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Lisa Borne Graves

Author of upper YA/crossover romance novels and blogger of books, writing tips, and publishing.

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Writing Tips: What is Romance? A Defense

on May 16, 2022

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Writing Tips: Taking it down a notch

on March 21, 2022

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Tips for YA Lit: How you can help a writer (aside from buying the book)

on October 15, 2018

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Book Review: Breed by Niki Cluff

YA Book Review: Breed Welcome to my first book review, on my blog at least. The backstory to my review involvement is such. I've reviewed books for years on Amazon and Goodreads. Then I realized when my novella got published in an anthology, we were supposed to have people review our book for us, ARCs. ARC stands for advanced reader/review copy, meaning you get the book early and free in hopes you will write an honest review. Not knowing any professional reviewers this was a problem for me. So now that I know quite a few authors when they ask for reviewers, I jumped on one so I could help them out. I'll be in their shoes again one day and need their support back. So here is my honest review of Breed by Niki Cluff. Divergent meets Deep Impact . Breed, by the talented Niki Cluff, is a YA dystopian romance novel, set in our possible near future where Earth is being bombarded by meteors, and there's one headed our way that could wipe out the majority of the human ...

A Message for Aspiring Authors

***Update*** In less than three years, I now have four published novels, and an upcoming fifth and sixth novel to be released. Come back to the moment with me when I grasped I would be a published author. Corrections are purposely shown to be transparent about my naivety back then on "writer" versus "author" terminology, another lesson of realization. I'm not sure why I never called myself a writer. It was as if I thought saying so would make me a phony. Or worse, if you tell people you're a writer, their next question always is, "what have you written?" I didn't have much to say aside from telling them my plethora of manuscripts I had never sent out. Now, I suddenly feel official. And as soon as I felt like a "real" writer author--after signing that first ever contract--I realized that this feeling was utterly wrong. Of course, I should be happy. I am, but I'm annoyed I wasn't happy with myself prior. My first writing...

Get published or not get published, that is the question…

Mission Impossible # 2 The allusion to Hamlet is no mistake. It feels to us writers when we send out a query letter to an agent or a story to a journal that it is a form of life and death. Did I just commit literary suicide with that query letter? It's tantamount to sending your child off to a school you know nothing about. The uneasiness and nervousness I still feel every time I click send makes me queasy. The standard cookie cutter rejection emails are disheartening (not to mention the tons of queries that are ignored by agents who swear they respond to everyone), but the worst disappointment is the feeling as if I’m being led-on in a sense when an agent reads a portion or the entire manuscript only to then reject it. However, this is the industry and the way it works. Agents get hundreds to thousands of queries a week, so I’m not condemning them to fishy practices. They do their best to find the cream of the crop and that for them must be like looking for a needle in a haystac...

Tales in Publishing: Peaks and Troughs

Tales in Publishing: Peaks and Troughs Recently I had a week. It was a full of highs and lows, peaks and troughs. Through my experience--as always--I view everything as a teaching moment, for myself and others. Sometimes in life, you gotta deal with a crappy lot and sometimes you feel as if nothing can go wrong. And then sometimes, the good and the bad occur so close together your just don't know how to feel. As a writer it is the same. Troughs: to get published one has to submit a query letter to a publisher or agent to spark their interest. Sometimes they'll ask for an extended synopsis, first couple chapters, 50 pages, or the entire manuscript. It honestly varies. What doesn't vary is how it feels to send it off. I imagine it is tantamount to sending your kid off to college, but not hearing from said child for anywhere from three weeks to four months. And then the news you're expecting is either your kid is failing or on the Dean's List. Because you...

YA Book Review: Fire in Ice (The Generators)

YA Book Review: Fire in Ice (The Generators) I couldn’t put Fire in Ice , by Jennifer DiGiovanni, down. It’s a quick, fun, read with excitement and romance intertwined with moments of great tension and irony created by a he said/she said dual narrative. The book dives right into the action with Cara Scotto being severely ill and waking up with strange new powers. Alex DeMarsh, a rich celebrity type, returns from prep school for winter break to instantly realize the little Cara he vaguely remembered from childhood has grown up to be hot and exactly like him, a Generator. The headstrong Cara must come to terms with being a supernatural being, gifted through her ancestry to be able generate and manipulate energy. Alex must teach her to control her energy, hide it from everyone, and he must protect her from their kind’s enemies. Only neither of them plans on the feelings that surge between them, both supernatural and natural. Tensions and dangers arise, and it becomes uncl...

Tales in Publishing: Editing Part 2

Tales in Publishing: Editing Part 2 As this is a consecutive journal about my experiences getting published, you may want to start from the beginning ( Acceptance , Contract , Cover , Editing 1 ) and stay tuned. After the preliminary oh-my-God-I-suck mentality was digested, I systematically went through the editor's notes and fixed all my smack-myself-in-the-face mistakes. I couldn't believe--even though I had been rushed to get my entry in and didn't revise or proofread much--that I had made so many errors and then overlooked them. The editor simply asked for me to make her suggested changes and resubmit. But, feeling almost embarrassed with myself, I went through it all again looking for any places I could improve my writing. I went crazy changing lots of things. I almost thought she would object to so many changes. However, she countered back with another edit and this time not much was there and she seemed impressed and talked more as if we were a ...

YA Book Review: Upon Broken Wings

YA Book Review: Upon Broken Wings Although this book’s beginning is hauntingly depressing, taken as a whole it is inventively brilliant, and ends with an uplifting message. I felt as if I were reading a cross between literary fiction and commercial fiction, stuck between an art form and a book for entertainment, much as the characters Andrew and Kiernan are trapped between damnation and salvation. Kiernan’s younger brother, fourteen-year-old Casey, spins a tale of utter sorrow and redemption by looking back in time with the help of omniscient angels. Andrew, a fourteen-year-old boy with autism, loses everyone he ever loved and is left alone in a cruel world with only Kiernan who secretly cares about him. Yet Kiernan’s love for Andrew comes much too late and with a high price. Bound in separate simultaneous suicides, Andrew must recall and come to terms with his past while in purgatory and Kiernan must find his way back to life while struggling away from a demon in the bo...

Tales in Publishing: Query example

Tales in Publishing: Query example I'm sharing my successful query to others in hopes it exemplifies what to do and helps other authors craft their own. Queries are one of the most difficult things for an author to do. From trying to sell yourself to buttering up the recipient, by far the hardest part is to condense your book baby down to blurbs. For those who are brand new to the scene, if you want to go the more traditional route of publishing (not self-publishing), you usually will need to send a query letter off to publishers and/or agents to get their attention in hopes they'll read your entire manuscript, love it, and represent you. Sounds pretty simple, but there's a format to follow, expectations, and things you should do to to increase your chances. The letter itself is in white and the explanations are in red . Dear AGENT'S NAME (unless they specify not to send it to one person) , What happens if bees go extinct? In the not so distant ...

YA Book Review: Insidious: An Urban Fantasy Romance by Victoria Evers

YA Book Review: Insidious: An Urban Fantasy Romance Recently, I purchased Insidious: An Urban Fantasy Romance (The Marked Mage Chronicles, Book 1) , by Victoria Evers, due to the low Kindle price. For the price, it was a steal. Overall, an enjoyable and creative story, but it had some hitches preventing a 5/5 star status. This story is told by Kat who's expected to be a perfect country-club teenage girl for her extremely superficial and unloving parents who expect total obedience. She's in a fatal accident but somehow survives with a quick recovery. Soon things start getting crazy and she is opened to a world of magicians, hell hounds, reapers, and an array of demons. The only person who can help her is the guy she loathes, Reese Blackburn, who ends up educating her about this world along with her ex and his father. Only these strange tattoos show up on her arm which Reese informs her are like a target for everyone in their world--good and evil--to eliminate her. A...

YA Book Review: Red Queen

YA Book Review: Red Queen Red Queen is a nail-biting tale of intrigue, mystery, and betrayals. Amazingly written, Victoria Aveyard spins an exciting tale of fabulous characters in a world so different, yet so very like our own. Red Queen follows the happenstance journey of Mare Barrow, a poor red-blooded thief, from the Stilts where she fears conscription (draft for the army) to the palace of silver-blooded nobility where she must playact to survive and betrayals are a given. In a world divided by blood--Reds are mere human, while Silvers are like supernatural gods--Mare has no place. She is not all she seems to be but bleeds red with powers of a Silver. To hide this "flaw," she is forced into a fabricated role of a lost noble and engaged to one prince (Maven) while battling feelings over the other prince who got her into this predicament (Cal). Throughout all this, the Reds are rising in a rebellion that will forever change the land as they know it, a good thing for...

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