Catherine Ryan Hyde Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of more than 25 published and forthcoming books, including the bestselling When I found You, Pay It Forward, Don't Let Me Go, and Take Me With You.
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I was fortunate enough to be asked to provide a guest post for LGBT Lit Days (August 9-20) on The Story Siren, an excellent book review blog. I'm sure my upcoming transgender novel Jumpstart the World is a big part of why I was asked, but my novel Becoming Chloe also falls into the LGBT category. In fact, my novel Pay It Forward also included the character of a gay/transgender young man, but most people don't know that, because he didn't make it into the film.
If you don't know the importance of LGBT literature to gay and transgender individuals, especially as they come of age, I hope you'll take a minute to read what I wrote.
It's August first. And some of you know I've been collecting entries for a giveaway through June and July, for which I promised to announce a winner in early August.
What you may not know is that when I say I'll draw a name out of a hat, I mean it quite literally. So here is the hat in question, an Australian Akubra that was given to me as a gift while I was touring Australia and New Zealand in 2001.
Ella is normally a bit camera-shy, so why she decided to plant herself front and center in one of these shots, I can't say. But I saw no reason to push her away.
Enough of that. Time to say whose name came out of the hat.
On August 28th and 29th, I'm going to be conducting a "weekend intensive" workshop. And, oh, believe me. I don't call it intensive for nothing. Unlike many of my other workshops, this will be specifically geared to beginning and intermediate writers. Think of it as a place to feel welcome no matter what your skill and experience level.
It will be held from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Saturday and 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, with an hour lunch break both days. Each participant will receive no less than one hour of group attention to his or her work-in-progress (time a standard critique group just doesn’t have). We’ll cover story arc, characterization, self-editing, dialogue, great beginnings, great voice. If you’re brand new, and have never experienced a critique group, this weekend will help get you started. If you’ve spent time in critique groups, it will help you make sense of the feedback you’ve been receiving.
My first one!I just...and I do mean just...got a terrific suggestion from a Facebook friend and fan. A video slideshow featuring my readers. After all, as I've said on more than one occasion, who's more important than my readers? Without you, I'd be out of a job.
So, this will be very easy...for you. Just send me a photo of yourself with one of my books. Be straighforward, or highly creative. It's up to you. That's it. I'll do the rest.
Give me time with this, because it will take a while to gather enough photos. But if you'll send 'em, I'll make it happen. Count on it.
Familiar with Internet references to something "going viral"? Here's hoping it's healthier than it sounds.
All I seem to have figured out for sure about viral-ness is that it happens to other people. People with truly bizarre YouTube videos. Celebrity stuff. But today I decided to play a game to see how viral I can get a video to go. I figure it's like changing the world. You set out to change it a lot, but maybe miss the mark and change it a little. But that's still good, right? Small change is better than no change at all.
The video is the Love in the Present Tense video excerpt.
Several months ago, I posted a blog making an offer. I had just cleaned out a storage space full of books, mostly my first two small-press titles, Funerals for Horses and Earthquake Weather. It didn't pay to keep storing them, but I didn't think I could fit them in my garage. So I offered to give some away.
Well, with the help of many loyal readers and fans who sent stamped, self-addressed mail bags, plus a fundraiser for the new Cambria library in which I gave three of my early hardcovers to anyone who donated to the library fund...they fit.
Here's a fun thing that I sincerely hope a few of my readers will try. There's a great site, www.storycasting.com. I was just reminded, via a Storycasting "tweet," that it was May 1, 2008 when I "cast the first cast" on the new site. (First author cast, really, but I couldn't resist saying "cast the first cast.") I was invited to participate, it sounded like fun, and I went out and cast the theoretical remake of Pay It Forward. (Don't get me started.)
Since then, I've cast some of the characters for a few of my other titles, so you can see how they look in "the movie in my mind."
Usually I don't like to say too much about the actual purchasing of books. I really don't lead you out to this site as a sales ploy. Of course I hope you read my work, but it's not all about the dollars and cents of what you buy.
But for several days I've been noticing what seems like a great deal to me, and I'm thinking some of my US readers might want it drawn to their attention. If you go to this page at The Book Depository, you'll see that they're selling pre-order copies of my new UK novel Second Hand Heart for $5.24. $5.24! It's marked 49% off. Granted, it's a paperback edition, but it's a big, nice trade paperback, high quality, not like a mass market edition. And they offer free international shipping!
After all, it's a brand new site, it's a brand new day...and I just happen to have one last ARC (advance reader's copy) of my brand new Young Adult novel (debatable, as always) Jumpstart the World. Check out its book page if you want to know what you're getting into (and with this book you just might).
Here's how easy it is to get into the running: just leave a comment. That's it.
A note to my wonderful (and I do mean that sincerely) UK and other out-of-the-US readers:
...that I figured out how to link this blog to MySpace entirely on my own. Which feels important, because I haven't been paying enough attention to MySpace lately. And I have so many wonderful MySpace friends. So, as with Twitter, I'll just have to repent, and keep my feet on the good road. I do solemnly swear.
...that I figured out how to get these blog posts to "echo" onto both my personal Facebook profile and my "page" as an author on Facebook?
In a word, no. Not even if this post appears in both places. I didn't figure it out. My Facebook friend Susan Gaddis was nice enough to tip me that it could be done, and as a result of that tip my very helpful techie friend Bob DeLaurentis figured out how to do it with my blog while I was out walking Ella. I'd love to take credit, but I'm too honest for my own good.
Many thanks to both Susan and Bob for helping me keep up in today's wired world.
Can't wait to hear what you think of my new site. It might take a few hours to finish forwarding, so if for any reason you end up on the old site, please check back later. But it's the same two URLs as always.
If you've gotten this far, I expect you've noticed that this site is...how shall I put it...entirely new. Built from the ground up all over again.
However, where the blog is concerned, I didn't want to erase all the communications I've posted over the past year. So I've pulled a big handful of blog entries from my old site and posted them here. They all had comments originally. If they were yours, sorry I had to leave them behind.
Every entry from here on out will be current and in real time.
You know, I almost called this blog "For Struggling Writers." Then it hit me. Is there any other kind?
Anne Allen posted a great blog today about critique groups. If you’re a writer, and are not familiar with Anne Allen's blog for writers, today is a good day to jump on board. Here’s a link:
Learning to understand and make use of criticism is a crucial subject for writers at every stage of the game. It’s hardest on newer writers, those who haven’t quite gotten their feet planted yet. But, believe me, if you write, you face critique.
Sound familiar? Probably because last year I wrote a blog with a very similar title. But, in that case, I was going a slightly different direction. That blog was more about speaking up. Not so much about what truth really is, how to find it, or how to know it when you see it, but more about saying what you really feel, popular or (far more likely) not.
I’ve given away a lot of books on this blog. But I’m hoping this giveaway will take the prize.
At the end of this month, I’m clearing out a paid storage space which is 75% full of brand-new-in-the-carton rare first edition hardcovers of my first two books, Funerals for Horses and Earthquake Weather. It just doesn’t make sense to keep paying to store them.
Now. Here’s the only problem. There are more than I can fit in my garage. Some may go to fulfillment sellers, and that’s all well and good. But what about my loyal readers?
So, a blog about what I think happiness is. I’ve been experimenting with the idea that it’s a decision.
Now, that’s an easy statement to argue. You may say, “But there’s so much I can’t control, and it makes me unhappy.” Right. True. There’s a lot we can’t control. But if we could be happy anyway, then we could be happy. Case in point:
My first true mentor was author Jean Brody (Gideon’s House, A Coven of Women, Cleo). I met her when I first had the guts to join the Cambria Writers Workshop and read my work out loud (picture if you will: hands trembling as they try to hold the printout; hammering heart; much pausing for life-giving oxygen).
She wasn’t an “easy” or “soft” mentor. In fact, I once stayed away from the group in despair when she announced that all my authority figures came off as stereotypes. I respected her knowledge so much that I allowed it to crush me.
I tend to think of myself as someone who speaks my mind fairy easily. So I’ve been quite surprised by my recent foray into a whole new realm of truth-telling (not as opposed to lying, which I haven’t done in years, but as opposed to keeping quiet about how I feel), because it’s shown me that I’m not nearly as good at it as I thought.
Not everyone is pleased by hearing my truth. I guess there’s no such thing as a world where you can say what you mean and enjoy everyone’s approval. And that, I think, is the real bottom line on speaking up. I guess it just boils down to this one key question: How much do you care what others think of you? More than I thought, I guess, but I’m doing it anyway. Because once you pull the covers off a pattern like that, there’s just no going home again.
The Cliffs at Ragged PointI seem to have a preoccupation with cliffs, both in fiction and in my everyday life. In Love in the Present Tense, Leonard launches his home-built hang glider off one. In The Day I Killed James, James drives his motorcycle off another. I quit my day job and became a writer.
Sounds like a one-time jump, but nothing could be further from the truth.
This morning I took a good look at my appointment book for the rest of the year. It’s a lot different from last year, because of my landmark (for me, anyway) decision to stop traveling and speaking on behalf of the Pay It Forward concept.
I was fortunate enough to be asked to provide a guest post for LGBT Lit Days (August 9-20) on The Story Siren, an excellent book review blog. I'm sure my upcoming transgender novel Jumpstart the World is a big part of why I was asked, but my novel Becoming Chloe also falls into the LGBT category. In fact, my novel Pay It Forward also included the character of a gay/transgender young man, but most people don't know that, because he didn't make it into the film.
