Santa Barbara Writers Conference Best Opening Contest

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The Santa Barbara Writers Conference is holding this Best Openings Contest and there’s one day left to enter! Beginnings are so important, as any writer or reader knows. Dorothy Allison says this: “You’ve got to write a first line that will haunt you. It’s got to be magic.” The challenge is that magic is subjective.

I entered the following start:

We compare scars like war veterans; replay our history by the marks in our skin. At night, quietly so Mom can’t hear, we trace the raised flesh road maps of our lives and whisper our stories into the dark.

This came out of a scene I was trying to write for Hand Me Down that eventually turned into the car accident scene in chapter three, without this line. But I love the idea of Jaime and Liz comparing scars—the physical reminders of the traumas they’ve survived—so I would definitely like to use this later as an opening. The chances of winning this contest are small, but you can’t win if you don’t try, right?

What is your favorite opening that you’ve written? Why not send it along to this contest? It can’t hurt and you might get a sponsored trip to a great meeting place for writers! And/or feel free to post it here!

Dear Blog

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Dear Blog,

It seems like it’s been forever since we talked, Blog, and I feel bad about that. I’ve just been so busy and so much has happened! I’m sorry I don’t always remember to keep you posted on my life. I guess I’m still getting used to this relationship.

In the last few weeks, I did book events in both of my hometowns, Sacramento and Salt Lake City, and several other bookstores in my current home, the San Francisco Bay Area. I read to packed rooms full of new and familiar faces. I made people laugh. I was asked interesting questions. I got to talk about writing and my book and people listened and seemed interested. I did an interview on Capital Public Radio—live!—and managed not to sound like a bumbling idiot. I received a bouquet of tulips and three other beautiful flower arrangements in one day. Hand Me Down was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle three times, the Salt Lake Tribune and several other papers, a bunch of blogs, and People magazine! I hugged two ex-boyfriends’ mothers, my best friend from elementary school and her mom, my favorite high school teacher, people I’d only previously known online, and tons of other old friends and landlords and teachers and coworkers. People were so excited for me and I felt so supported.

I know you deserve more than a quick recap, Blog, and I will write more, soon, I swear, but I have to go now. I have guest blogs to write (I know how painful that must be to hear) and interview questions to answer and event pages to update and emails to respond to…you know. I told you in the beginning that life as a published author would be different, busier. You said you understood, and I hope you’ll stick with me for the slow patches. I promise I’ll always come back.

Yours,

Melanie

A Special Sunday for Hand Me Down

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I have some exciting news to share: Hand Me Down was featured in four major newspapers today! It’s not exactly world domination, but I’ll take it! Each paper said wonderful things and I’m so honored to have my name and photo in such reputable publications.

  • I talk about the truth behind the fiction in Hand Me Down and how writing helped me reach that truth in this Salt Lake Tribune interview: A Debut Novel Finds the Truth in Writing Fiction.
  • Al Pierleoni The Sacramento Bee gives the book a shout-out and talks to John Lescroart about the Maurice Prize in Fiction that he founded and Hand Me Down won.
  • There is a great review in the Deseret News that says, among many other great things, this:

“Hand Me Down” is a gritty tale of a determined young woman who really wants to make a better life for herself and protect the little sister she dearly loves. It is also a story of triumph over desperation and the ignorance of those who live in the world of selfishness.

  • And, finally, there was a review in the San Francisco Chronicle that featured a color photo and lots of nice comments. The full review should be available online by Monday.

What a great day for me and my book baby! The timing is perfect as I’m set to do an event in Sacramento on Tuesday and one in Salt lke City on Thursday. (See my Events page for more details.)

I’m super excited and also super nervous about these two hometown events. I lived in each of these places during formative years and I expect to see people who knew me before I decided I wanted to be a writer; who remember the awkward girl I used to be. People I let call me “Mel.” It should be tons of fun. I hope you’ll join us!

News in Brief

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Wow. The last few days have flown by. Hand Me Down has been out in the world for four days and so far, so good. There are still a million things I need to do, but I have some quick, exciting highlights to share with you.

The review in People magazine was great. They gave it 3.5/4 stars and called it a “sad and compelling read.” My name is in People!

A friend told me she went to a Barnes & Noble in Salt Lake City and asked for my book. They had sold out. The clerk called all 3 other B&N’s in the area and they were all sold out too!

My first reading and signing went well, despite my nerves. My hometown bookstore, Copperfield’s, is so great. I even got to choose a book as a gift from them at the end of the night! The wonderful employees put the People review up next to my book on the shelf, and this was the first place I got to see my baby smiling back at me from her new home with all the other books.

We went to Book Passage in Corte Madera, one of the premier bookstores in the Bay Area, and found my book in three places! On two different new arrival tables and a shelf. Next to Joyce Carol Oates. While I was taking a million photos (more of which I will post later) I was asked if I needed help by a very nice sales girl named Jessica. I pointed at Hand Me Down, told her it was my book. She said she was excited to read it. She said, “And I’m not just saying that.” In fact, she told me, she’d been waiting for a while because all the advance copies of it kept being taken by employees to be read. How cool is that?

John Lescroart gave Hand Me Down this great recommendation, and Jennifer Chiaverini called it “compelling, heart wrenching, and ultimately redemptive.” She is offering a free signed copy of one of her bestselling Elm Creek Quilts novels if you buy a copy of my book in a bookstore. Details on her Facebook page.

As of right now, Hand Me Down is holding steady at #5 on Amazon’s Hot New Literary Fiction list. Yesterday it was at #3. It’s been in Amazon’s Literary Fiction Kindle bestseller list since Friday, in the top 50, getting up to #29.

On Friday and Saturday, the book was #3 or #4 on the Trending Nook Book list on B&N.

And, maybe most wonderful, is all the support I’ve gotten from friends and family, old coworkers and students. Emails, Facebook and Twitter messages and posts, calls, even flowers. People congratulating me, telling me they knew I would make it, or that they ordered their copy, or got their copy, or are planning to buy it when they come to see me read. People saying they saw my review in People or the AP review that was everywhere last week; that they saw Hand Me Down in a store; that they just finished reading and they loved it.

I’ve probably forgotten something—I’m finding that my brain is struggling to hold in all this new stimuli—and I can’t tell you exactly how I’m feeling yet since my emotions are still settling, but the one big thing I am aware of now, is gratitude.

Thank you for all of your kind words about my book. Thank you for the messages, the posts, the shout-outs and shares, and referrals. Thank you for buying a copy. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I can’t say it enough.

Bursting at the Seams

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I’ve been waiting to post here until I could take the time to write something poignant and meaningful, offer some deep reflections on the days before my book is born into the world for real. But, man, releasing a book requires hustle. So maybe—hopefully—that post is on its way, but this is not it.

In this post I want to tell you how full I feel. Stuffed, actually, bursting at the seams with news, with gratitude, with pride. I feel nervous, happy, scared, loved…this process has been a wild ride, that’s for sure. And it’s only going to get wilder.

More musings to come, but for now, let me share with you some of the latest news about Hand Me Down.

  • People Magazine gave the book 3.5/4 stars! They called it a “compelling read.” Look for the review it in the April 23rd issue, on sale today.
  • ML Johnson at the Associated Press wrote this wonderful review of Hand Me Down, which was then picked up by dozens of news outlets, including the Huffington Post and the Washington Post! “Melanie Thorne’s debut novel is raw with emotion.”
  • Last Sunday the San Francisco Chronicle included the first line of Hand Me Down in their book section of the paper and online. W’s mom called all excited to see that I’d shown up in her Sunday paper.
  • Cindy Wolfe Boynton at Book Page wrote a thoughtful review, “Reality Sparks Affecting Debut” that made my day. She called the book “impossible to put down” and said, “Readers vividly see and experience right along with Liz, thanks to Thorne’s sharp storytelling.” It was included in this special edition of Book Page. Plus, she interviewed me for a piece that is going to run in the Salt Lake City Tribune.
  • Daily Candy featured my book in their “Spring Ink” section, “15 Books to Read While the Trees Blossom.” The other books in this list look really interesting, too!
  • Hand Me Down made it onto Kirkus Reviews “New and Notable Fiction” list for April.
  • Confessions of a Vi3tbabe posted a great review this week. “A heartfelt story that I couldn’t put down…Hand Me Down is truly a moving and empowering story, one I think everyone should read.”
  • Candace’s Book Blog also posted a wonderful review. “This book was pretty fantastic. I thought it would be one I’d only read just a little at a time…but the second day I picked it up I ended up reading the whole thing. It sucked me in and I totally and completely ached for Liz and her horrible horrible situation.”
  • And finally, I got a tiny mention in the Press Democrat in an article about books set in Sonoma County along with fellow Dutton authors Sere Prince Halverson and Jennifer Chiaverini. And, this reporter may do a feature on just me a little later!

See, that was a lot of news! Not to mention the Goodreads reviews—mostly great—my launch event tomorrow night at Copperfield’s, my event with Pam Houston at the Booksmith in SF next week, my other upcoming events, my live interview on Capital Public Radio in Sacramento on May 1st, and a forthcoming Q&A in the East Bay Express. Phew!

I’m so happy for all the attention my labor of love is getting, and I really appreciate all the support from my friends and other authors and booksellers and people I don’t know who took the time to write something kind about my book. Thank you, thank you.

Hand Me Down’s Starred Kirkus Review!

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Things have been crazy in my currently very narrow my-book-is-about-to-be-published world. I continue to be surprised by all of the things that go into launching a book, and by how much work it is. I’ve been told that for the next four months I will be consumed with the business of releasing my baby into the world and giving her the proper support so she can thrive. Just four weeks and two days until publication! (Not that I’m counting down or anything.)

I know it seems contradictory, but as I was writing Hand Me Down, I was hoping to someday publish it but not really processing the fact that publication would lead to people actually reading it. Now that they are and reviews are coming in, I’m constantly nervous. As I’ve mentioned, waiting for reviews is unpleasant. There’s so much subjectivity in reviewing, even if the initial reviews are good, there is always the chance that the next person will hate it.

So when a reviewer really gets the book, it’s a gift. It’s even better if that reviewer writes for Kirkus Reviews, the “world’s toughest book critics,” who have a reputation for being downright mean. And if that reviewer loves the book enough to give it a star, then for a few minutes or days the doubts and fears and what-if voices quiet down and you remember what it is to love to read and how amazing it is to connect to a book and why you started writing in the first place and, well, this author feels truly grateful.

See the star next to the title on the Kirkus Reviews website, but unless you subscribe, you can’t read the whole review there. Lucky for you, I can share it with you here for free!

First-time author Thorne wears her heart on her sleeve in this semi-autobiographical tale about a 14-year-old who juggles equal amounts of hope and despair in her chaotic daily life.

Liz and younger sister Jaime have learned they can only count on one another after their mom, Linda, marries a convicted sex offender. Terrance, who parades around the small apartment half-dressed and leers at Liz, makes it clear that if she complains he’ll take it out on her sister. But when Terrance’s parole officer receives a tip that the ex-con is in violation of parole by living with the two girls, their mom’s solution is to farm the girls out to other family members. Jaime moves in with their dad, a lying drunk who mercilessly beat Linda during their marriage, while Liz is farmed out to Terrance’s brother, Gary, and his wife. Liz worries she’s missing too much school and is haunted by the fear that their father will repeat history and drive drunk with Jaime in tow. Liz continues to narrate her journey with prose that vibrates with intelligence and passion. Although she is just beginning her freshman year of high school, Liz manages to carry around with her a heavy burden of responsibility for her sister. Thorne writes Liz as world-weary and mature in ways children should not have to be. From the mother who willingly throws over her children for the promise of marriage to a man who uses her, to the well-meaning Aunt Deborah, who offers Liz a home she cannot accept, Thorne populates her pages with characters who are fascinating and sharply drawn.

Failed by the adults in her life and forced to be the grown-up when she should be experiencing first dates and football games, Liz is a wise, wry, wonderful heroine.

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Sacramento Event Booked!

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I grew up in Sacramento, and part of Hand Me Down takes place in Sacramento, so I’m extra excited to share this event with you: Tuesday, May 1st, at 7 pm I’ll be at the Barnes & Noble in Arden Fair Mall. I hope to see lots and lots of familiar faces at this one!

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This is the Barnes & Noble I used to drive to at ten o’clock on Friday nights to get my book fix for the weekend. I bought journals that I filled with poems and teenage angst. Sometimes I wandered through the rows and rows of shelves for hours, making lists in my head of all the books I wanted and then narrowing it down until I had a number I could afford. I spent what most college kids spent on booze on piles of novels that I still have.

Other authors have told me that at their hometown events they’ve seen past teachers, classmates, neighbors, even dentists or hairstylists, or surprising other blasts from the past and I can’t wait to see who shows up here, in my hometown. If we were friends or acquaintances, if we worked together or went to the same school, if we met in softball or choir or at a show or through an ex-boyfriend, if we knew each other at all, I hope you’ll come say hello!

If we don’t know each other yet, come introduce yourself! I’m friendly. My students often write “approachable” in their evaluations.

The point is, come celebrate my first event in the city where I was born and (mostly) raised. I’m sure to be at my best with the home court advantage and all.