Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Tell The Truth Tuesday

1. Every day this week I've put on work out clothes fully intending to actually work out. Sadly, the most athletic thing I end up doing all day is shoveling leftover pumpkin pie into my mouth. So basically, I've been walking around looking like someone who lives in her car and smells of sweaty socks and pumpkin. Sexy.

2. In semi-related news, I purchased two maternity shirts at Target. I'm not pregnant.

3. We've gotten a little bit of a hint about the cover for our SohoTeen book due out in July and HOLY CRAP. It's kind of amazing. We can't wait to be able to share it with you guys.

4. I believe in ghosts.

5. I stopped watching the Vampire Diaries. I just got kind of bored with the whole thing. Elana as a vampire was kind of lame and I seriously can't fathom why she stays with Stephan. Boo.

What's your truth this Tuesday? Spill it in the comments!

Monday, November 26, 2012

On Winnning Publishing

I'm a type-A personality.

"Whoa, I'm totally shocked," said no one who has ever met me.

Although techinically I think I'm more of an A-minus personality in that I only like to compete at things I know I can win. This has led to many problems and unfortunate events in my life. In my twisted little mind, it was better to make a joke out of tennis than it was to take it super seriously and lose. And math. No matter how hard I worked at math, I knew I'd never win so I ended up slacking my way through trig and calculus. (Sidenote: This is actually a really bad example because I've come to the conclusion that math is stupid. I mean honestly, this is the 21st century. We have calculators on our iPhones!) English Lit was a different story because I knew I could win. I loved reading and writing and debating and discussing books. I was always the first one to raise my hand. The nerd in the front row waxing poetic on my hatered for Daisy Buchanan.

When I work hard and take something seriously, I like to know that my efforts will be rewarded. It's easy for me to take my day job seriously because I'm good at it. When I work hard I'm almost always rewarded. It's a game I know I can win.

And publishing kills me because no matter how hard I work, how much I learn, or read or market, I will never win publishing. It might be a zero sum game. Or maybe not. Honestly, I didn't really pay much attention in Econ 101 because after I saw A Beautiful Mind I was pretty confident I'd never be able to beat John Nash. And every time we lose I try to convince myself that I don't really care. I try to convince Laura that we should just give up. I pretend that our writing career was just a long drawn out joke.

But the thing about publishing is that we keep changing the game. At first I thought getting an agent = WINNING.

And then we got an agent and it was really hard for her to sell our book to publishers.

And then I thought that getting our book published = WINNING.

And then our book was published and it didn't get a starred review or get nominated for any awards or really do much of anything aside from hang out on bookshelves occasionally getting purchased by bored 11-year-old girls who subsequently wrote us emails about how The Liar Society was their third favorite book.

Third favorite book? Funny? Not. Winning.

Oh, but I wasn't worried because we had The Lies That Bind and our amazing publisher was sending us out on a huge tour and surely this time around we'd WIN PUBLISHING.

But you know what? It's slow going. If anything, the second book feels harder than the first book. We only have one Amazon review and no professional reviews and sometimes I feel like instead of just NOT WINNING we're actually LOSING.

And the type-A-minus in me wants to just give up altogether. To pretend that I didn't really work hard on our books at all. To pretend that I don't care about Kate and Seth and Pemberly Brown. That we never really expected anyone to buy them in the first place.

But I can't ever convince myself, because it's simply not true.

I love Kate. I love Pemberly Brown and I especially love Seth. When we wrote these books I was sure that EVERYONE would want to read them. I thought they'd be international best sellers. I was positive that Kate would be this generation's Nancy Drew.

Yeah, I realize now that that's probably not in the cards for us. Not for this series. Not for these books. But lately I've been starting to think that my definition of winning is all wrong.

Maybe winning isn't about sales and awards, maybe it's about following our dreams and seeing our books on shelves. Maybe it's about finally overcoming my stupid A-minus personality disorder and growing up enough to realize that I'm not always going to win everything. That I'll never be the best. Maybe it's finally time to feel good, no GREAT, about being one 11-year-old girl's third favorite book.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Tell The Truth Tuesday

1. I'm still tired from our epic tour. It was the most amazing, exhausting, exciting 10 days of my life so far. We are so grateful to Sourcebooks for sending us out and for Miranda Kenneally and Janet Gurtler for putting up with LiLa uncensored. We'd love to make them honorary Roeckers but after experiencing our crazy first hand, they might not want to join up.

2. We sold our house! YAY! But I have to admit to being a total sap about the whole thing. When it comes down to it, this is the place where we brought our babies home. The place where I decided to become a writer. It's our first home and yes we've outgrown it, but I'm still going to miss it.

3. Our deadline for Third Lie's The Charm scares me a little. Laura isn't worried, so I guess I shouldn't be either. But still. Worried.

4. I spent two hours creating fake Twitter accounts and staging a fake DM conversation between characters today. This may or may not explain my concerns outlined in #3.

5. I keep forgetting Thanksgiving is this week. I'm in holi-denial. As usual.

6. Since we're probably never going to get around to a proper tour wrap up post, I'm going to add our favorite pics from the tour below. We met the coolest people EVER. It makes me happy just looking at these. Prepare to be photo bombed...
























Whew. So much awesome in one place. Whenever I'm having a bad day I'm going to just click on this post and look at these pictures. So. Much. Happy. If you have any pics of the #getreal tour that you'd like to share, send 'em our way and we'll add them to this post for a nice little collage. We can't tell you how happy we were to meet so many of our friends and readers. We are lucky, lucky girls.

THANK YOU to everyone who made this tour possible. Especially our parents, in-laws and husbands who wrangled our kids for 10-days. As the Regulator says, "It takes a village to send LiLa on tour." Truer words have never been spoken.

So, what's your truth this Tuesday? You don't have to post it in the comments, just think it really hard in the general direction of Cleveland and we'll totally commiserate with you.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

GET REAL in Cleveland!

HELLO! STOP. WE ARE ALIVE. STOP. ON CRAZY ASS BOOK TOUR. STOP. DELIRIOUSLY TIRED SO THIS SEEMED LIKE AN ENTERTAINING WAY TO TELL YOU ABOUT OUR LAUNCH PARTY FOR THE LIES THAT BIND. STOP.





*In case you're curious this is what we look like when we're on planes. Yes. Really. We have matching neck pillows and sleep masks purchased especially for this trip. That's just how we roll.


Ok, wow. That was awful. We are on the mother of all book tours and have so many hilarious adventures and stories to tell you when we're finally back on our couches in yoga pants.

But for now you'll have to settle for a quick informative post about our mega Cleveland Get Real Tour stop! If you live in Cleveland or really, anywhere in Ohio, you should come. Mostly because by the time we get there we'll be so tired that we'll spill all of our dirty tour secrets. You won't want to miss it. Seriously.

So here are the deets:

The Get Real Tour (including the amazing Janet Gurtler and Miranda Kenneally) will stop at The Lake Forest Country Club in Hudson, Ohio hosted by our very favorite independent bookseller, The Learned Owl.

WHEN: November 8th from 7 PM - 9 PM

WHERE: 100 Lake Forest Dr. Hudson, Ohio

COST: Free! And as a bonus we'll be giving away Twizzlers and bookmarks and spilling our guts.

Hope to see you there!

Don't call this a comeback

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