🎉 TODAY IS THE DAY! The wait is finally over - Raising Women by Shannon Waite is available in ebook and paperback from most book retailers NOW. Enjoy destroying your life 😉

I am so incredibly grateful that I have been able to write and share this story. I've put so much of myself into this one, and I genuinely love it. I appreciate everyone who has already read it and hyped it up. ❤️ The book went live today, and having so many people waiting for the book and just overall excited has melted my heart.

Already, too, Raising Women has jumped to a #1 New Release. While it falls into many categories, having it rise to the top quickly in one of them is exciting.

This book is undeniably candid in how it mirrors the hoops girls jump through to bargain their place in society, illuminating the desperate craving they have for belonging in a culture that is quick to cast them as pawns on a chessboard.

If you've had your eye on this book, this is your time to get it!
You can order it from most major book retailers above, or you can still purchase a signed copy (with stickers and a Polaroid) here.

🎉RAISING WOMEN releases in 5 days!🎉

Go to www.RaisingWomen.weebly.com to play MASH today! Read excerpts from the book, learn more about the characters, and enter for a chance to win a Raising Women sticker! There will be a new game each day (think Never Have I Ever, two truths and a lie, etc.) for four days - play each day for another chance to win.

On Thursday, all submissions will be entered into a drawing for a signed copy of Raising Women. Let's go play! ❤️📖

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Girls are taxes.
Women are city limits.

You are on the precipice of womanhood and have become obsessed with an ex-convict, Roman. She introduces you to the dangerous and honest side of life that no one else has been able to. As she unapologetically places you in scandalous situations, you begin making self-destructive decisions. Depending on which decisions you choose, you may taste Roman’s blood, get branded with a searing screwdriver, or date a married man– all while each choice challenges what it means to be a woman, real, or both.

In this interactive novel, readers have twenty-four possible pathways with four unique endings to explore the wild that is growing up girl.

I don't typically do film reviews, but I'll make an exception for Thirteen (2003).

I had never seen this movie before (as it goes with me and most movies... Hah. I'm a book reader.) but when my friend Lindee and I went on a walk one day, she suggested I check it out. She told me it sounded similar to Raising Women, so I went home that night, bought it, and watched it. She was right.

Thirteen follows Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood), a thirteen year old dealing with her alcoholic mom, mom's addict boyfriend, distant father,  and trying to fit in. Then to make things more challenging upon starting the new school year, she notices everyone loves Evie, a girl who dresses hot, seems unconcerned with school, and into risky behavior. A girl very different from her. The girls get closer and escalate their risky behavior: sneaking out, hanging out with groups of boys into their own rough behaviors, and trying to seduce a man who's over eighteen. The girls start taking different kinds of drugs and piercing themselves. Additionally, Tracy cuts herself throughout the film as the pressure of feeling misunderstood grows. The visuals often feel intentionally casually shot, and the colors change as toxic behaviors and suspense increase.

While plot similarities between Thirteen and Raising Women exist (like self-destructive behavior and the desire to belong among other things), Lindee was more specifically comparing the two texts' audiences when she said this film and my book were alike.

On the surface, Thirteen may seem like it's targeted at teens. The plot primarily follows these thirteen-year-olds and the challenging experiences they have. Similarly, Raising Women may seem like it's Young Adult (and early conversations have shown that this is what some people identify it as just based on the blurb). Like Thirteen, Raising Women's main character is a teen going through her experiences in present day. Arguably though, these assessments are wrong.

There are subtle details that nod toward why teens are not the intended audiences. Regarding Thirteen, film critic Roger Ebert says, "Who is this movie for? Not for most 13-year-olds, that's for sure. The R rating is richly deserved, no matter how much of a lark the poster promises." Sure, the main characters are teens dealing with stuff teens may deal with, but the R rating wouldn't have allowed teens to see it in theaters - so they couldn't have been the intended audience. One of the things that helps this film lean away from a teen audience is Tracy's mother, Mel. While the movie doesn't focus on Mel's experiences like the girls', there are enough scenes that show the struggle she has with handling Tracy's behavior that make Mel an also important character, and for viewers to understand her perspective of her daughter's behavior. This supports the argument that instead of targeting teens, the film is aimed at adults, specifically women, who can commiserate with all of these characters and the various stages (teen girl, mother, friend) they are going through. This isn't to say that teens don't identify with this film (according to Lindee, it became sort of a cult classic that teens watched after the film came out on tape). It's just not the intended audience. Hardwick co-wrote it with fourteen-year-old Nikki Reed, but brought her own adult perspective to it.

Raising Women has similar audience overlaps. The Professional Writing Academy says, "First up, YA isn’t a genre: it’s an age range. YA fiction is aimed at a target audience aged 12-18." They then go on to list typical characteristics for YA, and most of them happen in Raising Women, BUT Raising Women's target audience isn't 12-18. Sure, teens can read this (I was reading Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, and Lolita in high school), but I wrote it for adults. More specifically, I guess you could say "unhinged millennial women"... hah. My intended audience is women who knew the girls in this book. These women like dark psychological stories. These women read coming of age tales, especially ones that aren't aimed at teens. I mean, first, Raising Women is set in the 90s/2000s, and it's not that teens can't read books set in different time periods, but as a contemporary fiction piece, setting a realistic fiction piece a few decades ago isn't trying hard to connect with them. Additionally, the primary characters outside of "you" (a teen) are both adults. The themes in this book are ones that women who have already grown up would identify with. The women I wrote this for are already pre-ordering this book. Sure, teens can read it, but I didn't write this for teens. I wrote it for women who want to feel like they're reading something real, and feel like they see themselves in that real thing they just read.

If you loved Thirteen, than you'll also love Raising Women. Both of these stories follow girls who feel lost and left behind, and nudged into figuring things out. Reader Xavier said, "The whole story has followed You creating an identity as a woman amidst an infinity of mixed signals and potential dangers, an these lines really take that to a deeper level by pointing at the fact that this is not exclusive to You." This is meant to make readers feel connected, but moreso the women who used to be the girls that got left behind and had to figure out how to be a women amidst an infinity of mixed signals. This is their story, just like I think Thirteen is the story for women trying to figure out how to be an adult that raises those girls.

Raising Women says, "Adults are supposed to know it all. They’re supposed to have all the answers, but no one ever gave them the answers. Who was the first adult? Who’s the one to have known it all?"

Preorder Raising Women here

Are you interested in receiving an ARC eBook of Raising Women?? Sign up using this form now! You'll hear back at the beginning of the week of September 16. The book will be provided through NetGalley and will be available for a month.

📖 RAISING WOMEN:
🖋 Self-destructive decisions
🖋 Girls destroying girls
🖋 Womanhood
🖋 Reality (and when the lines blur)
🖋 Queerness
🖋 Interactive fiction

I'm here to share with you the Raising Women book trailer.

We're getting so close - just over a month away.
Pre-order here!

And check out the Raising Women site for downloads and other things.

Video clips shot by the forever wonderful Lindee Robinson Photography.

I love experimenting, and playing with different forms. Last year I decided I wanted to write a piece of literary fiction that incorporated an interactive fiction form (I'll blog more about writing in this way soon). Then this last December, I just dove in and decided to do it - I started writing Raising Women. It wasn't planned; I had just finished a fiction workshop for my fall semester and had another one in the winter semester and was in the middle of writing other things, but for two weeks I just decided to write this. I knocked out most of the first draft then, then revisited it a few months later to finish it. Many rounds of editing and revising later, and I'm extremely excited to reveal the cover and announce that Raising Women will be released on October 11th!   Learn more about it here. Look out for more blogs about how I wrote this, what I love about it, and other fun freebies that are coming soon.