carolyn2012

P.S.S. I notice you are not following me. haha. NO worries...but, if you want to read Chasing Time, it might be easier to follow me, cause that way you will see when I post updates about it.
          
          I feel weird. I've NEVER asked anyone to follow me, but you seem super nice and you obviously liked the book so, hopefully, I'm not being rude. :)

As far as a sequel, I'm leaning towards self-publishing Chasing Time and putting a link to it at the end of Skipping Time. I'd price it at $3.99. I'm not positive yet, cause I'd hate to go through all of that and then not have it sell. 
          
          Also, my dream has ALWAYS been to be traditionally published and, if I self-publish Chasing Time (to take advantage of the amount of readers now reading it on Wattpad) and then it DOESN'T sell, that is a black mark against me when it comes to getting an agent. 
          
          So I'm not sure. Cause if it DOES sell a lot, that could help me land an agent. But it would have to sell a LOT of copies for that to happen, and I don't know if it will sell any. This is a site for mostly kids and kids don't have money. 
          
          So it's a pretty hard decision. At any rate, I promise to keep all my readers/followers posted on what I decide to do. 
          
          Again, thank you SO much for the amazing comments. They seriously made my month!! If you have any questions or you ever just want to talk, be sure to stop by!! :)
          
          It was very nice meeting you! :)
          
          Tamara
          
          P.S. Your birthday is the day before mine. YAY Aquarians!!

Continued...
          
          As far as wondering if I know Jess and Cacee...not technically. But there is a lot of me as a teenager in both of them. In my very young teen years I was a lot like Cacee. Around fourteen, I started getting very much like Jess. Between the two of them, I had an easier time writing from Jess's point of view because, at seventeen, I was a LOT like him. 
          
          Strangely, the older I got, them more my personality reverted to being like Cacee again. But yeah...they definitely both have a lot of me in them, so they were easy for me to write. 
          
          I'm so touched that you found the book to be realistic. That was honestly one of my main goals with it. I LOVE reading YA but I got so tired of reading "bad-boy" characters who didn't have any REAL reason to be bad. Or who were bad in the beginning but, as soon as they meet the girl, become perfect. Or who ALWAYS have the perfect, clever, smart-ass response. Guys like that are a lot of fun to read--but they don't exist in real life. More than anything, I wanted my readers to feel like Jess and Cacee and even Ray were people they knew. Like friends. 
          
          Ray was a challenge because I had to write a character that one of my main characters hates, and also have him betray the MC, but still keep him likable and have the reader understand why he does the things he does. I think I mostly succeeded, although I've gotten some responses from teens who HATE Ray--which makes me sad cause he's a good guy. He's actually a lot like Jess. 
          
          Passionate, loyal, hot-tempered and with a tendency to make not-so-great decisions when he is angry. But he really loves his daughter and he really feels like Jess is this hoodlum who is using her, so I hope most of my readers can understand why he doesn't want them together. 
          
          to be continued...

Dear Carolyn, 
          
          I am SOOOO sorry for taking this long to respond to your comment. That comment was one of  the nicest I've ever gotten and I swear I want to frame it and hang it on my wall and every time I get another damn rejection slip from an agent I can look at it again and I will feel about a billion times better. 
          
          I'd have responded before now if not for two things. One, my son was super sick for like the last three months...like, in and out of the hospital, getting lung-biopsy's to diagnose him, sick. So we've been going crazy trying to figure out WHY cause NONE of the doctors could diagnose him, no matter how many tests they ran. 
          
          I finally realized that, whenever Chance (my son) was out of the house for longer than a day or two, he started to feel better. So I had him move in with his sister's. He has been there for a week and has done almost a complete turnaround. He's WAY healthier than he's been and on his way back to being 100%. Which obviously means it is something environmental in our house, making him sick. 
          
          So now the problem becomes tracking THAT down and finding out what is making him sick. In the meantime, I've spent most of my time out of the house (over at his sisters) so I can see Chance every day. He's seventeen but he's still my baby. haha
          
          Then, on top of all of that, my book got featured while it was all going on. I think you left his comment like the second day it was up. I wasn't able to get online and answer comments until it had been up for four days on the Feature list--at which point I had SO many comments that it took hours to get back to everyone. 
          
          I ended up looking all through my inbox and trying to find yours. Then on my profile and through a bunch of chapters in my book. I FINALLY located it today--it turned out I wasn't going back far enough. So that is my excuse for taking so long. Phew. 
          
          But again, I truly apologize. Your comment got read out loud to my whole family. haha. 
          
          to be continued...