A Special Preview for Leigh Ann Kopans' ONE - in Comic Form!

Hey all! As I'm sure many of you know, the fabulous Ms. Leigh Ann Kopans is coming out with her debut novel, ONE, TOMORROW! As a proud (and thoroughly psyched) member of #TeamONE, today I will be posting the final graphic novel-style preview of ONE. For more information and to see more of the comic, see the link list at the end of the post!

Find a full list with links to the other installments of this series on the author’s blog: 
www.leighannkopans.blogspot.com

Or follow the author on Twitter @LeighAnnKopans for daily updates!


About ONE (a novel by Leigh Ann Kopans:)

Release date: June 11, 2013

When having two powers makes you a Super and having none makes you a Normal, having only one makes you a sad half-superpowered freak.

It makes you a One.

Sixteen-year-old Merrin Grey would love to be able to fly – too bad all she can do is hover.

If she could just land an internship at the Biotech Hub, she might finally figure out how to fix herself. She busts her butt in AP Chem and salivates over the Hub’s research on the manifestation of superpowers, all in hopes of boosting her chances.

Then she meets Elias VanDyne, another One, and all her carefully crafted plans fly out the window.

Literally. When the two of them touch, their Ones combine to make them fly, and when they’re not soaring over the Nebraska cornfields, they’re busy falling for each other.

Merrin's mad chemistry skills land her a spot on the Hub's internship short list, but as she gets closer to the life she always wanted, she discovers that the Hub’s purpose is more sinister than it has always seemed. Now it’s up to her to decide if it's more important to fly solo, or to save everything - and everyone - she loves.

Add ONE to your Goodreads and learn more about the author here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/
show/17251203-one

Je ne sais quoi

Good morning, everyone! Are y'all as stressed out as I am right now? :) I have quite a few balls in the air, so to speak, so it's been a bit hard to relax lately.

Though my R&R has kept me out of the querying trenches for the past year (!) or so, I've been thinking about that rejection I'm sure we've all received once: "I just didn't fall in love the way I'd hoped." It's a frustrating one, for sure, because maybe there's nothing wrong with the manuscript. Maybe it just didn't cross over from like to love.

It got me thinking about my own reactions to fiction. As I said on Twitter a while ago, I basically have four possible responses to a movie, TV show, or book:

1. Ugh - This is not only bad, it's offensive or problematic in some way, and thinking about it annoys me.

2. Ehhh - Most bad or mediocre fiction falls into this category, and I won't waste energy hating it.

3. I like this! - Fiction in this category ranges from good to excellent. If it's a movie or TV show, it's something I enjoy having on in the background while I do line-edits or work out, and if it's a book, I'll usually spend a nice weekend afternoon reading it. Sometimes I forget it as soon as I'm done, and other times I will idly ponder plot points and relationships on my commute.

4. LYING ON THE FLOOR, INCAPACITATED BY EMOTIONS - I love it so much I cannot actually deal.

Gif is from this album.

Being in love with a piece of fiction is a wonderful thing. I giggle incessantly at the funny moments, I bawl my eyes out at the emotional moments, and I make giant heart eyes at all the characters. Sometimes I'm able to write long, loving reviews about why it's so good, but as a rule, the more I love something, the less coherent I will be about it. My insightful commentary generally adds up to "OMG, [CHARACTER NAME]."

The difference between 3 and 4 is so, so small, but most things I like don't make it to that 'love' stage. And that has nothing to do with quality. Sometimes I will read or watch something, and intellectually I will recognize how well-crafted it is, but it's a solid 3. Then I will read or watch something silly and fluffy and absolutely fall in love with it. It might be a trope that falls into one of my narrative kinks, or a character I completely and utterly fall for, but most of the time, it isn't something I can articulate. The spark was just there for me - and yet, for someone else, that same work of fiction might be a 3. 

Or even a 2.Which I respect. Even if it makes me sad. ;)

So just because your manuscript was a 3 with one agent, don't give up! There might be someone else out there who thinks you wrote a very, very emphatic 4.

What separates like from love for you? Any recent examples?

Various and sundry

First of all! Thank you so much to everyone who commented on the flash fiction piece! You guys are awesome. I was grinning all last week!

Well, my holiday weekend got off to a slightly inauspicious start: my laptop's power cord shuffled off this mortal coil on Friday afternoon, and I had set pretty lofty goals for my revision work. But after the requisite wailing and rending of garments, I figured out a few ways to stretch out the remaining battery power, and it looks like I'll be fine until the new one gets here. I didn't end up falling too short of my goal, either, since I knew I didn't have time to procrastinate on the internet and I got straight to work. And I got to relax with some new books in the name of conserving battery power! I read WITCH EYES and ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. The latter will be the subject of my Dark YA Blogfest post this week!

I also hit 90k on the revised draft, with more sure to come. My original draft was a relatively modest 74k, and most of my complete manuscripts fall around that length. I always assumed that, if I were to do revisions with an agent, I would either be chopping scenes out or rewriting and restructuring in general. There's a bit of that, and I imagine there will be more to come, but this draft is definitely the Add All The Things Draft. The number is giving me a mini-heart-attack - I think I have some sort of word count mental block - but the best thing about my editorial letter is that it's basically giving me permission to expand. I'm really enjoying the chance to dig deeper into the worldbuilding, characters, and themes.

But anyway! That's what I've been up to. How about you?