My A-Z Plans & New(s) Adult

Winner! Winner! 

Congrats to Melissa Maygrove on winning last week's giveaway for a free eCopy of Julie Flanders' Polar Night! Julie will be in touch, and I hope you enjoy. :)

My A to Z Plan... or Lack Thereof

Hey gang! April is nigh, and that means the A to Z blogfest is getting ready to explode our inboxes and web readers. It's a great bit of fun, but an extremely nuts time for those who participate.

I've decided to abstain this year as I'm very busy preparing my third Moonsongs book for launch (coming very soon!), prepping my home and family to relocate across the country in June, and adapting to some exciting new blog/writing opportunities. (More on that below...)

So what's my A-Z plan, then? To support you all, of course! Almost every blogger I follow is doing A-Z, so I'm going to spend my time commenting on and sharing your posts. As a result, this blog will be pretty quiet in April.

But you'll probably still be able to find me around the blog world...

New(s) Adult

If you've been following this blog very long, it's no secret that I'm a fan of New Adult literature. I love the idea of creating stories specifically for the 18 to 20-something crowd. It's a time in life when folks are truly just figuring out adulthood. They're actively conquering life and, sometimes, life is conquering them.

Being that age often means struggling to find a career or an identity in the professional world. It can also mean a lot of exploration in relationships with a freedom and responsibility not experienced in the teenage years. 

In short, it's a dynamic life stage. A stage that was very meaningful to me personally, and one I think deserves some real attention from both readers and storytellers alike. 

I truly believe it's not a category of literature that simply should exist, it's a category that demands to exist. (And does now!) That passion is what led me into the New Adult community online. 

How I got into NA

Just under a year ago I was totally floored to find this blog of New Adult writers and enthusiast called NA Alley Blog. At the time, I had no idea there was a name for the kinds of stories I mentioned above. I just knew I was writing them, and that I wanted to read more like them.

After visiting with NAAB, an idea was hatched to start a weekly New Adult chat on Twitter. So I did. 

I honestly figured it would just be me and those enthusiastic ladies from NA Alley doing all of the chatting at these things. People in publishing circles were still very uneasy with the concept of New Adult, it seemed, and considering I'd just heard of the term myself, I couldn't imagine there'd be much interest.  

I was very, very wrong. 

The chat was an instant hit, and thanks to the support/knowledge of the folks at NA Alley, it became a real resource for the NA community. We had authors of all kinds, readers of all kinds, editors, etc. stopping in to chat with us on a regular basis. Word of mouth spread, and within weeks we were regularly trending on the BIG Twitter lists. 

Amazing!

I'm proud to say that the chat is still going strong (we'll celebrate our first birthday in July), and has grown into quite a 'thing'. I still host most Thursday nights, but have been able to tap into a network of professionals who are eager to share their expertise with New Adult writers. So you never know who'll be around! 

Meanwhile, New Adult has also become quite a thing. Publishers are eagerly looking for it, big time media is starting to investigate it, and readers are snapping it up. 

And I truly think it only goes up from here.

My next role in the NA movement is... 

That's why I was so thrilled to apply to be, and subsequently be accepted (last week!) as an official contributor to NA Alley Blog. These are the folks who got me into NA, the people I turned to for NA answers, and now I get to be a part of that for others.

As part of NA Alley Blog I'll have a special opportunity to share my--hopefully--unique voice with a diversity of writing and reading communities. I'll do my best to bring energy, fun, and encouragement as well. 

I'll be blogging about NA centric things over there on a regular basis, as well as taking part in the various activities and initiatives on that front. I'll be sharing that stuff with you all, of course, but this blog will still be my own--for better or worse. :) 

I'll be busy, and it may take me a while to figure out how to mange three blogs/endeavors (I'm still running the NA Lit Chat blog). But I hope you'll stick around to see where this latest adventure takes me. Who knows, maybe you'll even join me on the NA front?

A Special Thank You

I want to publicly thank Alex Cavanaugh and P.K. Hrezo for endorsing my application. If you know them (how could you not), you know they're special people in our writing community. They're great ambassadors for what we all do and aspire to do as writers online. They operate with a class, thoughtfulness, and spirit of community that is hard to find in my 'real life' relationships, much less from people I've never met face-to-face. 

It's the spirit of people like P.K. and Alex I hope I bring to the NA community, so they were naturally the first people I approached to write me notes of recommendation for the NAAB position. 

Just as naturally, I suppose, they said yes. :) In the end, they are more than role models, they are people I'm proud to call friends. And I hope they would consider me the same. 

~EJW~