Oooh! I Lurve Excerpts!

The silliness is spilling out of me today. I've got my Dexter's Laboratory t-shirt on and exciting ideas for my WIP skipping around my mind making me caffeine-jittery to the point I'm knocking things over in my apartment. Granted, the inability to stand up on my two feet is nothing new, I can barely contain the the surge of passion. So, before I destroy everything I own, I thought I would sit down and share something I stumbled across on Tor.com (I'm a huge fan of the sci-fi website) and, then, get to writing.

Last week, I wrote about serialized fiction and whether it had a place in our literary world anymore on the Bucks County Writers' Group blog. Then, I came across the first few chapters of Catherynne M. Valente's middle grade novel The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There. Tor.com serialized the first 5 chapters of the sequel to Valente's first Fairyland book, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making.

What a great way to hook readers. Instead of making all the hard work Valente put into her novel FREE for a short time on Amazon, she made a 5-chapter excerpt  available to her audience in hopes of convincing them to purchase the novel. If a story has legs to stand on, it will capture its audience in the first few chapters. Now, I can't wait to hit the store to pick up Valente's two novels.

Her writing is rich and brings me back to a time when my sister and I would build forts out of my parents furniture by draping blankets over it to create tunnels and little secret rooms. The writing is elevated, giving the narrator an authority and making the story accessible to middle grade readers and enjoyable for adults.

Don't take my word for it. Read it yourself.


Serialized Fiction: A Thing of the Past? by Laura M. Campbell

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente