Scott Tracey – Young Adult Writer

I thought about making this a long, drawn out process.  Arranging something with book bloggers, or making a game out of it, but let’s face it.  It’s a lot more fun if I’m like BOOK COVER and you’re all like AHHHH.

Can we just talk about how in love with this cover I am? Seriously.  It’s EVERYTHING.  I thought I loved the WITCH EYES cover, and now I’m like “WITCH who?”  Yeah, it’s like that.

So….what do you guys think?  Creepy, right?  I love it!

Edit: If you click on the book cover, it’ll take you to the Witch Eyes series Facebook page.  You should like it for all the latest news about Witch/Demon/Phantom Eyes.

So my day started off rather normally.  An unexpected shipment of bagels arrived on our door last night, which is always a good sign.  (Translation: roommate brought lots of bagels home from work).  Increased presence of bagels in the house translates to increased productivity in Scotts during the daylight hours.

So I’m at my computer, bemoaning the fact that I have no coffee (because I forgot to turn the coffee maker on).  I couldn’t even SPELL my bemoaning tweet correctly, that’s how bad it was.

I opened up my word document, remembering that I was so tired last night I started writing a new scene in third person present (and in a really weird sort of omniscient third person, at that), instead of first person past.  It’s not like it conflicts with the other 85,000 words of the manuscript or anything.  So I set about changing everything to fit.

And then I get a tweet, asking if I’ve seen the Amazon Best of lists.  I of course go and look, see a bunch of books I love on the Teen list, and don’t think anything of it.  Then I realize they were talking about the LGBT portion of the list.  The list that WITCH EYES was on.

I may or may not have literally emailed my agent and editor with the following:

I’m pretty sure this is a mistake, right?

…….

RIGHT?

You can see the list over here, but apparently it’s all official and such.  WITCH EYES is listed as one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2011 in the Gay and Lesbian category.

So I’m in the middle of my revision for DEMON EYES, and I’m currently struggling with an important question for this particular scene, so I thought I would blog.  (In case you were wondering, I’m trying to decide which came first, the SPOILER or the SPOILER). Because nothing says productive author like “hey, I should blog as a form of procrastination!”

It’s been interesting to go back through DEMON EYES, which was written in stops and starts, and finally finished while I was in the middle of moving.  One of the things I’ve noticed is that this draft was all about EXTREMES.  Every emotion was overstated, every argument was huge and life-altering.  Apparently the theme was “go big or go home.”  It’s good for me, because at least it’s THERE.  Now as I prune and polish, I can pull it back to lessen the drama and keep it from going too far.

I think it’s interesting how writing processes change for writers the more they get into a routine and lifestyle.  Every book I’ve written has been a completely different process than the one before.  I’ve had books that were a struggle to write (hi, HACKYSACK), and books that I spit out in six weeks.  And now we’ve got the drama of DEMON EYES to add to the fire.

Even the way I’ve been editing is different.  Normally, I write to music and revise to soundtracks.  I go through at least 2-3 different playlists when I’m drafting, and flip between the same 5-6 soundtracks for revision.  (I’m not a huge fan of the movies, but the Transformers 3 score is FANTASTIC to write to).  But now, I have 3 playlists for my revision, and they’re all songs.  And when I’ve been writing new chapters, I’ve listened to the Inception and The Social Network soundtracks. So the process has gotten reversed somewhere along the way.

Also, I’m switching my author stuff on Facebook over to an author page, which I actually promise to update more often than I do my REAL Facebook.  So if you want to add me, you can do that here.

First off, thanks to everyone who entered, tweeted, retweeted and all that fun stuff!

Congrats to the winner of A TOUCH MORBID, THE GODDESS TEST, and SIRENZ!

Cait H.

Feel free to email me at scottshouldbewriting at gmail dot com with your mailing address, Cait!

To enter the Morbid kind of Magic contest!  All the information can be found here.  And trust me, you WANT a copy of A TOUCH MORBID – it’s so good! All you have to do is take a picture with a copy of WITCH EYES and you’re entered!

And I promise to do real blog entries again soon.  I’ve been rather uninspired lately.

So I woke up a little morbid and bloodthirsty this morning, and then this happened:

I’m super excited to keep working with Flux, and to get to keep telling Braden’s story.  I can’t tell you too much about PHANTOM EYES yet, but I’m definitely stoked to write it.  And you can tell that that’s the truth, because I used the word “stoked.”  Serious writer business, people.

Super, mega, HUGE thanks to my rockstar agent, Ginger Clark, who did all the hard work while I just lounged around doing…well, something, I’m sure.

So this means you’ll get DEMON EYES next fall (probably September) and then PHANTOM EYES the year after that!