Lips Touch Audio Book Giveaway!

Hey, look what I just got in the mail! Yippee! The audiobook of Lips Touch! It's by Brilliance Audio (writers, they are so awesome to work with; awesome) and narrated by Cassandra Campbell, who also did Silksinger. She does a beautiful job. Oh I love listening to audio of my own books. Some years ago I read on Shannon Hale's blog how for her it was the only way to experience one's own words fresh, and it's so true. After we've read our own books so many times, they sort of flatten out. By the time I've finished, I've practically got the darn things memorized, so it's so hard to read them with any *newness*. But the audio narrator brings the newness! Yay! Love love love!

Anyway, I thought I would share the bounty and give away a couple of copies. Want one? If you do, just leave a comment to this post before next Wednesday, May 11, and I'll plop them into a random name selector or something fancy like that, and that will be that. Okay?

question: How to win?

answer: Just leave a comment to this post!


*note: if you're entering on behalf of a library, say so, with library name, and you'll be entered twice!*

While on the topic of things writey, here's a great post by Libba Bray on the dastardly "I suck playlist," as she calls the insecurities that plague even veteran writers with each and every book. Oh yes oh yes, it's so so true! Read it and come back and discuss :-)  

Every writer I know goes through this, on every book. (Or, if they don't, they are wise enough to pretend they do so the pitchfork mob of the rest of us doesn't go after them.) The thing that makes it better is just that by doing it over and over -- that is, by writing another book and another -- some faith does accrue. In oneself, in the process. It still feels like hell to be caught in what sometimes feels like a vortex -- a part of the book that will not let you go, that sucks and hangs onto you so you can't move past it! But there is some small comfort in believing it will pass. You will not drown there, truly you won't. You will get through it like you always do.

That is, *if* you do. By which I mean, if you do not give up. Giving up is for giver-uppers. It's the lamest thing ever. Your book is just a book; it can't beat you. You are a real live person with will and imagination and typing fingers! You are superior to it in every way. How could it possibly beat you? That's just silly. Of course you'll win. 

Just keeping going, and take comfort in knowing we are all suffering our own suck. This, recently, from Stephanie Perkins' blog:

For me, first drafts are sloppy and embarrassing and filled with holes and stupidity. And that's okay! They're supposed to be that way! But my perfectionist mind despises cutting a path through the muck. Everything is so messy and unclear. It's humiliating for me to know these early drafts even exist; it feels like I'm stumbling through a crowded public square in my underpants and one flip-flop.

Oh god yes! I read that with a great loud guffaw and feeling of grateful kinship. That is exactly what it feels like. The rest of that post, which is hilarious and has lots of Thom Yorke in it, is here.

Don't forget to comment for an audiobook!!

(of course, the audiobook doesn't include the amazing art, so you'll still want to buy the book if you don't already have it :-)