Oppression Blog Tour: Guest Post and Giveaway

I'm very excited to have the Oppression Blog Tour stopping by today with a guest post from author Jessica Therrien. Be sure to stop by and read my Review to learn more about Oppression!

Hello! I’m Jessica Therrien, author of Oppression (Children of the Gods #1). Thanks so much Aeicha for having me on your blog!


If you’ve stopped by for the blog tour, then thank you too! 

I wanted to peel back the curtain a little for this post, let you all in on the making of my novel. I know you get to see the finished product, nicely packaged and beautiful with its alluring cover and all, but getting a book to that point isn’t all cupcakes and lollipops. It’s work people, and it’s hard. So here goes…

Writing doesn’t come easy to me. I’m not one of those writers who can sit down and pump out a book every six months. I’m a perfectionist, down to the word, the syntax, the formatting. I can’t help it. I’m a little nutzo that way. Needless to say, writing my first novel took more than one try. I gave up a few times, threw the pile of marked up sentences into a drawer, and said, “forget it,” more than once.

BUT, as it turns out, being a perfectionist can pay off, and in the end a publisher saw something in my work. Up until I actually got a publisher, I had no idea what went on after the contract was signed. I figured, you handed over your manuscript, they worked their magic, and voila! A book is made. Nope.

For every author the process is different, but my first hurdle to climb was content edits. These are changes to the plot, character development, reorganizing of chapters, rewrites, etc. Content edits came as a shock to me. I’d worked so hard to make my novel flawless, and to have someone point out its weaknesses was eye-opening, inspirational, and devastating all at once. Apparently this is the first step for most authors. Rarely does someone turn in a “perfect” manuscript, but it’s still a little hard to swallow. If you’re one of those “I write the perfect manuscript” kind of authors…I salute you.

Once all of the blubbering and tears were over, I actually ended up feeling grateful for my publisher’s honest suggestions to my novel’s content. The re-crafting of my story took several months, but it made the book a thousand times better. My publisher was right, and now those changes are my favorite parts.

After content edits comes a slew of read-throughs, one focusing on fine-tuning the writing, adding details to certain scenes, then line edits (grammar, punctuation, etc.), another to make sure the changes work, and finally one last read-through to approve the ARC. Each read-through isn’t a quick scan of the pages. Analyzing every sentence is hard on the eyes and takes quite a bit of time.

Up to this point, blood, sweat, and tears have gone into making the book the best it can be. Only, what good is that if nobody has heard of it? I struggled for months trying to figure out how to reach people through social media, and I’m still learning. Thanks to Rachael Harrie’s Writing Campaign, I was able to connect with some great bloggers and fellow authors.

Now here I am, hopping around on a blog tour. Thanks for stopping by, and now that you know a little more about how Oppression came to be, I hope you’ll give it a try.

Thanks for reading!

Thanks for stopping by Jessica :)

Find the author: Website / Goodreads / Twitter / Facebook
Purchase: Amazon / Barnes and Noble

Jessica Therrien is the author of OPPRESSION, book one in her YA paranormal romance/adventure series, CHILDREN OF THE GODS. OPPRESSION was published by ZOVA Books in February of 2012. Jessica is a graduate of San Diego State University. She lived in Taiwan for a year where she learned Chinese, but she lives in Chula Vista now, where everyone speaks Spanish instead. Although she is a Strategic Planner at the Otay Water District, her alter ego is a writer, who loves the arts with a passion. Jessica is currently writing book two in her CHILDREN OF THE GODS series.

Jessica Therrien is hosting a giveaway throughout the blog tour for a signed copy of her book, specifically for those who have purchased a Kindle or Nook copy of Oppression.

You can enter this giveaway on Jessica's website or here, below...

a Rafflecopter giveaway