Saturday, December 27, 2014

2014: A YEAR OF EMOTIONS

Because visual imagery will convey my sentiments better than any words my eggnog-laden brain could dare attempt, I invite you to relax and enjoy this .GIF-heavy post as we look back on the debut year of The Valentines.

Or, more specifically, the emotions we endured over the course of the last twelve months...


First there was,
EXCITEMENT

excited photo: excited 2n7ihd-gisellehappy.gif

OHMYGAWD! No feeling on earth could match how it felt to wake up on January 1, 2014, and realize that this year your book was going to be published.

That euphoric feeling lasted about...three seconds because FEAR came storming in the room and ruined everything!

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As delicately as a brick chucked at your face, it suddenly dawned on us that all of those words we pieced together in the safety of our home offices were going to be available for the entire effing world to read. The ENTIRE. EFFING. WORLD.

...and enter the FREAK OUT. 

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The FREAK OUT manifested in different ways for every author. In some cases tears and foot stomping were involved, in other cases the  repetitive mumbling of, "There's no f*cking way I can't do this!" could be overheard. No matter how the FREAK OUT presented, it was a scary moment that none of us ever want to encounter again. (even though we know we will--if we're lucky enough).

With the help of peer encouraging emails/chocolate/alcohol, we were somehow talked off of the ledges we were ready to leap from and able to gain a wee bit of perspective. Somebody liked this book enough to buy it, right? Maybe it's not that bad...
And so the BUSY began.

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Hours upon hours disappeared as we tweeted, tumbled and street-teamed. We answered interview questions (the same ones, so many times) and guest-posted, we Facebooked and Rafflecoptered. We pimped our books until our  fingers were bloody stumps and we'd, at some point, evolved into people we'd never seen before...

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But we did it because we were debut authors and we wanted our books to be a success.

We plotted along this course until the day our ARCs arrived.




And then...HOLY CRAP!
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Seeing your  name on the spine of a book is one of the most thrilling sights in the world. Each one of us oozed all of that Valentine-laden thrill into the world until the day our first negative reviews showed up and brought along with it  DEPRESSION and SADNESS.

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The same emails/chocolate/alcohol we depended on just a few hours/days/weeks ago, were called upon once more, and we suckled from them until we were strong enough to show your faces on the Internet again, or until a glowing review came out and our grief was replaced with ENTHUSIASM! because clearly, someone recognized that our book was just as awesome as we'd always known it was.


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This viscous, exhausting cycle continued, and continued, and continued, until the day each of our books were finally released. And after a fair amount of attaboys from your family and friends,

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and some well-earned booty-shaking,

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the only two emotions we were left with were EXHAUSTION 

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and complete and udder GRATITUDE.

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Despite  the emotional roller coaster that threatened to claim our collective sanity on more than a million one occasion, the one constant feeling has been our gratefulness for the encouragement and support offered by bloggers, readers and our fellow writers. Without you, 2014 never would have happened for us.

From the bottom of the Valentines hearts, we'd like to say,
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We can't wait to see you in 2015!

Friday, December 19, 2014

Cupid's Arrow: I Heart Books

Jen here, ready to offer my epic love of all things bookish with poetry (thanks so much to Beth for shooting us this arrow!).

An Ode to Books

Piled on the coffee table
stacked upon the shelves
paperbacks and hardcovers
precariously balance themselves
books from the local library
titles from the small bookstore
invisible copies of eBooks, too
waiting on devices
and yet, 
there's always room for more!

Titles of adventure
and stories of days of old
brand new books with unbroken spines
itching for me to hold.
Fiction and nonfiction
cozied up together
stories of romance, or murder,
or danger,
perfect to read
in any weather!

Oh, my precious beauties,
my wonderful little friends,
I love our time together,
even when the story ends.
Books, you have fed my soul
and nourished my heart, too
there will never be another
that I love as much
as you...

But look! There's something new
waiting on my shelf-
thus begins another love,
and each story becomes part of 
myself.

From http://i-wanna-perfect-soull.tumblr.com/

May you find lots of magical books waiting for you this holiday season!