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About Lisa Borne Graves
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Blog postMeet CJ Carson:
From a very early age, CJ Carson has been inspired by a great story, but what has brought her to this juncture in her life and inspired her to put pen to paper are the many rich experiences and opportunities her life has put in her path.
Her love of learning and new adventures has afforded her opportunities to reinvent herself many times over.
While working in the medical field, she became a licensed massage therapist, attending a numbe -
Blog post***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 -
Blog postRecently, because of the pandemic sucking up people's time, my publishers and I had to back off my writing, scaling me down to 1 book a year. This was bittersweet, but it did allow me to attempt another dream I had concerning children's books under a pen name. Little did I know that switching the age category you write for is not as easy as it sounds.
First, I naturally write in too elevated of a style for children, thanks to my years in academia. I found myself using multisyllabic wor -
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Blog post1. You might need to "sacrifice" your first work: what I mean by sacrifice is you might need to put the dream of the Big-5 and top agent on hold until you build a resume. For some, this means self-publishing first, for others lowering their expectations. Some will disagree with me but answer this question: do you want to be published and have people read your book, or do you need to make it big or not at all? If you choose the first option, then lowering your expectations of break
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Blog postI'm starting a new theme in my blogs. I often answer questions about writing the #writingcommunity puts forward, so I thought, why not turn these into blog posts when they crop up?
A question that came up was--to paraphrase--What is psychic distance in writing? The person had heard of it but wanted an explanation. Here are my responses:
Right, so I explained the short of it with examples (admittedly not great ones but limited characters, okay?). But there is more to it than that -
Blog postI was asked through two different avenues to do a lecture for the community through the local library and the university where I teach. Since my writing group got the library to house our workshops--that sadly won't happen due to the COVID-19 pandemic--I decided to collect my thoughts here as my lectures at the university might still happen in the fall. I also wanted to pass on the information the public won't get to hear in person.
A few people from my writing group ta -
Blog postSo, I finally did it. I finally tried this apparently amazing Grammarly--free version, of course--with trepidation. I have never met a grammar checker that I loved, let alone could tolerate. I probably should've tried it ages ago because my students like it and always ask it if is trustworthy. My go-to response was it would probably help, but they shouldn't fully machines machines. My question is, how useful is it for an author or someone who is pretty darn good with grammar? No one is infall
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Blog postHere's a peek into one of my novels!
In a previous post on pitches, I explained the use and my process for writing pitches. I promised that once my books were safely out and protected under copyright, I'd share my path to getting them snagged by a publisher. As I've discussed before, I'm a fan of Twitter pitch parties and found success in the two I've entered: #pit2pub and #pitmad. Here is one of my pitches that successfully attracted the attention of a publishe -
Blog postDigging through the hundreds of books I've read on Goodreads, I decided to pick the top 10 YA romance novels that I have read. Most are romance or have romance as a subgenre. There are tons of great books out there, but these are ones that I have read and given 5 stars in the last couple years. Maybe you'll find a new one for that valentine of yours. Note that these are not ranked in order and I linked them so check them out.
Addicted--5 stars that checked all the boxes and more, meani -
Blog postFor the first time ever, last fall, I didn't have to query or pitch on Twitter to get published. I now have a publisher to submit directly to. It is a huge milestone of an author's career and I am proud, but I miss creating pitches and queries. You'll call me sick, a masochist even, but I enjoyed writing queries and pitches--the waiting and rejection, I could definitely do without. The actual process of querying sucks, but mastering how to write just the letter has been a skill I learned to love
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Blog postIn response to those who have challenged or asked how my ADHD is a superpower and not a disability, I'm here to tell you it isn't always beneficial for my writing. I have my struggling moments too, and that is okay.
The pandemic hasn't treated us all kindly. I have been barely holding my head above water with work, motherhood, some homeschooling, and a house renovation. Writing--and blogging--has been difficult to accomplish. The worst thing is stress meeting any deadline is sometimes -
Blog postBeastly, by Alex Flinn, is an interesting modern take on "Beauty and the Beast" from the beast's perspective, although outdated now for being early 2000's trendy, verbose, and slow moving.
Not much summary is needed because it's a fairy tale retelling we are all familiar with. In this version, a wealthy and attractive teen (Kyle) is cursed into a hairy beast by a witch (Kendra) for his cruelty and overabundant arrogance. A brief encounter of kindness to a -
Blog postOne thing newly published authors often don't do--making me wonder if they know about theme--are virtual book launches. I'm not talking about doing it virtually only because of the pandemic. Before the pandemic, lots of publishers or authors had them. In fact, not having one could leave you at a disadvantage in spreading the word and/or gaining sales. I often sell a nice chunk in one day to mostly friends, family, and some fans during these launches. The important part of the book launch is t
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Blog postI have some news: I no longer will be publishing two novels a year for a couple years at least. This is sad but excessively relieving news, otherwise known as bittersweet.
If you've read my books, you'd know I was publishing two YA romance series simultaneously: the fantasy trilogy Celestial Spheres and the paranormal trilogy The Immortal Transcripts. The next up would've been book 2 of Celestial Spheres titled Fever. This book will now be delayed and come out in 2022.
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Blog postInstead of an author feature, I decided to do a group feature: Carolina Forest Authors Club.
I never liked the idea of a writing or critique group. I imagined two drastically different experiences when I joined: a bunch of authors chewing apart my writing and telling me what was wrong with it or well-meaning advice that didn't help me. Spoiler: it ended up being neither. We ended up critiquing each other's work, since that was what the group was founded for, and things went smoothly wi -
Blog postIt's that time of year. New Year's resolutions. Eek! Agh! Noooo! Tons of people joining the gym, starting diets, determined to begin that hobby they always wanted--and they never stick with it. Resolutions aren't a bad idea in theory: you leave one year hoping to make the next be better than ever, but only a determined breed stick with major life changes they insist they will make. What I mean is I could make a ton of promises to myself to change my life, but we can't change at the flick of a
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Blog postPublishing Update: 2020--The year of 9 WIPs
It's my birthday today, the big 4-0. I decided to dedicate this blog to the year in review. How my 39th year of life was one of the hardest, as it was for most, but also the most productive... uh, sort of.
So, yeah COVID-19, plus homeschooling, plus teaching my college students virtual and in-person. Add in 2 book releases and the copyediting and marketing done. Don't forget the life problems with the house and child--2020 was one for -
Blog postSo I spoke in the past about how I manage to juggle many life roles. I also updated on what COVID-19 had done to undermine my abilities to do so with tips of what I had done to get through it. I discussed how I learned how to delegate, use deadlines and stick to them, drop/postpone goals, and to be easier on myself. Now, just an hour after I finished teaching for the semester--grades submitted 4 days early--I am writing this blog. I want to reflect on the idea of trying to write, work, and pa
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Blog postYeah, if you came for educated answers about where everything is headed in publishing, I do not have them. I am only half-well researched on the topic, but there are two major newsworthy things going on that should concern us and will shape the industry over the next few years or longer. First, the controversy of Amazon practices exploiting authors on Audible and KU. Second, the aftermath that could occur from the Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House merger, where the Big 5 publisher
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Blog postAs we approach Thanksgiving, I often realize that I do not give enough thanks for the things in life that I am grateful for. It is often hard for us to focus on these positive things when life is so hard. 2020, in particular, has brought a pandemic and even more political divide for the US. In our personal lives, we are all struggling. I don't know about you, but we were handed financial cuts to our income, a forced house renovation due to a major destructive leak, and helped our disabled chi
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Blog postJ. Nathanial Corres is a poet and author, and his website says, "Aye, lass. I am That Silver Tongued devil." I'm intrigued, you?
Books:
The early 1900's. The turn of the century. Doctor James Camden prepares to head to Africa and study with an old army surgeon as he strives for his degree in forensic pathology. However, unbeknownst to him, he has been recruited for another more dangerous adventure. Operation Endeavour Sp -
Blog postThe dreaded bad review. It’s going to happen to every author, but the way an author reacts speaks volumes. You see it on social media often, an author posting or venting about a bad review. Every time I see it, I cringe.See, reviews are for readers, and the prospective buyers, not us authors. But you’ll say next, how can we become better writers without reading reviews? Well, beta readers, critique partners, writing groups, hiring editors, and much more is out there. Reviews are not for us. Asid
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Blog postPublishing Tales: So You Were Accepted, Now What?
Every agent is different as is every publisher, so these are mere generalizations based off what I hear and what I've gone through. The stage I'm discussing here is after you signed the contract with the publisher. Since I decided not to go the agent route, I'll leave those steps up to those more knowledgeable about the process.
There are stages to the editing process and they might happen in a different order, but the generalization -
Blog postWriting Tip: What to do if you can't do NaNoWriMo
For those new to writing, every November there is a self-motivating competition called NaNoWrMo. There are also camps other times of the year where you can set other goals to track like editing and such. The November event has a goal for authors to hit 50,000 words within that month.
Right? So 50,000 words in one month is pretty daunting for any author. For those who are the slower, more careful authors who mix researc -
Blog postThe author and her works: I was born September 1966 in the Chocolate City, also known as Washington, DC. When I was 12 years old, my parents moved our family to Upper Marlboro, Maryland where we called home. &n
Titles By Lisa Borne Graves
Kissed
Jul 20, 2018
by
Christine Rees
,
Kacie Ji
,
Roxas James
,
Peri Elizabeth Scott
,
M. Wiklund
,
Sasha Hibbs
,
Lisa Borne Graves
,
Kate Larkindale
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