Official Website of Author Emily White

It's been a great few years here on blogger, but I think it's time I admitted to myself and you that I'm just not posting like I used to. I still love blogger for updating you with information, but I'd much rather use it as an official website, rather than an online journal.

I'll be keeping the pages tabs and links updated, so check them out. If you want to know about all my books and where to find them, all that information is above, under "My Books."

If you still want all that good old-fashioned interaction with me and the absolute most up-to-date information, sign up to for my email newsletter!

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I'm Free

A few days ago I mentioned on FB that I had an announcement to make.

So here it is!

 I have decided that from now on--FOREVER--all of my books will be free.

Elemental? To Love or Die in a Steamy-Reamy World?

Yup, free (as soon as I figure out some kinks at Amazon).

And every book I write from now on will also be free.

You're probably thinking I've lost my mind right now. Hey, maybe. Or maybe I never had it! ;)

The truth is I just like to write and I LOVE to reach readers. And I don't really care about making money. I'm already super blessed. I have an amazing family, I'm doing something I love, and I get to meet new people while doing it.

I already spent enough years obsessing way too much about what "success" really was. I obsessed over my sales, wondering how I could tweak my plots, add more romance, more of this, more of that, anything to get more sales. And it depressed the hell out of me.

So I'm done with that.

I'm just going to write the best books I know how, and give them away for free. I just want to reach the people who will love my books.

I did all the other stuff.

I landed a deal with a publishing company, I made some money, went to NYC, did signings at book stores, landed more deals with more publishing companies (Yeah, I forgot to tell you that one. I sold the French translation rights for Elemental and Fae to a publishing company in Quebec. I meant to make a big announcement about that, so here it is! And obviously, the french version won't be free. I don't think they'd go for that :) ).

I wanted to get all that stuff done some time in my life. So I've done it and now all I want is to get my books read. That's all I care about.

So they're free. The ones I'm currently working on or about to publish will be offered in parts on Wattpad. And then when they're ready, I'll also upload them onto Amazon and Smashwords.

Come follow me on Wattpad and enjoy! I've already posted the first five chapters of Almost Night! Read them! Comment! Share with your friends! I'll be posting five chapters every week. Elemental and To Love or Die in a Steamy-Reamy world will be posted by this weekend. So if you've never read them, give 'em a go! :) And let me know what you think.

I hope you guys enjoy! And thank you so much for sticking with me all these years. You guys are the best part of writing. If it weren't for you, I'd just be talking to myself. :) Not that I'd ever do that...

Yeah... :P

The Doctor is NOT a Woman. Woohoo!!!

Okay, I know I'm a little late in all this, but I have opinions! Real, maybe semi-interesting opinions. And hey! Maybe you've heard all this before already (like I said, I'm late), but I feel like I gots to say it. I'm happy the new Doctor is not a woman.

(in fact, there he is) Seriously. I almost gave up on the whole series. Why? It's not because I hate women.

(that's me in the yellow, by the way) I'm a woman. I don't hate women. I love us. I hate it when we try to take something over, though. I kind of feel like a female Doctor would be the same as if Buffy the Vampire Slayer all of a sudden became Buff the Vampire Slayer. 'Cause that's ridiculous. Instead, they had a spinoff with Angel. Because that makes sense. And yeah, yeah, a lot of people said that Moffat introduced the idea of a gender change in the canon of Doctor Who, but I don't care what he did. The Doctor should not be a woman. And not because the title, "doctor," is male (honestly, that's a stupid argument), but because for the past 11 regenerations, HE'S BEEN A MAN! Period. If you want a show with a female timelord, have a spinoff with 10's daughter or something (that would be a really cool show. they should seriously do it), but don't take over The Doctor. So there it is. A woman who is happy that The Doctor is not a woman. And no, it's not because I want him to stay sexy (honestly, just...no). It's because I want the show to be the same show I fell in love with. And I want to have a chance to fall in love with a female timelord on a completely different show, if that ever happens.

Nature Decided to Give Me an Indoor Pool

I don't know just how broad this knowledge is, but my little corner of the U.S. is experiencing quite a bit of rain lately. In fact, last Friday will forever be remembered by me as the day I got an indoor pool.

That's not my basement (obviously). It's my driveway the flooded road right in front of my house. My driveway has quite a dip down to the road, so that's a LOT of water. Here's another pic:

One of many cars that thought they could get down the road. They were wrong. I tried to get a picture of my basement, but after someone I love dearly played with it, the flasher doesn't work. I can't figure out why. And it won't take pictures it deems are too dark to see. It's a fancy camera, so it likes to boss me around. Instead, let me tell you what you would have seen had I been able to take a picture: About a foot to a foot-and-a-half of water with tools and wood and clothes floating around. A half submerged washer and dryer. And a waterfall coming out of some pipe connected to the sewer. Yes. That's what I said. Sewer. Speaking of! I'm sure this doesn't apply to all teenagers, and I'm sure it DOES apply to many adults, but what is up with people playing in the middle of a flooded road? The girls across my street thought it would be fun to go romp in the deep, warm rain water. They knew their own basement was flooded. I'm reasonably sure they knew the vast majority of the basements on that road were flooded. And I'm aware that as a teen myself, I never really considered what was in a basement and what caused it to flood, but wouldn't their parents (who saw them) say something?? Like, "hey, that's poopy water you're playing in."

Well, that was my weekend! And the reason I didn't post yesterday. Without a dryer, I'm officially hanging all my clothes, but not outside because it's still raining. So I spent the day drying heavy stuff at my mom's house and hanging the rest in my kitchen. How was your weekend, everyone?

Books I Loved as a Teen and the Heroes I Connected With

I'd love to say I write to appeal to a large audience. I mean, that's what professional writers are supposed to do, right? Write and write and write to get a lot of fans so you can quit your job and write more books? First of all, the whole quitting your job thing...that happens to a very rare few, so it's best we writers toss that goal right out the window. It's not the one that should lead us. And secondly, I've come to firmly believe you can't make a large audience your goal, either. It's often a very delightful outcome, but when setting words to paper, you should have one or maybe just a few people in mind. You should write to yourself, your spouse, your mother or father, your best friend, sister, or brother. And once you've written enough, you'll get past all the obtuseness and self-righteousness about how your art is your ART, and you'll really start connecting with people. That's when the large audience comes. It comes from writing to one person, fully and completely, forgetting about how pretty your sentences are and embracing the language of the soul. And yeah, that sounds heavy, but if you're a human being, you're already more than halfway there to writing to connect to other human beings. And I assume we're all human beings? I don't think there are really any animals out there writing books. ;) So, who do you write to? I write to my teenage self. The girl who was looking for books about broken people who became heroes. It didn't matter if they were weak or confused or too girly or too bad. They saved someone. Maybe it was the world, maybe it was just a friend or a guy down the street. The point was, they were imperfect and they still made a difference. For this reason, I loved anything written by Mark Twain or Jonathan Swift. Tolkien became my own personal hero. I wanted to BE Frodo--the little hobbit who just had the power to say no a little bit longer than anybody else, and even in the end his weakness almost overpowered him. And Spiderman. I became obsessed with Spiderman. Here was a guy who dealt with his own personal demons, the "nobody" living with his aunt, who saved people. He hid who he really was, dealt with severe hatred coming from the very people he attempted to save. Weaknesses. That's what my teenage self craved to see. Weaknesses and failings that worked out to make a person a hero. And I think there are a whole lot of other teens out there who crave to see this, too. I'm positive I wasn't alone. So, who do you write to? And what are you trying to say to that person?

A New Day

I'm pretty excited. I am.

A letter came in the mail right after Friday's blog post from my editor over at SHP. My rights have officially released to me. It's one of those wonderful, terrifying things, and I'm so grateful that I still have a fantastic relationship with them.

'Cuz here's the thing: I was terrified they'd hate me forever. I mean, they had every right even though all my reasons were solely based on my own shortcomings. They had a right. But they don't, and that's how awesome they are over at SHP. It's really a family. And I HIGHLY recommend all you querying writers out there submit to them. They work hard for their authors, and there's real love over there.

But today's Monday for me. Literally and figuratively. It's the first day of my brand new career. I'm starting over.

No more plans for delightful surprises. You're getting it all. No more anxiously anticipating your glee once you find out Elemental is really about space fairies/elementals who can teleport with their wings. And that Ella's worrying more about not killing everyone than she is about a boy. I mean, there's a boy, but she's got priorities.

And Lilly in Almost Night may be a unicorn, but don't expect a sweet tale. She's got scars on her wrists for a reason.

I'd like to write a really sweet tale some day, but that day has not yet come. To Love or Die in a Steamy-reamy World comes closest. Kind of. Maybe. It's dark humor with a Victorian bent. So if you think that might qualify as sweet, there you go.

I guess I'm just not ready for writing sweet yet. I know I come across that way on the internet (and believe me, I do love my exclamation marks and emoticons), but my books are my darker side. I'm like Darth Vader or #10. Yeah...let's go with that. Let's pretend I'm cool. ;)

*waves jedi hand*

This how cool I am

Okay, maybe not...

but when I'm alone and the kids are napping, I *might* pretend to be Darth Vader.

Have a great Monday, everyone!

In which I tell you I'm a freakin' nutcase

I know I've done this before and then I went back to not blogging. And who's to say this is any different? It might not be. It feels different, though.

Crap, this is hard.

There's so much I want to say, but ironically, I don't know how.

Well, I guess I'll start with the truth. I've mentioned this before, but never in any detail. I get depression. Very frequently. Actually, this past year it's been pretty constant. I pushed for something for so long, blogging every day (or at least more frequently than this), making contacts, building a presence, and then I crashed.

I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. I didn't want to and no one could make me. I didn't see the point. Because that's kinda what depression does to you. It makes you feel like you're a worthless piece of crap, that you've done everything wrong, and why the hell are you going to bore people with your little "anecdotes?"

I tried to force myself back into it, but it made me sick. Physically and spiritually.

So then I went to the bare minimum, and I did that for a while. But eventually, I couldn't even make myself do that anymore. Because it's hard to pretend when you have to write something in 500 words. When you have to make something interesting.

It's easier to pretend on facebook where all you have to do is like something or post pictures or come up with a witty phrase you might have heard on a movie.

So what made me spiral into this cold, dark place? A lot of things. But basically, I started feeling like everything I'd ever done was wrong. I'd worked so hard for the wrong thing. And it sucked. I was drained.

Elemental came out last year and I was ecstatic. One of the greatest high points of my life. It was a dream come true. I even helped design the cover. It was all completed with my say-so. And I loved it. It was beautiful.

And it was beautiful. But it was a lie. Because the cover is like me. A pretty pink and sparkly exterior, hiding what's going on in the inside. And it got shitty reviews. Because people were expecting paranormal romance and what they got was the inside of me--the dark stuff. And I felt rejected. Like people couldn't like me for me. And I know that's not it at all, but that's what happened. Believe me, I've tried to convince myself that some people just didn't like it because they were expecting something else, but it doesn't work. I kept wondering why they couldn't just like it anyway. I didn't understand at the time that the cover was a lie. But when I did, I started feeling like I was a lie.

I was putting off this image and I started wondering if you guys would like the me on the inside. I didn't know how I could pretend anymore.

So I ran away. I didn't want to pretend, but I didn't want to be rejected either.

Something happened last summer (an epiphany of sorts) and it's taken me this long to start really doing it. I realized I did absolutely make some wrong decisions. Not bad ones. Just wrong ones, for me. They were the absolutely right decisions for someone else. But not me.

I realized that I needed to stop hiding myself. And I realized that I needed to go at it my way. That's why I decided to start self-publishing. But it hasn't worked yet because I'm still hiding. The book I put out last December was 100% me, but my presence online was still the superficial outer layer.

If I was going to do this, I needed to do it all the way. A few months ago, I contacted my editor at Spencer Hill Press. We did a lot of talking and I requested to be released from them. Not because I didn't love working with them (quite the opposite actually), but because I needed to go all in with my plan. I needed to build my new platform and it needed to be all me. She was wonderful and graciously agreed to everything. We worked the details out and soon I'll have all my rights back. Seriously, everyone there has been amazing. She told me I was still part of the family (and I nearly cried because that meant so much to me) and recently made a different offer for a completely different position in the company.

I'll be re-releasing Elemental this Fall with a new cover and some extra content. I'm excited and scared. I feel like I'm getting over the hump of my depression. I'm starting to see some sunshine at the end of this dark tunnel.

And I hope you'll stick with me through it all.