#SOoW PSA

THIS PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT FOR
SHARK OUT OF WATER

IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY NONE OTHER THAN:

As most of you are aware, the second book in the Grab Your Pole series, The Other Fish in Sea, saw my sister, our friends, as well as myself in some difficult and tumultuous situations, and it left many individuals dangling off a rather grim precipice.

Anticipating the public's response to certain events in TOFitS and in a particularly parental fashion, Jenn Cooksey spirited Tristan away within a matter of minutes of that book’s release, and no one aside from our creator has seen or heard from him since. Soon after Jenn had Tristan safely underground, the rest of us were put in lockdown. Although there were one or two successful prison breaks over the last few months, they were incredibly brief and we have been, for the most part, unable to interact with readers, or each other.

Naturally I've become overly bored and well, I’ve decided I don’t care to be in lockdown any longer. I mean season 8 of Supernatural isn't out on Netflix yet and there's only so many card games a girl can play and beat herself at before she has to take matters into her own hands, you know? Not only that, but there are a few messages I need to get to some people as to encourage and inspire them. So, if you'd like to join me in exploiting Jenn's usual pre-publishing frenzy in which she will most likely be neglecting social media in the coming days, in addition to taking advantage of a skill set of mine that I used to swipe Jenn's book playlists, you're more than welcome to follow along and share everywhere you're able to as I help those poor souls still sitting in solitary gear up for what's coming on July 30th.

Like me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, and then look for the following tags for a daily dose of Shark Out of Water playlist shenanigans.

#ForYourListeningPleasure #SOoW

Follow links can be found HERE and on behalf of the gang and myself, we'd like you to know how inordinately blessed we feel to be able to share our journey with you, and we thank you for hanging in there with us. 

We’ll see you on the 30th!

Boy howdy, so am I, but first...

*Please note that songs will not be posted in any particular order and although certain songs are mentioned in the book and are indicative of what’s occurring in the GYP gang’s lives at any given time, some are not. There will be selections associated with individuals, and some that were simply used as inspiration in Jenn's writing. Not to mention that I plan to use a few songs to communicate directly to my GYP family and friends.*

For Your Listening Pleasure selections posted thus far:

Spoilers & the Infamous End of TOFitS

With the release date for Shark Out of Water looming ever closer, there are publishing things I've realized that I've put off (shocker, right?) so I'm probably not gonna be on social media sites much in the next couple weeks. However, my announcement of that seemed to pick at the barely scabbed-over wounds that I left on most everyone who read The Other Fish in the Sea and since 99% of readers screamed and yelled, cussing me out mentally, privately to friends, while some did so publicly as well, and asked WHY and HOW COULD YOU, I figure now might be a good time to address those rantings, in non-spoilery fashion of course.

Which brings me to another topic you all might be wondering about. Although the ARCs went out weeks ago, not a single review of SOoW has been posted. Any guesses as to why that is when it's standard operating procedure to release ARCs so that reviews can be posted and buzz can be generated well before a book is published? Mmhm, it's simply because I requested that ARC readers not post their reviews or ANYthing even remotely indicative or spoilery in their reading updates. And I did that BECAUSE of how TOFitS ended. 

It's no secret that I abhor spoilers, not only terms of my work but in others as well, and I want everyone who can be called a diehard GYP fan—those who've chosen to ride this series out with me and have been patiently (or not-so patiently) waiting for each and every release day—to not have a single aspect of these books spoiled or ruined for them by someone else, even if that someone doesn't think of what they've said in an update or a review as a spoiler. People think of spoilers in different ways so even knowing POV beforehand could potentially take away from someone's experience. That's why I'm so vague and non-committal when asked questions about even the smallest details, like the timespan of the series for example. It's not that I'm trying to be a bitch or frustrate readers on purpose; on the contrary, it's incredibly difficult to keep my damned mouth shut so that I don't inadvertently say something that gives something away or could potentially spoil the story in general for even ONE person.

I work extremely hard to make these stories as detailed as possible and most of you know that although I'm verbose AF regardless, almost every single thing I write is written for a reason. Not only that, but the GYP series is highly character driven and for me to write it that way, I feel like even knowing the mundane is most often necessary for people to really and truly connect with a single main character, and I have EIGHT of them. That means a reader is gonna be getting a lot of seemingly unimportant content that some might term as "page filler," and if a reader isn't a fan of that sort of thing, no biggie. I don't expect everyone to be a fan or even like my work. However, there are a lot of you who are indeed fans and who actually want that filler, like I do when reading a book, so that's primarily why I'm as wordy as I am. Additionally, I don't like to see everything coming, I want a story that keeps things interesting and can even throw me a curve ball every now and again, because I personally enjoy trying to figure out the ending before I get there to see how amazing perceptive I am. So, I include a little bit of mystery in my books for those readers who are the same as me. I call the extraneous shit that most people think the books would be better without, breadcrumbs. Like in a mystery, they're clues as to what might or might not happen; some are meant to be misleading, and more often than not, they will come back up, if not in the same book, in a future one. I also don't personally care for loose ends, so it's a safe bet that if something is brought up in one of my books and is left unresolved, it will be addressed at some point in the future, when I feel it's supposed to be resolved. 

All of that means is that if you read with an eye for the future, chances are you'll pick up on clues and be able to piece things together on your own, and if you've spent precious time doing that already and someone comes along and shoves a spoiler in your face, you're gonna be pissed. I know I am every time I see a spoiler in a status update or a review of my books, and it's not because I've just had the book ruined for me, because you know, I already know what's gonna happen when all is said and done anyway. I'm pissed about it on behalf of my fans. So, that's why I tip-toe around questions and why no one will see a review of Shark Out of Water until next week at the absolute earliest. Actually, I'd prefer ARC readers hold their reviews until release day, but that's just me. If anyone does want to discuss anything that's happened in the series thus far, there is a fan-organized and ran group on Goodreads called Grab Your Pole Group Therapy and it's set up so that those wanting to talk,discuss, theorize, or just cry on the shoulders of others can do so without the risk of running into spoilers. 

With all that said, let's move onto how, for fuck's sake, could I end TOFitS the way I did...

Put simply, it's because if I didn't, SOoW wouldn't be the book I wanted it to be and the GYP story as a whole would've suffered. It's not because I was trying to up my sales or generate a lot of talk by including a nasty cliffhanger like that because honestly, in my experience people love ranting about them, but a lot of times hearing of a cliffhanger in a book will deter people from reading until a later date, however they rarely ever remember to once the follow-up book(s) are out, so cliffhangers are notorious for being a double-edged sword in terms of buzz and sales. And that's why I didn't intentionally set about trying to incorpoarate because it doesn't exactly work out for an author when a handful of people are talking about the book, but no one's buying it and/or reading it, you know? Plus, I know what I did to you all and although I'm not exactly sorry for doing it, I do empathize.

The fact of the matter is though, I ended it that way because I HAD to. It wasn't fun for me; I feel everything you all feel when you read, except as the author of these particular stories, I experience them on a different level in order for me to write them and write them even moderately well. The heads and lives of the characters in these stories aren't always the easiest or happiest of places to be mentally or emotionally, and yeah, some of my fictional children have royally fucked shit up, so I get it, but that's life and we all have to deal with unpleasantness in life. That's also why I was okay with slamming everyone the way I did by ending of The Other Fish in the Sea like that. I know what's coming and the ending was all because of Shark Out of Water and maintaing that book's integrity, not to mention the integrity of future books in the GYP series.

I understand that's probably not much of a consolation to those of you with freshly bleeding hearts and nauseous tummies upon finishing TOFitS, but hopefully it'll help more to know that everyone I've spoken to who has read SOoW has universally agreed that if TOFitS hadn't ended the way it did, SOoW wouldn't be the book that it is, which in my mind really is pretty flippin' epic. I mean I can't promise that it's perfect and everyone will love it like I do, or that everyone's questions will be answered in this book, but just so you all know, I had about six beta readers for SOoW, and I even brought on one at the last minute because aside from ONE beta reader almost a year ago who I agreed with about ONE small scene, not a single other beta reader could find anything in book 3 that they felt could've been written better. That's not me being self-righteous either, in fact that consensus makes me exceedingly twitchy, but honestly, the beta feedback was little to none aside from those folks telling me it's perfect in their opinion and/or that they didn't take notes because they couldn't find anything.

So, do yourselves and me a favor, just hang tight a little while longer, pay attention, but don't read reviews until you've read the book, and hopefully you'll agree that on July 30, I delivered what I now laughingly refer to as a masterpiece...

Bona fide, legit, whatever... They both = me celebrating!

Without making you watch more than 5, albeit comical minutes of video, I'm choosing to share this uber-quick snippet just so that you have an idea of what's been playing non-stop in my head for a whole week now...

So why do I have this scene from O Brother Where Art Thou? playing in my head, you ask? Well, it's because I've had a very exciting week beginning last Tuesday that has resulted with me being signed by literary agent rock star, Jane Dystel of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. 

Words like legitimate and bona fide naturally spring to mind as Jane is the literary agent for some folks like...oh...I don't know, Colleen Hoover, Heather Brewer, Abbi Glines, and Tara Sivec. I know, right? Hopefully you can now fully appreciate my glee and get on board with this whole "I'm bona fide" thing that I've mentally got goin' on at the moment. Truly though, I'm humbled and feel inordinately fortunate in this turn of events, and I'm BEYOND tickled to be part of the DGLM team, as well as super excited to work with everyone and get to know all the folks who make up this literary agency powerhouse.

Now, you might be wondering what this means to you as readers, and the answer is; aside from crush tourney winners having to wait just a teensy bot longer for me to get their prizes in the mail, not much at the moment. Me becoming bona fide and having representation just means that I have people who know what the hell they're doing and will go to bat for me if someone does become interested in purchasing the rights for the GYP series. And because I know this all most of you really care about at the moment you all can relax...with the way everything stands right now, Shark Out of Water is still scheduled to release on time, so no panicking. Leave all that stuff to me, because trust me, I excel at panicking and if anything of import does arise that might affect the release of SOoW, you can bet your sweet bippy I'll be not only panicking like a damned pro, but I'll also be running for cover and hiding from the angry mob who'll no doubt be organized by a couple of my friends and biggest fans. That'll of course be after I let everyone know what occurred to make me go into protective custody. Again.

That said though, it's pretty damned exciting news, huh? I know I think it is and even feel it worthy of mid-week cork-popping and drinking of champagne so that I can celebrate legitimately! (<—See what I did there? I know. I'm a nerd. Cut me some slack though, okay? I've been doing math today...)