I’m happy to announce that the five winners of my giveaway for The Turtle Ship have been selected! I will be emailing the randomly-picked winners tomorrow, so if you entered the giveaway, please be sure to check your inbox (and spam folder) this week. Each winner will be receiving a signed copy of the book, as well as some turtle-themed swag 🙂
Also, here are some lovely young readers. Aren’t they all too cute? (Side note: if you’d like to send in any photos of you/your kid/your pet with the book for future collages, please do email it to me via the Contact tab. Also, if you’re the rightful owner of any of the photos below and would like it removed, let me know!)
I used Adobe Spark to create this collage — a super easy and handy tool you can find online.
Another note: I recently had the opportunity to speak and sign books at a writer’s group in Santa Monica. During the Q&A portion, some fabulous questions were asked, questions that made me think about how I’d like to shape my writing career. One question was: “What’s the book of your heart, the one you’ve wanted to write your entire life?” The group was composed of mostly older folks who were writing fiction based on real-life events, events that they were involved in during their past. One of them read an excerpt from her manuscript, and it was truly a soul-baring excerpt about betrayal and recovery.
This re-affirmed for me that writing books is like opening up your soul. And the best stories are those that not only entertain, but also contain the emotional resonance that connects one soul to another. That’s the beauty of reading after all: you get a glimpse into another person’s soul. That’s a gift I receive whenever I read a good book, and that’s a gift I’d like to impart with each book I write.
I know the book of my heart. It’s a novel I attempted to write about a decade ago, and then put aside because I wasn’t quite sure how to shape the story. But I’m working towards it. Each book I read, each book I write is taking me closer to that manuscript that I hope to complete one day.
How about you? What’s the story of your heart? Will you write it down someday?
