Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Bounce Back from Rejection! Advice from author Kourtney Heintz #NewRelease


Author Kourtney  Heintz
I'm thrilled to welcome the talented Kourtney Heintz today! She's got a new book release, and she also has some terrific advice about handling rejection. Be sure to check out ways to win a copy of her book at the bottom of this post. Take it away, Kourtney...

How to Bounce Back from Rejection

Rejection is inevitable. It can take 100s of Nos to get that one Yes. I say this with certainty because it’s been seven years since I started my writing journey. Between my two novels, I racked up 400 rejections.

I’m not going to lie. Some hurt more than others. The cold query rejection was the least painful. Stung like a paper cut. Usually it meant the query needed work, sometimes it meant my idea wasn’t grabbing that agent.

Rejections on full manuscript requests hurt more. Because you knew they read some of your work and decided it wasn’t good enough. You couldn’t brush it off as an issue with the presentation of the idea. No, this was a problem with the storytelling. Several of these meant a serious revision was in order.

The revise and resubmit rejection annihilated me. Like a pack of yellowjackets attacking my heart. I had no idea how to make the book better. It was the best thing I had written. It was a rejection of everything I’d worked so hard to create. It was a rejection of me.

How did I keep going? I have an arsenal of coping techniques. You have to when you spend years dealing with something.

Crying helped. Raging at the world. Venting privately to friends. Pouting. I let myself have a couple days to wallow.

And then I would step back.  Give myself a sabbatical from writing. I needed to want to write more than I wanted to avoid the pain of rejection.

Sometimes it was a few days. With the cold query rejections, I was back on my pogo stick in a day or two. Other times--after several full manuscript rejections or the revise and resubmit rejection--it was a few months. Inevitably, the need to write overcame everything else.

But I had to allow myself a break. To understand what my days were like without the writing. To feel the emptiness and want to fill it.

Another way to cope with rejection is to bundle work into projects. Some projects can happen at the same time, others require my complete focus. When I’m querying, I’m also drafting. But when I’m revising, I’m just revising. You have to build in those breaks from querying. Because querying can be a soul-sucking experience.

There have to be periods where you do what you love: write stories and polish them. That’s the best part of being a writer and you need to connect with it and feel it. You need to know that this is why you keep going in the face of rejection.

The Six Train to Wisconsin Back Cover:

Sometimes saving the person you love can cost you everything.

There is one person that ties Oliver Richter to this world: his wife Kai. For Kai, Oliver is the keeper of her secrets.

When her telepathy spirals out of control and inundates her mind with the thoughts and emotions of everyone within a half-mile radius, the life they built together in Manhattan is threatened.

To save her, Oliver brings her to the hometown he abandoned—Butternut, Wisconsin—where the secrets of his past remain buried. But the past has a way of refusing to stay dead. Can Kai save Oliver before his secrets claim their future?

An emotionally powerful debut, The Six Train to Wisconsin pushes the bounds of love as it explores devotion, forgiveness and acceptance.


Author Bio:
Kourtney Heintz writes emotionally evocative speculative fiction that captures the deepest truths of being human. For her characters, love is a journey never a destination.

She resides in Connecticut with her warrior lapdog, Emerson, her supportive parents and three quirky golden retrievers. Years of working on Wall Street provided the perfect backdrop for her imagination to run amuck at night, imagining a world where out-of-control telepathy and buried secrets collide.

Her debut novel, The Six Train to Wisconsin, was a 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Semifinalist.


Amazon Author Central Page: http://amazon.com/author/kourtneyheintz

Buy Links

Paperback available from:
Barnes and Noble

Ebook available from:

Goodreads Six Train giveaways going on until July 1:

For Canadians, 1 signed copy:
Several other countries can win 1 signed copy: http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/54217-the-six-train-to-wisconsin

 

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Altered Frequency Blog Tour Begins Today! #Prizes #Romance #PNR


Check out these awesome blogs hosting Altered Frequency in the coming weeks. Interesting interviews, loads of new information about Baltimore's Inner Harbor, and prizes!

Hope you'll stop by for a chat and to enter to win some fun prizes!
Wednesday, June 19th S.J. Maylee
Thursday, June 20th Gabrielle Bisset
Saturday, June 22nd What the Cat Can Read
Monday, June 24th Book Devotee Reviews
Tuesday, June 25th All Things Romance
Wednesday, June 26th I am, Indeed
Thursday, June 27th TBR the blog
Monday, July 1 Lusty Penguin Reviews
Monday, July 1 Kiru Taye Writes
Wednesday, July 3  Romance with Suspense, Secrets, and Sinful Sunsets
Thursday, July 4 Angels with Attitude Book Reviews Angels with Attitude Book Reviews
Monday, July 7 Harlie's Books Harlie's Books
Tuesday, July 8 Caffeinated Book Reviewer

Thanks very much for stopping by today! Hope to see you at one (or all!) of the Altered Frequency blog tour stops. Remember, you could win some cool prizes, including a $25 Amazon or BN giftcard.