These Broken Stars will be published in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin! Meg and I are over the moon!

To have one incredible publisher in Disney*Hyperion is more than anyone could ask. To have two, and add the publisher of so many wonderful titles to our writing family? Let’s just say Meg and I have perfected our international synchronised flipping out routine. Any judging panel in the world would give us a row of perfect tens.

Every Aussie grows up on Allen & Unwin books, and my shelves are full of them. Allen & Unwin publish some of my writing heroes — I get tongue-tied just trying to talk to these authors (no really, this is an evidence-based assertion), and they publish some of the most amazing up-and-coming authors. They’re home to stories I loved as a kid, and some of my favourite discoveries of recent years.

I can’t believe we’re going to be part of the family! Thank you one thousand times over to the truly lovely Anna McFarlane and all at Allen & Unwin who made it happen, and to our equally wonderful rights gurus at Hyperion!

Now, Aussies, you know what this means, right?

You, me, the book, Melbourne, December: PARTY TIME!

Details to come, and in the meantime, if you don’t want to miss any news, you can sign up for our monthly newsletter by clicking here.

I’m leaving for the USA in a couple of days — I’ll be road-tripping, eating a LOT of fabulous food, visiting many fabulous authors, falling in love with too many fabulous books, and posting pictures and updates on Facebook and Twitter daily if you want to live vicariously!

I have a busy, busy month ahead! Road trips, writing and adventures of all kinds! Meg and I will be appearing at Book Expo America (usually called BEA) at the end of May! Here’s a list of where and when to find us:

May 29th, 4:30pm – 5:30pm: We’ll be at the BEA Bloggers Conference Happy Hour after the closing keynote. If you’ll be there, come and introduce yourself!

May 29th 5:30pm – 7:30pm: BEA Annual Children’s Art Auction and Reception — this year it’s a tribute to Maurice Sendak!

May 30th, 11:30am – 12:30pm: This is the big one! Meg and I will be signing advance reader copies of These Broken Stars at Table 6. Since we live in different countries, this is a rare chance to catch us autographing together! We’d love to see you, so come on by! Aren’t they b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l?

June 1st, 11am – 12:pm: Meg will be signing advance reader copies of Shadowlark in the Lerner booth! Publishers Weekly listed it as a galley to grab, so make sure you don’t miss out!

And you know what else we’re bringing to BEA with us? This:

What’s in that little bag, you ask? You’ll have to come find us and see!

Before BEA, though, I’ve got all kinds of adventures planned! I’ll be hanging out with writer friends in LA, visiting my big brother in Vegas, then road tripping through the South with friends and checking out everything from Graceland to Smokey Mountains National Park! Many miles and many delicious barbecued foodstuffs lie ahead of me. If there’s anything we mustn’t miss on the road through Atlanta, Memphis, Nashville and on through Asheville to Charlotte, be sure to let me know!

Finally, our first newsletter goes out on Monday, and it contains exclusive material you won’t see ANYWHERE else! If you want in, click here to sign up!

Because we want to hear from YOU, we’re offering a prize pack of swag and books from over TWENTY authors! The winner will receive a package full of swag (including bookmarks, postcards, temporary tattoos, jewelry, tea, buttons, author business cards, book plates, magnets, and stickers) signed by over twenty authors, as well as FIVE advance reader copies from our collection, which the winner will be able to choose. (If you’re an international, you’ll win everything but the books — sorry, but international postage on those things is brutal!)

Click the link below to subscribe, then be sure to come back here in order to enter the contest and tell us what you want in a newsletter!

 Click here to subscribe to the newsletter!

Enter to win all our awesome prizes, and let us know what you’d like to see in a newsletter!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Visit each of the six blogs below for six different chances to win an ARC of These Broken Stars. Each blog also has a piece of exclusive content, if you’d like to know that little bit more about the book!

Cuddlebuggery: See what the cover COULD have looked like, plus a live interview with Amie and Meg!
The Book Smugglers: This is all well and good, but what do the authors REALLY think about their cover?
The Midnight Garden: Where did the title come from?
Pub(lishing) Crawl: Check out this exclusive interview from cover designer Whitney Manger!
Mundie Moms: Want to know more about the characters on the cover? Click for more about Lilac!
Supernatural Snark: Want to know more about the characters on the cover? Click for more about Tarver!

In other exciting news, These Broken Stars is now available for pre-order, with more online options to come!

So, what are you waiting for? Go check out the cover! What do you think?

1. Our trilogy sold to publishers in Poland, Brazil, Portugal and France!
2. Listening Library won the rights to produce an audiobook of These Broken Stars!
3. Our book featured in Publishers Weekly!
4. 

   Writing on retreat in North Carolina

   We finalised our edits on These Broken Stars and had our first glimpse of a cover shoot!

5. We finished our first draft of the sequel to These Broken Stars, which we’ll be sending to our editor next week!
6. I became a contributor to Pub(lishing) Crawl, a blog about books and writing by a group of authors, editors, literary agents and booksellers!
7. I blogged about how to write a book and researching your story.
8. I wrote about a teacher and a book that influenced my writing, and how I find time to write.
9. My amazing co-author, Meg, saw the launch of her debut novel, Skylark, and I wrote about that.
10. 

    Amie Kaufman, Meagan Spooner and Beth Revis, geeking out about books

    I hit up North Carolina, New York, Washington DC, Bangkok, Koh Samui, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane (in some cases repeatedly), hauling my laptop with me all the way.

11. I went on a writing retreat with some of my favourite authors, Sarah, Erin and Sooz. We climbed mountains, braved the wilderness and wrote a ton of words.
12. 

    GenreCon: The Pistols and Parasols Ball

    I attended the fantastic GenreCon, a conference for Australian genre writers, and had a ball.

In 2013, we’ll edit our sequel and draft book #3. I’ll visit the US again, this time to celebrate the launch of These Broken Stars! As for what else the year will hold, we’ll all have to wait and see. My friends, family, husband, critique partners, writing friends, publisher and literary agents have been an amazing support as I get my feet under me and learn more about this authoring gig. I’m really looking forward to finding out what 2013 has in store!

We’ve been working hard on drafting the sequel, and we’re nearly finished with the first draft–it will be done in time for Christmas! I can’t wait for a week off once we send it in to our editor.

We’ve got some other fun news to share soon, but for now, here’s what else I’ve been up to around the internet….

I was a guest blogger over at The League of Extraordinary Writers on thinking outside the box when attending writing conventions.

I blogged at Pub(lishing) Crawl on 3 Ways to Improve Your Critique Using Conflict Communication, discussing the crossover between my work as a mediator and my work as an author, and the places they meet.

And now, back to the keyboard. More words to write before we’re done!

It’s been a fantastic couple of months, but I am glad to be home!

I’ll talk more about my trip later, but for now, here’s some book-writing wisdom.

How do you write a book that works? Today, I’m here to tell you.

That’s right, there’s an answer. Of course, nobody ever shares it, because then we’d have nothing left to blog about. But today, I’m breaking my silence. Here’s the deal:

1. Outline your story in advance, so you know where it’s going and don’t take any false turns.
2.  Work up your plot as you go, so your creativity isn’t stifled.
3.  Take as many writing classes as you can, learn from a pro.
4.  Remember you don’t need classes to write your own story, don’t be tied down by external advice.
5.  Listen to music.
6.  Write in silence.
7.  Write every day, without fail, rain, hail or shine.
8.  Don’t force it, take it as it comes.
9.  Write your draft the whole way through, don’t stop to polish as you go.
10.  Read through what you’ve written. Pause, prune, consider.

See where I’m going with this? I was being untruthful about that whole one answer thing. There are no rules. You can write a book any way you like, and if you round up a bunch of authors, half of them will swear one of these rules is the golden one. This isn’t just a post about walking your own path, though.

It’s a post about excuses.

You don’t need anything in particular to write a book, apart from something to write with, and something to write on. Add an idea, and you’re good to go. Yes, of course you should study craft, work to improve and continue to challenge yourself. But you don’t need your special music. You don’t need to set aside a whole day to outline before you can get started (except you never have a day), and you don’t need your lucky tea, candle or warm-up routine.  Often, when we insist there’s a particular process to be followed, we’re really making excuses about why we’re not doing anything.

I know I’ve wasted time trying to make my square peg fit into round holes. Trying to do things other people’s way, because I believed there was just one right way, and thinking it was hard because writing’s supposed to be hard. Now, that’s not wrong—of course it’s hard. But I can’t escape the feeling a lot of us make it harder than we need to, by listening to a bunch of rules that don’t match our circumstances.

I’m just going to say it. Even if J.K. Rowling says it’s super important to her process, it’s not a rule. If Neil Gaiman says using only purple pens is integral to his process, you should check it out, but it’s not a rule.

You don’t need to wait until the right month to query, putting it off even though you’re ready. You don’t need to outline if it feels wrong and uncomfortable, or follow anyone’s wisdom. Of course, I’m not saying you should ignore the wealth of fantastic information available to you. I’m just saying that, in the words of a famous pirate, they’re more like guidelines, really.

Do walk your own path. Listen to all the great advice out there, but don’t let it hamstring you. Don’t get yourself so tangled up trying to follow rules that you don’t make any forward process. Don’t use the lack of something that’s supposedly an essential to stop you doing something, anything. Work out what works for you, have courage, and stick to it. You’ll be rewarded.

Meg and I have been deep, deep in edits and revisions for These Broken Stars, and as I write this, we’re just a few hours away from turning the book back into our editor. Next stop, copy edits! And for me, next stop, USA!

I’m flying out on September 1st, and I’ll be catching up with amazing agents Josh and Tracey at Adams Literary and dining out with my agency sister Megan Shepherd. Then I’m disappearing on Hero Squad, a writing retreat, with my friends and critique partners Susan Dennard, Sarah J. Maas, Erin Bowman and of course my very own genius co-author Meagan Spooner. (You can catch us all, plus Gwenda Bond and Beth Revis at Malaprops on Wednesday 5th September, if you’re in NC!) Then it’s up to New York to catch up with friends I miss like crazy, to meet up with our insanely clever editors and sundry other authors, agents and friends, and then finally to DC for a few days, where Meg and I will be hard, hard at work on the draft of our sequel.

Then I will come home to Australia, for some actual rest.

T: Things I Like

Kat Brauer’s Freedom For Skylark contest — win a copy of the book!

This fantastic post over at Pub(lishing) Crawl on picking the best sort of conference or convention to attend. (I’ve got my fingers crossed for the World Fantasy Convention in London next year, but we’ll see what the publishing schedule and the finances say!)

This super cool interview over on Presenting Lenore, featuring yours truly and These Broken Stars. Want to know who our characters would share a drink with and what Meg and I want to do before we die? This is your chance!

W: What I’m Reading

I’ve been reading Stormdancer, by Jay Kristoff. You can read my full review here. For now, I’m just going to flail my arms wildly and tell you that you have to read this book. Epic worldbuilding? Check. The trilogy is set in a dying, dystopian land, clouded by the pollution of lotus fumes, a fantasy world inspired by Japan. Epic action? Check. I was literally gripping the book with white knuckles in places! Epic characters? CHECK. I cried, people. More than once. Stormdancer just blew me away. Dystopian, fantasy, Japanese steampunk. I mean, come on. How was that not going to rock?

Skylark, by Meagan Spooner, comes out today. I don’t even know how to describe Meg to you, let alone this book, but I’m going to take a swing. I’ve been trying to work out what to say for months.

Can we start with her incredible talent first?

Her writing is dark and visceral, wild, full of stunning moments of hope and twists that turn everything you know on its head. Her stories give me chills, and I read them over and over–first to charge through the mesmerising plot, and then later to pore over the intricate way she weaves her words. She has x-ray vision when it comes to plot, reaching in unerringly to pull out the threads and weave them together in familiar in ways you never expected, but instantly love.

When Meg sent me the first few chapters of Skylark, Husband and I believed so instantly and so surely in her story that we invited her to come out to Australia, stay with us and focus on getting the book written. I read and critiqued each page on the train on the way home, and I’d tear in the door to hand over the pages I’d finished, and demand the next chapter. Now.

Then there’s Meg the person, because of course she’s not just a writer. She’s a smart, generous, incredibly hard working, frequently hilarious and utterly loyal friend. And she’s more than a friend–Meg’s supported me through family crises, dropped everything when I’ve needed her, worked into the night to help me, cooked for me while I worked to deadline, cheered for me when I needed it.

But. Don’t grab a copy of Skylark because its author is made of awesome. Grab it because this book will pick you up by the scruff of the neck and refuse to let you go, and I’m not the only one saying so.

Intense and absorbing, Skylark transported me to a world of magic and danger unlike anything I’ve read before. Dark, original, and beautiful, this is a novel you don’t want to miss. — Veronica Rossi, author of Under the Never Sky

Skylark’s rich narrative and plucky heroine will transport you into a mesmerizing and horrifying world. — New York Times Bestselling author Carrie Jones

“unexpected and enthralling” — “spellbound from the first moment” — online reviewers.

I came away from it with that breathless feeling you get when a book hits you just right — Carolina Valdez Miller.

I could go on and on with these quotes, pulling them from dozens of pre-release reviews, and you’ll see the same thing over and over.

I guess I did find my words in the end, though it took me a long time to work out how to get onto the page a fraction of how I feel about this author, my friend, and her book.

Guys, I love Skylark. Buy it. Read it.

Vis in magia, in vita vi.

In magic there is power, and in power, life.