When It Feels Real

Today, Pretty Crooked is finally published. I am a bona fide author. It finally feels real. Well, kinda.

In the year leading up to publication there are so many firsts, so many little milestones. There’s the cover reveal, the day your ARCs arrive. The first blurb (yay!). The first negative review (boo!). With each new event you feel yourself changing, and you understand the process in new ways. And yet, the concept that a word-processing file you typed up is going to be a thing, a product other people can actually buy and read and discuss and yes, maybe even smack-talk on Goodreads, doesn’t always feel real. Maybe this is because it’s always been a dream, something you aspire to but don’t necessarily expect to happen.

For me, there were a few key (and seemingly random) moments on the timeline that brought it home, bit by bit.

July, 2011: Doing my first interview. When Jen Bigheart asked me for an interview after my cover reveal I was surprised and elated and all of a sudden aware that Pretty Crooked was now something some people (granted, at that point, only a few savvy bloggers) might actually be anticipating.

August, 2011. Attending SCBWI-LA. This was my first national conference and my first one as an Apocalypsie. Meeting some of my fellow Apocs plus other authors and librarians gave me a true sense of belonging. It was moving, and very exciting. Also, I started to pass out cards with the title of the book, literally making it my calling card. (Six months later, a librarian I happened to be sitting next to during a session blogged about the book. Magic!)

August, 2011: Attending the PAYA Festival in West Chester, PA. For the first time, someone casually introduced me as “author of Pretty Crooked.” A wave of dizziness, a flash of surprise (OMG, that's me!) and a huge first.

January, 2012. Standing in front of a shelf in Barnes & Noble and seeing six fellow Apocs’ books displayed. Realizing that each of these people had gone through the debut year and here was the fruit of their labor, suddenly touchable, in Technicolor. Awesome and tear-jerking.

February, 2012. Buying Sharpies. (Actually, standing in Staples and obsessing over the various colors and nib widths and variety packs available. Could they make it any more confusing?) A small moment, to be sure, but a new feeling of ownership. My book would be here in a month and people were going to ask me to sign it. I was going to need these things.

And now, today. There will be lots of Tweeting and Facebooking and celebration, I’m sure. There will also plenty of other firsts over the next few months to look forward to. And I guess whether or not it “feels” real is kind of beside the point now—because it most definitely is. Whoa.

Day in the Life, or Living the Dream

My YA novel Pretty Crooked (Katherine Tegen) is out in about six weeks (!!!). I don’t know how typical or non-typical my writing life is, but I am seriously loving every minute of every day I spend as an author. Now, I’m not a fulltime author, mind you. I’m kind of a part timer/shift worker. It’s taking some time management, some weekend hours and a little bit less sleep to stay on top of writing, revising and promotional activities on top of a 40-hour workweek at my day job, which is freelance writing. An average day, when I’m not on a big deadline to finish something, usually looks something like this:

6:00-6:30 am: Wake up, attempt to wake up or lie in bed thinking about the ways to trick myself out of bed. The crying cat sometimes helps. As does the thought of coffee.

7:00 am: Feed cat. Make coffee. Caffeinate. Eat breakfast. Check email, answer email. Waste time on daily itinerary of websites.

7:30 am: Greet eye-rubbing husband in the doorway of my office.

7:32 am: Put on author hat. I like to think it looks like this:

On to work on current WIP, revisions or anything requiring Smart Morning Brain.

8:15 am: Take a break to answer emails, look up a recipe for dinner, and/or sign up for my Crossfit workout.

8:30 am: Back to work.

9:30 am: Husband comes into office to medicate cat and chat. If I’m on a roll, he gets a vacant stare. But usually he and the cat, pictured here with Jodi Meadows' Incarnate, are a welcome distraction.

10:00 am: Author hat comes off. Time to start freelance work—making calls, writing up copy, answering more emails.

11:45 am: Leave for the gym.

12:00 pm-1:00 p.m.: Sweat, grunt and temporarily forget everything that goes on between me and my keyboard.

1:15 p.m.: Lunch time at my desk—as long as my meal lasts is as long as I’m allowed to screw around on the internet.

2:00 p.m.: Back to work. More coffee may be needed. C’mon brain.

3:30 p.m.: Time to attend to promotional business. Manage ARC requests, update blog(s), work on interviews, plan events, contact stores, libraries, etc. Think up fun swag ideas.

5:00 p.m.: Start cooking dinner. Attempt to stay off internet for remainder of evening. [Umm, good luck, me]

11:00 p.m.: Sneak in one more peek at email, etc. Sleep, sweet sleep.

Elisa Ludwig: PRETTY CROOKED

BIO: Elisa Ludwig studied writing at Vassar College and Temple University before embarking on a career in freelance writing, and now YA fiction. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband Jesse and cat Beau a.k.a. Bread.

DEBUT: PRETTY CROOKED (Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins, March 13, 2012)
Willa’s secret plan seems all too simple: take from the rich kids at Valley Prep and give to the poor ones.

Yet Willa’s turn as Robin Hood at her ultra-exclusive high school is anything but. Bilking her “friends”—known to everyone as the Glitterati—without them suspecting a thing is far from easy. Learning how to pick pockets and break into lockers is as difficult as she’d thought it’d be. Delivering care packages to the scholarship girls, who are ostracized just for being from the “wrong” side of town, is way more fun than she’d expected.

The complication Willa didn’t expect, though, is Aidan Murphy, Valley Prep’s most notorious (and gorgeous) ace-degenerate. His mere existence is distracting Willa from what matters most to her: evening the social playing field between the haves and have-nots. There’s no time for crushes and flirting with boys, especially conceited and obnoxious trust-funders like Aidan.
But when the cops start investigating the string of thefts at Valley Prep and the Glitterati begin to seek revenge, could Aidan wind up being the person that Willa trusts most?

FIVE BEST WAYS TO SPEND THE APOCALYPSE: kissing, eating Nutella with a spoon, watching Mitchell and Webb’s The Event, reading anything by Kurt Vonnegut, dancing to Fishbone’s “Party at Ground Zero” on repeat.