Posted in Publishing, Scattered Thoughts

Tomorrow (a letter to myself)

Posted on by Jane-Holly

Soon Fae Child will be in your hands. The culmination of a four year project, constrained by paper and forced into physical form. You created it, nurtured it along, babied it and disciplined it, and now it’s ready to go out into the world.

Once it is in the hands of others, you have to let it go. That piece of your soul that you put into the words? It’ll always be there, and that makes you vulnerable. You may wish to pull it back. To keep it close, rather than give it to the world.

But that is what makes it uniquely yours, and what gives the book its life. So, tomorrow, release it freely. Enjoy the moment. Ignore the haters. Try not to worry about sales, or marketing, or any of that noise.

Tomorrow it will be out of your hands, and into theirs.

And that’s how it should be.

Posted in Scattered Thoughts

#FaeChild by @hanejolly

Posted on by Jane-Holly

I’m so excited and pleased to announce the #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour is kicking off today with @pscottwriter at the Book Lovers Boudoir! A big thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Through My Letterbox for organizing the tour, and thank you to all the bloggers taking part!

The Book Lover's Boudoir

When eight-year-old Abbie Brown discovers a quiet pool of water while wandering through the woods behind her Oregon home, she wades out into it and discovers she’s not alone. A wild-haired boy in green stares at her from the other side of the water. Mesmerized, Abbie reaches down to him and is yanked underwater.

She emerges on the other side as an unwelcome visitor to the Otherworld, the land of the Fae, with only the boy Foster to guide her. Back in Oregon, a changeling lookalike has taken her place, bonding with her mother while her father, hiding a secret of his own, views the “girl” with suspicion.

In the courts of the Fae a truce has long been in place between Winter and Summer. What havoc might a human child wreak in the careful machinations of beings older than time? And to what lengths will Abbie’s father go to…

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Posted in Fiction, Scattered Thoughts

List of Excuses

Posted on by Jane-Holly
for emergency use only
(written a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away)

my best friend’s former boyfriend’s roomate’s sister’s goldfish died. I had to attend the funeral.

my dog ate my homework.

I ate my dog’s homework.

I had a severe case of meningitis over the weekend.

my dog ate all my clothes.

your lectures were too long and my notes too short.

my dog ate all my notes.

my notes got soaked in the rain.

the rain got water in my ears, which affected my balance and I was walking into walls all weekend.

the walls are closing in on me! I can’t breathe! [fall to ground and fake death]

I was on a secret spy mission for the CIA. Now I have to kill you…unless you give me an A.

um…my goldfish fell into my printer and ruined it.

Y2K

(I told you this was written a long time ago)

I was held captive by an underground militia group for three days.

my brother shot my computer.

my computer ate my homework.

I ate some bad Taco Bell and was having my stomach pumped.

the gas station pumped water into my gas tank.

my car exploded.

a cow fell on me.

I had amnesia for 5 days.

someone cast a spell on me and I was a cat all of last week.

I choked on a gummy worm and almost died.

I had quintuple bypass surgery over the weekend.

I was helping my sister move and I got stuck behind the fridge.

my refridgerator was on the fritz and froze my house, including all my notebooks.

Posted in Scattered Thoughts

Reading to my kids

Posted on by Jane-Holly

I love reading, and as a mom it has been a lot of fun to read to my children. My father used to read to us when I was a kid and it is a treasured memory that I am happy to be able to pass down to my kids.

I might not throw the greatest birthday parties, or have the best planned activities (thanks ADHD brain), but I am able to open the world of books to them. I’ve been reading to them before bed almost every night for about three years now.

We’ve made it through the Harry Potter series (and the movies!) and the Artemis Fowl books, and are now working our way through Percy Jackson and the Olympians (we’re on book 3). I even read them the second draft of Fae Child (they approved)!

And hey, it’s also really good at getting that one kid who is SO TIRED but can’t sleep (because they keep getting out of bed to whine how not tired they are) to just LAY STILL for two minutes so their body can pass out. You know the one.

Anyway, it’s a great thing, and everyone should do it. Picture books with your babies are great, but CHAPTER BOOKS with your tweens are awesome. Drop some series suggestions in the comments, I’m always on the prowl for more to add to the pile.

Posted in Fae Child, The Fae Child Trilogy

Thirteen Days to go…

Posted on by Jane-Holly

Fae Child is not a traditional YA (whatever that means), because the protagonist is very young (8). However, the dual POV style I wrote it in means that for a chunk of the narrative we are following her adult father and his trials as he tries to find his daughter.

I think I was influenced by the Louis L’amour book “Down the Long Hills” which splits the narrative between two young pioneer children who are trying to find safety and survive in the wild, and the adult Native American who is tracking them. My father read us almost all the Louis L’amour books when we were kids/teens and this was one of my favorites. Having a child be a main character in a book meant for adults has always been fascinating to me.

That being said, I’m aware Fae Child is written very tamely and I think you should be perfectly safe to read it to your kids or allow them to read it on their own. And it’s short! Still a novel, though—I checked.

I am marketing Fae Child as YA because I split the difference between the adult and child POVs. Perhaps it fits as Middle Grade, but there are adult themes in it, as well as a body-copying, possibly mom-killing entity.

I hope Fae Child finds its readers, and that they love it. Maybe that is you? Enjoy! And stay tuned for Abbie’s continuing adventure in the sequel “The Furious Host.”

If you preorder Fae Child you can enter my giveaway for a new Kindle Paperwhite and some of my favorite ebooks! Click here for details: bit.ly/37nDMlP