October 20, 2014 In Book News & Events By Rachel Gold

Just Girls: Art Giveaway, part 2!

Remember how I had this great plan to reward people who bought Just Girls in its first six weeks with free, amazing art of the characters? Then I spent some time with art and realized I just want everyone to have it. So forget what I said about emailing me to tell me you bought the book. If you want the art, it's yours! Clicking the link below will start downloading the PDF for you (or open it in a browser window so you can save it to your computer). Give it a minute to download. It's a 93MB file so that you can print it out in high quality if you want. Just Girls character art Here's a smaller file version of the finished art so you can see the whole illustration:

September 17, 2014 In Book News & Events By Rachel Gold

Virtual reading: Just Girls chapter 3

If you wanted to see me read from Just Girls, here it is -- a virtual reading for folks who can't make it to one of the launch parties or who want a trailer for said parties. (If you're viewing this on my home page, click the title to go to a page with a bigger video player.) Here's the link to the page with the preview of chapters one and two in case you want to read those first.   Here's a page with links of places where you can buy a copy of Just Girls: https://rachelgold.com/just-girls/ And here's my facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/BeingEmily

September 11, 2014 In Book News & Events By Rachel Gold

Just Girls: Art Giveaway!

Because I believe readers will fall in love with many of the characters of Just Girls, I'm working with an illustrator to create a free art piece for anyone who buys a copy of the novel between now and Nov. 1, 2014. In this post you can see some preview sketches from the early drafts (be patient with the page of sketches, it takes a few moments to load). The final piece will be a detailed, two-color, full-page illustration. I'll also have at least one framed copy signed by me and by the illustrator as a prize for the games we'll be playing at the Sept. 27 launch party at Addendum Bookstore.  To get your digital copy of the art emailed to you, just email me some proof that you bought the book: part of the receipt, a photo of you holding the book or your eReader with the book on it, or the confirmation from your favorite online bookseller that you bought a copy. Send that to: Beingemily@gmail.com. I'll email you the art, which will become available around Sept. 20. And now on to the sketches from the talented (and delightful) Mandie Brasington. (Fans of Just Girls will appreciate her comic: How

September 8, 2014 In Book News & Events By Rachel Gold

Order Just Girls

Available from your favorite booksellers (or the ones you grudgingly order from because they're cheap and have fast shipping). For more information visit my Just Girls page. You can order your copy  from Bella Books, Powell's Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound and many others.

September 2, 2014 In Uncategorized By Rachel Gold

On writing and gaming

Or is that gaming and writing? Many people know that I’m an avid gamer in addition to writing young adult novels. I get a fair number of questions about how I balance the two because as many writers have discovered it’s hard enough to balance writing and a day job and a social life and staying healthy (all of which are also parts of my life) — and then to try adding gaming to that mix. So I’m going to answer that and specifically the question from Allison Moon who asked this week if I have, “

July 27, 2014 In Power of Story By Rachel Gold

Age & Time part 2: author edition

In a fun confluence of events, just after Kristin published my guest blog about inspired age math and how to not freak out about being over 40, my publisher asked me last week if I was under 35 so they could submit me for an award given to young authors. I had to tell them I’m not under 35 (as you can see in the blog I wrote for Kristin, I’m 42). And then like every other adult in American culture, I freaked out for a little while thinking that I was too old and had waited too long to get published. The inside of my head sounded like this: Why didn’t I get published younger? What kind of failure is it that I’m not eligible for a young authors award even though I only have two books out? What did I do wrong? Culminating in: Oh my God, I wish I’d been first published at 30, not 40! Luckily I have a habit of at least trying to critically listen to my ego when it goes on a rant like that, so I delved more deeply into that statement. Is it really true? Not quite. What I really wished was that I was first

July 17, 2014 In Uncategorized By Rachel Gold

Gut feelings: gluten sensitivity is complicated

This morning Business Insider ran a short video: “Gluten Sensitivity Proven False,” which makes a few good points and some dubious ones. First off, a more accurate title for the video would be: “One Study Shows Gluten Not a Factor in IBS Symptoms,” but that’s got a lot less drama to it. (Here’s the video if you’re curious.) Basically, according to the video only 1% of Americans have Celiac Disease but about 30% report wanting to eat less gluten. Is there such a thing as “non-celiac gluten sensitivity” and how many of that 30% might have it? The bottom line in the video is there isn’t such a thing. The actual title of the video on the page is "The Science is in -- Why Gluten Sensitivity is Probably Fake." I get cranky when people cite "Science" when they really mean one study or a small group of studies and then use emotionally loaded words like "fake." My bottom line is this: self-care trumps all. If you feel better eating gluten-free or grain free or only foods that don’t begin with the letter “g,” then that’s what you should eat. Everyone is an individual. Just like there aren’t two one-size-fits-all genders, there

June 2, 2014 In Power of Story By Rachel Gold

Solving Gender Neutrality (at least at WisCon)

Being on the “Solving Gender Neutrality” panel at WisCon over Memorial Day weekend got me thinking about gender more deeply than usual the past few weeks and two things occurred to me: 1. I want to alter my language more because “dude” just isn’t gender neutral like I want it to be. 2. Non-binary femme should be a thing. The first is pretty straightforward and I’m cheerfully accepting better synonyms for “dude,” which I generally use to mean: person I’m fond of in a co-player sense. Coming from a gaming context, I use it for both men and women, but then I realized that if you don't know that and you randomly hear me use it, it sounds just a gendered as people who think there's such a thing as using male pronouns as a universal. So far my favorite suggestion for a replacement has been, “Peep!” We’ll see if I can rock that. On to #2. Trying to describe my gender in an email to the other panel members for "Solving Gender Neutrality" in the week before the panel was a lot harder than I expected. (If you want the excellent list of resources put together by another panel member, it's online at:

May 2, 2014 In Book News & Events By Rachel Gold

You wrote WHAT? Sex scenes in GLBTQ YA Literature

The headline above was the title of the panel I had the pleasure of moderating at the Loft Literary Center's Children's & YA writing conference last weekend (April 25-27). The other panel members were: Kirstin Cronn-Mills, Molly Beth Griffin, Dawn Klehr, Juliann Rich and Elizabeth Wheeler. Between the six of us, we read scenes about sex, sexual identity, and gender identity and covered a pretty broad spectrum of  GLBT (though we may have been a little short on the Q). Below are the stats that I cited at the start of the panel, plus some bonus stats: From the Teen Lit Lab studies — 250 teens surveyed n 2009 (read the whole Sex in Young Adult Literature paper here): 13.4% of girls said that the general level of sexual content in teen novels underestimates their level of sexual activity 32% of male respondents suggested that sex in YA Lit was most often tamer than what they personally experience 46% say that, in general, YA books overestimate the level of sexual activity they engage in When teens were asked to rank (in order of importance) the reasons they read YA fiction with explicit sexual content: ‘‘To be entertained’’ was the number one reason across all age groups (14-18) Exploring