I mean come on, how cute is that Tiana Smith How to Speak Boy set?

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I've also been having a blast reading to review with with organizations like NetGalley, LibraryThing, BookishFirst, and Goodreads Giveaways. What an awesome privilege for readers!

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OK, but you promised to talk about AuthorMentorMatch...

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Of course!

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So here's the thing. I had been writing adult for most of my aspiring author life. But in 2016 I was hit with a spark to write a middle grade historical fantasy. It was not long after I gave birth to my second child and was deep in the decision to leave my teaching job to raise them. I was trying to find a way to still use the skills I gained as an historian and bring the subject to children.

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I finished the book, started querying, and failed. 100%. I had no community at the time, was writing in a vacuum.

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So I took to the World Wide Web to figure out what to do to fix this failure. And I found something called PitchWars.

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Which, as I'm sure many of you know, attracts a trillion writers. All with phenomenal manuscripts.

 

And I failed out of that 100% too. Except I found some really awesome writing partners.

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And then a couple months later, a CP I found during that very PitchWars asked if I was going to sub my manuscript to something called AuthorMentorMatch.

 

And for me, the rest was history. Because the unforeseeable happened: Gail Villanueva, author of My Fate According to the Butterfly, chose to mentor me and my book.  

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So I should sub to AuthorMentorMatch too?

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Yes, without a doubt! Because if you are selected, you will gain a group of writing friends who will carry you through all the ups and downs of this crazy publishing process. Seriously, my fellow round 3 mentees? We still chat ALL THE TIME. It's a support system of everything from questions about the industry, crying privately about rejections, celebrating successes, and so much more.

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Just keep in mind that it is a much different format than PitchWars. The biggest thing? There is no agent round. You work with your mentor for as long as it takes, and then they guide you through the querying process. The goal is that it's a long-term relationship rather than a brief period of revisions to get that query and opening page in front of agents. 

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But just check out the AuthorMentorMatch page of success stories to see that our mentees are going places!! 

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And no, I'll be quite transparent. It just wasn't the right time for my AMM manuscript, but I'm currently working on an adult romance that I'm pitching as a cross of Liane Moriarty and Sophie Kinsella. Here's an aesthetic I made for it <3

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