesome for lots of reasons – it’s easy to download, it stays in print forever, it doesn’t weigh anything and it’s not killing trees. In short, it’s kinda made of magic. But one thing you can’t do with an e-book? You can’t sign it.

That’s a bummer, because book signings are fun. One of my writers’ groups once published an anthology and held a book signing and it was amazing. I could have signed books all night. I considered coming home and signing every book in my bookshelves, but luckily my roommate at the time, (who was also in the writers’ group, but who also had books on the shelves that she probably didn’t want me to deface) distracted me.

I digress.

Anyhow, I was sort of saddened by the fact that there would be no book signing at first, and then, during a conversation on Facebook, I realized that I don’t need to have a physical book to have a signing. In fact I don’t even need to be in the same room with everyone to have a signing. Here’s the deal.

From now until next Monday (Jan. 23, 2012), people who buy the book can send me an email with their mailing address. I’ll send you an autographed Post-It that you can put on your Kindle, Nook or computer while you’re reading my book. Not very fancy, perhaps, but who doesn’t like getting mail that’s not a bill?

So, if you want your autograph, send your mailing addresses to annjoconnell<at>gmail<dot>com. (Just until Jan. 23. Because this week is a special week.)

Then keep an eye on that mailbox. Now, if only I could figure out how to do a virtual reading.

* If you want to help a woman out, get it from the Vagabondage Press site. Both the publishers and I get better royalties and you get the book in three formats. Also, why reward Amazon for releasing the book early?

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Send me your beards!

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Not your real beards. Keep those on your faces. Please.

I want you to send me your “protest beards.”

What am I talking about? Good question. This past weekend, I posted about the horrible injustices faced by dwarf women in Middle-Earth.

That post – which featured faux PSA photos of me in a faux beard – has gotten a lot of views, and by a lot, I mean more than the eight views a day I usually get (normally because someone’s been Google Searching for a photo of the chick from Alien Nation).

Since there’s been a lot of interest, I’d like to invite you all to send me your protest beards. Below are some examples.

Ads for the bearded lady campaign

Photoshopped-in text is optional.

You can send me your protest in three simple steps:

1) Cut a beard out of paper.

2) Scrawl a slogan on it, condemning the oppression of female dwarves in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.

3) Using your cell phone or your computer’s camera, take a photo of yourself wearing the beard.

Then send it to me at annjoconnell<at>gmail<dot>com, which is technically the fourth step, I guess.

I will be accepting entries until Jan. 20, and then I will post the best ones. And because this is a contest there will be a (completely unrelated) prize. (Yaaaay, free stuff!) The person with the best protest beard will get a copy of my new e-book, Beware the Hawk. (Yaaaay, self-promotion!) I really hope I get some photos of beards, because I’d hate to host a contest and have no one show up. So get out your scissors and your Sharpies, and prepare to beard injustice in its lair.

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