Sarah Bromley's Blog

So I have recently learned that A MURDER OF MAGPIES has been picked up by Barnes & Noble for nationwide roll-out of titles by Month9Books.

What does this mean?

It means that MAGPIES will soon be available in-store instead of online ordering. I don’t know how many stores or where, but getting a book in a brick-and-mortar store is a big feat, especially when the book has been published by a small press.

What can you, dark and lovelies, do?

If you would like a copy of A MURDER OF MAGPIES but your local Barnes & Noble doesn’t stock it, ask them to order a copy instead of ordering it offline. Stores will rarely order just one copy of a book, and it’s a chance for A MURDER OF MAGPIES to reach more readers.

And who knows? Once it starts turning up in stores, I might throw a contest . . . Stay tuned.

 

 

Welcome to YA Scavenger Hunt! This bi-annual event was first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors…and a chance to win some awesome prizes! At this hunt, you not only get access to exclusive content from each author, you also get a clue for the hunt. Add up the clues, and you can enter for our prize–one lucky winner will receive one signed book from each author on the hunt in my team! But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online for 72 hours!

Go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. There are SIX contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! I am a part of the BLUE TEAM–but there is also a red team, a gold team, an orange team, a red team, and an indie team for a chance to win a whole different set of signed books!

If you’d like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page.

SCAVENGER HUNT PUZZLE
 
Directions: Below, you’ll notice that I’ve listed my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the blue team, and then add them up (don’t worry, you can use a calculator!).
 
Entry Form: Once you’ve added up all the numbers, make sure you fill out the form here to officially qualify for the grand prize. Only entries that have the correct number will qualify.

Rules: Open internationally, anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian’s permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by October 5, 2014, at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered.

SCAVENGER HUNT POST



Today, I am hosting Mary Elizabeth Summer on my website for the YA Scavenger Hunt!  

 

I’m so happy to share this with you all.

I haz a sad. I’m not at the Romantic Times Convention 2014.

But A MURDER OF MAGPIES is.

How?

See, back in 2008-2009, when MAGPIES was written, two authors spurred me on. They kept me going. They insisted I finish. They insisted I query. They insisted I never give up on the dream of seeing MAGPIES in print. And even though I couldn’t make it to RT this year, they are taking the little book that could with them to the big book signing. Follow my Twitter feed to find out where they’re placed at the big book signing and once you know, tell the keepers of the MAGPIES that you want in the “Magpie’s Nest” to get your chapbook!

Yes, I really am that short and Shawntelle is that tall.

Shawntelle Madison is a powerhouse who does it all. In her former life as a corn detassler, she’s now a web designer by day, werewolf mistress by night. Her novels about a werewolf with obsessive-compulsive disorder, COVETED and KEPT, were released by Random House, and she has mastered the art of being a hybrid author by carrying on the series through COLLECTED and COMPELLED. She runs Madison Designs (just by being here, you’re seeing her handiwork), and while she didn’t design the cover of A MURDER OF MAGPIES, she did put together the chapbook in a way that makes me look damn good. I’ve known Shawny for eight years, and we fell down the publishing rabbit hole together when when went to a mutual friend’s son’s birthday party together and she noticed I seemed super happy and it was because I was writing again after a long hiatus. I never knew she wrote, too. As such crit partners were born.

Bonus: Shawny’s got the swag! If you miss out on MAGPIES at the big book signing, have no fear–some may go rogue and Shawtelle will be the one to know where!

We are good girls who were clearly drinking root beer and white grape juice.

If you don’t know the name Cole Gibsen, you will soon. With the books of the KATANA trilogy (KATANA, SENSHI, & SHINOBI) complete from Flux, she is soon releasing SERENADE IN BLACK from SpencerHill Press and has even more up her sleeve! Shawntelle and I first met Cole in Coffee Cartel over five years ago. We were pumped because she had AN AGENT and we were newbies. Cole sat with her back to the wall and immediately asked us how serious we were. She was deciding if we were psychos. Now we’re all slightly mad, but that’s another story. Cole shaped Vayda in MAGPIES. She gave me some harsh but needed criticism of Vayda, and while it stung, it changed Vayda for the better. For years, Cole and I have held each other’s hands through thick and thin. Go see her. She’s an absolute hoot.

Bonus: If you miss out on getting MAGPIES at the big book signing, head over to the Teen Party on Saturday evening! Tell Cole she has cute shoes (trust me, she will) or cute hair (she has phenomenal hair), and she just might let you know where you can find more MAGPIES!

DON’T FORGET!!! Tweet me a pic of you and your A MURDER OF MAGPIES chapbook for a chance to win a signed, print ARC! I’m still taking sign ups for my street team, the Magpie’s Nest, which you can join by emailing me at magpiesneststreetteam@gmail.com and get the inside scoop on A MURDER OF MAGPIES: deleted scenes, extended scenes, character drawings, behind the scenes information, swag, and so much more!

If you are heading to the Romantic Times Convention in New Orleans this week, you are less than a week out from getting your hands on a chapbook with the first three chapters of A MURDER OF MAGPIES and other goodies! Don’t forget to tweet a picture of yourself holding your chapbook to me and Month9Books for a chance to win a RARE, SIGNED ARC of A MURDER OF MAGPIES! They will be at the big book signing and the Teen Party on Saturday, May 17th, and check my Twitter feed to find out who has them and other places where they may be hiding.

But what if you can’t go to RT and are still excited about A MURDER OF MAGPIES and want in on some of the fun of sneak peeks at early chapters, deleted scenes, character bios, and swag like bookmarks, chances to get signed bookplates, or even signed copies of A MURDER OF MAGPIES?

You can join my street team, the Magpie’s Nest by emailing magpiesneststreetteam(at)gmail(dot)com to receive an introductory email from me, learn about the Magpie’s Nest and A MURDER OF MAGPIES. You can help spread word about A MURDER OF MAGPIES, and the great thing is, it’s up to you how much you want to do, but every little bit helps. There will be chances to get fun prizes along the way and learn more about the MAGPIES’ world!

See you soon, dark and lovelies!

~S

 

All right, dark and lovelies, as I said yesterday on my Facebook page, if you’re heading to the Romantic Times Convention in New Orleans this month, you have a chance to win a print signed ARC of A MURDER OF MAGPIES!

HOW? You ask.

Easy. First, we’ll have a scavenger hunt on May 17th, during the big book signing. Follow the clues in my Twitter feed and Month9Book’s Twitter feed to find the authors holding print chapbook of the first THREE chapters of A MURDER OF MAGPIES. Go see the authors and say, “Magpie’s Nest,” and you’ll get a chapbook plus a teaser of the book’s awesome cover. Maybe you’ll even get some extra swag!

Have no fear, if you don’t snag one at the book signing, you can find some at the Teen Day party on Saturday evening or maybe even one gone rogue…but you’ll have to watch my Twitter feed to find out where.

Now how do you get your hands on A MURDER OF MAGPIES signed ARC? Tweet a picture to me  of you holding your copy of the chapbook by June 1st, 2014, and you will be entered to win a very rare print copy of the ARC of A MURDER OF MAGPIES that I will sign for you once they are available.

Check back next Friday for more news!

If you are interested in joining my street team, please visit contact page and drop me a note that you’d like to join the Magpie’s Nest.

See you on the dark side!

~S

Hey guys,

Now that the holiday chaos is packed up and put back into its storage bins for another year and the littles are back in school, I have time to sit and let you all in on a few updates. I am moving my blog over to this main website. It’s gotten to be more difficult to maintain both over the years, so I am working on archiving the old posts over here.

* The YA Scream Queens blog, where I post under my other pen name Sarah Jude, is up and running. If you want an insider’s look at the YA horror scene with up and coming YA women of horror, this is the place to be. We have posts on tropes, writing horror, movies, author interviews, giveaways. It’s really a rather spooky but awesome place to be.

* Also, I will be posting from time to time at The BookYArd, a new group blog made up of other soon-to-debut YA authors. We’ll be sharing the excitement of our debut year and trying to let potential readers know about our upcoming novels.

* My WiP is now going strong. I’ve been derailed a few times when my private life went to shambles. My daughter was very sick at the end of last year and was in and out of the hospital. She had surgery and a number of complications so that she was home-schooled for a while. She is doing better now, and I am grateful for the thoughts, prayers, and well wishes my family received during what was a rough time. And now it’s time to make words on the little murder book my agent calls “a killer concept.”

* Working on A MURDER OF MAGPIES and its sequel. I’ve had the storyline for MAGPIES 2 in my head for years. YEARS. I’ve now got a Pinterest board where I’m beginning to storyboard and conceptualize, which means the writing time is drawing closer. Sometime this year, there will be a cover reveal for A MURDER OF MAGPIES and if you are a blogger interested in featuring the cover, you can join in by emailing my publisher.

* Vertigo. Yep, still there and still a daily struggle. I have good days and bad days. The good days I’m very grateful for.

So that’s in a nutshell what’s been going on. Hope to see some of you this summer and fall as I start making rounds with A MURDER OF MAGPIES!

Sometimes life throws a curveball at you. Sometimes that curveball hits you right between your eyes.

It ain’t pretty when that happens.

This is a year where I’ve sucked at blogging. I really have. I do manage to hang on to my deadlines to get my blogs up at Scream Queens, but seriously, blogging over here has needed to take a backseat because of things called PRIORITIES.

As a writer, there will always be something else that demands priority over your word count for the day. It could be your dog needed an emergency trip to the vet (thanks, Penny). It could be the day job that’s sapped you of energy or the small creature you spawned that’s now projectile vomiting all over your carpet. Lots of things come up to take you away from your writing. And that’s okay. To a point.

There are a lot of people who are in love with the idea of being a writer but not doing the writing. They get all over Twitter and blogs and blab about developing craft, story ideas, whatever. But they’re not actually writing. Then they have the balls to complain they never have time to write. No, they haven’t made writing a priority, which means they aren’t writers.

Am I prickly about this? Yes. Because I would give anything to have more time to write and it’s not for a lack of making writing a priority. For several months, we noticed my daughter was sick and not getting better. She has been very sick as of late, enough so that we had to pull her from school for homeschooling so that she wouldn’t be held back. Every time I have fifteen minutes or more, I’m on the computer either trying to cram in a few hundred words or reading over a manuscript. Tweets come when I’m in the parking lot at the doctor’s office with the kid, not when I’m in the comfort of my workspace when I should be, you know, working. Blogging? Not a priority unless I have a specific commitment or deadline such as Scream Queens.

Somehow, slowly but surely, this manuscript is accumulating words, and it’d be very easy for it to sit and wallow as I sit there and whine, “But I have no time to write.” It doesn’t make me a better writer than others, but it does make me more committed. A story doesn’t tell itself. Words aren’t written unless you force yourself to get them onto a page, a used napkin, written in the snow with sticks. It’s important to live life, indeed. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy, but writing isn’t all just fun and giggles. Writing a book is an accomplishment, so give it the attention it deserves.

Source: Sarah Bromley

Sometimes life throws a curveball at you. Sometimes that curveball hits you right between your eyes.

It ain't pretty when that happens.

This is a year where I've sucked at blogging. I really have. I do manage to hang on to my deadlines to get my blogs up at Scream Queens, but seriously, blogging over here has needed to take a backseat because of things called PRIORITIES.

As a writer, there will always be something else that demands priority over your word count for the day. It could be your dog needed an emergency trip to the vet (thanks, Penny). It could be the day job that's sapped you of energy or the small creature you spawned that's now projectile vomiting all over your carpet. Lots of things come up to take you away from your writing. And that's okay. To a point.

There are a lot of people who are in love with the idea of being a writer but not doing the writing. They get all over Twitter and blogs and blab about developing craft, story ideas, whatever. But they're not actually writing. Then they have the balls to complain they never have time to write. No, they haven't made writing a priority, which means they aren't writers.

Am I prickly about this? Yes. Because I would give anything to have more time to write and it's not for a lack of making writing a priority. For several months, we noticed my daughter was sick and not getting better. She has been very sick as of late, enough so that we had to pull her from school for homeschooling so that she wouldn't be held back. Every time I have fifteen minutes or more, I'm on the computer either trying to cram in a few hundred words or reading over a manuscript. Tweets come when I'm in the parking lot at the doctor's office with the kid, not when I'm in the comfort of my workspace when I should be, you know, working. Blogging? Not a priority unless I have a specific commitment or deadline such as Scream Queens.

Somehow, slowly but surely, this manuscript is accumulating words, and it'd be very easy for it to sit and wallow as I sit there and whine, "But I have no time to write." It doesn't make me a better writer than others, but it does make me more committed. A story doesn't tell itself. Words aren't written unless you force yourself to get them onto a page, a used napkin, written in the snow with sticks. It's important to live life, indeed. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy, but writing isn't all just fun and giggles. Writing a book is an accomplishment, so give it the attention it deserves.

This past Saturday, October 19th, was the first Less Than Three Anti-Bullying/YA Literature Conference in St. Louis. It was healing. It was cathartic. I met so many wonderful authors. I knew it would be intense, but I don’t think I was truly prepared for the wellspring of emotion that it would unleash in myself.

Being an anti-bullying conference, everyone was there because we were connected by that unfortunate common bond: we had been bullied. Some had survived and seen the other side. Some were still trying to find a way to survive. Some still have echoes of what happened to them that haunt them even now. It’s those echoes that brought me to Less Than Three.

See, when I was younger, I was teased pretty mercilessly in grade school for the things that were beyond my control. I had long hair and loved horses. So the kids called me “Horse Hair.” I also had one hell of a temper, so when I was picked on, I would lash out very angrily. Because of my reaction, the kids teased me even worse. In fourth grade, a new girl came to school. She threw up on her first day, and as awful as it makes me seem, I was so relieved when she threw up and was humiliated because then I stopped getting teased quite as much.

I had a best friend, but she was teased as well. She was older because of where her birthday fell, and her name was easy to pick on. I really don’t blame her for not standing up for me when I was teased. That would only make things worse for herself, which was already pretty grim. Our teachers said, “Well, if you just didn’t react, they won’t tease you as much.” That’s a really hard concept for an eight-year-old to understand.

In fifth grade, there was a boy who was bigger and taller and gawkier than all the others. He was made fun of, too, of course. But because my best friend and I were short girls–girls who also developed breasts at a young age–he would corner us in the classroom to grab our boobs. It hurt. He would grab and pinch, snap our bras, give us titty-twisters. He did this to a lot of girls, but he seemed to do this to me a lot. Our teacher did nothing to put a stop to it. Somehow I got the idea that because I’d gotten my breasts early, I’d been asking for it. No one asks for that. No child in that situation should have a blind eye turned to her, and yet several girls in my class did. None of us told our parents what happened at school. It was just too embarrassing.

By sixth grade, it had gotten a little better. We were at the top of the totem pole in our school. The oldest. The ones who were just soooo grown up and getting ready to move on to our big junior high schools. But in sixth grade, the kids realized something. My dad was old. He came in one day to do a presentation about where he had lived in Europe, and some boys began making fun of him, whispering to me, “Old man, old man.” My dad was forty-five when I was born, and when I was in sixth grade, he was in his later fifties but could have easily passed for his seventies. He did not take care of himself and was mostly deaf, so he talked very loud. The kids made fun of how he talked. When he would pick me up from school, I would just cringe because no matter where I was, other kids nearby would laugh and point at him, calling him retarded and that I was a retard’s kid. They were so vicious to him, and I was so embarrassed by him that I’d get mad at him and yell that I didn’t want to be seen with him. I can’t imagine how painful that must’ve been for my father. My parents had lost a son at birth between my older sister and me, and I knew that they had wanted me so badly. And there I was, rejecting him. My dad died when I was seventeen, and I’d spent the previous three years taking care of him. But I don’t think I can ever forgive myself for being as downright nasty to him as I was during the time when I was picked on for simply being his daughter…

Junior high brought with it the chance to go to a new school. I went to a private school where the junior high and high school were in the same building. I had some shielding in that my older sister also attended this school. Some of the kids had already been together at other private schools, but I thought I’d found a group of friends. I was really into the Cure, so I wore a lot of black, way too much eyeliner, and was really pale. I wrote their lyrics in my notebook. One of the kids I was friends with told the school guidance counselor that she was worried I was depressed, which I was, but then the guidance counselor called my parents. He never talked to me directly. My mother’s reaction? Take away my Cure music. Because that was clearly the cause of my problems. There was another girl that I got along with, and for a time, I started to fit in. Some of it was because I had an older sister who could make the perverted jokes the other girls wanted to hear and would wave to them in the hallway. If a high schooler waved to a little junior high student, you were pretty cool shit.

But my sister graduated, and freshman year, things fell apart. Some friendships became strained or ended. I don’t remember exactly what prompted it, but I remember getting really sick of it and slamming one girl I’d once been friends with against the wall in the bathroom. I threatened her–I can’t remember with what, something stupid, I’m sure. Whatever it was didn’t solve anything. I wanted to seem tough so that people would just leave me the fuck alone, but it just led to rumors about me being unstable. And I was. I was being torn apart inside, and there was nothing being done to help me. When I reached out to my parents, my mother told me I’d talked myself into problems, into being sad and depressed and that it wasn’t real.

But the one of the nastiest things that happened was the Shadow incident. After going to a public junior high, my best friend from grade school attended my private high school. There was another girl who desperately wanted my friend to be her best friend. Because, of course, girls can only have ONE best friend.  Altogether, there was a group of about seven of us. We were all friends, but within our group, there was this strange unspoken rule that Mary and Kari were close, Amy and Julie were tight, and my best friend and I were close. That left one girl out. And she…to this day, I don’t know why and I don’t care…got nasty about it. It started off as little things in our chemistry class. We all sat together and this girl would say things to my best friend like, “Oh, Shadow’s been following you around, I see.” My friend would shrug and blow it off. But this other girl persisted. For weeks, she told stories about this clingy Shadow to my best friend, how Shadow had no life, how Shadow was obsessed, how Shadow couldn’t stand the idea of anybody else talking to my friend. She made it sound like Shadow was sick in the head, and all of us began growing concerned for my friend. Who is Shadow? We need to do something about Shadow! Let’s kick Shadow’s ass! I remember this girl saying, “I saw Shadow has a penis! Shadow was standing by (our friend) and had a huge erection!” The way she said it was so nasty. This was 1996, at a religious school. At the time, there were no kids who were out and proud, certainly not at that school. What she’d said was homophobic and cruel and intended to cause deep hurt. But she’d also messed up and said WHEN she’d seen this.

And then it dawned on me.

Shadow was me. This girl would not talk to me. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. She avoided me and snickered me and gave me little smug grins. She was making fun of me to my face and I hadn’t picked up on it. I felt so sick I didn’t want to go to school. I was so humiliated. It took a long time to get my courage up, but I called a few of the other girls in my group and asked if they knew who Shadow was, if they thought Shadow was me. The ones I talked to were very obvious that they had no idea who Shadow was but had simply gone along with this girl because they had been afraid not to. ANd when I asked my best friend about it, she said the same thing. At least I knew that they weren’t in on it, but I still felt so low and so mortified. But I was also really pissed. And I decided to call this girl and tell her I knew exactly what she was doing and that it needed to stop. So I called her, and she got hysterical and put her mother on the phone. Her mother yelled at me and told me to leave her daughter alone. When I told her what her daughter was saying about me, she denied everything, denied that her daughter even knew words like erection. I got off the phone, told my mother what happened between tears, and my mother held me and had a few choice words about the girl and her mother. If I remember correctly, there was a phone call between my mother and the other girl’s mother…but I’m not certain. My mother handled things very privately, but when she was pissed off, you did not cross her path. There were some very hellish weeks to come where I did not want to go to school. I didn’t know if this girl would talk to others in our class and tell them how “out of control” I was. There were rumblings, but nothing really came of it. The girl detached from our group and began hanging out with other girls. I think our group had realized if she did that to me, what was to stop her from doing that to the rest of them?

Time has has softened some of those hurts. It’s been fifteen years since I graduated high school, but I don’t forget that incident. In some ways, I have some satisfaction because I still have many of those girls as my friends. The one she tried so desperately to separate me from? We talk often and even have matching tattoos that we got this past summer. Other girls from that group are ones that I try to see every summer when I visit my hometown. I’m godmother to one of the girls’ daughters. What was set out to isolate me drew me closer to some who are among my dearest friends. I don’t know where that girl is. I used to be curious, but now I just don’t care.

It still hurts when I think back at these incidents. And there are other ones that I’m not ready to talk about. But I also know that I came out on the other side. I have a daughter who’s eight years old, the same age I was when I was first really teased at school. She’s had a classmate pick on her, and the difference is that now instead of letting kids be kids, schools and parents are more aware that words can harm just as much as fists and kicks. They’re doing something about it and teaching kids to stand up for themselves. Words can harm, but words can heal.

I’m looking forward to next year’s Less Than Three Conference. Are you?
~S

Source: Sarah Bromley