Finally, News!

I'm not sure if anyone is even checking this thing anymore, but I promised to announce news about my book when I had some, and I FINALLY have some: My novel, LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE, will be published by Simon & Schuster in June 2015. This actually happened almost two months ago, but we couldn't make the announcement until we settled on the title, and that was a surprisingly, maddeningly difficult process.

Here is the announcement and link to the announcement in Publisher's Marketplace (scroll down to middle of the page, under Deal of the Day to read about it...note this will only be up on their homepage today, 4/2/14, so I've pasted the announcement beneath the link in case you come to this later):

http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/

Fiction: Debut: Former Cosmopolitan and current SELF Magazine articles editor Jessica Knoll's LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE, pitched as "psychotic Emily Giffin" about a NYC magazine editor on the cusp of marriage to the perfect guy, whose carefully constructed life starts to unravel as a documentary film threatens to shine a light on a violent incident from her past, to Sarah Knight at Simon & Schuster, in a major deal, at auction, by Alyssa Reuben at Paradigm (World).

I am SO excited for all you LSPers to read it. It's different from Josie's story, my editor is packaging it as "literary suspense meets edgy women's fiction," which I love. The "Josie" of this story has worked very hard to overcome her humble beginnings, and she's played a lot of people to create the so-called perfect life for herself. But as she nears her wedding, she is forced to confront a vicious incident from her past and her carefully crafted veneer begins to crack. She has a cutting sense of humor, but when you discover the source of her bite, you will root for her (or at least I hope you do). Even though there are parts of the book that are a little chilling, I wanted it to have a heart. I teared up when I wrote the last line! 

My final edits are due in May, and I will be back here to wrap up the Josie story after I've handed everything in. I have loved blogging about her for the last two and a half years, and I adore the LSP community, but I am planning on bringing her story to an end in the near future. I really wanted to maintain the blog until I could share news with you about my book, and give you something real to read. In some ways, the blog has been more difficult to maintain than writing my book! There are days I experience writer's block or just have a long day at work, and I can give myself permission to come back to the book when I'm fresh again because I'm not subject to a twice weekly deadline. I don't have that kind of leeway with the blog, and there have been times I've been sitting at my computer at midnight, exhausted, trying to figure out what the heck to say! Then I end up posting something that I'm not 100% proud of, and I hate that feeling. It was different when this was a part of my job—it was something I did during my work day, and if I didn't do it, um, I would get fired, so the motivation was certainly there! But it's become something I do on top of my job and writing a book, and I did not anticipate how difficult and draining that would be. I hope you can understand that I'm a little burned out. I hate disbanding LSP, but I'm just trying to give myself a little break. The editing process has been tough, but there is an end in sight in May. The idea of having a few months where I don't have any responsibility other than my 9-5 (well, more like 10-8 in the magazine world!), where I don't have to be an anti-social hermit hunched over my laptop on the weekends—swoon!—it's like heaven to me. And after I've rebooted, I want to start on my second book, which is already bubbling away in my brain...