Keeper
As you may know, the first installment of Keeper came out in February 2014 and the next three volumes will release one each month, leading to the omnibus edition in July of the same year. And guys, you have no idea how this sounds to me. It’s music to my ears! I practically hear little cherubs playing harps and singing in angelic voices. That’s how thrilled I am.
It all begins seven years ago (that’s when I decided to become a writer.) In 2007, I started crafting my first novel, equipped with one awesome idea, absolutely no writing skills and a ten thousand pounds of naivety. Two years later—yep two, I know, even I cringe—I finished, and my awesome idea became a young adult fantasy novel, one that needed about two more years of work! O.o
Now, don’t panic, that book IS NOT Keeper. That’s another book that shall not be mentioned *pulls out a garlic necklace on said book*
And oh, boy! Did that book make me realize I had a lot to learn! Wow, just wow! Still, undeterred and more excited about writing than ever, I began working on another book, also an awesome idea . . . I mean teens who metamorph . . . how cool is that?! (Yep, I’m finally talking about Keeper.)
With my fingers very well acquainted with the keyboard by that point, Keeper didn’t take as long to write. Incredibly, I cut my time in half and it took me only one insignificant year of work (notice the sarcasm?)
But, as with any book, the journey had just began, because there’s always . . . revision time. Yay! Several rounds of those later, I thought I had a pretty good story and was ready desperate for some feedback. Yeah, authors can be pretty needy like that. Reviews, give me more reviews!
*clears throat* Uh, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, feedback. Since I needed someone to tell me I should quit writing and find another hobby, I thought what better place to take my young adult novel than to a place where young adult readers congregated. So that’s just what I did; I took Keeper to inkpop.com. Inkpop doesn’t exist anymore (it was absorbed by figment.com) but this was a site created by HarperCollins to find talent and let writerly teens hang out, a site a lot like authonomy.com. Every month readers voted for their favorite books and every month the top five were read by an honest-to-God HarperCollins editor.
What do you think happened to Keeper over at Inkpop? Something I still can’t believe. Within 3 months, the YA audiences there voted KEEPER not only to the top five, but to #1 where it stayed for the entire month!! Ahhhhh! How crazy is that? I was floored.
This happened in 2010, since I’ve written 6 more books and have learned tons more about the craft. Since I’ve gotten an agent and I’m in the process of signing a book contract. Incredible!
It took Keeper four years to finally be published, not because the book wasn’t ready, but because I was too busy writing other books, ‘cause that’s what I love to do most . . . WRITE. Then last year I finally said, “enough is enough, some of these babies have to go out into the world.”
So I did it, and now I give you my second baby, the one that came out looking very pretty—not the first one with the paper bag over its head—I give you: KEEPER!