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I am heading off to Book Expo America  this morning via a 4 day stop in Nashville to visit some dear cousins and kidnap one of them on a ride along for my NYC adventures. I have never been and am out of my mind excited. I was really hoping that I wouldn’t have to work this trip, but publishing production schedules wait for no man, woman or author and I will be doing  a bit of editing on this trip.

It’s been a while since I blogged, too busy with writing and the fact that when spring springs here in the PNA, it’s like a weed stampede. Every year about April, my hubby and I  are overwhelmed by all the yard work. Then we put our nose to the grindstone (I should have posted a cliche alert, eh?) and about Mid June are completely enjoying our lovely yard. This year we have the added bonus (and work) of watching our veggies grow in our garden patch that we added. It’s incredibly satisfying, not to mention feeds the creative well.

Come see me at BEA! I’ll be signing at the Harper Collins booth at noon on Thursday, May 30th!!!!

In an unprecedented collaboration, Glamour Doll Eyes and Young Adult Author, Teri Brown, come together to bring you an eye shadow collection created exclusively for Brown’s upcoming young adult novel, Born of Illusion, (Balzer+Bray 6/11/2013).

Set against the underground world of the magicians, mediums and mentalists of 1920’s New York City, Brown’s Born of Illusion brings back the allure and the excitement of the jazz era and these earth mineral shadows are a perfect reflection of that glamour.

To celebrate, Glamour Doll Eyes and Teri Brown will be holding a Twitter party to launch the collection, (which will be available for a limited time only), and a very special makeup tutorial. Follow along Wednesday May 15^th at 8:30 Eastern Time with the hashtag #BOIGDE

Prizes to be given away at the party include:

• Five sets of the Born of Illusion eye shadow collection
• Two ten dollar gift cards to the online book retailer of your choice
• One advanced reader copy of Born of Illusion
• Two ten dollar gift code to purchase Glamour Doll Eyes makeup.

As someone who writes books set in the twenties, I was incredibly excited to see The Great Gatsby. Now let me quantify this by admitting upfront that I don’t think Fitzgerald’s book is the last word in great American novels. I wasn’t a huge fan of the story. I am however a screaming, raving devotee of the writing. The words of The Great Gatsby thrill me to my ever-loving, word geeky soul. So I had kind of a love/meh relationship with the book. I’ve read it at least five times, so what does that tell you? Conflicted much?

I felt the same way about the movie.

On one hand, the cinematography was lush and gorgeous, the acting superb. On the other, the style of the filming, the narrator, the music and the over the top feel of the movie took me aback. I was bewildered and I don’t go to movies for bewilderment. I go for enjoyment and it’s hard to enjoy something when you’re all WTF?

You know those in-between parts in a musical, where you’re just waiting for the cast to break out in song? The Great Gatsby felt just like that only the musical numbers never came.

It didn’t help that I was watching it with someone who ended up LOATHING the film, so my enjoyment of those parts that were noteworthy were a bit diminished. After watching it, I met the girlfriend of a young friend who just loved it. She was nineteen. My daughter thought it was phenomenal. She is twenty-two. I  find it extremely interesting that young people adore it. Maybe that was the point?

Perhaps that is why I wasn’t fully on board with the production. Even though I write YA, I am most decidedly NOT a young adult, or even a new adult.  The movie’s slick MTV style threw me because I was expecting movie realism rather than an excessive interpretation of the era of art deco and jazz, (the absence of which actually pissed me off, jazz lover that I am.)

But isn’t excessive opulence what the jazz era and The Great Gatsby was all about?

So I am going again. I am going with a different mindset to watch a movie that just might be an accurate representation of a book I love… even though, you know, I really don’t. But I do.

If you know what I mean.

Have you seen the movie yet?

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@terbrownwrites thinks The Great Gatsby felt just like a musical except they never broke out into song. (Click to Tweet)

After a lifelong love/meh relationship with The Great Gatsby, @teribrownwrites reviews the movie! (Click to Tweet)

I have been sitting on this secret for months and am so happy and relieved to finally share!

On May 15^th, in collaboration with Glamour Doll Eyes, I will be launching The Born of Illusion eye shadow collection!!! The ingredients for these 20’s inspired shadows are all made of earth minerals and all ingredients are FDA approved. The Born of Illusion collection includes three colors, Deception, Levitation and Illusion and will help you achieve the glamorous look of the 1920’s!

I wanted to come up with something very unique to help promote Born of Illusion and hit upon the idea of doing some sort of quality makeup.  I went to my daughter and my niece, (both avid makeup junkies), and asked them for the name of an independent company that created high quality pigments. They both pointed toward Glamour Doll Eyes. I went to Vee and she loved the idea of creating shadows inspired by a novel. After a myriad of emails back and forth, the Born of Illusion collection was born! Originally, I was only going to have enough made to give away, but then I suggested to Vee that she make some available on her website for anyone who wanted to purchase them and she agreed to make the collection available for a short time.

On May 15^th I will be holding a Twitter party in conjunction with Glamour Doll Eyes, and we’ll be giving away five sets of this highly coveted collection, as well as revealing the makeup tutorial inspired by Born of Illusion that shows how to use the shadows to create the glamorous look of the twenties with a modern twist. I will also be giving away the collection on my blog tour beginning May 27^th with Rockstar Book Tours. Details for both the blog tour and the makeup launch to come!

Going to be at the Romantic Times Reader’s convention? Hit me up… I’ll be carrying some around and giving them away! More pictures as the launch date nears…

I’ve been a fiction fanatic for most of my life except for the odd biography or two.  But lately I have been reading a ton of nonfiction books—far more nonfiction than novels. I think part of that has to do with time. When I was writing nonfiction articles, I was able to just get up and leave them if I were interrupted… I could never do that with fiction as it would totally throw me off. When I read novels I like to have hours of uninterrupted time. With nonfiction I can go do other things and then return without skipping a beat. With my life so pressed for time, nonfiction seems like a logical choice.

My obsession with nonfiction started last summer when I read Nicholas Kristof’s book, Half the Sky. It was the first book I bought and read on my Kindle. (If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend that you do. It’s fantastic.)

From there I moved on to books that will help me grow my platform and business. First was Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy. I really needed to organize my time better so I can live a more balanced life. He has some great ideas that have improved my time management skills considerably. I am also reading Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World by Michael Hyatt. That book has given me some excellent insight on platform building and it really made me think of how I want to brand myself.

Another book I just bought that’s making me take frantic notes is Molly Greene’s book on blogging called Blog It! The advice Greene lays out is simple, direct and easy to follow.

I am also reading two historical nonfiction books for research for two very different upcoming books. I would tell you what they are called, only then I would have to kill you…

Do you read nonfiction books? What kinds?

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What do @BrianTracy, @mollygreene, @MichaelHyatt and @NickKristof have in common? @teribrownwrites blog!  (Click to Tweet)

How did a fiction fan become a nonfiction fanatic?@teribrownwrites tells you how it happened to her! (Click to Tweet!)

Several years ago, I was sitting with my critique partner at the Emerald City RWA writer’s conference and listening to the amazing Jayne Ann Krentz keynote. I was really interested in her talk because I have always wanted to have dueling careers… She writes under several names and I inspired to emulate her. She is one of the reasons why I write under TJ Brown and Teri Brown! Anyway, she said that even though her books are all across the genres, her themes are similar. My critique partner, (who had read both my adult and young adult books), turned to me and whispered, “Your books all have the same theme too. You write fish out of water books.”

Upon further reflection, I realized she was absolutely right. All my protagonists feel like fish out of water, as if they don’t fit in anywhere. Upon even further reflection, (hey, writers have serious internal lives, don’t judge!) I realized that I have spent most of my life feeling like a fish out of water. Think about it–fish have no legs, can’t breathe and are completely stuck in an inhospitable place. I KNOW EXACTLY HOW THAT FEELS.

Here’s why:

• I was a literate girl with hippie leanings and I moved to in Alfalfa, Oregon in the fourth grade where all the friendships had already been set for years, maybe even generations. Enough said.
• My brothers and sisters were so much older than me that I was like an only child. My only friends for a long while were books, which gave me a great big vocabulary and no one to use it on, and a huge imagination. (Okay, I was weird.)
• Trying to fit into the geographical oddity that was Alfalfa, Oregon, I went along with the crowd a lot. The crowd was mean. This conflict made me pretty quiet which caused my friend’s parents to be suspicious. “That Teri is too quiet, I don’t trust her.”  It’s not like my friends were going to say, “She’s quiet because she’s afraid I’m going to turn on her and make her an outcast in the group like we just did with Michelle…” No, they wouldn’t say that. They would just tell me, “My parents don’t like you.” Which basically made me even quieter and weirder.

FISH OUT OF WATER

Like many writers, I took that feeling out on my writing. The Summerset women are all outcasts in their own way. Prudence was born of a different class, while Rowena and Victoria were raised as bohemians, which conflicted with the station in life they were born to. But my biggest fish out of water is Anna Van Housen of Born of Illusion. Anna was born to an ambitious, cunning woman in an era where ambitious cunning women were generally punished. Her mother took to the stage as a fake medium in both road shows and circuses. Anna became her mother’s assistant and partner in crime and if that doesn’t make you a fish out of water, I don’t know what will. Plus, Anna is a magician and a real psychic. This girl was doomed to be a fish out of water!

So what about you? Have you ever felt like a fish out of water? Do you have reoccurring themes in your writing?

Do the reoccurring themes in your writing make you feel like a fish out of water? (Click to Tweet)

@teribrownwrites on the pain of feeling like a fish out of water! (Click to Tweet)

Is Anna Van Housen from Born of Illusion a fish out of water? (Click to Tweet)

 I love me some book bloggers/reviewers. I’ve met a few of them in person for dinner or coffee and had funny online chats with a lot of them. They are just like normal people, except, you know, for the fact that they can bring grown novelists to their knees and transform them into steaming heaps of humiliated, groveling author dung with a single steely look.

But they love books and pretty much anyone who loves books is all right by me.

I make it a point not to engage bloggers about their reviews of my books. They’re not only entitled to their opinion, but often times their insights are right on the money and I learn a lot from them. Reading is subjective, which means what floats one person’s boat isn’t necessarily going to float another person’s boat, etc. and I have found book bloggers to be a pretty smart bunch, overall. (Authors, Did you see how cleverly I worked that kiss ass sentiment in there? *Nods sagely*)

However, there are times when I read a review of my book, or even that of a friend’s book, and I am forced to think, “Exactly what kind of happy, chronic, buzz weed were you smoking when you wrote that, babe? Cause I need me some of that!”

Luckily, most of the reviews of my books have been overwhelmingly positive. But there were a few…so I thought I’d make a list of the most common comments I’d make if I had a compulsive, overpowering desire to commit career hari-kiri.

1. Dude, it’s a SERIES. It’s going to continue, yanno?
2. What was I trying to do with that ending? I was trying to be smart and literary. Trust me, I WON’T DO IT AGAIN.
3. You do know it’s NOT a romance novel, right? (Not that there is anything wrong with that, I’m a member of RWA, after all, but that doesn’t make that particular book a romance!)
4. YOUR MOM!
5. What do you mean, you don’t like my character? What did she ever do to you? You do know that people have flaws, right?
6. (Pinching my thumb and index fingers together and bringing them to my lips.) *Coughs* Here. Have another hit on the crack pipe.
7. It’s abundantly apparent to anyone reading your anonymous review that you have an ax to grind. Or perhaps slighted you in a critique group? Did I call you a name in the fifth grade?
8. POO-POO HEAD!
9. Oh, yeah? Well, I bet you couldn’t write your way out of a paper bag either! *sobs uncontrollably* OH GOD, WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!

Yeah, I know that was nine. I couldn’t help myself.

PS. Dear Bloggers/reviewers, I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean any of it! Don’t hate me! I love you all!!!!

PPS. You all do know this was written in jest, right? *worries*

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Eight things @teribrownwrites would say to book reviewers/bloggers if she was, you know, STOOPID.  (Click to Tweet)

Did she just commit career hari-kiri?  @teribrownwrites engages BOOK BLOGGERS. (Cue scary music)  (Click to Tweet)

 I’ve been doing Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day shred for five days now and I am SORE. Cancer, two back to back surgeries, radiation and the resulting 45 pound weight loss left me weak and even more klutzy than usual, which is SCARY considering how Klutzy I was to begin with! I’d been working out, but only sporadically, due more to my crushing writing schedule than desire. Now that I have a few minutes to breathe,  I finally decided it was time to get serious.

If you’re gonna get serious, Jillian Michaels seems like a good choice. Plus, my friend of many years, (even though we’ve only met once), Linda Sherwood ,was doing it, and enjoying the benefits, so I jumped on the bandwagon, purchased a DVD and started the program. I have a gym membership and a great workout buddy, but my desire is to run, so I thought I would give this a shot to build some strength before I hit the road. The last thing I want right now is more doctor’s appointments!

Getting stronger in any area of your life takes commitment. And sometimes, often times, it takes pain as well. Writing four books in a year was both exhilarating and painful. But my writing has improved in a million little ways. I was working on a proposal the other day and by the time I finished it, I barely recognized the writing—my style and voice improved more in the last year than it had the five years prior. I’m currently working on the copy edits for the third Summerset Abbey book, Spring Awakening. The book made me cry when I wrote it and even now, I shake my head over the growth in my writing. The pain was worth it.

I’m hoping that 30 Day Shred is going to be worth it, too!

On the Blog: What does the 30 Day Shred and writing have in common? From @teribrownwrites (Click to Tweet)

On the Blog: Strengthening your writing muscles can be as painful as strengthening your real ones. From @teribrownwrites (Click to Tweet)