Video Cover Reveal Teaser
Are you ready to see the shiny new cover for COMPULSION? I’m beyond excited to share it with you. Watch the cover reveal video and you’ll see it the way I’d love to introduce it. But if you’re video-averse, that’s okay. Read on. And please, please let me know what you think. I hope you love it as much as I do!
FROM BLOGGER TO AUTHOR
One of the reasons I really can’t wait to hear what you think is that I’ve shared the whole path of this book with you. Or you’ve shared it with me. This blog is where I learned to structure and write a novel.
I only recently realized it’s been almost four years since I started this blog with a friend. Back then, at a local SCBWI conference, a literary agent gave us an hour-long presentation on the necessity of blogging. But what would we blog about? Well, writing of course. That seemed the obvious answer. Um. Yeah. Obvious to us and every other writer who ever had a dream of publication.
As a writer, I assimilate information by writing it out. From the beginning, I used this blog as a sounding board to learn craft, to collect and assimilate the information I was discovering myself–information I was learning from so many of you.
That’s the great thing about the online writing community. We learn from each other. It’s therapeutic to share the journey. I’m so thankful for all the support and friendship you all have given me and I’m happy to still be learning with you. The truth is, I’m still looking for the secret formula, the key to the alchemical process that will spin my straw words into gold.
Writing is magic, and we–all of us–are the magicians. What other profession lets someone weave reality out of nothing more substantial than imagination? I’m awed by the writers whose worlds become real for me. There must be a Loramendi, right? A Thisby Island, a Diagon Alley, a Night Circus. Of course there are mockingjays, and daemons, and how can there not be Grisha or a Mrs. Whatsit, or an Abhorsen?
As writers, we sit at our lonely desks and start the writing process with nothing more than a blank computer screen and a tickle in the back of the brain that will eventually spawn an idea, a page, a chapter, and a book.
But magic of any kind is elusive. Wrestling ideas is like fighting a dragon armed with nothing except a fork. A hobbit-sized fork.
I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to give up over the years, and how many times I’ve forced myself to go on because I read something that one of you had tweeted, written on your own blogs, or left as a comment on a post here at Adventures. I’ve been strengthened and encouraged by the authors who’ve been lovely enough to come share what they’ve learned with us here. And I’ve been kicked in the ass when I needed it by friends I’ve made along the way.
The trip from blogger to author is both long and short. It’s as hard to grasp as an idea.
If I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s that nothing you do can guarantee publication. But you’re never going to be published if you don’t try, if you don’t stretch yourself to come up with the biggest, truest, most brutally honest and original idea that you can possibly spill onto a page.
I’m lucky to have found an agent and a team of people at Simon Pulse who see my idea for COMPULSION the way that I do, and I’m so, so honored and astounded that Watson Island is going to have the chance to become real for other people. I hope it becomes real for other people.
Today’s cover reveal is one more giant step on the journey. I haven’t quite reached the moon yet, but I’m definitely floating. And if this blog can be even a small part of helping someone else feel the way that I feel right now? That will make me even happier.
Wherever you are on your own path, I hope that seeing this happen for me convinces you that it is possible, that anything is possible.
Keep dreaming. Dream wildly, boldly, and with conviction.
ABOUT THE BOOK
COMPULSION
By Martina Boone
Hardcover
October 28, 2014
ISBN: 18732883
Simon & Schuster, Simon Pulse
Three plantations. Two wishes. One ancient curse.
When loss is all you know, how do you find true love?
All her life, Barrie Watson has been a virtual prisoner in the house where she lived with her shut-in mother. When her mother dies, Barrie promises to put some mileage on her stiletto heels. But she finds a new kind of prison at her aunt’s South Carolina plantation instead—a prison guarded by an ancient spirit who long ago cursed one of the three founding families of Watson Island and gave the others magical gifts that became compulsions.
Stuck with the ghosts of a generations-old feud and hunted by forces she cannot see, Barrie must find a way to break free of the family legacy. With the help of sun-kissed Eight Beaufort, who knows what Barrie wants before she knows herself, the last Watson heir starts to unravel her family’s twisted secrets. What she finds is dangerous: a love she never expected, a river that turns to fire at midnight, a gorgeous cousin who isn’t what she seems, and very real enemies who want both Eight and Barrie dead.
ABOUT ME
I was born in Prague and spoke several languages before learning English. My first teacher in the U.S. made fun of me for not pronouncing the “wh” sound right, so I set out to master “all the words”—I’m still working on that! In the meantime, I’m writing contemporary fantasy set in the kinds of magical places I’d love to visit.
If you like romance steeped in mystery, mayhem, Spanish moss, and a bit of magic, I hope you’ll look forward to meeting Barrie, Eight, Cassie, Pru, Seven and the other characters of Watson Island.
ABOUT THE GIVEAWAY
Celebrating along with a signed and personalized copy of one of the first ARCs of COMPULSION to come off the press, Martina is giving away a sterling silver key necklace similar to one of the keys on the necklace Barrie wears. There are also three signed books by some of her favorite authors:
- SHATTER ME signed by Tahereh Mafi
- UNRAVEL ME signed by Tahereh Mafi
- IGNITE ME signed by Tahereh Mafi
The giveaway is international and will run through 3/31/14. Enter using the Rafflecopter form below.
Want more chances to win? Check out all eight giveaways. I’m giving away a set of books signed by my favorite authors in each one, including Laini Taylor, Maggie Steifvater, Stephanie Kuehn, Tahereh Mafi, Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl, Megan Shepherd, Kendare Blake, Kat Zhang, Meagan Spooner and Amie Kaufman, and Jennifer L. Armentrout.
