YA Rebels Vlogs - "How I got my agent" & "My favorite fictional characters"

I think from now on I'll be more consistent with posting my YA Rebels vlog on day here on my blog. Here are what you missed!

"Tuesday does it all wrong and still gets an agent"


"Tuesday reveals who is the smartest My Little Pony"

New Art:: Ellie from MY SOUL TO REAP

And this time it was done by me! If you click on the image, it should open up to a larger one so you can see more of the detail. I've had my little Wacom tablet for a couple of years, but I don't do much freehand drawings on it since the work space is so small. This is my first try at human digital art. The hair is a little choppy and I see a few errors here and there, but overall I'm really pleased. This was about 4.5 hours of work. Hope you like!

Next up: a drawing of Will! *shudders* I can't draw boys...

Word is getting out!

People are talking about MY SOUL TO REAP and that's great news! I'm so honored and tickled that some people are already excited about my book. I can't wait for you all to read it!









Books By Their Cover

Dark Faerie Tales

Books to Watch

The Cracked Spine

MSTR's first appearance on an Amazon List!

My Introduction at the Elevensies!

Here's me! I'm a member of the Elevensies, a livejournal group filled with authors whose debut novels release in 2011.

http://community.livejournal.com/2011debuts/34241.html

Introducing... The YA Rebels!

So, you've heard me talk about the awesome vlog group of YA authors and seen me pimp us on Twitter. Well, at last we've arrived! We will be vlogging every single day, each of us will post once a week, about the behind the scenes of publishing and writing YA literature.

We are...




Monday: Gretchen McNeil


Tuesday: Courtney Allison Moulton (that's me!)


Wednesday: Victoria Schwab


Thursday: Leah Clifford


Friday: Jen Hayley


Saturday: Scott Tracey


Sunday: Kody Keplinger

When bad seeds come together and get great ideas...

...there tends to be pretty sweet results. Besides being ridiculously good-looking, we're also a little rebellious. And we write YA.

I'm a part of the YA Rebels, a vlog group coming to a YouTube near you in January 2010. We'll be covering important topics in YA fiction such as cafeteria drama, f-bombs, and how to properly cast spells without accidentally turning your boyfriend into polar bear dung. It's a pretty serious matter.

Check out the Teaser Trailer:

The happy never stops!

From Publishers Marketplace:

Courtney Allison Moulton's MY SOUL TO REAP, in which a sixteen-year-old begins seeing Reapers; monstrously sized wolf-like creatures; with the help of a handsome boy who has waited 60 years for her return, she unlocks her full power; soon the secrets of her past-lives surface - including truths that may be too frightening to remember; now she must keep an army of Reapers from consuming every soul on the planet...starting with hers, WINGS OF THE WICKED, and HYMN TO THE FALLEN, to Sarah Shumway at Katherine Tegen Books, in a good deal, In a pre-empt, by Elizabeth Jote at Objective Entertainment.

In October 2008, I was toying with some post-apocalyptic novel ideas and decided to watch The Time Machine. I'd seen it many times before(Guy Pierce is so hot) but this time was different. For those who've never seen the movie before, it's about about a scientist whose fiance dies and he builds a time machine to go back and save her. He goes back several times, but she keeps dying. Eventually he stops trying to save her and moves on. I wondered what would've happened if he'd kept trying to save her life even though he knew she was doomed to die. That's how Will character was created and I built a story around his never-ending tragedy. Ellie's character was created and eventually Will's story of tragedy became a story of hope--and scary monsters! So that's what I decided to write for NaNoWriMo '08.

On November 23, 2008 I finished the first draft and, like one of THOSE NaNoWriMo-ers, I sent out a couple of queries. When I got requests, I scrambled to edit and send out the second draft. When those requests turned into rejections, I realized that I shouldn't have been so quick to query such a crappy book. That is NOT how you get published, FYI! I stopped querying, got a couple of amazing beta readers, and did an extensive rewrite, careful to take my time.

In January 2009, I started querying again and two weeks later I had an offer of representation from the fabulous Elizabeth Jote. We had actually spoken over the phone about the book I queried 2008, so I made sure she was one of the agents I queried as soon as I felt I had a good (non-sucky) draft of the current manuscript ready. In March, we went on submission. In April, we got a lot of interest and in June, we began some extensive revisions requested from editors. I would spend a month of revisions, turn the MS in, and Liz would encourage me to top what I'd just done with another of her brilliant ideas. I stressed and freaked out and doubted myself and my story, but she never did any of those things. She believed in me through and through, and I couldn't have done it without her behind me all the way. After five rigorous months of revising back and forth, we went on sub again with the revised manuscript (36,000 words longer than the original draft) in November. I held my breath and crossed my fingers, toes, and eyes.

On November 23, 2009--one year exactly to the DAY of finishing the first draft--I walked in my front door after coming home from riding my horse and my phone rings. Liz has called to tell me that we were about to get an offer. The next day, just after eating lunch with my mom at our favorite Mexican restaurant, my phone rang again. I accepted a three-book pre-empt offer from Sarah Shumway, senior editor at Katherine Tegen Books for HarperCollins.

I started to have a panic attack while on the phone with Liz, so bad that my mom had to pull the car over in a grocery story parking lot so I could get out and walk around the car in order to breathe. Within a few moments, the walking turned into running and jumping and dancing. That was definitely the best day of my life--and my mom of course embarassingly documented my whole freakout session on her camera phone and then posted the pictures on Facebook.

What are moms for, right?

I owe so much to my agent for having the guts to take on such a rough project and help me to transform it. Her advice and brilliant ideas really pushed me to be the writer I never thought I could be, and to delve into an emotional depth that I thought would kill me. I've never had anyone work so hard for me and I owe her everything. She's a rockstar, a goddess, a queen, and a great agent.

So there you have it! A not-that-exciting publishing story and why I love my agent. I'm so thrilled for the next year and a half working with my shiny new editor and making this book even better.

Summer 2011, baby!! *dancedancebananasdancedance*

MY SOUL TO REAP - Artwork ft. Ellie and Will

(click on the image to see a bigger version!)

It's finally done!! This is a drawing of Ellie and Will, the two main characters from my Preliator Trilogy, done by the phenomenally talented 18-year-old Yue Wang. She did just... amazingly. Their expressions were captured just flawlessly...So mystical and filled with such subtle certainty. Will's eyes are perfect. I've spent the last year with his eyes in my head and seeing them for the first time is such a great feeling. Their weapons are AMAZING. I love the ancient and (very) well-used look of Will's sword and it's so beautiful. And the angelfire around Ellie's sword is just as otherworldly than I pictured. It doesn't look like ordinary fire at all, which is exactly how I saw it in my head.

Here's a little more about MY SOUL TO REAP, the first book in the trilogy currently on submission with my agent:

When seventeen-year-old Ellie starts seeing reapers--monstrous creatures who devour humans and send their souls to Hell--she finds herself on the front lines of a supernatural war between Seraphim and the Fallen and faced with the possible destruction of her soul.

A mysterious boy named Will reveals she is the reincarnation of an ancient warrior, the only one capable of fighting the reapers, and he is an immortal sworn to protect her in battle. Now that Ellie's powers have been awakened, a powerful reaper called Bastian has come forward to challenge her. He has employed a fierce assassin to eliminate her--an assassin who has already killed her once.

While balancing her dwindling social life and reaper-hunting extracurriculars, she and Will discover Bastian is searching for a dormant creature believed to be a true soul reaper. Bastian plans to use this weapon to destroy Ellie's soul forever, ending her rebirth cycle. Now, she must face an army of Bastian's most frightening reapers, prevent the soul reaper from consuming her soul, and uncover the secrets of her past lives--including truths that may be too frightening to remember.

The Book Trailer for MY SOUL TO REAP

I made a book trailer! Please let me know what you think. It was a ton of fun to make and I got amazing advice from my friend, Leah Clifford, who is a book trailer guru!

**Update!! My SOUL TO REAP and its two sequels will be published by Katherine Tegen Books for HarperCollins in Summer 2011!

I've been interviewed!

The fabulous and multi-talented Realm Lovejoy interviewed me on her blog today and drew a badass illustration of Ellie from MY SOUL TO REAP! She asked some great (and hard) questions about my book on submission, my writing process, and of course monsters!

Check it out by following this link!