I’ve been woefully absent from my site lately! This is the problem with social media sites like Instagram and Twitter, it’s so easy to share news there and forget to update it here! I’ll try to do better moving forward 🙂 I’ve also been busy working on new projects! A good reason to be absent, if you ask me 🙂
So, new project #1 is one that I still can’t talk about. I know, I know I’m a tease. But I have this sort of unwritten rule that I don’t talk too much about my WIPs until they’re well into production and it’s so hard because all I want to do is squee and share what I’m working on! I have so many photos of hints that I’m itching to post online — hopefully in a few more months I can share more. But at least I wanted y’all to know that I do have another YA in the works and it’s full steam ahead!
(this photo is me about to dive into edits — office supplies are critical to the process)
New Project #2 I can definitely talk a lot more about! I partnered with Serial Box, Gwenda Bond, and Rachel Caine to produce Dead Air, a serialized novel debuting on August 1. I’m soooo excited about this project!! If you guys haven’t heard of Serial Box it’s basically HBO for reading — every book (season) is broken into bite-size pieces (episodes). The episodes are released weekly and each one is short enough that you should be able to read or listen to it in about 45 minutes (the length of a TV show without commercials). The best part is that every episode is released in both text and audio and they’re synced, which means you can start reading an episode over lunch and listen to the rest on the way home!
How do you get Serial Box? The first episode will be released on August 1, 2018 and a new episode will come out every week after that (there are 10 episodes total). The only way to get those is through the Serial Box app or through their website (links here). Once all the episodes have been released they’ll be gathered into an omnibus and published as a full book which you can order from your favorite bookstore. So depending on your preferred method of reading/listening, you have your pic!
So what’s Dead Air about? Here’s the flap copy:
Welcome to Dead Air, where M is for midnight, Mackenzie…and murder.
Mackenzie Walker wasn’t planning on using her college radio show to solve a decades old murder, but when she receives an anonymous tip that the wrong man may have taken the fall, she can’t resist digging deeper.
It doesn’t take long for Mackenzie to discover gaps in the official story. Several potential witnesses conveniently disappeared soon after the murder. The victim, a glamorous heiress and founder of a Kentucky horse-racing dynasty, left behind plenty of enemies. And the cops don’t seem particularly interested in discussing any of it.
But when the threats begin, Mackenzie knows she’s onto something. Someone out there would prefer to keep old secrets buried and they seem willing to bury Mackenzie with them. Thankfully, she’s getting help from a very unexpected source: the victim’s son, Ryan. The closer she gets to him, however, the more important it is for Mackenzie to uncover the truth before he gets buried alongside her.
Read or listen to weekly ebook and audio episodes of the serial novel Dead Air and then check out Mackenzie’s podcast for a uniquely immersive experience. Does the truth lie in the serial, the podcast…or somewhere in-between?
As many of you know, I’m a huge fan of true-crime podcasts. Seriously, Serial hooked me completely once that first season ended I was hooked. I’ve listened to a ton of them, so when Gwenda approached me with the idea for Dead Air, I was immediately sold. In order to plot everything out, Rachel, Gwenda, and I flew up to the Serial Box offices in NYC and spent several days holed up together hammering out the plot (which was amazing – I love being able to bounce ideas off others and have them take those ideas and spin them in new directions). After that it was home to write and pull everything together. I was surprised at just how easily it all came together, but then again Rachel and Gwenda are total pros.
And one of the best parts of this project is that we actually wrote and produced the podcast from the book! I’ve already listened to parts of it and it is amazing!
Right now Serial Box is running a promotion that you can get 25% off if you pre-order the season of Dead Air by the end of July. Just go to www.SerialBox.com/redeem and use the promo code DEADAIRAPO18. Can’t wait for y’all to read and hear Mackenzie’s story!
