July Updates: News about My Next Book & Upcoming Events

First of all, thank you to those of you who participated in my Goodreads Q&A this week. The group is officially inactive at this point (I chose to run it for three days), but I'll leave it up there for a while in case you want to check out my answers. If a late question happens to creep in, I'll likely still answer it if I'm not having an overly busy moment. You can also always ask me questions via Twitter, Facebook, and email.

My big accomplishment of the summer, so far, has been sending my brilliant editor, Maggie Lehrman, the finished draft of my second novel, The Cure for Dreaming. If you're curious about that book, here's how I described the plot in that recent Goodreads chat:

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The Cure for Dreaming takes place in 1900 Portland, OR, and it's about a seventeen-year-old girl named Olivia whose father hires a young male hypnotist to remove her rebellious thoughts. Olivia's father is worried she's becoming a suffragist and a "modern woman," and he's terrified she'll turn into her mother, who abandoned their family to return to a life in the theater. The hypnotism cure, however, doesn't go quite as planned...and Olivia has to figure out if the hypnotist is a friend or a foe.  

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The book is still scheduled for publication in Fall 2014, and I'll likely be launching into my intense revision stage this upcoming fall, once I receive my editor's letter. I have no idea what will be appearing on the cover of this one yet, but I'm looking forward to finding out. For now, I have a Pinterest page and a Spotify playlist to share for the book.

If you're in the Portland, OR, area, and you're an aspiring author, please consider joining me for a mansucript critique at the following event:

Saturday, July 20, 2013, 9:00 am:
The Great Summer Critique

 The Dining Room, TaborSpace
5441 SE Belmont St, Portland, OR

I'll be taking a break from appearances in August to spend time with family, but I already have events planned for September and October, with more in the works. You can find them all at my Events Page.

Last of all, I'm happy to report that I proposed an idea for a third standalone YA novel to my agent, and she's thrilled about the concept and title (both of which will remain tightly under wraps for now). I've already started a draft and look forward to working more on the project this summer.