Blog: When happiness & overwhelmedness (not a real word?) compete.

Live Through This, my second published novel, came out exactly a week ago today!

It's been an exciting and happy time--especially hearing from so many people who read and were moved by it. I've received lots of encouraging and complimentary notes from friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers. I try to use my writing to empower lives and broaden perspectives, and it's wonderful to know that Coley's story is accomplishing that. 

But I will also admit that having this book out has been very overwhelming. There were a few days last week where I did little except lie around in bed and read books. I just didn't have it in me to do anything else. Not very glamorous, interesting, or healthy, I know, but it is what it is and I want to be honest about that. The release of Freefall two years ago had a similar, but less extreme effect on me. I'm already snapping out of it, which feels like a much better place to be, obviously.

I did get a chance to see Live Through This on the shelves at Barnes and Noble a few days before actual release date, which made me cry a little. I wasn't expecting that, since this isn't my first book. Maybe that's what it will always be like, though? Writing, revising, and waiting for publication is SUCH A LONG PROCESS, so seeing the real book on the shelves of a real bookstore makes it finally really, real?

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Reminder! My Seattle launch party is happening on October 13th, which is this coming Saturday! I hope to see you there. Here's the info about it, if you need it. And if you can't attend, but would like order signed copies of my books to be shipped to you, you should do that, like, right away! 

Here's some promotion stuff for Live Through This that's popped up in the past couple of weeks. I hope you'll check some of it out. I worked hard on these and they're interesting, if you're into that sort of thing. ;-)

Videos

• I read aloud from my old diary all the details of my first kiss at age 15 for Truth or Dare at the Thirteeners. 
• Over at Girls in the Stacks, I wrote about the bizarre twist that helped make my book trailer become a real thing. 

Guest blogs

• Cover Story at Melissa Walker's blog. Commentary from my editor, Liesa (used with permission) about how and why this particular cover art was selected for my book as well as my interpretation of the image that's depicted. 
• Editor Guest blog at Hobbitsies: Liesa shared what it was like for her to work with me on this book. 
• Music Guest Post at Greads: I talked about some of songs that are mentioned in LTT and why they were chosen. 

Book Excerpt
A cute excerpt from Chapter 5 of LTT was posted at I Like These Books, along with my commentary about what's happening in the scene. 

Reviews

• Amber Benson and Sarah Kuhn wrote a tandem review of Live Through This. 
• Also, I added more links on my website to some of my favorite reviews for LTT. If you have a review you'd like to share with me, please email me at mindirochelle AT gmail DOT com or tweet to me: @mindi_scott

Character Interviews

• Ming (a close friend of LTT's narrator, Coley) is over at the Elliott Review.
• Reece (Coley's "adorkable love interest") answered questions for Kari at A Good Addiction.

Blogs that have posted recent interviews with me

• Author Denise Jaden
• Author Sara Hantz
• Paperback Treasures
• Mimosa Stimulus

Blog: The time that @Amber_Benson read & recommended a book that I wrote.

My second book came out a week ago today and many things have happened! I'll be detailing some of it in a later post, but I want to write about THIS THING that I just typed in the subject line, because it's kind of a big deal to me.

Over ten years ago, Dwayne and I started watching a television show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Two years ago, I made a vlog, discussing briefly, how the show changed my life. Last week (on my birthday), an actor from the show recommended my second published novel to readers of her blog. Among many other wonderful things, the blog post said this:

 "Mindi Scott has a real talent for getting inside her protagonist’s head. She sketches out Coley’s story in grand swathes, and then paints in all the little details, so that you feel as though you are enmeshed in Coley’s brain: thinking her thoughts, feeling her confusion, anger, and, in the end, pain. I just don’t think it’s possible to read this book and not identify with Coley in some way." -Amber Benson, actor/writer/director

Now, I've had some time to get used to this whole being-published concept, since I got my first book deal three and a half years ago. It was only a few months after that happened when I met Amber Benson for the first time at our editor's wedding reception. But when I take some time now to let it sink in, to consider this from the point of view of the me of ten plus years ago, I get pretty emotional. I think of my younger self reading the above paragraph and I imagine that my reaction might have been something like this:

Amber Benson read a book that I wrote! Amber Benson liked what I wrote! Amber Benson blogged about the book I wrote and suggested that others should also read it! AMBER BENSON KNOWS WHO I AM!!!!!!!

It's just . . . I mean. What a crazy, wonderful thing!

Check out the LIVE THROUGH THIS book trailer (plus a whole bunch of links to stuff)!

Last month, I wrote about the photo shoot we did for the book trailer for Live Through This. Now the time has come to finally share it with you!

Song: "Somewhat Broken" by Shaina Rae | ShainaRaeMusic.com

Photography and Video Editing: Shaina Rae
Concept: Mindi Scott
Direction: Dwayne Scott
Voiceover: Laura Samsel
Featuring: Anika, Bailey, Cali, Carter, Kelland, Kyle, Linda, Madeline, Marty, Sarah, Shaylee, and Taylor.

If you've read the book, you might spot that some of the details aren't perfectly perfect. But we got really close in most of the casting, which was an accomplishment in and of itself! I'm very thankful to everyone who was a part of it, and especially to Shaina who really worked hard to use her photography to bring Coley and the others to life as I'd envisioned them.

(Side note: I actually don't think I'll be able to watch this video again for a while myself; the adorable way that "Reece" looks at "Coley" in the pictures at the end truly makes my chest hurt. How did he do that? Ha ha.)

Okay, wait! There's more I want to share with you!

Blog Tour
Live Through This officially comes out on October 2nd, so I have a blog tour starting today through The Teen Book Scene. (Click the link to see the full schedule.) Kari Olson, an agent-represented YA writer and book blogger, coordinated a varied and fun tour with a couple of author interviews and guest blogs by me, some questions for my characters, reviews, and a wonderful post by my editor, Liesa, about her experience editing Live Through This that will go up next Monday. I'll likely Tweet and post the links on FB each day. I hope you'll check them out!

FYI: The first stop of the tour is TODAY over at Mimosa Stimulus. Jenny did an interview with me, which included questions about tough issue books that I recommend and how my own experiences affected the writing of this book.

Reviews
A few reviews of Live Through This have started popping up online. I've done a round-up of some of my favorites so far on my website. All of these are from readers who really get it (which is so gratifying for me!) and who were careful in their reviews not to give away too much and spoil the story for others. Each of them do address the major theme, but I wouldn't call that a spoiler at all; it's revealed on the very first page of the book (as well as in the letter to readers about why I wrote it).

Seattle Launch Party
Just in case you missed it, the launch party for Live Through This is happening on Saturday, October 13th at 2pm. There will be music and food and desserts and other fun things happening! All the information about the event is posted here. (The official event page on FB is here.)

Signed Copies of Live Through This and Freefall
And in case you missed this, even if you can't make it out for my launch party, you can still get signed and personalized copies of my books from the event on October 13th. You'll just want to try to get your order in very soon. The information for how and where to order signed copies is here.

And that's all the stuff for now!

LIVE THROUGH THIS book trailer

This is the book trailer for Live Through This! The song is “Something Broken” by Shaina Rae. You can visit her website to buy her demo or check out a couple of her other songs at Reverb Nation. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNHG2UHvmyo?feature=player_embedded]

On the blog: Comparing the finished (yay!) hardcover and paperback versions of LIVE THROUGH THIS

Two years ago minus three days, I received finished copies of Freefall and wrote up a blog post comparing the book with the ARC. 

With Live Through This, I have both a hardcover and a paperback version of the book to show you, so I'm going to leave the ARC out of the discussion. (I will say, though, that I think the biggest differences this time are that the cover on the finished book is matte and the pages themselves are beige, while the ARC's cover is glossy and the pages are white.)

So here are the finished books!

The hard cover, obviously, is on the left and the paperback is on the right. They both feature the blurb from Stephanie Perkins at the top, and are close to the same height. Also, they are the same number of pages. From what I can spot, the interior pages in both versions are identical in every way, so if you're talking with your friend about the Miley Cyrus quote that you read on page 89 (for example!), it should be the same, no matter which version you have.

Things start to look a little bit different when you flip over to the back:

With the hardcover, we have the blurbs from Mandy Hubbard/Amanda Grace and Jo Knowles in much larger print than the paperback, since they take up the majority of the content. The back of the paperback is busier: small blurbs up top, the (condensed) book summary, as well as lots of tiny print about the design and such at the bottom. With the hardcover, the summary and all the tiny print appears inside on the jacket flaps, of course. 

There are actually a few slight differences in the book summary from hardcover to paperback. The paperback is more concise. Neither of these summaries match what's on my website or Goodreads. Amazon and other booksellers happen to be using the catalog summary, which isn't like any of the summaries that you can find elsewhere. (I think I'll probably go ahead and edit my website and Goodreads to match the hardcover's summary now that it's for sure final.) Also, the tagline appears on neither version! Live Through This doesn't appear to have a tagline.

Here's a look at the back flap of the hard cover sitting beside the last page of the paperback:

My picture didn't get used anywhere appear with Freefall, so this is kind of cool. The picture that appears in the books is the same one that appears at the top of my blog.

Here are both styles of Live Through This on the shelf beside Freefall:

As you can see, Freefall is their shorter (but still sexy) little brother. (And, yes, I adore Courtney Summers and her books. ♥)

The only thing I would have liked to see different on the Live Through This spine is my first name, like Freefall has. I like Elizabeth Scott, Kieran Scott, and Michael Scott very much, but I'd prefer to see Mindi Scott's books in the right place on a store shelf rather than potentially mixed in with the books of another YA-writing Scott, you know? Oh, well.

That's all the stuff that I can think of to tell you! I'm super excited that the finished copies are ready and will soon be available for YOU. I'm also really glad that Live Through This has format options for readers. Me? I'm actually a paperback-loving girl, so the hardcover will mostly be chilling on the shelf looking cool while the paperback and I go off and have the time of our fricken lives together. :-)