Elevated Release Week!

About ELEVATED: The last person seventeen-year-old Eleanor Livingston wants to see on the elevator—let alone get stuck with—is her ex-boyfriend Travis, the guy she's been avoiding for five months.

Plagued with the belief that when she speaks the truth, bad things happen, Elly hasn’t told Trav anything. Not why she broke up with him and cut off all contact. Not what happened the day her father returned from his deployment to Afghanistan. And certainly not that she misses him and still thinks about him everyday.

But with nowhere to hide and Travis so close it hurts, Elly’s worried she won’t be able to contain her secrets for long. She’s terrified of finally revealing the truth, because she can’t bear to watch a tragedy befall the boy she still loves.

Buy Links:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Elevated-Elana-Johnson-ebook/dp/B00IGINRFI/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1392473749&sr=8-6&keywords=elana+johnson  elevated 

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/elevated-elana-johnson/1118630040?ean=2940148251064 

Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/elevated 

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/elevated/id802533886?mt=11 

On Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18947183-elevated 

Praise for ELEVATED:

"ELEVATED will take you on an emotionally gripping journey through the highs and lows of first love."

~Carolee Dean, author of Take Me There and Forget Me Not

"Poignant, raw, and intense, ELEVATED is a novel that will grip your heart and linger in your mind long after you turn the last page."

~Stasia Ward Kehoe, author of Audition and The Sound of Letting Go

About Elana Johnson: Elana Johnson’s work, including Possession, Surrender, Abandon, and Regret, published by Simon Pulse (Simon & Schuster), is available now everywhere books are sold. Her popular ebook, From the Query to the Call, is also available for free download, as well as a Possession short story, Resist. School teacher by day, Query Ninja by night, you can find her online at her personal blog or Twitter. She also co-founded the Query Tracker blog, and contributes to the League of Extraordinary Writers.

Social Media Links:

Website/blog: http://elanajohnson.blogspot.com/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElanaJ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/possessionthebook 

Tumblr: http://elanajohnson.tumblr.com/ 

Wattpad: http://www.wattpad.com/user/elanajohnson 

League of Extraordinary Writers: http://leaguewriters.blogspot.com/ 

WriteOnCon: http://writeoncon.com/ 

Elana on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4044383.Elana_Johnson 

The In's and Outs of YA Novels: Tidbits From Agent Michelle Witte

I recently had the amazing opportunity to attend an SCBWI meeting and hear agent Michelle Witte speak, and I thought I'd share a few tidbits I learned from her.

1. YA paranormal romance and Dystopian novels are out. No one is buying them anymore. The market is saturated. Paranormal is okay if the creature is chasing and trying to kill your MC, but not trying to date them. So much for my paranormal modern-day Beauty and the Beast with a Bigfoot-type character (Wendigo) that I've been working on for too long. Time to put it aside, unless I can sell it as a fairy-tale retelling but . . .

2. Fairytale retellings, which made a short comeback for a while, are on the way out. Unless they are really different. Like folklore from other cultures. So much for my African Snow White story. Although . . .

3. Retellings of classic stories are in.

3. More contemporary, realistic novels are coming back in, too! That's good news for my contemporary YA adventure/romance I wrote and set aside for a while. I can take that one back out now, have it critiqued one more time, make a few revisions, and start sending it out.

4. Magical realism is popular: Think authors Alice Hoffman, Isabel Allende, and Laurel Snyder and books such as BIG Fish based in reality with subtle magic around the edges.

5. Horror is big right now, too.

6. Sci fi not so much.

I also had the privilege of meeting with Michelle in a pitch/critique session at a conference (LTUE: Life the Universe and Everything) and she gave me some excellent advice on my query and first page of a novel. I need more details in my query, and less explaining in my first page.)