THIS IS HOPE

            People suck.

 

            James Foster tells Emma Ryan this the night the world ends, but it takes a sadistic psycho with a hunting rifle to beat the lesson into her. After a traumatic adolescence, Emma’s built herself a perfect little bubble: great job, beautiful house, adoring family…and a little bit of James on the side.

 

            But Emma never could have predicted this. The power’s gone, planes fall from the sky, crazies emerge from the hills of Montana, and Emma’s stuck eighteen hundred miles from home with a man who isn’t her husband.

 

            With the last remnants of society crumbling around them, James makes Emma a promise: he’ll get her to Atlanta or die trying. They set out to traverse the country on foot with only his dog for company.  Emma and James try to avoid people. But, people find them. They come across the best—and worst—of humanity. When they have their backs to a wall, seconds from an extremely nasty death, they are saved by the kindness of strangers. In the hell the world has become, even kindness isn’t free. The cost for Emma and James may destroy what little normalcy they’ve managed to cling to.

 

Everything has to end, and when Emma and James’s journey finally does, it is nothing like either expects.

           

It's amazing what an offer does

In terms of agents, that is.

I got an offer--the offer, actually--last Friday, and it has been insane. My phone is constantly ringing with "blocked" numbers, my emails are piling up, and I've been sending out chapters and author bios left and right. Honestly, an agent I hadn't queried contacted me.

And the offer itself? The only word to describe it is magical. There was one agent who all along has been a huge champion of my story, and the fact that the offer came from her is quite astounding. The fact that people are reading what I'm writing? It's like a dream. I never thought that I would be choosing between agents.

I am starting to have faith that this could actually happen. That one day, I could hold a copy of a book that I've written in my hands and see it on shelves. I had to buy a book for a friend's baby shower on Saturday, and I stood there in the fiction section for a moment, looking at all the books. As I have since I was young, I thought "Someday...."

But now? Someday seems like it may be a reality.

I will be making my decision in the next day or so. Exciting times! I'll announce it here, and on Twitter, and FB and I may even scream it in the streets.
Dori

Feeling discouraged

When emails go unanswered, I feel sad.

Hanson Hornets?

Not too bad, considering. The color is right, and the H...

My dive into YA...Playing on Ice

So, I decided last year, in maybe September, to jump into YA writing. Why? Well, for a couple of reasons. One is that as a high school English teacher, I am completely surrounded by it. Another is that I needed distraction. This is Hope was just in the beginning of querying, and the best way for me to calm those Oh My God, I just sent this to an agent jitters was to start writing.

I'm always a bit of a slow start. Poor Jenna and Wes had to wait until I was halfway done with their story before it grabbed me....you know, before I started living and breathing in their world instead of my own. But I did, and I shed tears in Nebraska when Aaron and Darrell told their story, when Michelle appeared out of a solid rock wall, when Heather told us about Haley, and when Jenna and Wes were faced with the end of their journey. That moment broke my heart.  The best thing I heard about the book was from my mother at Christmas. She told me that after she finished reading This is Hope, she moped around for a few days before she realized what was wrong. She missed my characters. For a writer, another Oh My God! moment. But while poor doomed Luke and Bekah grabbed me from the first moment, Jenna and Wes took about 30,000 words.

Collin and Dani took a lot longer.

But Dani and Collin are different. First of all they're not lovers. They're stepbrother and sister. Second of all, instead of thirty-six in my first book and thirty-eight in my second, they're seventeen and eighteen. They're in high school. And they are both flawed and damaged in ways my other characters haven't been.

So, I was about 40,000 words into a story. I thought I knew where it was going, but I really didn't have any drive to get it there. I was waiting for that moment, for the second when the story would grab me and not let go, the moment I would leave Green Cove Springs, Florida and live in Hanson, New Hampshire. After all, I'd lived in Mashpee and Barnstable on Cape Cod with Luke and Bekah. I'd walked from Smithfield, Montana to Callahan, Florida with Wes and Jenna.

Then, this past weekend, I had some personal stuff go wrong. And I decided to go to Hanson for a little while to recover. And I stayed there for 25,000 words. The story was nothing like I'd thought it would be. It's darker, but also more redeeming.

So I'm calling it, y'all. I've finished the first draft of my very first YA novel. It's a hair over 65,000 words. I expect it to be in the neighborhood of 70-75k when it's really ready to query.
It's called (for now) Playing on Ice. Here's the early draft of my query if you're curious.

Playing on Ice

She took a drink from her boyfriend at a party, and it wrecked her entire life. Daniela Guzman’s sure that nothing in front of her can be as bad as what she left behind. Trusting the wrong person tore her life apart. The high school senior decides to escape the harassment of her former friends and move in with the mother she hasn’t seen in eleven years. When she gets to New Hampshire, Dani only has two goals: finish high school and be left alone

She couldn’t have picked a worse place to disappear. The whole graduating class of Hanson High School numbers just eighty three, and they’ve all known each other since infancy. She’s the only non-white student in the school. In Hanson, ice hockey is life, and Dani’s stepbrother Collin is the captain of the team. Dani is thrust into the social spotlight, especially when one of Collin’s teammates takes an unhealthy interest in her. 

Everyone tells her she’s lucky. Derek’s gorgeous, and he seems like a nice guy, but Dani just wants to be left alone. Derek’s interest turns to obsession, and when he finds out Dani’s history, he uses it to blackmail her into his bed. The betrayal and humiliation, so like what happened to her in San Diego, threatens to ruin what little happiness Dani’s found. When Collin discovers what happened, he rushes to her defense without thinking. The resulting clash has catastrophic consequences for everyone involved. With one classmate dead, another gravely injured, and her so-called secret splashed all over the hallways, Dani is forced to face her own guilt and stop running away. Because in Hanson, she just might have found something worth staying for.

  And, introducing (among others) Collin Anders, Dani Guzman, Derek Powell, Ashlee and Kayla Reid, Cris and Troy Mercier, and Jonathan Campbell. Collectively, they are one-tenth of HHS's senior class. And they all have issues.

Who doesn't?