I’m going to try and keep this short and sweet, like the Oscar accep­tance speeches are expected to be – but like them, don’t be sur­prised if I drone on and on and am cut off by the music.

I have accepted an offer by a major “Big Six” pub­lisher for The Artists Tril­ogy, which includes On Every Street, Sins & Nee­dles, Shoot­ing Scars and Bold Tricks (the ten­ta­tively titled last book). All books will be pub­lished this year in e-book for­mat and late 2014 in mass mar­ket paperback.

*con­fetti gun goes off*

This is THE dream of all dreams for me. I wrote my first novel in 2009 (Dark­house, EIT #1) and self-published it on May 13, 2011 (after a few more books were writ­ten). Since then, I have writ­ten and pro­moted 13 books and I NEVER ever thought this day would come. I always felt like my writ­ing was unno­ticed and under­ap­pre­ci­ated. I felt like the geeky kid who can’t sit at the cool kids table (and I still feel like this). I felt like the val­i­da­tion I needed, wanted, craved was always out of my hands, a dream belong­ing to some­one else.

I felt like this for two years. But I per­se­vered. I kept writ­ing, kept try­ing to do my best. I sac­ri­ficed sleep, friends, a social life, fit­ting into my clothes, spend­ing qual­ity time with fam­ily, exer­cise, trav­el­ing, EVERYTHING. I invested money in it that, for the longest time, I NEVER saw come back. I felt like a lone sol­dier, just work­ing her ass off, some­times while hold­ing down a day job and some­times while work­ing 10 hour days of just writ­ing until my brain started to bleed. It’s been hard. It’s been tough. No one ever said being an indie author was easy but I never thought it would be SO hard. I never thought I would lose so much in pur­suit of my dream.

But, slowly, even­tu­ally, after about a year and a half of sell­ing 0–20 copies of my books a month, some­thing changed. Thanks to blog­gers like Maryse, The Book­ish Babes and For­ever Young Adult, and the hard­core fans who have been there since the start, peo­ple started to notice Dex and Perry and Exper­i­ment in Terror.

And after they noticed that, they noticed Sage and Dawn from The Devil’s Metal.

And then they noticed Ellie and Cam­den (and Javier) and Sins & Needles.

And pub­lish­ers noticed it too.

So, finally, I feel like all my hard work is finally being rec­og­nized, finally pay­ing off. I’ve made my friends proud of me (they can point to the books when they come out in book­stores and say, “I know that dork!”), I’ve made my par­ents proud of me (they can tell their friends that their daugh­ter is “actu­ally” pub­lished, since the older gen­er­a­tion doesn’t really get the whole self-pubbing thing and our fam­ily over­seas will be able to pick up MY BOOKS at the air­ports), I’ve made my fiancé proud of me (who has seen me strug­gle for far too long) and I’ve made ME proud of me. Because I made it – I finally did it. I got a tra­di­tional pub­lish­ing deal. My books will be in book­stores every­where in 2014. I will have the back­ing of a huge cor­po­ra­tion and edi­tors who believe in me. I am PROUD of myself and all the blood that went into it.

But…and here was the ques­tion that always nagged at me since the begin­ning of nego­ti­a­tions – would my READERS be proud of me?

You see, dear read­ers, I was ter­ri­fied of telling you this. Because every­one knows now that books get pushed back when a pub­lisher takes them on. And from some of the angry com­ments I had already received from  peo­ple who hated the way Sins & Nee­dles ended, I knew I was going to make a lot of peo­ple mad at me. They weren’t going to be happy for me. They wouldn’t be proud. They would be upset that Shoot­ing Scars got pushed back from May and noth­ing else would matter.

So, I kept that thought at the fore­front of nego­ti­a­tions. If the book was going to be delayed more than I thought nec­es­sary, I wouldn’t sign the deal.

I’ll repeat: I would rather give up my dream than majorly dis­ap­point and anger my readers.

Thank­fully, it didn’t have to be that way. The pub­lisher under­stood how impor­tant it was to get Shoot­ing Scars out there. They didn’t want to delay it for the sake of delay­ing it (even though it does ben­e­fit them to do so). They under­stood. They are awe­some like that.

And so I said yes.

So here it is:

Shoot­ing Scars is get­ting delayed until July 2013 (iron­i­cally, that was the orig­i­nal release date I picked for the book before I moved it up to May). It’s just two months. It could have been a lot worse. It was the best I can do and believe me, that was the lat­est I would allow it to be pushed back.

On the plus side: the book will stay around the same price of Sins & Nee­dles (def­i­nitely indie-priced) AND the final book in the series will be pub­lished sooner than I had orig­i­nally planned. I was think­ing Novem­ber for Bold Tricks but it appears to be bumped up to Sep­tem­ber. So yes, more wait­ing in the short-term but less wait­ing in the long-term.

Now I know some of you are angry and I’ve been wait­ing for the retal­i­a­tion. And I under­stand the dis­ap­point­ment. I really do! I wish it could come out in May, too (though this does give me more time to work on it and make it amaz­ing). But as another author said to me, the true fans will wait. They will under­stand. And they will be proud of what you’ve accomplished.

I hope you’re all just as proud as I am

PS — Come Alive, the 7th Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror book is still com­ing out in June (mid-month it seems). I WILL have lots of awe­somely awe­some TAT (The Artists Tril­ogy) give­aways and swag plus lots of teasers to keep you game.

PPS I am doing a LOT of book sign­ings this year — there’s RT in May, Maryse’s Book Bash in Orlando in June. There’s an east coast sign­ing or two (or three) later on. Even one in the desert. Since I will soon have to pull my paper­backs of Sins & Nee­dles and On Every Street very soon — and the paper­backs from the pub­lisher won’t be out till next year — I advise you to buy them from Ama­zon now, while you can.

Link to Sins & Nee­dles paperback

Link to On Every Street paperback

PPS I will let you know the name of the pub­lisher once the ink on the con­tract has dried

<3