Heidi Heilig

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The Ship Beyond Time: Preorder Incentive

January 9, 2017 by Heidi Heilig

Soooooooo The Ship Beyond Time comes out in less than two months and I haven’t done anything to promote it.

[insert sailor swears here]

This is not because the book is no good. Au contraire! The Ship Beyond Time got rave reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and School Library Journal (they even gave me a star, yay!) Entertainment Weekly called it one of their most anticipated books of 2017, and more importantly to me, early readers have loved the story (some even going so far as to curse my name for the ending, which is perhaps the highest honor a reader can bestow.)

No, my lack of promotion has been due in large part to a strong desire for a real life time machine (dial set for November 7th 2016) and to an extremely crunched schedule consisting of writing my own fantastic next book and reading the fabulous books of others. But now I’ve wasted two paragraphs explaining myself and the clock is really ticking, so without further ado, let me announce my preorder incentive.

I’m not going to be subtle–I want your preorders! Preorders are the best way to ensure a book and an author gets love and attention from publishers and press, and we all want is love and attention, right? Or is that only a holdover from my theatre days? ANYWAY. To encourage those preorders, I’m offering an incentive in the form of a beautiful cloisonne pin shaped like the Temptation.

special-swag Tada!

I have a limited amount of these pins, so if you’re on the fence about preordering but you really really like collecting rare swag*, this might just sway you! So go on, preorder**! Then enter your info here.

*Yes, for those who asked, I DID look into cloning Kashmir, but the Cloning Nerds have a friendly rivalry with us Time Travel Nerds and there are a lot more of them than us–at least, intermittently, between the moments that we fire up the time machine to go back to stop Casey from pressing the clone button FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME.

**This incentive was originally conceived as an incentive for indie bookstores only, but it was rightfully pointed out to me that access to an indie bookstore is a privilege. Supporting indie bookstores is near and dear to my heart, and by supporting indie bookstores, you are helping make them accessible to more people, so I highly encourage you preorder from your local indie, BUT, if you cannot, you are still welcome to claim your incentive along with my gratitude. 🙂

 

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Preorder Incentive: Update

January 11, 2016 by heidiadmin

Due to overwhelming interest, as of January 11th, we have run out of the special maps I had printed for preorder swag. Thank you so much for making this so fun!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

UK Cover

November 9, 2015 by heidiadmin

Tada! The UK cover for THE GIRL FROM EVERYWHERE!

THE GIRL FROM EVERYWHERE UK cover

When I first saw it, I was swept away by the richness of the colors and the tropical-adventure feel. I love how this cover perfectly captures an entirely different (but just as important) aspect of the story–namely, finding home in a place and time you’ve never visited, but somehow belong. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Giveaway: Signed ARC (International)

October 30, 2015 by heidiadmin

Hey! So! I have one last ARC of THE GIRL FROM EVERYWHERE, and I defaced it with my signature in bronze sharpie. Maybe someone wants it?

This could be yours! Sorry I wrote in it.
This could be yours! Sorry I wrote in it.

Since I’m trying to drum up email addresses for my newsletter, I was thinking: INTERNATIONAL GIVEAWAY! Do me a favor and subscribe (at the bottom right of that page) for my monthly thoughts and musings, book and event news, peccadillos and misadventures. In exchange, I’ll enter your name into the giveaway, ending November 15th. (Winner will be announced that week!)

Yes? YES!

Filed Under: announcement, giveaway, The Girl From Everywhere, Uncategorized

Writing Outside The Checkbox

May 18, 2015 by heidiadmin

You know those checkboxes you get on some official forms where there’s an incomplete list of races/genders and you’re like “Where am I on here?” and also “Is this, strictly-speaking, legal?”

Not even an “Other” box? 

Very few of us fit in neat boxes, but you can imagine a hypothetical and inclusive checklist. And I posit that most of us feel pretty comfortable writing characters with whom we share an identity–people who would check the same boxes as we would.

In seeking to write diversity, I definitely feel like I can speak for the type of people that would check the same boxes as me. I’m bipolar. I’m biracial. So I’m comfortable writing characters with mood swings or people who never feel quite at home in any one culture. Part of this is that I have a huge amount of lived experience to draw from.

And part of it, of course, is that I never have to fear that someone can accurately say to me “We’re not like that. You got it wrong.”

I hate being wrong, of course. Most people do. But it’s more than that.

Any member of a marginalized community knows how hurtful stereotypes and misattributions can be. (If one more mass murderer is diagnosed by popular opinion with “mental illness” post-rampage, I’m going to go NUTS.) (See what I did there?) I don’t want to feed into stereotypes. I don’t want to hurt people. I don’t want to make things even worse.

But I don’t want to do nothing either, because the status quo is actively harmful.

So how to try to make things better without making things worse instead?

Two things I recommend.

1) Read and support marginalized voices outside your own experience. Listen, like, buy, retweet, signal boost. And most importantly, do this without butting into the conversation to give your own take on other people’s lives.

2) Use the learning that naturally came from listening in your own work. Try to write outside your checkbox. My main character is mixed race, her father is a bipolar addict. Those are all things I’ve dealt with. But her best friend is Persian. Her surrogate father is Nuer. I am neither, but I did my best to research, to listen, to understand, and then to write a compelling cast of diverse characters.

Did I get stuff wrong? Very likely.

Will I apologize for getting it wrong when someone lets me know? Most definitely.

Would I rather have just stuck with people that were like me? Certainly not.*

After all, they can’t ALL be crazy.

Trying and failing is better than not trying at all. Do your best to write diversity well, and acknowledge in advance that you can always do better.

And then write books that can proudly check loads of boxes.

*That is, unless for some reason my portrayal of these characters causes massive harm to others. I really don’t think it will. But I may be utterly clueless. You have to leave open that possibility, the possibility that you are Utterly Clueless.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Terrific or Terrified?

April 24, 2015 by heidiadmin

So I just got my copy edits back and they are awesome and terrifying.

They are awesome because we are nearly done!

They are terrifying because we are nearly done!

A real life edit note from the copy editor

Committing to something is not my best skill. My favorite quote* is “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” I love rewriting, and this past year of edits has shown me how very much you can rewrite. You can tweak and adjust and fix and retool forever.

Well, you could, if you didn’t have deadlines.

SO. I’m going to get these edits done, and then I’m going to send them off, and then that will be it. I will not have to make more changes. I will not be able to make more changes.

Indeed.

It’s a good thing. It has to be. Because I have to put book 1 down and finish up book 2.

Martha Mihalick sums it up perfectly

Happy (re)writing.

*Fittingly, there are many versions of this quote attributed to many different people. Quotes are never given, only claimed.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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