Why Beth Revis inspires me

With all the news of downsizing in publishing, of people stacking up rejections, of people leaning toward self-publishing, of advice on how to keep your spirits up, of how bad the odds are, there have still been moments of uplift when a blogging friend signs with an agent or another gets a book deal.

But nothing has sent my heart racing like the news that Beth Revis has a three-book, "major" deal. Here is a snippet from Publishers Weekly: "In another major YA acquisition before the Bologna Book Fair, Ben Schrank at Razorbill pre-empted North American rights to the debut novel by high school teacher Beth Revis, Across the Universe...Schrank said he thinks the book will do for popular sci-fi what The Hunger Games did for post-apocalyptic fiction."

Wow. Double Wow. Get the heart monitor.

In celebration, Beth has a contest you don't want to miss--for both writers and readers.

But I'm going back to a quieter time, when I met Beth online. Over and over, she inspired me with her posts. Plus, she loves art and music, sharing wonderful pictures and videos--so, triple interest for me.

In June, she wrote about finishing the above-mentioned YA--and that she had written 10,000 words the day before to do it! This has a lot to do with Beth being a teacher who has limited time for writing. So two wows in that.

In July, she held online critique sessions for any of her readers who wanted to go public. I did it as did many others, including Beth. It was scary and helpful for me and generous of her.

Skipping ahead to October, she did an overlook of her revision process, which was insightful and useful, for sure.

In November, she talked of how time-consuming the query process can be. But she approached querying the smart way, having done her research, and she'd bookmarked helpful sites And, as always, she thanked other bloggers who helped along the way.

In December, *wild dancing* she signed with Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House. Holy Toledo.

On Jan. 1, Beth made some wishes to the universe--like for a book deal, maybe several, and a chance to write full-time. Um, I think the Universe listened.

But I really want to point out the Dec. 15 post when she honored books that inspired her on the journey to writing this one. She mentioned how THE THIEF by Megan Whalen Turner has an unreliable narrator, and this gave Beth ideas for one of her own narrators, and how THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX by Mary Pearson freed her to write sci-fi based more on characters than science.

So this is a little bit of why Beth inspires me. Follow her, read her. I think you'll be inspired, too.