News - Knockout Girl

October 3 ^

"My life has always been absolutely beautiful. Amazing. Perfect. Floating in the salty ocean, lying on endless sandy beaches, school, surfing, boys, beach parties, night dips. Everything has always been exactly as it should be. Until one day it all came crashing down.

Picture yourself—not on a boat on the river—lying on a towel, stretched out on white sands, the sound of the ocean waves calming you as a breeze filters through your salt-tangled hair. The palm trees sway back and forth, offering you occasional shade from the hot rays of light.

Then you leave forever, because the next day you’re on a plane bound for Canada in the dead of winter. And you just keep wishing that you’d wake up back in the real world. You keep wishing that you never had to leave. But you do. The stupid plane keeps heading farther and farther north.

Obviously this story is about me, and not you. But you get the idea."

Thus begins Elli's journey in my new novel called Knockout Girl. You've already read about it (if you haven't, click the link), and you've been treated to the cover reveal through my social media. So I'll keep this short and sweet.

If all goes as planned, Knockout Girl will be released as a paperback and an ebook on October 3, 2018 on Amazon. I'm going to try to give some more updates and maybe a few more excerpts before then, but for now, mark your calendars! This is a story you won't want to miss, I promise.

- Natasja

Ergonomics... and other useful things to know

There's this little thing called "ergonomics" which is basically about the relationship between the human body and your work environment. If you were ever in a high school band, you might link this to when your music teacher yelled at you to "sit up straight!" and "don't play out of the side of your mouth." Or perhaps you've never even heard of ergonomics, which is probably due to the fact that most people don't really care. It's kind of one of those things where hindsight is 20/20, because apparently you can ruin parts of your body just by typing wrong, but you won't know it until way after the fact. Allow me to illustrate this point...

Proper posture looks like this:

I think you mean, "write a sentence every 30 minutes."

Improper posture looks like this:

At least I'm drinking water today.

Apparently there are other really important things to do/not do when you're an author. Like not forgetting important words in a sentence. Example:

"You probably hate my guts now, don't you?" he asked teasingly.

"No," she laughed. "I do hate your guts."

"HA HAHAHA HAHA WAIT... what?"

Verb tenses! Don't mix up verb tenses. Not even in a query letter...

So he asks me, "Do you hate my guts now?"

"No," I said and laughed. "I do not hate your guts."

"So then, the characters will find out that they've switched bodies. And then after that, they tried to find a way to switch back. But now, they're stuck."

(I know it's subtle, but also incredibly annoying.)

So now you know - some things to keep in mind while you write.

- Natasja