{"id":24959,"date":"2014-10-02T07:22:30","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T11:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=24959"},"modified":"2014-10-02T07:22:30","modified_gmt":"2014-10-02T11:22:30","slug":"julie-hutchings-do-the-thing-that-makes-you-bleed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2014\/10\/02\/julie-hutchings-do-the-thing-that-makes-you-bleed\/","title":{"rendered":"Julie Hutchings: Do The Thing That Makes You Bleed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Julie Hutchings is a deranged lunatic who lives down by the trashcans at the end of my driveway. She either commands a small army of woodland creatures or she does battle against them? Honestly, the mythology of her situation escapes me. Regardless, despite being some kind of forested hobo, she’s hella funny and a hoot on social media and here she’d like to talk to you about panty peddling, public book pitches, and why you should sometimes do the scary thing instead of the safe thing. Her newest is\u00a0Running Away<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

I was a highly paid professional panty peddler. For ten years, through my wedding bells to babies crying, and I was happy as hell. Climbing the ladder from the ground up, I was treated like lingerie royalty; met models and celebs, was given jewelry and trips and praise. Loved it.<\/p>\n

Until I didn’t.<\/p>\n

Retail has an expiration date on it. Working your ass off to make money for someone else, even if you like them a whole lot, gets tired. I didn\u2019t know it until I was on maternity leave with my first baby, sleep-sucked and blubbery, dreading going back to work. It was that fear and possibly weird attachment to my kids that gave me the emotional cojones to write RUNNING HOME. <\/em><\/p>\n

RUNNING HOME <\/em>took me years corporate visits, pumping milk in the office on conference calls, manhandling bras at all hours, crying during my commute, stopping shoplifters, running sales meetings, treating that store like my home away from home, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t my home.<\/p>\n

My home had my family in it and it felt like me. I thought about scribbling away at a novel that I had no idea what to do with while I was at work. Playing with panties, not doing the thing I went to college for, not doing the thing I\u2019d wanted to do since I was an awkward kid with my mother\u2019s haircut.<\/p>\n

I went to work a miserable disaster at the thought of leaving my kids to do something that at the end of the day meant<\/em> nothing. Being away from my kids made me physically ill daily. My job suffered, my family suffered and I was certain that if I stayed another year, I’d be dead at the end of it. Even my staff and my boss had an intervention with me, afraid of what was happening to me.<\/p>\n

So I said FUCK THIS and I left my career to make a life.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d show my boys that you don’t have to do the safe thing to survive. I didn\u2019t want them to know me as the withering martyr. They deserve to know the mom that isn\u2019t fearless but is brave<\/em>. Passionate. A fighter. An occasional pigheaded jerk. I want them to want <\/em>to take risks and know they’re worth that. I want to show them I\u2019m worth that too.<\/p>\n

Sure, it was scary leaving the bulk of my family income, 401K, our health insurance, to depend on the scraps of a vampire book. I threw all of that fear and clawing determination into a main character. I made her afraid, and rash, dumb at times, and defensive. But strong. Determined. And most importantly, self-trusting that she was meant for something more. <\/em><\/p>\n

Going on a feeling when it looks like fate has something else in mind for you entirely is goddamn scary. But my entire life I\u2019d been a jumper-inner-and-never-looker-backer, and not only was I not about to stop, I was going to do it harder and faster now that it was mine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I went from shyly telling people in the confines of the stock room that I was writing a book to querying, blogging, tweeting, going to conventions. I did public query critiques on giant screens with agents and writers, I live pitched, phone pitched, read my first 3 pages out loud to rooms full of people.<\/p>\n

I defended writing a vampire book by making it my <\/em>vampire book. All or nothing.<\/p>\n

I was one of only 7 authors published with Books of the Dead Press last summer, and the only woman. I knew I\u2019d done something.<\/p>\n

Now RUNNING AWAY<\/em>, the sequel to that first book, is going public. They\u2019ve both been received better than I ever anticipated, and for that I\u2019m not only grateful but fulfilled. I never really cared that the world thought vampires were overdone; they hadn\u2019t seen mine, and fuck \u2018em if they can\u2019t take a joke. I strongly believe that if you write the book you need to write, readers will need to read it. I never feared rejection because I don\u2019t write to be accepted. I write because I must. I write because I love the look on my boys\u2019 faces when they see me pound away at the laptop. And I write because I\u2019m an animal without it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll forever do the thing that makes me bleed, not the thing that holds me together. Now read my goddamn vampire books<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

About Julie:<\/strong> Julie revels in all things Buffy, has a sick need for exotic reptiles, and drinks more coffee than Juan Valdez and his donkey combined, if that donkey is allowed to drink coffee. Julie\u2019s a black belt with an almost inappropriate love for martial arts. And pizza. And Rob Zombie. Julie lives in Plymouth, MA, constantly awaiting thunderstorms with her wildly supportive husband and two magnificent boys.<\/p>\n

On<\/strong> Running Away<\/strong>: Eliza Morgan is desperate to escape the horrors of her mortal life and understand why death follows her, leaving only one man, Nicholas French, in its wake. He\u2019s the one she loves, the one she resents, the one fated to make her legendary among an ancient order of vampires with a \u201cheroic\u201d duty to kill: the Shinigami.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

On a ghostlike mountaintop in Japan the all-powerful Master guides Eliza\u2019s transition into a Shinigami death god. Sacrificing her destiny will save Nicholas, who is decaying before her eyes. But she\u2019s not afraid to defy fate, and must forge her own path through a maze of ancient traditions. To uncover the truth and save her loved ones, Eliza will stop at nothing, including war with fate itself.<\/em><\/p>\n

Julie Hutchings: Website<\/span><\/a> | Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Running Away: Amazon<\/span><\/a> | B&N<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Julie Hutchings is a deranged lunatic who lives down by the trashcans at the end of my driveway. She either commands a small army of woodland creatures or she does battle against them? Honestly, the mythology of her situation escapes me. Regardless, despite being some kind of forested hobo, she’s hella funny and a hoot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-6uz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24959"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24961,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24959\/revisions\/24961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}