Secrets and Lies! Coming SOON!

Hello lovelies!

As many of you know, my publisher will be releasing an ebook of short stories featuring characters from my books.

I have LOTS of news about that!

First - title:  SECRETS AND LIES.

SECRETS AND LIES will feature 2 short stories by me. The first is ABBREVIATIONS AND ALLITERATIONS, which will feature Casey from THE DUFF. The second is PEOPLE WORTH KNOWING which is about Bailey from A MIDSUMMER'S NIGHTMARE.  These aren't like short-short stories, either.  Each is somewhere between 5 and 6 chapters long.

So when will it be released?

NEXT MONTH!  On June 4th, to be exact.  

And, best of all, COVER!

Is that CAsey or is it Bailey? I"ll let you decide.

So SECRETS AND LIES will be released next month on all the ebook platforms - Kindle, Nook, iBooks - and guys, I'm REALLY stoked about this.  I had THE BEST time writing these stories, and I really hope you enjoy reading them.  

Woo! That was a lot of news. But good news! Yay! 

Disability and Identity

Hello all.  So quick housekeeping note: I've been traveling a lot, but I just picked a winner for the exclusive content booklet. I'll be contacting that person today since it turned out to be someone who tweeted. So keep an eye out for that if you entered!

Okay, now on to some other stuff.

Recently I got my first guide dog. She's an adorable ball of love and affection and she's crazy smart. We've only been working together a month, but she goes everywhere with me and she's already made a huge difference in the way I travel. I'm so glad I made the decision to get her.

But along with the good, there comes some bad.

Dogs are different than canes (my last form of mobility).  Canes don't need to go potty. Canes don't cost money to feed or groom. Canes don't try to go sniff other dogs when they're supposed to be working.

And canes can be folded up and put away when you don't want people to know you're blind.

In some ways, I have what could be called an "invisible disability." As in, you can't look at me and tell that I am disabled. This can be good, but it can also be really, really frustrating. I've been accused of "faking" my disability before because I have some residual vision and look at things. I've been yelled at for sitting at the front of the bus when that's for "disabled people! Not you!" because I am young and healthy and I don't "look disabled." (By the way, telling someone they "don't look disabled" is not a compliment because it implies that looking disabled is a bad thing. So don't do that.)  Having an invisible disability can suck, but in some ways, I liked it. Because it also meant my blindness didn't have to be my identity. It meant people could meet me and not know. It meant I could "pass."

I want to clarify something here before I get any farther. I am not ashamed of my disability. I never have been, never will be. This is not a thing of pride.  I liked hiding it, being able to pass, because when people don't know I'm blind, they treat me like anyone else. I like that. I like being treated like a person - not like a BLIND person.

When you have a visible disability, it becomes your entire identity. People don't see YOU, they see your cane or your wheelchair or your hearing aid.  You are seen as "other" - someone to assist and pity. You are the subject of a thousand misconceptions and stereotypes. Everything you do is seen as "inspiring" and that's the part of you that everyone wants to talk about, no matter how successful or interesting you are outside of your disability.

So yeah. Sometimes, I liked to hide my cane and pass for an able person. Sometimes I hated myself for it, too.

But now that I have my dog, that's not an option. I can't fold her up. I can't hide her (at least not well - we're talking sixty pounds of fluffy German Shepherd. Not the easiest to stash away.) My ability to pass is, for the most part, gone. I say "for the most part" because for some reason a lot of people assume I"m training my dog, not actually using her. And when I correct them, I again get the "Oh, wow! You don't look blind!" thing. Again, not a compliment, guys.

Now my disability is very apparent, where as before, with the cane, it was only obvious part of the time, now it's obvious (to most people) all of the time. All of those negatives of invisible disability are gone - no one yells at me on the bus, for example - but all of the negatives of visible disability are piled on at full force.

Especially the identity issue.

It sucks to know that when people see you, they don't see a person, they see a disability. I have a lot of worries and fears about being honest about my disability because of this. I feel like I"m taking a risk every time I write a blog post about it because I'm opening the doors for assumptions and questions and comments about how "inspiring" I am for "overcoming" my disability. (Please leave your inspiration at the door, folks. There is no reason to be inspired by me living a normal life. Loads of disabled people do it every day. It's honestly not a big deal.) But I've let myself be pretty candid on here, and until I start seeing these negative things happen, I'll continue to do so.

The thing that really bothers me is, there are a lot of things about disability that I want to be able to talk about openly - the guide dog process, my thoughts on accessibility and technology, political issues regarding the disabled, etc - but the thing is, I don't want to put myself in the role of "spokesperson." Unfortunately, that's sort of what happens whenever you're an outspoken member of any minority group. People like to take your words and assume they represent the whole of your community. "I know this blind person thinks this, so that must be how they all feel."  I'll be unfront and I say that I have very different views from some other blind people on many different issues - just as I have different views from other white people, other women, other Christians, etc etc etc.  I don't speak for the whole community, nor do I wish to.

The other thing about speaking out is that once you start talking about disability, that's all people want to hear about.  I recently had a thought about making some youtube videos discussing disability related issues and accessible technology, but then I thought, "But I just want that to be something I do, not who I am."

I don't want to be seen as a Blind Person. I'm a person. I am a woman. I am a feminist. I am a writer. I am a vegan. I am a Southerner. I am a liberal. I am an animal lover. I am a reader. I am a fan of TV and film. I am a brunette.

I also happen to be blind.

It is not my identity. It is one part of a whole. One piece of the puzzle that creates me. Yes it informs my identity, just as many of the things I mentioned before it do, but it isn't who I am. I'm okay with people knowing I'm disabled, just as I'm okay with people knowing I'm all of those things above. I just wish it wasn't the one thing strangers focus on. I wish I could talk about it more freely without fear of it consuming my identity.

Unfortunately, I think this is true of a lot of minority groups. POC, LGBT, disability, etc - people find the one part of you that's "different' and zero in instead of seeing the person as a whole. Our society has come a long way over the past century, but we still have a long way to go.

Want to Win Some Exclusive Material By Cool Authors?

Then you came to the right place!

Next week, several New Leaf Literary authors (including myself) will be signing together at Powell's in Portland, OR.  Everyone who comes will get a booklet of exclusive material - short stories, maps, etc - from the authors. (Lisa Desrochers, Leigh Bardugo, Kristin Halbrook, and MORE!) and you could get the booklet, too!

An example of the material? I wrote a scene from Wesley's POV in THE DUFF.

So how can you win this booklet (which will be autographed by the authors)? EASY!

For 1 entry, comment on this post.

For a bonus entry, tweet this giveaway and link your tweet in the comments.

And that's it!  This bonus material is all REALLY awesome, guys. Trust me, you want it.  And also, here is the flyer for the event, in case you live in the PNW area!

Giveaway ends a week from today (Tuesday, April 16) at midnight EST!

When People Tell Me Ableism Doesn't Exist

I don't consider my disability a major part of my life. It's just a Thing. It's a thing that changes how I go about my life, but not the quality of life itself. I live an exceedingly normal life - I have friends, I go to movies, I take improv classes sometimes, I live in New York and take the subway and do all the things people my age do. Most of the time, I forget that I even have a disability. Yes, some tasks are different for me (I use magnification on my laptop, I walk with a cane) but those things don't make life for me any different than life for another 21-year-old.

Except in how others react to me.

I've talked occasionally about my frustrations with ableism and stereotypes and misleading points of view. I've talked about how it makes me crazy when people assume I need help crossing the street (true story - blind people often cross streets more safely than sighted people, because we pay extra attention). It rubs me the wrong way when people's first questions about me are about my disability and not me as a person. And the worst - I loathe when people invade my personal space (touching me, grabbing me) because they want to "help" without my permission.

These are all forms of ableism, whether people like to think of it that way or not. It might all be well meaning, but the underlying assumption is that a disabled person (in my case, a blind person) cannot do normal things on their own or that they ARE their disability and not real people.

Recently, someone told me that ableism doesn't exist.  That all of these things I mention are well-meaning. That they aren't really ableist at all and that I am overreacting to them.

But even well-meaning people can be ableist.  And if these little actions aren't enough to prove that, then hopefully this will be.

This is a story I haven't shared in a long time, mostly because I was bitter, angry, and still raw from it, despite it happening when I was sixteen.  I won't name the people involved, even though I should because all of them should be held accountable for thier attitudes towards me and other disabled students. Because the horrible thing is, the people i"m about to discuss actually worked at a school for the blind. Their JOBS were to work with kids with disabilities, and while they may have been well-meaning, they were horrible perpetrators of ableism.

A little background:

I went to mainstream schools from the day I started kindergarten, and despite having a school system that wasn't always great at getting me the assistive technology I needed, I was happy there. I thrived, even. I always had great grades and did all the same school work as my peers.  But in high school, it dawned on me that I needed some training in mobility (i. e. I needed to learn to use a cane) so I started going to the closest school for the blind to take "short courses" - basically, I'd go there, stay in a dorm for two weeks, do all of my normal school work with a few tutors, and get trained in cane techniques and city travel (I'm from a small town with no bus system, so that was something I had to learn to do, too.)

I enjoyed short course a lot, even though I missed my high school. What I didn't enjoy were the attitudes of some of the administration I worked with. Not everyone - my mobility teacher was excellent, I adored my dorm parents, I had a great time with two of my three short course tutors (who were teachers, actually).  But this affection doesn't extend to everyone at the school for the blind.

It should be known that I have always been extremely ambitious. I've known since I was eight that I wanted to leave my hometown and go to school far away. I've known I wanted to be a writer (or an actor, either one) since I was nine. I've had big dreams for myself, and I saw no reason why I shouldn't chase them. I had good grades, I was focused, I was motivated - I didn't think twice about my disability even playing a factor. Because it doesn't. It shouldn't. Not in chasing goals. (You know, unless your goal is to be a NASCAR driver - that might have been hard with my vision, but I digress.)

While I was at the school, I mentioned to one of my short course teachers that I wanted to go to Ithaca College (I was a junior and already researching places to apply).  Her reaction was not what I'd expected. Immediately she started telling me to be more "realistic."  She wanted me to apply in-state. She knew I had a high GPA and that I had good ACT scores, but my dream was "unrealistic." Not my dream of going into an artistic field, just of going to college where I wanted to.

Later, she suggested I should have a meeting with the guidance counselor at school, just to discuss my future. Why not? So I talked with him, and he spent the whole meeting telling me why I shouldn't go away to college. He brought up my parents finances (something he knew NOTHING about) and then told me I should stay in state because I'd get more support from the Office for the Blind (a government entity that helps blind individuals in the sate of KY). He acted like I was utterly ridiculous for even considering attending at highly ranked private school that - in actuality - I was extremely likely to be accepted to based on my academics.

During that particular stent of short course, I'd also been considering transferring to the school for the blind in order to get the best mobility training I could (it hadn't been offered at my school). So I'd had a meeting with the short course teacher who had discouraged me, the guidance counselor, and the principal. Long story short, they spent the whole meeting telling me I "couldn't" go  away to college and that I needed to be more "realistic."

I left the office sobbing, convinced they were right.

Thank God for the dorm parent I had at the time. She saw me sobbing, pulled me into her room, and listened to what had happened. She gave me great advice which ultimately amounted to "don't listen to those people."  So I didn't.

Later, I learned a lot about the guidance counselor at the school for the blind. I wasn't the first one to have that situation. He'd told a class valedictorian that he "couldn't handle college." He suggested to another student that he'd be better off working on his parents farm than going to school. Disclaimer: these things were all heard second hand, but based on my experience, I have little doubt as t their validity.

When I got back to my public school, my guidance counselor asked me to come see her. She informed me that the counselor for school for the blind had called her and told her she "had to tell me" that I couldn't go to the colleges I wanted. When she'd told him she wouldn't do that, he'd yelled at her and hung up the phone. He'd also called my Office for the Blind counselor (who legally cannot give him information on me without my consent) and tried to ask her questions about my situation and encourage her to do the same (re: discourage me.)

There are a lot of questions as to why the people at this school - whose whole purpose is to HELP kids with disabilities - would act this way to a student.  Would a guidance counselor at a public school tell a student with a 3.5 GPA they shouldn't apply to a good (but not Ivy League) college? Tell them they couldn't "handle" it? Tell them to stay close to home? I have my doubts. In the case of these individuals, they should have been helping to ENCOURAGE and BETTER and BUILD THE CONFIDENCE of students who have probably been told they "can't" all their lives.

But that's not what they were doing.

I like to believe the best in people, so I'm going to say that the people I dealt with meant well. I think they genuinely believed it was in my best interest to stay in Kentucky, close to my family, and attend a public school I might be able to "handle" better.  I'm sure they thought they were looking out for the blind kids they worked with.  But instead, they were just bringing them down.

That is ableism. True, horrible, real ableism. Well meant? Maybe. But it comes from a place of believing these kids aren't capable of doing the things most people their age do.

I never went back to the school for the blind after that. Instead, my school got me a mobility teacher, and I learned all the things I needed to about traveling in a city by visiting nearby cities. And I did apply to Ithaca, where I was accepted.  I went for two years. Then I moved to New York City. And now I"m a writer, doing what I've always dreamed of.

And you know what? None of that has anything to do with my disability. I didn't overcome anything. I didn't do anything "inspirational." I just did what I loved, went to a college I wanted, and moved to a city far away from home where I am very happy.

Believe me, it's crossed my mind - wanting to go back to the school for the blind and show the administration there just what I've been up to despite their greatest attempts to "help" me. But I don't think most of the people involved even work there anymore. Which is for the best. I don't want to see them, really. I think it would be too upsetting.

So why am I sharing this very, very long story with you? Because I needed to tell it, for one. I needed to expose these attitudes once and for all. And for another, because ableism - well meaning or not - is ableism none the less. Just as well-meaning people can do and say racist things or anti-feminist things. Good people do ableist things, and that's not excuse. Because whether it's telling someone they're dreams are "unrealistic" due to thier disability or assuming you should "help" a person with a disability when they haven't asked or calling a disabled person "inspirational" for doing the things everyone else does - it all comes from the same problematic mind set - that people who have disabilities are not equal to the rest of the world, they are less capable.

I hate this mindset. I deal with this mindset on a daily basis. Which is why I waited so long to even talk about being blind on this blog - I didn't want anyone to see me any differently because I just can't see as well. But sadly, some people do. Some people see the disability, not the person, and that makes me sad. Sad and angry.

Ableism exists, and while it's a problem most people will never face, it's still a problem our society as a whole really needs to address.

How Do I Get Published and Other FAQs

(Copied from my Tumblr @ kodykeplinger.tumblr.com) 

So over the last few weeks, I've gotten a flood of emails from readers. I LOVE hearing from readers and other aspiring writers. It really makes me so happy. So thank you all!

Lately, though, I've been swamped with work, and I'm finding it hard to respond to everyone (via email and tumblr and twitter), and I want to answer everyone. Lately I've gotten a lot of questions. And a lot of the same questions, actually. So I thought I'd make an FAQ post of my most frequently asked questions so I have something to link readers to when they email me with some of these questions.  You can also see the FAQs page on my website for more.

So here we go:

• How did you get started writing?

Honestly, I don't really remember. I've always written. That was how I got my entertainment as a kid - I made up stories.  Either with my Barbies, with pictures I drew, or with a keyboard. I liked stories. As I got older, my stories got longer and longer. I wrote my first "novel" when I was 11 (it was only 60 pages and it was terrible). I wrote more over the years, some finished, some not.  Then, my senior year of high school, I wrote THE DUFF.  And the rest is history.

• How did you get THE DUFF published?

First thing's first. I went through a lot of revisions on THE DUFF before I even considered trying to get it published. In fact, i wasn't planning on trying at all. I wrote the book for fun, and then I asked some people I'd met on absolutewrite.com (a writing website) to read it and give me notes.  After I edited the book based on their notes, I was encouraged to try and pursue publishing. 

The first step I took was to find an agent.  I knew I wanted to traditionally publish, and that seemed like the best route to me. So I started doing research. I did a lot of googling, I talked to other aspiring writers, and I learned that I needed to write a query letter.  That's a pitch letter. If you'd like to see examples, including my letter, check out YAHighway.com's "Query Series", where authors share their query letters and their agents write up a short post about why the ltter worked.  There are lots of other sources online for query tutorials. Just do some googling.

I created a list of agents who represented my genre (young adult), perfected my query (with help from others), and then sent out letters to the agents on my list.  And after several rejections, an awesome agent asked to read my book, she liked it, and then she signed me.  We worked together on some revisions, and then she submitted THE DUFF to publishers.  A few weeks later, my book sold to Little Brown & Co/Poppy. And the rest is history.

• How do I find an agent/get an agent?

I answered a lot of this in the last question, but I'll break it down a bit more here.

When you have a finished, revised novel and you think it's time to find an agent, the first thing to do is research.  Research, research, research. Do some googling (seriously, google will get you a long way) to find agents who represent your genre. Also look at the acknowledgements page of books you love or books in your genre and see if an agent is mentioned. Make a list of agents that represent your genre, and then research them. Does it seem like you guys have similar taste/do they represent books you've liked? Do they represent books in your genre? Are they looking to sign new writers? Do as much research as you can. Also be sure they don't charge a reading fee.

Once you have a list of agents, write a query. (Or write your query first. This order doesn't matter.)  The job of a query is to make an agent interested in reading your book.  Be sure and show your query to others and get feedback. They can be really challenging to write. You can have an awesome book, but if your query isn't intriguing, the agent will never read it.  So work REALLY hard on your query letter and look at lots of examples of them online. Seriously. I can't stress this enough. A good query goes a long way.

Once you have a good query, you can start sending to agents on your list.  Don't get discouraged if you get rejections - every single author gets them, no matter how awesome their book is. Don't be discouraged if your first book doesn't get you an agent. That's fine. Try again with your next book.  Every journey is different and publishing is a long road for most people.  To be honest, my first attempt at getting an agent failed. THE DUFF was the second book I queried, and I wasn't even planning on querying it.  So persistence is key.

• How do I write a query?

This is hard to answer because every author has a different process.  Queries are tough and it's a different style of writing than most are used to.  The whole point of a query is to get an agent interested in your book. Think of the summary on the back of a novel - it gives you just enough to know what the book is about but leaves you wondering what's going to happen.

Check out YAHighway.com and look at their Query Series. Lots of authors have submitted their successful queries along with their agent's comments on why the query worked. It's a great way to see examples. You can also check out QueryShark, a website where people submit queries and a real agent tears them apart - the good, the bad, and the ugly.  There are so many other sources. Seriously, just googling "successful query letters" and you'll get lots of info.  But this is another research, research, research situation. The better your query is, the better your chances are of getting an agent interested.  

• Where do you get your inspiration?

Everywhere.  Seriously, everywhere. I can't say one specific place. I get it from music, from movies, from things people on the street say - Every. Where.  

• Can you make your books into movies? And can I audition?

I get this question more than any other, I think.

To the first part - authors aren't really in charge of making their books into movies. If we had that power, we'd all make our books into huge blockbusters! No, that's the task of the people out in Hollywood. They have to decide if a book should be a movie. In my case, THE DUFF has been optioned for film rights. That doesn't mean it WILL be a film, just that someone paid for the option to make it a film. So we'll see what happens there!

As to the second question - I, and most authors, have no power over who gets the parts in our movies. So even if any of my movies do become films, chances are I don't have the power to get anyone an audition.  Sorry!

And I think that's it for today! Thanks for all your emails and questions, guys! I hope this post is helpful, and if I get any more questions that I haven't answered here or on my website, I'll do a part two.

NEWS! Short Stories and Goldfish Release

(Via my Tumblr.)

Hello my lovely, lovely friends!

I’ve been dying to share some news with you, but I’ve had to wait. And finally, I can tell you some exciting things happening in the future!

So, first, I have to mention that GOLDFISH has been moved. It will not be released in Fall 2013 as planned. Instead, it has been moved to Spring 2014. This is for a few different reasons, but ultimately it’s for the best.  

But that doesn’t mean I have nothing going on in 2013. Because I do.

In Spring 2013, Little Brown will be releasing a collection of 3 short stories (each about 5 or 6 chapters long), featuring characters from my other books.  Squee!

One story is about Casey from THE DUFF, and it’s a story I’ve wanted to tell since I wrote the book but had no outlet for, so I’m SO EXCITED to finally get a chance to tell Casey’s story.  Another story is about Bailey from A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHTMARE. And the third is about Julie - a character you will meet in Goldfish - and it serves as sort of a prequel to the book.

The collection doesn’t have a title just yet, but the theme is secrets.

These will be released in digital format only (so for your Nook, Kindle, iPad, etc) and they’ll be out in Spring 2013 (wait, did I already say that part?)

Guys, I am really, really excited! I”m so glad I got to share this with you all. And there is more news on the horizon, so stay tuned!

What I Said to JK Rowling

So on Tuesday night, I went to Lincoln Center to see an interview and reading by THE JK Rowling.  It was one of the best night’s of my life, and I don’t say that with hyperbole. After her reading, she signed everyone’s copy of THE CASUAL VACANCY.

EVERYONE’S.

That was like 2,000 books, y’all.

That’s A LOT.  

So when I came up in line (near the end, after she’d be signing for 2 hours) I didn’t expect her to say much, if anything, to me. And I would have been fine with that, because the fact that she was staying there so late to sign so many books was enough.

But she did talk to me. It was a short conversation, but one of the most amazing of my life. It went something like this.

ME: (hands her my book) I just have to say, I became a writer because of you. So thank you for that.

JK ROWLING: (looks up - VERY genuine) Thank  you so much. That is a wonderful thing to hear.

ME: (blush like CRAZY) Oh, no, thank YOU. I’m actually a Little Brown author as well.

JK ROWLING: Really??? Oh wow! We’re in the same stable, then, you and I!

ME: Ha! I guess we are. (takes signed book) Thank you so, so much. It was lovely meeting you.

JK ROWLING: You too.

And then I ran away.

I want emphasize something here. She was so, so incredibly kind and genuine. She made me feel like she really, truly cared what I had to say.  You never would have known that she’d been signing for two hours or that her hand was probably about to fall off.  She treated every person in line like she was glad to see them.

And that’s how she grew to inspire me even more than she already has. Not only did this woman single handedly keep me from failing 5th grade (yes, I was FAILING. Because while I’ve loved to write, I hated reading for a while as a kid), but she also showed me that she’s just as admirable as a person as she is a writer. 

I want to do that.

I want to be like her.

I want every single one of my readers to know how much they mean to me and how glad I am that they’ve read and enjoyed my books. I want to inspire. I want to make people love to read. I want to make people want to write. Even if it’s just one person, that’s more than enough.

(Reposted from my tumblr: kodykeplinger.tumblr.com.)