Author Jen Meyers

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Iron Fey Series Giveaway!

I’ve been cleaning out my bookshelves lately and that means good things for YOU. My shelves are OVERFLOWING with fantastic YA books. So much so that I must part with some to make room for at least *most* of the remaining books to fit (doubled up on many shelves). (It’s a sickness, I tell you.) (One for which I hope there is NEVER a cure.)

So, do you know what I have for you? Free books for one lucky person! (And I hope that’s you.) Also, there will be more free books from my overflowing shelves for another lucky person in a couple of weeks, and then even more coming in the future as I work my way through my TBR pile and decide which I’m willing to give away.

This first giveaway is for these two lovely books:

They are the first two books in the Iron Fey series by Julie Kagawa.

To enter, all you need to do is let me know you’d like them. There are three ways to do that:

1. Leave a comment here.
2. Leave a comment on my Facebook post about the giveaway. (And share it, too, please!)
3. Tweet about it (but be sure to include my Twitter name and a link to this post in your tweet so I see it! I’m @jmeyersbooks on Twitter).  Here’s a sample tweet you can just copy and paste, or adjust as you like:

I entered to win Julie Kagawa’s Iron Daughter and Iron King from @jmeyersbooks. You can too! http://wp.me/p28ik8-KE

CONTEST IS CLOSED! Winner will be announced Monday.

Thanks for playing!

If you wanted to follow me in any of those places, that’d be extra sweet. :-) But you can enter even if you’d rather not. You can do all three ways or only one. And I’d really appreciate it if you’d help spread the word so more people get a chance for these great books.

Each person gets one entry. The giveaway is open until Sunday, July 1, 2012, when I’ll give everyone a number and pick a random winner. On Monday, July 2, I’ll announce the winner here on my blog, on Twitter, and Facebook. So make sure you check back to see if you’ve won!

Good luck everyone! (I hope you win.)  ;-)

 

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Oh, hey there! One last thing—I would love to send you a FREE paperback copy of Intangible. Click here to find out how you can get me to do that. :-)

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By jen | June 25, 2012 | Blog |

JK Rowling is better than ANY nanny

A couple of weeks ago we dashed off to Vermont for a whirlwind three-day trip during which we were driving for 4-6 hours each day. (FUN.) (No, REALLY.) The trip itself was very educational. Wanna know what I learned?

1. You can never have too many plastic bags to catch the vomit of car-sick children.
2. You CAN have too FEW.
3. You can’t bring too many changes of clothes for said car-sick children.
4. You CAN bring too FEW.
5. Even when you don’t let your kids eat breakfast before they get in the car, they still get sick.
6. Seeing your grandparents TOTALLY makes up for throwing up in the car, and it’s like the misery of the previous 6 hours NEVER happened.
7. Grandparents have magical powers.
8. Books on CD rock like NOTHING else in this world when you’re trapped in a car for 16 hours over three days. And your kids get car sick. (Did I mention the car sickness?)
9. J.K. Rowling is better than ANY nanny.
10. I will never do it again.

Actually I will. I’m taking the kids back to Vermont in a couple of weeks—where I’ll be doing my first reading/book signing!—and I’ve already bought Sea Bands in hopes that they’ll quell the kid nausea and we’ll ALL have a much more pleasant trip. (Cross your fingers for us, please. We need all the luck we can get.)

If you’re in the area, please come to the reading! (Don’t leave me there by myself! My biggest fear at the moment—you know, besides 12 more hours of children getting car sick—is that no one will show.  O_O) It’s at the Brownell Library in Essex Junction, VT, on July 6 at 3 pm.

One last thing. I put up a new vlog over at Parenthetically that you should TOTALLY check out. Oh, look! Here it is:

(There are more great vlogs by my Parenthetical cohorts on YouTube. Go see!)

Have a great day, everyone!

 

By jen | June 21, 2012 | Blog |

Fledglings

Did I tell you that we had a pair of Carolina wrens build a nest on our front porch? I LOVE the Carolina wren because it looks an awful lot like a puff ball with a tail and it has a great song. (Click that link to go hear it via the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which TOTALLY rocks, in case you were unaware.) Plus, my neighbor recently told me they eat spiders…so, you know, that pretty much CEMENTED my deep, undying love for this little bird.

We were supposed to spend the morning visiting the dentist, but the littlest of the littles is sick, so there was some last minute cancelling to do first thing this morning. And good thing, too, because otherwise we would have missed out on this:

Well, hello little baby bird!

The chicks we’ve heard peeping for the last week poked their little feathered heads out of the nest this morning and we were lucky enough to catch it. We gathered in the doorway (noses practically pressed against the storm door window) to watch—our first sighting of them. Mom and Dad both came by with creepy-crawly eats. And then the babies hopped out of the nest! All five of them.

(Every year they build their nest in an empty wasp trap up under the roof of our porch…a trap that’s never caught anything but Carolina wrens.)

(That’s mom/dad standing on the brick.)

Then they tried out their wobbly wings. Some landed in very precarious places.

  

(And they often followed each other to those spots.)

Some found places a bit more stable.

  

Once they were all out of the nest and scattered around the porch, the parents were rushing around trying to keep track of them all. (I can TOTALLY relate.) I’m sure it’s quite a task to suddenly have five individuals flying and hopping around in different directions. Insta-parenting! Not like they haven’t been busy catching bugs and spiders (yay!) for them to eat for the last week and a half. And suddenly feeding five hungry birds one bug at a time would be time consuming, to say the least. But still. Now they’re FREE. And they have WINGS. It’s like suddenly all your kids can drive AND they have cars. And it happens all at ONCE. You know?

Anyway, it was so super cool. We’ve never seen birds fledge before, so it was a really thrilling morning for EVERYONE involved (people and birds).

I hope your Monday has been just as exciting. :-) Have a great day!

 

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Oh, hey there! One last thing—I would love to send you a FREE paperback copy of Intangible. Click here to find out how you can get me to do that. :-)

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By jen | June 18, 2012 | Blog |

In Remembrance

I wanted to tell you a little bit about the loved one who passed last week because he was an extraordinary individual. And I don’t say that lightly.

His name was Bernie Henault and I met him about 13 years ago because he was Steve’s uncle (by marriage). Bernie immediately stood out from the rest of Steve’s family in two ways—he was loud (in a very cheerful sort of way) and he only had one leg (he’d lost the left one when he was hit by a drunk driver at 17). Bernie was married to Steve’s aunt Sharon, who has cerebral palsy. They are two of the most amazing people I’ve ever met.

Bernie’s standard reply to my “Hey, how are you?” was always, “Well, I’m on my last leg.” He lived on laughter and positivity. Sharon does too. She loves to tell about her mother’s reaction when she first brought Bernie home to meet her parents. “But, he’s a cripple!” her mom had said, and Sharon had looked at her and cried, “Mom! Look at me!”

But honestly, there is nothing crippled about either one of them. And there IS everything remarkable about them. They both worked hard to help others their whole lives. They adopted two high needs kids and years later raised two of their five grandchildren. They are both the kind of people who would do anything for anyone. Without exception, without expectation.

Bernie worked in social services for 40 years, helping low income families, fighting inequality. He spent almost his entire life trying to make life better for other people. He didn’t feel sorry for himself, he didn’t expect handouts because of his physical limitation. He believed that all people are worth helping.

There is a lovely article from 2009 written about him by Kevin O’Connor of the Rutland Herald detailing much more of his life and his spitfire spirit, if you’re interested. (I HIGHLY recommend it if you’re in the mood to be inspired.) This is just a snippet:

Henault has a long resume of advocacy for low-income and educational, economic and environmental causes. He tells the story of serving 16 years on the North Country Union High School Board when other members complained bitterly about the cost of special education students.

“I said, ‘Should we gas the little suckers?'”

People gasped.

“Then what are you saying?” he responded. “There are no throwaway children.”

I’d never heard that story before, but that is SO Bernie. He was passionate, intelligent, warm, and incredibly positive.

I was lucky enough to know him personally, and I think I loved him from that first “I’m on my last leg” reply. The world lost a bright soul a week ago, and I can definitely feel his absence. Even from afar.

 

By jen | June 12, 2012 | Blog |

The Best Laid Plans

Well, it’s only the beginning of the month, but already I know I’m not going to get the first draft completed in June. Which is okay. Life has gotten in the way—in not a good way, a beloved family member just died—and so I must take a deep breath, release my plans, and just go with it. Things will come together, get done—maybe not when I’d hoped, but there are more important things.

Much more important.

So I’m taking a break to go remember and celebrate the life of a much-loved person. Who I already deeply miss.

On a lighter note, earlier this week I sent off a free signed paperback to a reader who helped spread the word. I was thrilled to do it, and am hoping to be mailing out many more free books this summer.

I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. Go hug the people you love and make sure you tell them that you love them. As often as you can. :-)

By jen | June 7, 2012 | Blog |

Science class

You know we home school, right? We don’t do structure much, so we’re really unschoolers. I wanted to show you science class:

Thanks to Ginny for the picture!

We were checking out the spring pond life—tadpoles, water bugs, fish, dragonfly larvae. This is our neighbor’s pond where we ice skate in the winter and swim in the summer. (We have the most generous and loveliest of neighbors.) (Though I do hope we’ll have land for our own pond someday.)

This photo totally makes me think of Otis Redding. “Sittin’ in the mornin’ sun, I’ll be sittin’ when the evening comes…” *Sigh.* What a GREAT tune. In fact, here. Go listen to Mr. Redding sing The Dock of the Bay.

Hope your week is starting out beautifully, maybe even wasting time on the dock of a bay (or pond). :-)

By jen | June 4, 2012 | Blog |

Scoffing at the Insanity

Happy last day of May! I’m celebrating today because as of tomorrow—and for the full month of June—I will be a writing machine and won’t see much of anything beyond my computer and the screen of my imagination. The outline for book two is done(ish) (enough) and I’ve set the (possibly insane and unrealistic) goal of finishing the first draft in a month. Which basically means writing about 20,000 words a week, about 3,000 words a day (or more, really, if I want to take a day off here and there) (and I WILL want to take a day off here and there—I will NEED to). So I’m probably really shooting for writing between 4,000–5,000 words a day.

HA!

(That’s me scoffing at the insanity of it. I HAVE FOUR KIDS AT HOME.) (But still. I’m going to try.)

Why am I trying to write the book in a month? Because it takes me FOREVER to make it into something fabulous, so I need a LOT of time to edit/revise/polish. But I can’t do that until I have a draft to work with. AND I want to have book two out by the end of the year.

So, I may be less than verbose here for the next month so I can spend most of my time making my carpal tunnel excruciatingly painful in a very short time period. (I’m kidding.) (I hope.)

Wish me luck!

Also? This just makes me smile SO huge! The most elaborate marriage proposal I’ve ever seen. So sweet!

Thanks to Julia for the link!

Oh! And go check out Parenthetically on YouTube. I’m posting a new video today about why I (shamefully, but for a very good reason) do not watch the news.

Parenthetically

(Click to go!)

Have a great rest of your week (and weekend ahead), everyone!

 

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Oh, hey there! One last thing—I would love to send you a FREE paperback copy of Intangible. Click here to find out how you can get me to do that. :-)

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By jen | May 31, 2012 | Blog |

(Parenthetically)

I have a new project that I’m SO excited to tell you about.

I’ve teamed up with some fabulous YA writers to create our own YouTube vlogging channel called Parenthetically. We’re just getting started, but expect to have several new videos posted every week on just about any topic. Who knows what will come out of our mouths?

Here’s my intro video.

Here’s Suz’s intro (she’s one of my fabulous cohorts).

And here’s Megan’s intro (another of the fabulous ones).

Parenthetically is Suzanne Gale, Megan Whitmer, and Gina Denny. (Oh, and me, of course.) Come check us out and subscribe!

Happy Memorial Day! A special thanks to all our people in uniform—past, present, and future. Have a great day, everyone!

By jen | May 28, 2012 | Blog |

the remains of the day

We had a really cool visitor to our yard this week:

(That’s a pileated woodpecker, and it’s HUGE.)

(And isn’t that a cool piece of wood? It’s from a neighbor’s tree that came down in a storm and it was too big to chop into firewood by hand, so it frames one corner of our butterfly garden. I LOVE that funky chunk of wood.)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Oh, hey there! One last thing—I would love to send you a FREE paperback copy of Intangible. Click here to find out how you can get me to do that. :-)

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By jen | May 25, 2012 | Blog |

The Ups and Downs of Self-Publishing (a.k.a. I Need Your Help!)

Hey!

So, I wanted to tell you a little bit about the ups and downs of self-publishing, and offer a way that YOU (who are so wonderfully supportive and have read and loved my book) can help AND get a free signed paperback in return.

I *love* self-publishing. Like with my whole heart. I love that I am in control of the entire creative process as well as the business end of things. I decide what the cover looks like (or, well, really you do because I CANNOT make a decision), the price, when it’s released, when to put it on sale, etc. And I get a MUCH higher percentage of the proceeds as an indie author than I would going traditional. I *love* that…because I’d like to be able to make a living as a writer.

I work hard to create a high quality product—a clean, polished, well-told story that is laid out/formatted neatly and wrapped in a shiny, professional-looking cover. I do a lot of it myself and I have people to do the things I can’t (like story and line editing, copy editing, and proofreading). I’ve found that it’s a serious advantage to be in control of and responsible for every part of the process.

Which brings me to the disadvantage of self-publishing: I am responsible for EVERY part of the process. Like marketing. There’s no marketing team out there spreading the word and selling my book for me. But there IS a fabulous book blogging community that I’ve been  warmly welcomed by (thank you!), and they are probably the best way to get exposure for a new book. It would be virtually impossible to get the word out without them.

These past few months I’ve been marketing like CRAZY because I want Intangible to do well—I want people to hear about it and read it. (And pine for book two.)  ;-) In that time I’ve contacted over 750 book bloggers and more than 400 have expressed interest in reading and reviewing Intangible (again, THANK you!).  Already 100 of those lovely bloggers have posted reviews online, helping to spread the word to their followers as well as people on Goodreads, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. (Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!)

(Those are crazy numbers, I know…but really, I’m trying to get the word out about my book to millions of possible readers. On my own. It’s bound to take some craziness.)

So I’m working hard to get the word out, but I still need more exposure. And that’s where YOU can help. :-)

How, you ask? Like this:

1. Pick a date.
2. Spread the word about Intangible. Tweet, blog, chat, text…heck, maybe even do something crazy like talk to people about it. ;-)
3. If there are at least 10 ebook sales on your date, I’ll send you a signed paperback of Intangible. Free!

Simple, yes?

Now the small print:
1. If the date you’ve chosen is already taken, I’ll ask you to pick another.
2. I have to use ebook sales because they are accounted for immediately. I can’t count paperbacks sold on Amazon because it’s impossible for me to tell what date someone ordered the paperback. However, I will count any paperbacks purchased directly from my store on this site. So the total for a given day will be the sum of ebooks sold on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, plus ANY books (paper or ebooks) sold on my site.
3. Just as an FYI, I typically sell several ebooks a day, so it won’t take much more to make it to 10 on any particular day.
4. I need to limit this to the US only for right now, and I’m sorry to do that. It’s just that international shipping charges are a wee bit too steep for me at this point. (However, with more success I’ll be better able to afford international shipping . . . so, here’s hoping!)
5. You can play as many times as you like. No limits. Get a free book for you, get one for a friend, get one for your library!

So, if you want to play, shoot me an email telling me which date you’d like to claim: j (AT) jmeyerbooks (DOT) com.

And thank YOU so very much for helping to spread the word! :-)

Have a great day, everyone!

 

By jen | May 23, 2012 | Blog |