Hello, readers!

How are you enjoying On Home?! I’ve been blown away by the amazing response and I appreciate every single message, selfie, and review! Please keep them coming!

I would love to have you join me for one or all of the following events:

This Thursday, September 23 at 6pm EST ONLINE: Queer Appalachian Parents, Sex Work, and the End of the World. Join rural authors Alison Stine, winner of the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award, and Becca Spence Dobias to discuss their new books, Trashlands and On Home. Trashlands is a strip club at the edge of an apocalyptic junkyard where a mother works to earn enough to rescue her son. In On Home, three generations of Appalachian mothers, including one who works as a cam girl, struggle with the weight of the past and the small town they call home. What can rural America—past, present, and near-future, teach us about queerness and the volatile world we find ourselves in today? Stine and Spence Dobias will ask each other these questions and more. Register for free here.

October 6, 6-8pm EST ONLINE: Join Beausoleil Book’s Manager, Alexis and I to talk about the writing process, On Home, and representation of the queer community in literature and pop culture. The $5 ticket supports this incredible inclusive bookstore in Lafayette, Louisiana, or there’s an option to get a ticket for free by purchasing a book from them! Register here. 

October 7, 7pm PST IN PERSON at NEW Riverside Main Library Community Room. Join me for a National Novel Writing Event Workshop. I wrote the first draft of On Home during NaNoWriMo in November 2012. In this workshop, I’ll share the journey from that draft to a published novel, provide tips and tricks for “winning” NaNoWriMo, and answer questions. Come prepared to write, as parts of the workshop will be participatory. Signed books will also be available to purchase.

Thank you so much for your continued support!!
Becca

Surprise! If you pre-ordered through Inkshares, check your email! You should get your ebook TODAY!

Holy crap! You can start reading! Hard copies should still be shipped out August 31.

I’m so nervous and excited and so happy for you to finally be able to read this story!

Sending this early also means you have three weeks to read as much as you can and write a review on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, or wherever! It doesn’t have to be long, or even good. It can just say "I loved it" or "It’s lame." But the more early reviews I have, the better the book will do! If you write a review, fill out this form and I’ll send you an awesome sticker for your help!

Thank you so much for all of your support!! I hope you enjoy On Home!!!!

September! I managed to rewrite a chapter every day and finished this draft on September 5! It’s up to over 141,000 words and I think (hope) my main character is more interesting, my setting is more immersive, and my prose is more engaging.
I’m rereading the whole thing before I send it back to my awesome editor, though I keep telling people it’s kind of like when you say a word over and over and it starts to sound ridiculous. It’s hard to gain enough distance after going through it so many times to imagine what it’s like to read it for the first time. So far I’ve mostly been removing unneccesary dialogue tags and the word "just."
We’ve been busy at Writing Bloc editing our Deception anthology and creating several cool episodes of the podcast. Check them out! I’m in the one on crowdfunding. 
I hope you are all having a fantastic month so far. Let me know what you’re up to!  
Thank you for your support!

This month’s update is a few days late because I wanted to wait until I could say I FINISHED THE REWRITE! 

That’s the second complete rewrite, for those keeping track. This one changed the whole book from first person to third, focused on the quality of prose, and added lots of historical detail. 

I’ve treated the last six months or so as a giant research project for the historical parts, reading, watching films, and interviewing people. The novel now stands at 115,416 words! The last draft was 90-something thousand, and the original manuscript I sent to Inkshares was 54k!

I’m letting the draft stand for a week before I go back and read the whole thing out loud to polish it and send it in. Please send me "take a break" vibes and also "don’t lose your mind while you’re waiting for feedback on this thing you’ve worked your ass off on for half a year" vibes. 

Thank you, as always, for your support!

March 1! 
I’m on chapter 30 of 42, and I am SO EXCITED about Jane’s story. 
While much of Rock of Ages is a contemporary story, there are two other points of view. Cassidy’s mother, Paloma, meets her father in Prague just after the fall of communism. When she has trouble getting pregnant, the two move back to his hometown in West Virginia.

Cassidy’s grandmother, Jane, signs on as a Government Girl  and moves from WV to Washington DC, where she classifies fingerprints for the FBI during WWII. This is the part I’m rewriting now and it is so, so fun. I’ve been nerding out big time with the research, watching old films, reading old books, looking at old comics, listening to old music. I’m kind of obsessed right now with the time period and with the craft of historical fiction writing. It’s all making me feel really close to my grandma, which is bittersweet.

I’ll post the first chapter of Jane’s story on the Inkshares story page after sending this so you can take a look! Let me know what you think. I hope you’re as excited as I am!
I hope by this time next month I’ll be VERY close to finishing this draft.
Thank you, as always, for your support and encouragement!

It’s October! I waited a couple days to send this update because THE REVISED DRAFT OF ROCK OF AGES IS IN!

I’ve been working incredibly hard for the last three months. Not only have I rewritten over 91,000 words almost from scratch but I’ve read several relevant books to work on my own style, taken the Margaret Atwood Masterclass on Writing, taken a course on the business of being an author, and taken lots of steps to build my platform leading up to the release of the book. I’ve begun blogging on a weekly basis and contributing regularly to the Writing Bloc website and have had several guest posts published as well. I’m committed to making Rock of Ages as successful as it can be!

There will be more rounds of changes to be made. The good news is that each round should get a little easier! This was the big one.

Thank you, as always, for following along on this journey and for all your support and encouragement!

If you’d prefer weekly updates that include links to blog posts and events, be sure to subscribe to my email list at http://eepurl.com/dBsQdP

It’s July! We’re moved into our new house and just in time. I received my developmental edit letter from my editor on Friday! If you haven’t heard of a developmental edit letter, you aren’t alone. I hadn’t either until I started this process. It’s basically a giant letter explaining eveything that needs to be changed in your book. 

I’ve been super nervous to receive mine since I’ve heard the editor is very thorough. Some of my Inkshares author friends have gone through 9 or 10 drafts! Sure enough, the letter suggests I restructure my whole story, take out some characters and plots, make some changes to focus on a different audience (young adult!), and work a lot on my descriptive prose and character arcs. 

The extent of the suggestions wasn’t a surprise, but my reaction was! I really expected to be very defensive and sad and overwhelmed. Instead I feel incredibly honored that someone as skilled as my editor gave such thoughtful and helpful comments and incredibly grateful that you all gave me the chance to work with him. This book is going to be so much better because of it.

I just submitted a revised (4000 word!) outline based on his suggestions and we’ll work on that until we agree it’s time to move forward to a rewrite. I’ll keep you all updated!

Thank you for following along with this journey and for giving me the opportunity to experience this process! It’s so exciting!