The Braced Experience now available !

It went much faster than I expected, and the third Dr.Samantha Wrighting book, the collection of orthodontic stories The Braced Experience, is now listed in Books in Print, so your local bookseller can order it for you - and it's now available at Amazon, and the Amazons in England, Germany and so on. (It wasn't listed at Barnes & Noble yet but it should be soon, if you prefer shopping there.)

So anyone who wants to buy it can now get it pretty easily - and I hope there's lots of interest. The Braced Experience is a bit different from the two novels, Retainer Girl and Love and Braces, because it's all shorter stories, but that means more variety and more different stories about what's it's like having braces (and retainers and headgear).

I hope readers like it! Especially since I have a lot more stories I want to write....

Weekly update

Even though I usually only check in how everything is going about once a week it's sort of disappointing how hard it is to get readers interested - or to reach them! I guess I understand that everyone is waiting until The Braced Experience is available everywhere and not just at Lulu before getting it, but Love and Braces has been available at Amazon and so on for a while now, and it looks like the only one readers who have bought it are the ones at the German one.

The piece I put up about The Unfabulous Appearances and Reality of Braces on TV also hasn't brought in that many readers. I think it's also because you wouldn't find it on search engines, so it's only the readers who are already fans and know about the site who find it. I think that the Emma Roberts and Emma Watson and Dakota Fanning fans would find it interesting too, to read about them and their braces, and all the other ways braces are shown on TV. But without knowing about it I guess they haven't seen it yet. Too bad, because I think a lot of those girls might be the ones who would also like the Dr.Wrighting books!

New book !

I do worry about getting ahead of myself, but there's a new book out! The Braced Experience,which is a collection of orthodontic stories. So far it is only available at Lulu, and it will probably take over a month until you can get it at Amazon and everywhere else, but eager fans can already get their hands on it! There's information at Lulu, and there are also excerpts from three of the stories at the Intraoral Press site. I'll have more to say about it when it is available at other outlets and everyone can easily buy it, but I hope that that's enough information for those who are considering getting it from Lulu!

I should be spending more time trying to publicize Love and Braces since that hasn't sold that many copies yet, but I'm telling myself that it's also good to build up the number of books that are available.

And I am working on more Dr.Wrighting books, though I'm not sure which will come next. There's The Girl Next Door which is a novel, and I'm also working on another story collection, for all the stories that didn't fit in The Braced Experience. But I think I might finish both before the end of the year.

Something new

I have added something new to the Intraoral Press site: an essay "written" by Dr.Wrighting called 94 Weeks and Single Episodes: The Unfabulous Appearances and Reality of Braces on TV.

I like this idea of putting up pieces "by" Dr.Wrighting, especially the sort of things that don't fit in the books and I think this one is pretty good. I had a lot of help from Ashley, who helped take care of the girls last summer and fortunately knows a lot more about kids-TV than I (or my girls!) do and used the research skills she's learning at college to find so much material.

It was also fun trying to find a voice for Dr.Wrighting. So far in the books it's all the patients describing everything, and you don't really get to know her that well. And since this is supposed to be a serious essay it also has to sound sort of professional and academic. I had some help with that, even though it was hard agreeing to some of the changes. But I think the overall result is good. And I am sure I'll try and write more of these too. (Ashley already gave me one more great idea, and I'd also like to write some about how Dr.Wrighting treats patient - maybe a mission statement or something of that sort.)

Weekly update

The stories are coming along very well and I think that The Braced Experience will be a fun collection. But with some of them I feel it's a shame not to write "the full story" - the way I did in Love and Braces and Retainer Girl. It's tough letting a lot of these characters go after only ten or twenty pages, and in almost every case there's so much more to say about each of their "braced experiences" and what having braces is like for each of them. But I hope readers like the variety - the different stories and experiences that are described.

I'm also writing something else which I'm having a lot of fun with, but that's going to be a surprise!

I'm still disappointed with the sales of Love and Braces so far, but maybe when there's a third book available too there will be enough available that readers will come across one book and then want to try the others and the books will start reaching more people. And I really hope it catches on among the teen or college readers, because I think that is the target audience who would like these books best.

Reality and fiction

Back from taking the girls to the orthodontist. I'm working on The Braced Experience right now, which is a collection of stories, and it's the first of the Dr.Samantha Wrighting books being written while I'm also seeing first-hand what the whole orthodontic experience is like again. What my girls are going through is different from what I went through - both the technological improvements and the office-visits themselves, and I guess my stories are more "old fashioned" (and exagerrated), but I think that works. So far, it's in the smaller details that what the girls are going through has really influenced what I'm writing. Like I'll catch them looking in the mirror sometimes, and I want to try to capture that look and the way it's different from the way they looked in the mirror a few months ago. Or the small things where the expander or the braces get in the way which I'd forgotten about.

I decided to use one more personal family experience in some of the stories - "the precaution" as we call it - though the daughter in question would be mortified. But I think it fits with the whole Dr.Wrighting experience, and I think it is probably more common than most people think.

I'm amazed how much I still have to write. I think The Braced Experience will have 10 or 11 stories (I want it to be around 200 pages long), but that's only half the stories I have outlines for! And I have another idea for a novel now too.

Right now I'm not thinking too much about finding readers and all that, though I porbably should be. I'm not sure the books will ever really catch on but I have so much to write that at the moment I almost don't care. But I guess I am a bit disappointed and surprised that there hasn't been more interest in Love and Braces yet. I really think there is an audience for it and for Retainer Girl - girls who really would get something out of them and feel better.

I'm really bad trying to do the publicity things, but I did add the press release for Love and Braces at the Intraoral Press MySpace page!

Love and Braces at Barnes & Noble

Now Love and Braces is also available at Barnes & Noble (just like it is at all the Amazons). So at least everyone who wants to should be able to get it pretty easily - but no one has bought it at any of the online stores yet, I think. Just at Lulu. (I hope some who bought it at Lulu also review it there, so others can see whether or not they like the book!)

I have to start trying to get the word out, I guess, but I'm not very good at that. (Haven't updated the myspace page in months ....)

I am a bit surprised that more people aren't interested yet, but I think it's also because not enough know about it (and Retainer Girl ....)

Pricing

Lulu now uses the uniform retail price that you pay at Amazon and everywhere else too. So now the books are no longer cheaper if you buy them at Lulu than if you buy them from Amazon or elsewhere. (So the couple of lucky people who bought Love and Braces from Lulu before it became available at Amazon are the only ones who saved a lot of money!). I'm sorry that readers can't get it cheaper, but I hope they think it's worthwhile. (And Love and Braces does have 280 pages, so you are getting a lot for you $21.95.)

The only inconvenience with the pricing change was that the Lulu pages about the books were inaccessible for a few hours. (And I just checked and now the whole site is inaccessible because of "site maintenance" - frustrating!) Even if you don't buy from Lulu you can read longer excerpts from the books, so the site is useful - when it's accessible! (which it usually is...)

About Love and Braces

Now that Love and Braces is available (at Lulu and Amazon and I hope soon everywhere else) I want to write more about why you might want to read it.

Love and Braces is about a woman in her mid-twenties dealing with braces. She makes a good friend who is going through the same thing, but finding love is more difficult. I guess it is a sort of chick-lit novel, describing Sylvia's struggles with her career, friendships, family and personal life - with braces on top of it all! Her time in braces is the main part of the story, but it's the rest that makes it a good read, I think.

I only realized when I had written a lot of it that even though Sylvia is an adult her story is more like that of a teen going through having braces. I didn't think I wrote that much from my own experiences, but being a braced teenager is "what I know", and you always hear that you should write what you know, and apparently I have a difficult time writing anything else. Even though Sylvia is an adult her parents play a big role in her getting braces, which I think makes her different from most adults who get braces. And looking back on it some of her reactions to wearing braces may be more childish than a grownup's would be. But I'm not unhappy with how it worked out. I think having her be an adult also gives a different feel to the book, and might make it more appealing to older teens dealing with similar issues. Showing that she is independent - living on her own, with a job - and still struggles with so many things a thirteen-year-old does makes it a universal story.

I think having it be the story of a grownup might also make it more appealing to adult readers, reminding them of their experiences with braces when they were younger (or now) but also providing more adult subject matter. So when Sylvia worries about a sleep-over her worries are about very different things than Lauren's were in Retainer Girl. Even though one of the things I think is so great is how similar all those concerns turn out to be, regardless of what age they are!

It feels weird trying to tell people You should read this book! I'm not sure who should, or who would like it. What I can tell you is that I had braces when I was in my teens and it made being a teenager even harder than it had to be and I would have loved to have had books like Love and Braces and Retainer Girl to help me get through it. Even afterwards - even now! - I think they're helpful. Writing them has helped me, and maybe there are readers who need books like this too.

Love and Braces at Amazon !

Love and Braces is now available at Amazon!

Barnes & Noble was quicker with Retainer Girl but they don't seem to have L&B up yet, but they should soon. And this probably means that you can get your bookseller to order it, too.

So now you can buy it from any of the Amazons - in the US, England, Germany, even Japan!

So I hope more people go out and check it out!