Book 3 Cover Reveal + New Updates!

Yo, I meant to update about seven times already, but I kept getting distracted by -- shockingly -- the novella and book 3! But since intros are boring and totally skippable (shh, it's a word), let me just jump into the most exciting part:

WOO! Look at that cover -- aw, yisss. I'll be updating Goodreads with the new entry soon. With how things are going, we're right on track for a December release, and we've got much more room to stretch than we did with book 2 (which we finished just days before September 1st).

I'm not supposed to play favorites, but if I were to play favorites, then I would say book three is my absolute favorite so far. Don't ask me why or else I'll start gushing spoilers.

The manuscript is currently sitting with betas, who are very nearly complete with the novella. Once the novella's back with us, we have one last run-through before it's all set to go.

After all these months revising, it'll be a relief to actually start writing book four. My fingers are itching for some day-long, 10k marathons that finished the original 120k words of book 3 in about a month's time. Those were the days where I wrote until my fingers hurt. Aw, yes. Good times.

(Tip: if you're going to write until your fingers hurt, make sure your hands, wrists, and forearms are level so you don't get carpal tunnel, okay? Carpal tunnel is bad.)

On a final note, I've finally put together all the songs for the first book's soundtrack. I'll make a little banner and try to figure out the mystery that is 8Track and post it soon! Also, since this cover involved some more intricate changes than the others, and nine variations, I'll of course have another cover process post in the future!

Holy Freaking Curse Words in YA

I'm not really a heavy subscriber on the profound language of the curse word. I throw out the occasional bomb when I get angry, but it stays fairly PG13 (perhaps a little less so on the internet). I've always been like this, despite how my mother cursed (and still curses) like a sailor. It's just my personal decision, and I don't condemn anyone for making their own decision.

I'd be out of a girlfriend if I did.

So, in the spirit of banned book week -- someone told me the other day, "Cursing is a sign of lower intelligence and a lack of a command of the English language."

I got puffy. Super puffy.

I said, "I can curse all I want and still be fucking eloquent."

He didn't expect me to say that. Let's just put it that way.

To me, cursing is simply another way of communication, but the words themselves mean little after societal context is taken away. "Kill" is a dangerous word, and it's dangerous by its neutral definition alone. A child can read the definition of "kill" and know it's a bad thing. "Shit" is, well, poop. An angry word for poop. And it's the "angry" part that people generally don't like, even if a child reads the neutral definition and only giggles because poop is funny.

Because of this, there are appropriate times and places for this type of expression. But "appropriate" is sort of subjective, isn't it? Who gets to decide what language is "appropriate" for young adults?

My characters curse. They do. Well, not all of them do as frequently as others. Some of them throw out the occasional bomb as I do: when under excruciatingly uncomfortable situations where "shoot" just simply won't suffice. Other characters get a thousand times more creative.

(Seriously, sometimes I sit and stare out the window, brainstorming some of these curses because, wow, they're crazy.)

But the fact is simple: for me to censor or reduce a character's cursing is painfully out of character for them. It's in their character to curse the way they do, and my responsibility as a writer is to write honestly and truthfully. They curse. Some more than others. Some a lot more than others. But this is them. Good young adult fiction should always be honest to teens and never hold back, just because they're teens.

I've always considered Marionettes to be Upper YA for its edgier themes and language. I know I might have been a bit surprised if I'd picked up a book like this when I was a teen, but to be perfectly honest, the teens of today are not the teens of my day. Seriously. My teen section in Barnes and Noble was an itty-bitty thing. Now, it's growing at a rate that bookstores don't even know what to do with.

Also, teens are tougher now. They're more independent and, holy cow, they're a whole lot more aware of the world than I'd been. And just like with anything else, teens will decide for themselves if the language of the curse word is something they want to practice. Censoring it in fiction doesn't keep it from them -- it just makes them ask, "Why is this character saying 'shoot' instead of 'shit'?"

The Paperback of Book 2 is Available on Amazon!

The paperback of Fracture the Spider's Web is all up and available in the Amazon store! It looks nice, right? All bright and shiny and freaking awesome.

So far, for some reason, Amazon has the digital and the paperback as separate listings. You can search by title or series name and you should get both listings, so make sure to scroll a little bit down and the paperback listing should show up.

The first round of revisions for book 3 are done -- all I need to do is go back, tweak a few more things, and then it's off to the betas! There's also, of course, Interlude, the novella that I've just started revising. Compared to these massive manuscripts I'm used to, the novella will be easy-peasy.

That's all for now. Stay awesome.

Some Updates and Another Announcement!

WHEW. It's been a while since our last update, and even longer since we talked about anything fun. It isn't for lack of fun things -- noooo way. In fact, we have a ton of new things. Let's start with the most exciting:

Yep, the Marionettes series is going to have its very own little novella set after the events of Fracture the Spider's Web and before book 3, and we'll have more details about the story later on. Here's some of the things we CAN tell you about it:

• The release date is tentatively set for this upcoming October. We're chugging along on it and we REALLY want to have it out by then. Why? Well...let's juts say it's perfect for October. 
• Just like the Dance in Shadow and Whisper & Fracture the Spider's Web, the novella will feature multiple character viewpoints. The best part? Everyone will be in FIRST PERSON, just like Kali.
• The digital editions will be only 99 cents, but for a small window at the end of October, we'll be giving away digital copies for free. 

Writing this story happened spontaneously, but we've been having so much fun and laughing and crying our faces off. We're so excited to share this piece of the world and let you all get closer to the characters you've already gotten to know.

We'll update again when we have the synopsis, release date, and Goodreads page! Make sure you follow the Tumblog for piece-by-piece updates.

Next up --

The proof for Fracture the Spider's Web finally arrived!

It looks pretty awesome, but I'm going to make it look a tad awesomer before we officially make the paperback available. I'm even really proud of how the back cover came out?? It's pretty slick.

Now, I have to go through each page and make sure everything's beautiful. Once that's finished, I'll announce on the Tumblog that it's finally available!

If you haven't yet, you can add FtSW on Goodreads. Still gotta update the sidebar with new links herpaderp.

Added two new sprites!

Ave and Elliot are official additions to the Adoptables page in celebration of the second book. Geez, so many of the boys are just so unamused at being a sprite. Perk up, guys.

Revisions of book three have begun!

We took a brief vacation and now we're back to work. This book is my FAVORITE -- it's a secret I can't really keep. Events came together so naturally and the pacing was thrilling to work. Seriously, even I wrote myself into nervousness and anxiety of, "Holycow, what's going to happen next?!???" The characters are fantastic in this book, and they came out in ways I didn't expect them to. I'm really excited just to READ it again.

The tentative release date for book 3 is December, and if we finish with time to spare this time, hopefully we can send out actual digital arcs. Luckily, I don't think we'll be making the types of changes to book 3 that we had to make for book 2 to be as brilliant and complete as it is, which is super exciting.

I just really love the third book, okay. Don't judge me.

Anyway, that's it for now! More fun stuff later!

Fracture the Spider's Web Release Day!

Carmi is really just the go-to guy for adding a splash of excitement to anything.

ANYWAY! SO, HERE'S THE DAY! I'm posting this into the future, so, as a head's up, I hit the "publish" button on both Kindle and Nook, but it can take anywhere from 12-48 hours for it to become active.

If it doesn't show up in your Amazon/B&N search, check back again later. When I see both links live, I'll make another little update on the tumblog.

So, in short, I hope you guys enjoy! As soon as I can, I'll submit the book to Goodreads and announce when that's live as well! Thanks SO much for everyone's support -- it really makes us feel just all warm and fuzzy inside.

♥

Cover Talk pt. II

So, I've finally finished the fourth draft of Fracture the Spider's Web (AH, I can finally use the whole title now instead of the ambiguous "book two"), and now Victoria's in the process of copy edits, which means we're on schedule for the super exciting September 1st release date.

Since I talked about the cover of Dance in Shadow and Whisper, I thought it'd be fun to go into the process of this cover. The process was actually a bit different from how I though together the first cover, because now I had to think about how to carry the same theme of the first to the second.

An important part of covers for series is that they have to look cohesive. There's got to be some visually unifying devices that clearly identifies this cover as definitely part of the series.

I mean, that's totally daunting. Let me tell you.

When Victoria and I took our trip to Pittsburgh, I photographed everything. I got every angle of different buildings and cityscapes so that I had a wide range of pictures to choose from. Here's what the original base image of the cover looks like:

On its own, it's painfully ordinary, right? But, by the end, I had transformed the base image to look like this:

Up close, the building basically looks like a vector, but for Pittsburghians, the PPG building is easily recognizable. The building is such an awesome design, so how could I resist using it for this particular cover?

What I ended up doing was making a "sketch" of the second and third covers to make sure I could manage some key similar characteristics (yes, that means I've thrown the first draft of the third cover together already too!), so here's what the sketch looks like:

Welllll, I got the basic idea down, and that was the point. One of the first noticeable differences, of course, is that "web" was originally sketched out. I ended up scrapping that halfway through drawing out the letters because "web" was just hogging way too much of the composition. The letters were very heavy, stealing so much of the spotlight that the other letters seemed almost out of place.

So I decided to use regular Georgia for "web", and in the end it worked out well because I was able to place the series name much better-like.

This time around, I also decided to use an image for the back cover, since Fracture the Spider's Web has two sides. Here's the image I took out in the middle of Nowheresville:

I took a bunch of pictures of these trees, but the clouds were moving so fast that each snap is different from the next. I loved this one in particular (the first one I took, actually) because the cloud shapes mimic the shape of the trees, forming a lovely composition on its own. Here's how I transformed it:

It's TOTALLY distorted  by this point -- and also flipped. I did this so that the colors matched the front cover as closely as possible, and I flipped the whole image in its final form to get the right kind of symmetry.

Like this, the picture doesn't look very cool. At all. Looks like novice Photoshop farting around. BUT, with all the other layers on top of it, here's what the final product looks like without text:

Textures really make a difference! And the sunburst? Well, you'll have to read and find out!

(And, for the record, I loved being out in the middle of Nowheresville. It's so different from the smoggy California I'm used to!)

Book 2: Fracture the Spider's Web - COVER REVEAL

So, as we mentioned, today's the big day for the cover reveal of BOOK TWO. I've been SO EXCITED to show this to you all since I finished it last month, I only hope it meets the expectations that the first book set!

And since you probably skipped right over this, here, just take it already:

Fracture the Spider's Web is the sequel to Dance in Shadow and Whisper and will be out in Kindle and Nook formats September 1st (barring no setbacks from a higher power, since we definitely can't plan ahead for that).

And, if you haven't yet gotten your copy of Dance in Shadow and Whisper yet, we'll be discounting the digital versions to 99 cents. We set the price to change, but it can take up to 24 hrs for it to set in, so make sure you check first!

Like, holy cow, 99 cents, that's pretty sweet. BUT, we'll only have the discount until 11:59 p.m. on the 30th of August, a day before the release of the second book. So, if you've been waffling on getting your copy, now's a darn good time to do it.


Here's what the paperback will look like:

Eeeee I can't wait to put this up on the sidebar! We'll have the official release date of the paperback later. Updates to come!

Also, if you've read the first book, you can find the summary of the second book in the "read more". If you HAVEN'T read the first book, ohmygosh, don't read the summary. It'll be spoiler CITY!