Paige Agnew's Blog

Synopsis:

GetReal.com—it was her escape, the only place she could go and say whatever she wanted without the world judging her for once, the only place she could go where no one would find out how she really felt about how her perfect boyfriend dumped her, how her father’s alcoholism landed him thousands of miles away, how her prodigal son of a brother dropped out of college and moved back home, and how her mother would walk around pretending as if none of these things even existed. As her last year of high school approaches, Anna realizes it’s time to make a change. But she never would have expected the newest change to be the boy that could see right through her façade, the only place besides GetReal.com that she finds an escape.

I’ve always found the concept of “diary” books interesting but annoying. However, I’ve always wanted to keep a diary myself and have many failed attempts and thought about what it’d be like to truly document my life. But life’s not that interesting…or at least mine anyway. There are interesting bits and pieces here and there, but in its entirety, it would never be something I could truly capture. So in my imaginary world, I created a character who could do what I couldn’t do—document their life in some form of a diary, but better. The main character, Anna, creates a website where she talks about her life and those entries are almost seamlessly integrated with the regular narration of the story, never interrupting it or taking anything away from it.

Get Real has a special place in my heart because subconsciously or consciously, I put a lot of pieces of myself into Anna. She writes in GetReal because, fittingly, it’s the only place she feels she can be real. In the way that she goes to a website to express herself is the same way I write books to express the thoughts and emotions that I have.

Anna meets Spencer, the unlikely geeky boy that helps her reconnect to the world around her. Through him, she gains the courage to speak up herself and help her broken family regain what they once had. Spencer helps her learn that not everything is perfect and it doesn’t have to be. Imperfect can be kind of great too.

I’d tell you to look for Get Real soon, but it’s entirely too long and needs a lot of revision…even though I hate revision with a flaming passion. Hopefully the process goes well.

Synopsis:

GetReal.com—it was her escape, the only place she could go and say whatever she wanted without the world judging her for once, the only place she could go where no one would find out how she really felt about how her perfect boyfriend dumped her, how her father’s alcoholism landed him thousands of miles away, how her prodigal son of a brother dropped out of college and moved back home, and how her mother would walk around pretending as if none of these things even existed. As her last year of high school approaches, Anna realizes it’s time to make a change. But she never would have expected the newest change to be the boy that could see right through her façade, the only place besides GetReal.com that she finds an escape.

I’ve always found the concept of “diary” books interesting but annoying. However, I’ve always wanted to keep a diary myself and have many failed attempts and thought about what it’d be like to truly document my life. But life’s not that interesting…or at least mine anyway. There are interesting bits and pieces here and there, but in its entirety, it would never be something I could truly capture. So in my imaginary world, I created a character who could do what I couldn’t do—document their life in some form of a diary, but better. The main character, Anna, creates a website where she talks about her life and those entries are almost seamlessly integrated with the regular narration of the story, never interrupting it or taking anything away from it.

Get Real has a special place in my heart because subconsciously or consciously, I put a lot of pieces of myself into Anna. She writes in GetReal  because, fittingly, it’s the only place she feels she can be real. In the way that she goes to a website to express herself is the same way I write books to express the thoughts and emotions that I have.

Anna meets Spencer, the unlikely geeky boy that helps her reconnect to the world around her. Through him, she gains the courage to speak up herself and help her broken family regain what they once had. Spencer helps her learn that not everything is perfect and it doesn’t have to be. Imperfect can be kind of great too.

I’d tell you to look for Get Real soon, but it’s entirely too long and needs a lot of revision…even though I hate revision with a flaming passion. Hopefully the process goes well.

Find my contests on Goodreads, Library Thing (give-a-ways), and my website.

Holiday Contest

Entry Dates – November 20, 2011 thru December 16, 2011

 

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Seven

by Paige Agnew

Giveaway ends December 16, 2011.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

 

Goodreads Book Giveaway

A Starless Sky

by Paige Agnew

Giveaway ends December 16, 2011.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

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Seven strangers, one purpose. The purpose? Escape the kidnapper. But how will they ever accomplish such a task when they are so different? Will they all live? Seven promises to end with a bang and with lives changed forever.

Twists, turns, metaphors, and clues.

Find out more at www.PaigeAgnew.com and join author, Paige Agnew on the Seven virtual book tour in September.

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My first interview. 

Lady Serenity, Rachel Berry of the Heart & Soul Radio Show, made doing an interview easy.  Sure I was nervous, but she was great!  Everyone should be so blessed to have someone like her to be their interviewer. 

February 26, 2pm – 4pm

Literary Life Bookstore – 758 Wealthy St SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49503

Listen to audio book excerpt

Purchase Starless Sky

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Fans ask if the people in Starless Sky come from my real life.  Well, no, but sometimes sorta.  By that, I mean that I sometimes take small tidbits from real life and use it with the people in Starless Sky.  For example, the characters, Kahlen and Kennley play the Random Game. 

I came up with the Random Game during track season a few years ago.  My friend, Ally, and I were bored at the track banquet and I asked her to play the Random Game.  After giving her instructions, which I made up, we played the game.  The rules are: (1) the person who begins says something completely random, (2) the person who responds has to say something random and completely unrelated to what the first person said – only 5 to 10 seconds is allowed for a response, and (3) the game goes on and on, back and forth, until one of the players fail to come up with a response in the alloted time.  For example, the first person says "tatoo" and the second person says "needle."  Obviously the second person loses.  Another example would be, the first person says, "tatoo" and the second person says"shoe lace."  The first person would then respond with something random and completely unrelated to "shoe lace,"  such as "mattress."  The Random Game does not have to be limited to two people.  You can always find more than one person who is looking for a distraction (and of course, I am not saying anyone needs a distraction from school work, or that anyone could ever be bored in math class).   As you probably have guessed, I am not a huge fan of math.

  Random Fun

 

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What I learned:        

I think the reason people fail when it comes to writing is that they fail to plan.  My Uncle Mark (who is in the Navy and known by others as Tim) has a sign in his office that says, “A failure to plan is a plan to fail.”  All of my previous writings involved little to no planning; I was the puppet master making crazy, unrealistic things happen with my characters. The first step in Starless Sky was changing that. Looking back on it, I was organized with Starless. I had everything planned but not to the extent that I do now; I write with notebooks upon notebooks of character and plot notes.

            Plan. What do I mean by plan? You can’t tell a story if you don’t know it. You have to play around with ideas inside your head and get to know your characters and their personalities. What would they say? What would they wear? Who would they hang out with and why? The more real the world is inside your head, the better it transmits to paper.

            One of the most important things I learned while writing Starless was that it’s important to build the story based from the story. It has to be cohesive and cadent. I really didn’t have much of a plan or a plot for the first chapter but that was okay as long as I starting building from there. When Kahlen first met Kennley at the creek, I had to ask myself who I wanted Kennley to be as a character. I wanted him to be a bad boy, but he seemed too nice for that. Okay. But why? Why would a bad boy seem good? Well maybe he used to be bad but now he’s not anymore. Well what changed? Hm, I don’t know. And since I don’t know, I won’t let the audience know either. For now, let’s just make him…a mystery:

“My thoughts were all distracted when I saw Kennley speed walking across the street and dodging cars while he was talking on his cell phone. He looked like he was unusually angry. Although I didn’t know what his usual behavior was, he seemed much too friendly and jovial to have a look like that on his face. He screamed something I couldn’t hear— partly because my window was up— before he slammed the phone shut, and took off in a fully fledged sprint down the street. I pushed aside my curiosity, turned the key in the ignition, and pulled off down the street to the closest McDonald’s. ”

I built from that and kept building and building and finding answers to my own questions and began to develop his character more and more.

Another thing I learned while writing Starless is that backspace (on the keyboard), aka, delete, can be your best friend. It’s important to be critical of your writing. There have been times when I’ve written a whole chapter and then decided I must have lost my mind and deleted the whole thing. It is important to read over your work to catch mistakes like taking your story in a direction you shouldn’t.  I recommend reading over your writing after a day or two so your brain can be fresh and you can easier look at your work from the reader’s perspective. When I’ve finished the whole book, I go back and read it as a whole, tweaking here and there to make sure the dialogue and character’s actions are realistic.

            Honestly, I don’t think my journey through Starless would have been much of a journey at all without God’s help. The months that I spent writing, I had the same prayer on my lips, “God, if you bless this book, I’ll dedicate it to you.”

 

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What I learned:        

I think the reason people fail when it comes to writing is that they fail to plan.  My Uncle Mark (who is in the Navy and known by others as Tim) has a sign in his office that says, "A failure to plan is a plan to fail."  All of my previous writings involved little to no planning; I was the puppet master making crazy, unrealistic things happen with my characters. The first step in Starless Sky was changing that. Looking back on it, I was organized with Starless. I had everything planned but not to the extent that I do now; I write with notebooks upon notebooks of character and plot notes.

            Plan. What do I mean by plan? You can't tell a story if you don't know it. You have to play around with ideas inside your head and get to know your characters and their personalities. What would they say? What would they wear? Who would they hang out with and why? The more real the world is inside your head, the better it transmits to paper.

            One of the most important things I learned while writing Starless was that it's important to build the story based from the story. It has to be cohesive and cadent. I really didn't have much of a plan or a plot for the first chapter but that was okay as long as I starting building from there. When Kahlen first met Kennley at the creek, I had to ask myself who I wanted Kennley to be as a character. I wanted him to be a bad boy, but he seemed too nice for that. Okay. But why? Why would a bad boy seem good? Well maybe he used to be bad but now he's not anymore. Well what changed? Hm, I don't know. And since I don't know, I won't let the audience know either. For now, let's just make him…a mystery:

"My thoughts were all distracted when I saw Kennley speed walking across the street and dodging cars while he was talking on his cell phone. He looked like he was unusually angry. Although I didn't know what his usual behavior was, he seemed much too friendly and jovial to have a look like that on his face. He screamed something I couldn't hear— partly because my window was up— before he slammed the phone shut, and took off in a fully fledged sprint down the street. I pushed aside my curiosity, turned the key in the ignition, and pulled off down the street to the closest McDonald's. "

I built from that and kept building and building and finding answers to my own questions and began to develop his character more and more.

Another thing I learned while writing Starless is that backspace (on the keyboard), aka, delete, can be your best friend. It's important to be critical of your writing. There have been times when I've written a whole chapter and then decided I must have lost my mind and deleted the whole thing. It is important to read over your work to catch mistakes like taking your story in a direction you shouldn't.  I recommend reading over your writing after a day or two so your brain can be fresh and you can easier look at your work from the reader's perspective. When I've finished the whole book, I go back and read it as a whole, tweaking here and there to make sure the dialogue and character's actions are realistic.

            Honestly, I don't think my journey through Starless would have been much of a journey at all without God's help. The months that I spent writing, I had the same prayer on my lips, "God, if you bless this book, I'll dedicate it to you."

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The Inspiration:[image error]

I remember the exact moment I began to write Starless Sky. I had just finished watching 13 Going on 30 on FX (the let’s-play-this-movie-a-hundred-times TV station) and I was bored, which usually triggers my writing. I’d been playing around with some ideas for the book for awhile, but I never thought it would turn into something serious. Too many times than I’d like to admit to, I had starting writing a story and then grew uncommitted and stopped. I didn’t have much hope that Starless would be any different…but when I realized how much I just wanted to finish a story, not to get published or anything, but just simply to finish it— I turned to prayer.

How I got the idea for the story was simple. How many times have you read a book or seen a movie where a character dies and you can’t help but bawl your eyes out?  (Never? Well then, may I recommend Nicholas Sparks?) I have experienced my fair share. So, I wanted to find a story where I could tap into something as deep as death, but instead of leaving the reader in despair, portray hope. That was the main reason I wanted to write this story. I wanted to take on the challenge of writing a book about death that wasn’t sad.  In addition, the story gave me an opportunity to draw from my own very real pain of having recently lost someone I loved so much.