MTV Books

Elvis has left the building

2010-10-30T18:15:00.000-05:00

Logging on just now to compose the final post for the MTV Books Blog, I took a look at my first post. It was on November 19, 2007. I had no idea we’d been blogging almost 3 years!

Reading that post was like traveling back in a time machine and saying hi to myself. Hello young, innocent Jennifer from three years ago! I had just finished 1665th in the Vulcan Run 10K--which I will be running for the 6th time next Saturday, and I’m pretty sure my time will be even worse. In 2007, apparently I was planning to run my first half marathon the following February, which I can tell you did NOT happen. I am planning to run the very same half marathon for the first time this coming February. I sure hope I have a better track record with this sort of thing when I check in with myself after another 3 years.

One thing I didn’t blog about back then was National Novel Writing Month. During November, novelists and would-be novelists try to write 50,000 words. My first NaNoWriMo was not until 2008, and guess what? I JUST revised that same book for the umpteenth time and sent it to my agent this morning. That clears my desk for NaNoWriMo 2010 starting on Monday.

And ending this blog clears the way for the six of us still participating to join ten of our friends on YA Outside the Lines. But even though some things haven’t changed much in 3 years, I definitely have a lot more confidence that I can write a book in a month, finish a 10K, and participate in a rewarding writers’ blog. For that experience, I have to thank editor Jennifer Heddle at MTV Books for getting the blog approved and sending us material; the current bloggers, Jan Blazanin, Barbara Caridad Ferrer, Danielle Joseph, Stephanie Kuehnert, and Jenny O’Connell; and former bloggers Kelly Parra, Christopher Golden, Tara Altebrando, Cara Lockwood, and Alex McAulay. Collectively we put a lot of work into this blog, publicized our work, met new readers, and supported each other. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for us next.

New Beginnings

2010-10-30T11:24:00.002-05:00

As my fellow bloggers have told you, we are saying goodbye to the MTV Books blog as of tomorrow and heading over to our new space: YA Outside The Lines where we will continue to blog together and add some new voices to the mix, other YA authors who push boundaries and write from the heart the way we do.

Usually I'm not a person who deals well with change, but in this case, I'm excited and I think it couldn't come at a better time for me. As you probably know from reading my last blog entry here, I'm in a tough place with my writing. My work-in-progress ground to a halt and I go back and forth daily (actually probably hourly) as to whether to completely shelve the idea, walk away from it for a little while or try to keep plugging along. The tentative plan is to try something new for at the least the first week of November and if it goes well, I may try to write a full rough draft of that new idea for NaNoWriMo. Or I may just let the new idea reinvigorate me and then finish my current project.

So yes, I am definitely in transition in terms of my writing career. I'm not sure what I'll do next or where it will be published. But I am so proud of the books I put out with MTV Books, loved all the people I worked with there and the authors I was published with, so I am proud to continue on with these lovely ladies to explore new horizons. I may not be sure of where I'm going, but I know I'll be in excellent company at YA Outside The Lines.

Good-bye and HELLO!

2010-10-25T15:55:00.004-05:00

This is the best kind of good-bye. No feelings are hurt, nobody gets left behind, and everybody wins.

When our marvelous blog leader, Jennifer Echols, suggested striking out on a new blog-venture, the emails began flying. Which is what you’d expect from six creative, slightly off the wall minds. In less than 48 hours we had a new name, tagline, and blog spot. We each grabbed a couple of outside-the-lines author friends, and we were set.

Now it’s time to say adieu to the MTV Books Blog, which has been loads of fun, and move on. We hope to see you, our loyal followers, at our new blog-cation, YAoutsidethelines, bright and early November 1.

Yippee!!!

Follow us to YA Outside the Lines

2010-10-22T10:05:00.002-05:00

Like Jenny just mentioned, come November 1 we will be moving on to bigger things with the unveiling of our new blog YA Outside the Lines! I'm really looking forward to it because a lot more authors who also draw outside the lines will be joining us.

This MTV Books Blog has been something I look forward to contributing to every month and I love hearing what my fellow authors have to say. They are my cyber family so I am glad we are all moving on together. I do hope everyone will continue to follow us because we have a lot of great things in store! I'm talking contests, new books and posts galore!

Happy Halloween everyone and see you in a couple of weeks on YA Outside the Lines!
xo,
Danielle

Riding off into the sunset...

2010-10-22T09:51:00.003-05:00

But as Jenny said in her post, a new adventure awaits and can I just tell y'all how excited I am? It was actually a pretty easy decision to say goodbye to the MTV Books Blog as a formal entity. It's been a great ride, but we're all moving on into new ventures, exploring new possibilities, and in short, coloring outside the lines that this particular blog provided.

And deciding what to do next was actually pretty easy, too. We all knew, without a doubt, that we wanted to keep blogging together. We've been this ragtag little bunch for the past several years and we've kind of developed this rebel mentality that prevents us from merely fading gently into that good night, so..

Come November 1st, I hope y'all will join us at our new venture. Again, as Jenny mentioned, we're not merely remaining stagnant. We were like those old Breck commercials, each of us telling two friends and spreading the word and because even within our little core group we're so diverse, we managed to amass an absolutely fantastic group of authors whose one defining characteristic is that we color outside the lines a bit. Push boundaries. It makes us sort of stubborn. Maybe a little crazy. But I think it's safe to say we all write with a lot of passion and heart and that's what our new blog is going to be about.

But for now, hasta la vista MTV Books Blog and thanks for the memories.

Looking Ahead

2010-10-22T09:05:00.002-05:00

As all of us emailed and chatted over the past few days about what we'd like this blog to become we came to a conclusion: different!! And bigger!!! More authors, more points of view. I'm so excited to see what new authors have to say, because as Stephanie pointed out in her recent post, writing can be a lonely, frustrating, pull-your-hair-out and question-your-existence experience.

I've so enjoyed being a part of this over the years and really, really look forward to taking this blog "outside the lines."

I can't wait for it to begin November 1, and I can't wait to welcome the new writers. The more the merrier. Jen Echols has done such an amazing job wrangling us and the new blog is amazing 2.0.

See you then!!

The Writer's Low

2010-10-13T15:36:00.003-05:00

I apologize in advance for how pathetic this blog entry is going to be. I've been holding all this stuff in for about a month now and I just have to let it out. Maybe if I do, things will get better. But I promise not to be so lame again.

Anyway, you've been warned....

Back in May I blogged about rediscovering my writer's high. Unfortunately right now I'm in the opposite situation: the deepest darkest writer's low.

The book that I was so excited about back in May--the bartender book as I'd been calling it since it is set largely in a bar-- quickly became the bane of my existence this summer. My agent loved those first 100 pages that I loved, but she pointed out that it's a hard market, so she wanted me to write a full. No problem, I said and I had every intention of getting it into her by the middle of September or early October at the latest because she was going on maternity leave. I set about writing as fast as I could, telling myself that it could suck and I didn't have to actually enjoy writing it because rewriting is my favorite part, if I could just get the words on the page to revise, I'd be happy. But for the most part I felt miserable. I hated the words. My goals felt increasingly impossible. I just kept digging myself into a deeper and deeper hole of writerly angst. I stopped even posting the occasional progress reports on my blog because I was afraid if I posted my true feelings about how I felt about my book and my career in general, I would scare off my few readers.

As mid September approached and with it, my agent's maternity leave, I emailed her to say that I wouldn't have the book in. My goal had been unrealistic, too high pressure for me. I was aiming for December 15th now when she returned. Once I said that, it was like a weight had lifted. I'd also finally worked my way to a point in the book that I felt I could write really well. (A funeral scene. I am at my best when my characters are at their saddest, what can I say?) The story started flowing. I remember why I was writing that book and why I loved those characters. And I thought maybe everything would be okay after all even though I saw how dark the horizon was. I didn't know how to end the book, but I hoped that if I continued to put one foot in front of the other I might just find my way. I had a vague idea after all. I had an outline carefully written even though it didn't sound right any more, but maybe just maybe...

On September 20th (and I remember the date precisely because it was my brother's birthday and I took him to a concert that I hoped would reignite my muse), it all came to a grinding halt. A secret was revealed. Characters reacted. And then.... nothing. I didn't know where to go next. Nothing I'd plotted previously seemed right. So I've spent the past few weeks in various stages of angst. Sometimes I'm quietly ignoring the fact that I absolutely can't seem to write and definitely can't write well or come up with the correct storyline for my characters. Sometimes I'm having huge nervous breakdowns like crying in the shower, making myself physically ill breakdowns because I think I broke this book. I think it is beyond repair. I can't see how to fix it and I don't know where I will find the energy to start a new one.

Yeah, see why I haven't been blogging about this? It makes me feel pathetic. It's strange. When it comes to blogging, I'm generally very open. I've talked freely about the self injury in my past, the abusive relationship, the struggles with depression, drug and alcohol abuse, but when it comes to how I've been feeling about my career lately, I've been very hesitant to share, fearful that I will come across as whiny, ungrateful, pathetic, etc. I can be a perfectionist and I don't like admitting when I feel like I've failed.

But I feel like I've failed.

My first two books, especially my second, which I put my heart and soul into, have not done very well. I fear that soon they will go out of print. I feel that the only way to save them is write a really good, much more successful book that will make readers hungry for my backlist. I wish that I had spent more time writing that book instead of promoting the other two since I didn't really have the money or skills to promote it in such a way that would make an impact.

Since those books came out, I have been working on two books. The first was submitted to MTV Books as my option book. They turned it down. I had an idea to make it into an adult book, the bartender book, which would be more in line with my vision for it anyway, so I tried to stay positive. I also had a YA paranormal idea, that I was very excited about. Wrote a partial of that, which made the rounds and received rejections, though a couple of places said they would be interested in seeing the full. So the plan was to try to finish both of these books this year or early next year. I started with bartender book because I was the most excited about it at the time, but then came the block.

The block is partially to do with me struggling with the story, which is normal. It has happened with my other two books as well. But since I wrote those other two books before I had a real idea of the publishing industry, I didn't have two of the issues that I am having now.

The main one is word count. My books always start out long. I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE was 150,000 words in it's first draft. I had an inkling that that was probably too long. It sold at 112,000 words, which I didn't know was too long, but it was and I eventually got it down into the mid-90s. Right now the bartender book is at 115,000 words and I still have a lot (and I mean A LOT) of loose ends to tie up, so I'm looking at another 150,000 word draft, but unlike with IWBYJR, I don't have an idea of how to shave it down. There aren't any real subplots to cut. It seems that the story I came up with is simply too big. And I freeze just thinking about how I can possibly fix it. Also, this makes me want to rush the ending and it makes me doubt every idea I have for the ending.

And for me, when I start to doubt one thing, I start to doubt *everything*. This leads to the other issue I didn't have before I was published--dwelling on if the book will sell. I never concerned myself with markets before. But now I think, this is another contemporary realistic fiction book with quirky characters. It's going to have the same fate as my other two books--if someone will even buy it this time. What if I'm turning myself out inside out again and end up really disappointed. Should I be working on that paranormal instead? Maybe that had more potential or what about that post-apocalyptic book that I literally dreamed up a year and a half ago on my 30th birthday. It was dream, maybe that's a sign. I should have written it then, post-apoc is huge now. Maybe if I had just dropped everything and written it, I wouldn't be freelancing and bartending and teaching (don't even get me started on the teaching--the other thing that has completely screwed up my fall) just to try to make ends meet. Maybe I should give up on the bartending book, at least for now and try to write that post-apocalyptic book for NaNoWriMo (which I have never attempted before because writing super fast is not what suits me well). I have cheated on the bartender book a little bit by writing that one and it felt kinda good. I don't know a ton about the story yet, but it's interesting....

But it also felt bad because I've been beating myself up big time that I haven't finished a full manuscript since I finished revising BALLADS OF SUBURBIA almost 2 years ago. I have to finish a full book to sell another book and I feel like if I don't finish and sell another book soon, the few fans I have will forget me and I am so so so grateful for them, I have the best fans in the world and I feel like I'm letting them down terribly.

So yeah I wish that I could write faster. I wish that I could write better. But right now I can't seem to write at all. And I have friends urging me to take a break, but I feel like I can't. I've already spent a month making no progress on my writing. If I take another week off there is no way I'll finish this book and revise it by December 15th. If I don't finish a book by the end of this year, I'll be incredibly frustrated with myself, even more than I am now.

Thanks for letting me vent about this. I promise not to do it again since I don't want to be the Debbie Downer of the blogosphere. But maybe some of you out there have advice. Tips on how you got through your writer's lows or blocks. The typical stuff that I do--the music, the running, the doing other tasks to try ignore it and hope genius will strike--hasn't been working because I think I've almost got myself to the point of creating a writing phobia. I'm so scared of being stuck and of failing that I *am* being stuck and failing. So thoughts? Should I cheat on the bartender book with the idea from the dream? Should I force myself to take time off from writing completely and then go back to the bartender book? Should I just keep plodding along? That is, after tomorrow. I'm taking off tomorrow for sure to shop for Halloween costumes. Hopefully it will make me slightly less neurotic.

I am huge in Brazil!

2010-10-12T13:11:00.008-05:00

Well, probably not. Time will tell. But after selling the Turkish rights to GOING TOO FAR and FORGET YOU earlier in the year, I have now sold the Brazilian rights.

My books haven't gotten a lot of publicity. I have no way to measure this, but I'm pretty sure that most of my success is a result of book bloggers being kind enough to write about my novels. And I suspect that I wouldn't have sold the Brazilian rights if it hadn't been for Brazilian book bloggers like Fracky and Raíla. I'm very appreciative of and eternally grateful to the friends I've met online!

I've never sold the foreign rights to any of my novels before, but some of my friends have sold theirs, so I have a good idea what happens next.

First, your book is translated by the new publisher into the language in question. They will send you a copy but you will not be able to make heads or tails of it. Here, for instance, is my critique partner Victoria Dahl's adult historical romance To Tempt a Scotsman.

Next, the new publisher selects a new cover. Because it's a brand new publisher and you've sold the book all over again to them, they can't use your old cover even if they liked it. So here's Vicki's original American cover

and here's the Japanese version.

Finally, the new publisher may give it a new title. But you will not know this unless you ask someone who speaks the language. For instance, Vicki found out that in Russia, the title of her book is no longer To Tempt a Scotsman. It is Lovely Hermit.

I can't wait to see the foreign editions of my novels! But I have a feeling that the new covers and titles are going to tell us a lot more about Turkey and Brazil and marketing there than they will tell us about my books.

Writing Retreat!

2010-10-08T13:59:00.006-05:00

Last weekend I drove to my first writing retreat. I was excited to be invited to join this group of published authors, but nervous, too. For one thing, the center is run by Franciscan Sisters, which had me worried about my sometimes-colorful vocabulary. The word “retreat” conjured up images of solitary reflection, solemn faces, and hushed voices. And a ruler across my knuckles if my language slipped into dangerous territory. However, a good friend of mine who had taken part in the retreat for more than a decade called it the “highlight” of her year. How could I pass it up?

I’m glad I didn’t.

In the years since I started writing I’ve attended a dozen or so writing conferences, but this retreat was another animal entirely. There were no agents, no editors, and no pressure to be “on.” I didn't have to worry about making small talk with strangers and saying too much or too little. Instead, I got to hang out in my jeans and sweats with my hair-- We won't talk about my hair.

During the evenings, we lounged in comfortable chairs eating chocolate—naturally—and swapping stories about writing, families, and pets. To be truthful, we told more kid, dog, and cat stories than writing tales. On Saturday we shared manuscripts, critiqued synopses, and kicked around story ideas. We moved at our own pace, went for walks when we felt like it, and crashed in our rooms if we were in the mood for solitude.

A plus for me was the “green” environment. The heating was solar, the food was organic, and the surrounding land bloomed with native prairie grass and wildflowers. The only drawback from the solar heating was our cold showers Saturday morning. Not the best way to clean up after a chilly morning jog, but we all survived.

If you and your writing need recharging, I suggest you get some friends together and head out on a retreat. You’ll come home filled with inspiration and—if you’re like my new group—a couple of pounds of chocolate, too!

2010-10-06T18:04:00.003-05:00

I am writing this from 25,000 feet in the air. I see clouds and blue sky out my window. The seatbelt sign is lit. How cool is it that planes can have wireless? How fab when you totally forgot to bring a book and the Delta magazine ceases to be interesting after the fifth read (although the Sky Mall catalog has convinced me that I need a magic showerhead with LED light technology so I can shower with blue, purple and green colored water - an optical illusion of course).

Which brings me to my point. The Sky Mall catalog. Way back when I was writing The Book of Luke it was November and I was trying to figure out how to begin the story. November is NaNoWriMo - otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month. That's right, you're supposed to write a novel in a month. And because I was way behind on a deadline, that sure sounded good to me.

Well, I'd peruse the chat boards on the NaNoWriMo site while procrastinating. And one of the topics had people suggest things to jump start your writing. Someone wrote "Write a scene that includes a Sky Mall catalog." I hadn't considered having the story start at the airport on the morning Emily moves back to Boston, but you can only get a Sky Mall in the sky, so there she was. On the sidewalk outside the United terminal. And so a scene was born, thanks to that anonymous person who gave writers the Sky Mall challenge.

So here's my challenge: In the comments offer up your own obscure place/thing/action/etc. that us writers have to include in a scene. No matter how crazy. And I promise that I will work it into my current novel (because yes, I am that lazy and, yes, I just cannot seem to finish the beast). And you other writers, do the same. You may end up with a fabulous you'd never thought of before!!

Time Management

2010-10-02T11:10:00.003-05:00

The old dreaded subject--time management. I am always wondering how other authors manage their time and have also been asked how I find time to write with three kids. My initial answer is, I don't know. For example I can't get through this sentence because my eight year old is telling me all about his Lego people, my 6 year old is playing his DS naked next to me (another story) and I am fielding multiple texts from friends about playdates and birthday presents. Fortunately my 18 month old is napping so I do stand a chance.

I have a sitter three mornings a week and that is my writing time. I run out the door with my laptop those days and work at my "Starbucks Office." I try to get some work done at night but that does not happen as much as I would like. By nature I am a night person but since having kids I can not keep my college hours! On the other days I work during my daughter's naps. Luckily she is a good napper.

Now that I am in the rewrite stage of my wip, Graveyard Shift, I am setting goals with my Starbucks Officemate. We have beening telling each other what page we will be on when we meet next. I like this system because it keeps me moving. I also know that I would like to be done with the rewrite in six weeks so I keep that as my larger goal.

When I an writing something new I like to do daily word goals. If it's a writing day I shoot for a 1000 words and on other days I am satisfied with a page or two.

So what am I doing the rest of the time? Through out the day I try to answer all emails and do promotional stuff for my books, like answer interview questions, prepare for school visits, conferences etc... Other than that I am shuttling three kids around, being a homework warden or wrestling the laundry beast.

So all this juggling makes my writing time that much more precious. I would love to know how others do it. Whether you have another day/night job, kids or are a lifelong procrastinator, how do you do make time to write?

What kind of high school student were you?

2010-09-30T12:47:00.006-05:00

To follow Jenn's example and compare myself to one of my characters, I'd say I was a lot like Kara in BALLADS OF SUBURBIA... just without the heroin addiction. But in truth you'll find pieces of the high school student I was in many of my teenage characters. As you can see in this picture, I had the same boots that were on the cover of I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE.

I had a love/hate relationship with high school, which made me the rebel who got straight A's. (Almost. Freshman year I got a B in my honors Biology class during the first semester. I stopped taking honors science courses after that. Oh and I got C's and D's in gym unless I was taking dance classes, but that didn't count for your GPA.) I loved learning, I always have, even though I struggled a bit more with Math and Science. (Like everyone but Jenn, who is clearly a genius who is going to rule the world so be nice to her.) I adored English and History and elective classes like Psych and Philosophy. I loved to adapt them to my interests. I petitioned for a Women's History class, which they did institute... the year after I graduated. I did a huge presentation about the ethics of veganism for philosophy and convinced my entire class except for the kid who hung on to some religious idea that animals were put on earth for man to dominate and a hippie girl who worried if it would turn out that vegetables have feelings. Sigh. My English papers were the most fun. Senior year, I did a comparison of Fahrenheit 451 and Trainspotting, two of my favorite books for Humanities. For my junior theme (the biggest English research paper in our high school career, which I actually wrote sophomore year because I was an honors student), I compared and contrasted the lives and art of Sylvia Plath and Courtney Love of Hole, my two biggest idols at the time.

The way I loved and related to those two women, both of whom were misunderstood and struggled with anger and depression, says a lot about my state of mind in high school. So now we are coming to the hate part of high school. I hated the majority of my peers. I hated the system. I didn't fit in. BALLADS OF SUBURBIA is set in the town where I went to high school, the very middle class and proud Oak Park, Illinois. Hemingway was from there as well. They have a classroom dedicated to him, kept in the style it was when he was there with this big stained glass windows. I had English class in it my senior year and I used to fantasize about bullets or bombs or something raining through those windows and shattering them and giving the whole pompous school/town a big black eye. It didn't help that I hated Hemingway. I was a Riot Grrrl and I thought he was a misogynist and his writing bored the crap out of me. I'd read newspaper articles that were more interesting and eloquent. But the one thing that we both agreed upon was our hatred for Oak Park. He said the town was filled with "wide lawns and narrow minds." I concurred. I also thought it was ridiculous the way they put him up on a pedestal when he probably just wanted to spit on them.

My issues with Oak Park and my high school were very similar to Kara's in BALLADS. Like her, I moved to the town from a working class neighborhood in the middle of grade school. (Kara moves from the South Side of Chicago in second grade. I moved from the South Grand neighborhood in St. Louis in third grade.) My parents didn't share or raise me to share the materialistic values that my classmates had. I was teased relentlessly through grade school and junior high, clinging to enjoyment I found in my studies and the few smart but different kids that I met. I was shy, but eventually like Kara I found my way to a park a few blocks from the high school called Scoville where all the freaks and geeks and punk rockers and skaters and ravers and stoners hung out. And those became my people. The friendships I formed there helped me survive high school.

And when I started hanging out at Scoville my sophomore year of high school, the more rebellious side of my nature came out. Before I'd expressed it only through the punk music I listened to and the poetry I wrote. I started to act out a bit. I ditched the classes I didn't feel like going to. I smoked pot and went to school stoned. I refused to sit inside the classroom during homeroom which I thought was just gossip period for the mean kids. But because I'd always been the good kid, I got away with all of it. When I got sent to my dean, he'd chastise me a little bit, but then turn to talk of college, which liberal arts schools he thought I should attend. While I was glad that I didn't get into serious trouble, I was also troubled by the injustice I saw at my school. Several of my friends, a few of them non-white and/or non-middle class, all of them artistic and very smart just not people who learned in the traditional way were actually encouraged to drop out of high school while I was being encouraged to go to college. Our high school's dropout rate was low, so it wouldn't look back if the "bad" kids dropped out, but it would bring down the school's academic reputation if they continued to fail their classes and bomb standardized tests. Rather them try to reach these kids, I saw the school trying to sweep them under the rug. And I knew they would have done it to me, too, but my grades never slipped. I never ditched so much school that I failed classes and I never got so deep into drugs and partying that I didn't do my homework. I rode the razor's edge. And speaking of razors.... Depression was a huge problem for me in high school. Like Kara, I self-injured. As you can imagine, if they wanted the weirdo kids to drop out of school, there wasn't a lot of help for those of us dealing with emotional issues.

But like Kara and her friends, I did use writing to cope. In addition to short stories about kids sitting in diners and poetry about unrequited love and razor blades, junior year of high school, my friends and I started making zines. We had a series of feminist political zines called Kill Supermodels (about killing the idea that women should look like supermodels, not killing actual supermodels of course). I wrote a few personal zines about my struggles with depression and self injury and the emotionally and sexually abusive relationship I'd survived during my sophomore year of high school.

So high school had a lot of ups and downs. Maybe I could have been valedictorian if I applied myself more (I was in the top one-percent of my class), but I was more concerned with escaping. I graduated a semester early and moved to Wisconsin with a friend. I didn't come back for graduation because my school had this silly tradition where girls were required to wear white dresses at the ceremony. I thought it was sexist and only wore black during that time of my life anyway and most of my friends were either older or younger than me and wouldn't be there.

High school by that point had been taken outside for me. I learned from the people in a park that meant so much to me I would eventually write a book about it. And our version of the prom was dressing up in the finest thrift store suits, vintage dresses and fishnet tights, and combat boots and going to the middle of Scoville Park with a boombox where we danced to a mix of ska and punk until the cops came to kick us out. As much as I hated high school at the time, it's memories like that one that allow me to look back happily now.

What kind of high school student were you?

2010-09-28T06:10:00.005-05:00

If you've read GOING TOO FAR...I seemed to people like Goody-Two-Shoes Tiffany, but I felt like rebellious Meg.

I was drum major of the marching band, obviously. I was editor of the yearbook. I was valedictorian. Unlike the other chicks posting here, I was as good at math and science as I was at English. Partly because my mom had been a math and chemistry double major in college, and this was expected of me. Partly because my older brother was valedictorian and had made a nearly perfect score on the SAT, and I was not going to be shown up.

But if you were to look at my behavioral record, there would be a pattern, starting in the 3rd grade, of me getting called into the principal's office for mouthing off to a teacher. When this happened, I was always outraged at some injustice perpetrated by the teacher, real or imagined, sometimes against me but more often against somebody else, or against ALL OF US. I was a crusader. This continued through grade school, through junior high, through high school, and by my senior year I was visiting the principal's office often and wishing the whole experience could just be OVER. I am 100% certain those folks breathed a sigh of relief when I made that valedictorian speech and they were rid of me.

This makes my high school experience sound like torture, but it wasn't. I had a BLAST because I had the best friends imaginable. My town had population of about 15,000, and it was isolated, set on a beautiful lake in Alabama but lost in the forest between Montgomery and Birmingham. Each grade had about 300 students, which included EVERYBODY, from the children of minimum-wage textile mill workers to the children of the corporate vice presidents who lived on the lake. There was something about people being from such genuinely different worlds that made the more superficial differences--whether you were a geek or a jock or whatever--not matter so much. For the most part people got along. It was a nice place to live. And, as you can imagine, a rich source of material for conflict in a YA novel.

What kind of high school student were you?

2010-09-25T13:25:00.006-05:00

Highly motivated. I loved school, liked all of my teachers—with one glaring exception, and wasn’t satisfied with any grade below an A. My mom and dad expected me to get good grades, but they didn’t micromanage. I can’t recall my parents ever asking me if I’d done my homework, promising me a reward for good grades, or threatening me with punishment if an assignment wasn’t finished on time. I was supposed to do well in school, so I did. End of story.

I loved English, reading, literature, drama, and art—all the girly stuff. History and social studies left me cold, primarily because the texts were dry and boring. Although I did my best to understand math it was a mystery, especially sine, cosine, tangent, and all those other terms that boggled my mind. Never got them; never used them; don’t care about them now. I might have felt that way about science except for my favorite teacher, Mr. Gunderson, who had a brilliant smile and a terrific sense of humor. One summer he taught an enrichment biology class, and we students chased around after insects, collected plants, dipped nets into goopy streams, and generally had a great time. I did, anyway. During junior year—maybe senior—my friend Jill and I reassembled a chicken skeleton over the course of several weeks. The process was smelly, goopy, and gross, but it was better than sitting through study hall.

I tried to limit the number of times I raised my hand in class, but I wasn’t terribly successful. I know my relentless participation annoyed other students and probably some of my teachers. What can I say? I liked answering questions! I loved reading aloud, especially stories and poetry, and entered speech and drama contests.

For the most part I was respectful to my teachers. I wasn’t disruptive, didn’t pass too many notes, and hid my compulsive doodling under my notebook. Although I frequently daydreamed in class, I mastered the art of appearing to listen even when I wasn’t. One of the few ways I rebelled was by wearing short skirts and wild-colored clothes, which were ridiculously tame compared to today’s styles.

That was me: A studious, respectful, teacher-loving daydreamer. No wonder I didn't have any dates!

What kind of high school student were you?

2010-09-22T10:49:00.003-05:00

In a word? Indifferent.

It was partially my own fault. Partially the fault of an educational system that I know now, wasn't the best for me. I could have conformed, but didn't really want to. Here's the thing: in elementary school, I was identified as a "gifted" student and as such, was able to attend an alternative educational program two days a week through elementary school and one day a week through junior high. The alternative program absolutely rocked my world. That was the kind of education I responded to—very innovative for the time, very student-driven, very classical in nature. I can easily say that I learned more in those two days a week, than I learned in my "regular" classes. Which had the unfortunate result of boring me silly in my regular classes and also engendered a good deal of resentment in the teachers who were not pleased I was being pulled out of their classes. So when I did have legitimate issues with subject matter, like math (*spits three times and throws holy water*) I'd get a response along the lines of "You're gifted, surely you don't need my help."

So I learned early not to trust the system because the system wasn't helping me.

Now here's the interesting part: I had the opportunity—twice—to forego high school altogether and go to college on an accelerated program, which might not have been a bad idea, since that gifted education was a lot more like a college education than the standard high school education, that was ostensibly preparing us for college, was. So once in seventh grade, I was offered the opportunity to attend a local college, and then again, in ninth grade, I was invited to attend one of the Seven Sisters colleges in the Northeast. But I said no, because I knew it wasn't the right move for me. I wasn't ready and I figured college would always be there.

So off I went to high school.

Now, of course, in high school, there were Honors and AP classes, but after early experiences with those, I kind of threw them over as well for the strangest of reasons—the competitiveness. Which is weird, because as competitive as I am (and I am über-competitive, trust me) the idea of competing for grades, to be deemed some intellectual "best," on what I saw as a false scale, in order to get into the "right" colleges somehow rubbed me so completely wrong. Even then, I knew there were all sorts of intellegences that couldn't possibly be measured simply by grades and test scores (the bane of a gifted education—having learned that a WHOLE lot earlier than most). And to be honest, I actually found more creative teaching and learning going on in the so-called "regular" classes. The Honors and AP were so tightly regimented because of what they had to accomplish in a set amount of time, there was very little room for intellectual exploration. Whereas the "regular" classes were far more freeform. And you know, I had a much bigger range of personality in the regular classes. I had punks, jocks, stoners, metalheads, immigrant kids, poor kids, rich kids, kids in the middle, artistic kids—you name it, we had it. The AP & Honors classes had a very homogeneous feel to them, with the same kids, in the same classes, with the same goals, year after year. There was a shiny uniformity to them that, in short, got on my nerves, especially with the sense of entitlement they seemed to wear, simply because they had been publicly anointed as "the smart kids". Tell you what, some of the smartest, most well-read kids I ever met were in those regular classes, whereas the AP/Honors kids didn't have time to crack a book that wouldn't help them with their grades or the AP tests. Reading for pleasure? Not so much.

I know that my ranting against uniformity must sound weird, given I spent so much of my time in high school involved in band and corps. But the thing about those pursuits is that yeah, we wore our uniforms and rehearsed for hours on end with a common goal, but in the end, beneath the uniforms, there was such a huge range of personalities in the organizations. So many different people with varied interests. It just wasn't something I saw that much of within the AP/Honors kids.

I think in the end, even though I'm not sure I could have articulated it at the time, I wanted to have time to just be and to dedicate myself to that which interested me, rather than put myself on someone's idea of the path that I should be on, in order to Succeed.

I never imagined I was that much of a rebel in high school, but looking back, maybe, just maybe, I was a little. It certainly provides a lot of clues to the person I would ultimately become.

What kind of high school student were you?

2010-09-21T19:57:00.003-05:00

School: I always loved school so I wasn't someone who dreaded going there.

Subjects: I had subjects I loved, like English, and those I hated, like math. I hate that I was a stereotypical "girl" that way. I wanted so badly to be good at math.

Grades: My parents drilled into me since birth that grades were important, so getting bad grades was unacceptable (and resulted in getting grounded, so not an option - because as much as I loved school, I loved socializing just as much).

Answer Please: I love to talk. So if I knew the answer to a question, my hand was raised. This didn't happen very often in math class.

Awards: I won the Freshman Art award. My parents were convinced I was the artistic child (my brother was the athletic child). I was cured of any fleeting sense of artistic mastery when my parents sent me to the Rhode Island School of Design for my Sophomore summer. I recognized that I just wasn't that good. I also co-won the Sophomore English award. I also would have won the "can't stand to stay home on a Friday or Saturday night" award if they had one.

Thnking Ahead: I couldn't wait to go to college, so early on I was always thinking about what it would take to get into a good college (I remember reading a book in fifth grade where one of the character's brothers went to Dartmouth and so I decided I, too, would go to Dartmouth).

Send Me Away: I always wanted to go to boarding school (also the result of reading a book). My parents wouldn't let me because they figured they had only a few years with their daughter and they wanted to enjoy the time (which I'm sure they regretted when they came home early from a Saturday night out and discovered that the daughter they'd grounded was in her bedroom with her boyfriend).

What Kind of High School Student Were You?

2010-09-20T20:56:00.004-05:00

Hmm, are my parents going to read this--lol?! No, really I was a good student but not a spectacular student. I did well in the subjects that I enjoyed and fine in the others.
Not surprisingly, I loved English and petitioned to take double English my senior year and the department allowed me to do so. Basically I took a regular Engish class and then two specialty English classes. I also took German and Spanish and loved art classes. I wasn't so hot on math and science but I tried, sort of.

Even though I didn't study much for tests, I always did my homework. I got a lot of A's when essays were involved but loathed fill in the blank and short answer questions. Anything creative, I was there! Two of my favorite classes were psychology and Theory of Knowledge. I loved discussions and subjects that really got me thinking. I still think back to those classes today.

Another amazing experience that I had senior year was when we were allowed to submit a proposal for a senior project. I chose to write a novel, or at least half a novel during this time. I was allowed to write half the day and go to school the second half during my last quarter of school. This was the beginning of my first YA novel. I wrote 80 pages and still have the novel in my filing cabinet. Visions of Liberty might never see the light of day, but I loved every minute of being allowed to write from home.

So what was I doing during the school day when I was supposed to be listening? I wrote notes to my friends. I mean, tons of notes. My friend Nell and I used to keep notebooks and write in them back and forth to each other. It was so much fun and we had code words for people in case the notebooks were ever "discovered". We also carried around a friend/not friend list and you couldn't even imagine how quickly people moved from one list to the other!

And thinking back all of this behind the scenes stuff was great material for my books. So without even knowing it, I was getting on the job training!

Fall TV!

2010-09-15T04:02:00.000-05:00

When I was a teenager, I was very proud of the fact that I barely watched any TV. I read books. I listened to punk rock. These were worthy pursuits. Movies, those were good too. But TV was thing making the masses dumber.

Yeah, I'm so not snobby like that anymore. Even back then, whenever I was home sick or bored during the summer, I would tune into my guilty pleasure: One Life to Live. Yep, as in the soap opera. Which I still watch daily and have since the summer before freshman year of high school.

I think my frustration with TV came in the middle of high school when one of my all-time favorite shows, My So-Called Life, was canceled after one season. I was the same age as the characters in that show and dealing with the issues they were dealing with. I'd never seen something so real on television before. But they CANCELED it!!! And on a total cliffhanger too! Would Rae Ann and Angela ever really be friends again? Would Angela and Jordan Catelano get back together? I would never know. So I started making blanket statements that TV sucked, it was mind-numbing, there were no good stories told through that medium.

And honestly during the mid-to-late nineties, I don't think there were many. There were a lot of sitcoms, which weren't really my thing unless I was really bored or sick or tired or bummed out and then yes, please cue up the Seinfeld. But the only show I watched religiously was The X-Files because it had all the right elements of tension and suspense and OMG would Mulder and Scully ever get together???

I don't know if the writing on TV has just gotten better or I have come to a point in my life where I need some mindless entertainment and melodrama to unwind (probably a mixture of both), but I've found myself watching a lot more TV over the past few years, including catching up on the things I missed during my TV boycott phase. My friend Jenny and I get together weekly to watch the Gilmore Girls (we're on season 4 and were both probably way too excited when Sebastian Bach tried out for Lane's band!). And on my brother's recommendation, I also watched Freaks and Geeks because he felt like it was a comedic 80s version of our high school experience. He said the little brother reminded him of himself and the sister reminded him of me and it was quite true! However, I had the same reaction when I reached the end of that series as I did with My So-Called Life, wondering why a show that was both so hilarious and so true to real high school life had gotten canceled!

My husband and I have one Netflix queue for movies and one for TV and lately the TV one gets a lot more attention while the movies just languish for weeks. Currently we are watching and loving season two of True Blood. We are also into the comedies on Showtime like Weeds and Californication. (I never thought I would pay for the premiere cable channels, but we fell so in love with those shows when watching them on Netflix that we had to.) I'm really loving this season of Weeds so far, especially since right now it is in my favorite city, Seattle.

I also have to admit that I started watching Grey's Anatomy because it's set in Seattle, but I kept watching because it has the soapy drama I crave. Usually it is pretty well-written too, though I felt it started to go downhill for about a year or so there. Then the end of last season really picked up and the season finale had my heart pounding and left me crying on the couch, so I have to say that is the season premiere I am most anticipating.

I was also incredibly pumped for the 90210 premiere, and it did not disappoint! An earthquake on the first day of school? A bunch of new potential relationship and broken hearts? And some seriously sketchy situations going on? Soap opera heaven for me!

90210 falls into my soapy drama category, but as a YA writer and someone who deep down still feels 16, I have to say I have a particular soft spot for those teen dramas. I love Degrassi: The Next Generation too, but it has gone on so long at this point that most of the characters I initially watched for are gone.

On the soapy drama front, I have to say I was disappointed that the new Melrose Place was canceled as I rather enjoyed it, but now I have a hole in my TV viewing schedule to fill (not that I have that much time to watch TV unfortunately). There are a bunch of shows I really want to see but am afraid I might be too far behind on to tune this season. I might have to catch up over next summer and then get hooked. Those include Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, Glee and Mad Men. All of which sound right up my alley for various reasons, but I didn't have time to watch them when they started so now I'm behind.

Maybe there are some new shows just premiering that I would like, but I'm not that up on the TV news so if you guys have suggestions, I'd really love to hear them. Obviously I watch all kinds of TV. I love sci-fi/fantasy like X-Files, Battlestar Galactica and True Blood. I love my soapy dramas like 90210 and Grey's Anatomy. And I have a particular soft spot for shows that seem true to life like My So-Called Life was... well obviously, those are the kind of books I write now, so if someone out there also likes those kinds of shows and wants to turn BALLADS OF SUBURBIA into one, please let me know ;)

But seriously, what returning and/or new shows are you especially excited about this season?

Do you write the book you want to read?

2010-09-13T08:25:00.004-05:00

I turned in THE BOOK WITH THE TITLE SO FABULOUS THAT I DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME, which will be published by MTV Books on July 1, 2011, and I've moved on to writing my option proposal. I'm so excited! The sky is the limit for this book. The only requirement is that it should be the same genre as GOING TOO FAR, FORGET YOU, and THE BOOK WITH THE TITLE SO FABULOUS THAT I DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME. So I'm writing the book I want to read.

I'm being very careful about this. I've loaded the soundtrack onto my iPod, only songs I love. I've found cool names for the hero and heroine. I'm working on their characters, making sure they're people I'd want to hang out with. The setting is a place I'd kill to live. The stuff that happens in this book is stuff I love to read about in other people's books--if I read these hooks in the back cover summary when I'm standing in the bookstore, that book is an automatic buy for me. I am doing my best to make this the Best Book Ever--for me, at least. Tastes differ, but this book is perfect for mine.

But not everybody writes this way. At a writers' conference luncheon recently, I sat at a table with an author who wasn't published yet but was pretty far along, with more than one manuscript completed. She told me she wrote romantic comedy, so of course my ears pricked up. But then she went on and on and on about THE HUNGER GAMES, and when I said dystopian isn't my thing, she said dystopian is her FAVORITE. So I asked her: "If dystopian is your favorite, why in the world are you writing romantic comedy? Don't you write the book you want to read?" Her response is that she'd gotten that advice before, and it was the worst advice she'd ever received. People told her that she did not have a dystopian voice. She has a romantic comedy voice. She wasted a lot of time writing dystopian and now she is writing romantic comedy.

I don't want to mess with anybody's head here, because I do think what's good advice for one person can be terrible advice for another. But, trying to put myself in her place...I cannot imagine someone telling me that I do not have the voice to write YA romantic comedy and romantic drama, but I have a good dystopian voice, and I should write dystopian instead. I mean, I REALLY dislike dystopian. It would be like someone telling me that I was a terrible writer but I had a terrific aptitude for being a mortician. I would not run out and become a mortician. And even if I did give writing dystopian a shot, writing it would be like painting with my eyes closed. I would have no idea whether I'd written a good dystopian novel or not, because I dislike all of them.

Writing is hard, and navigating the publishing world is harder, but I think the most confusing and demoralizing time for writers is that period when they've completed some manuscripts, they've had some encouragement, but they haven't made that first sale. At that point some people beat their heads against the wall for many years and many manuscripts, acting out the definition of stupidity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. (Fifteen years and ten manuscripts before I was published...I am way guilty here.) I have watched people make one change and suddenly their careers take off. But turning your back on the genre you love in favor of one you don't love, just because somebody (who didn't buy your book or offer you representation) suggested it, is not a change I would recommend to anyone.

Weigh in, y'all. Do you write the book you want to read? Are you operating very successfully in a genre you don't prefer? Do you think "voice" is really an immutable part of a writer and is suitable only to certain extant genres? I would love to know what you think.

Critiquing 101

2010-09-09T16:30:00.006-05:00

We writers love to get feedback on our work and are satisfied with comments ranging from gushing praise to awestruck delight. After we’ve spent hours slaving at our computers, criticism is the last thing we want to hear. But the painful truth is that nobody’s writing is perfect, and one of the ways we improve is by absorbing constructive criticism and applying it to our writing.

Like so many other things that are good for us, being criticized is a pain.

Every writer knows there are two sides to criticism: dishing it out and taking it. To be effective, both must be done with finesse. If you’ve taken part in a critiquing session, you’ve learned—possibly the hard way—that not everyone has mastered the technique. When a writer is reduced to tears, throws her coffee cup, and storms out of the room, those are pretty good signs that something went wrong.

Having been both a disher and a taker, I’ve learned a few strategies that have kept me on the good side of my fellow writers. (I hope!!!)

When you’re dishing it out:

1. Lead with specific positive comments such as, “Your dialogue sounds so natural.” Do not say, “Uh, this is a pretty good story,” and then heap on the negatives.

2. Phrase your constructive criticisms as suggestions or questions. “Do you think this scene might work better if….” rather than, "This scene is boring."

3. Limit your criticisms to two or three points at the most so the author doesn’t feel picked on.

4. If the author gets defensive, stop talking! Arguing your point leads to hard feelings--and slashed tires.

5. Be supportive. Emphasize the positive aspects of the work and encourage the author to keep trying.

When you’re taking it:

1. Listen to all comments with an open mind and resist the urge to defend your writing. If possible, take notes. This keeps your hands occupied so you don’t strangle the critiquer.

2. Respect the critiquer’s views. If one person has these concerns, others may feel the same way.

3. Do not shred or ritually burn your notes. Set them aside for a few days and review them.

4. Reread your manuscript with fresh eyes and revise as necessary.

A few last words:

ü Only ask for feedback from people whose opinions you respect.

ü Give feedback that’s honest but courteous.

ü If you dish out criticism, be able to take it.

Stand alones or series?

2010-09-06T11:40:00.004-05:00

Okay, here's my deep dark confession: Series scare the TAR out of me. At least, in terms of writing. I insist that my brain doesn't work that way and as a general rule, the stories that most interest me tend to be stand alone stories, whereas I have many writer friends who come up with ideas in terms of series. Common conversation with some of my friends:

Me: I have a great idea for a story. It's about [insert story idea]

Writer Friends: Wow, you know if you did this and that to it, it would make a great series.

Me: YAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

or

Writer Friends: You know, I just had a great idea for a series.

Me: A series? Another one? You can't just think of one story?

Over and over, I've had these conversations with my friends. They think I'm being a big baby and they may have a point. I do get to frothing at the mouth and snarling like a cornered badger when I think I'm being pushed into a corner and I can't help it—that's exactly how the idea of committing to a series makes me feel. And you know, I understand that it's a feeling that's in all likelihood, akin to shooting myself in the foot. Clearly, publishers love the idea of series. I could probably sell a series idea a lot easier than I could any of my stand alones. Maybe. Possibly.

Thing is, there are no guarantees in this business. And I've seen far too many stories that maybe should have only ever been one book, two at the most, that were stretched into series that went on ad infinitum and it dilutes the power of the original story. Of course, by the same token, some of the most celebrated stories of the last decade were series—especially within the young adult genre. I mean, HUNGER GAMES, much?

I don't know... it's not that I'm totally against the idea of writing series,—after all, I do have an adult story that somehow wound up expanded into three manuscripts (still unsold, but clearly, I can do it). However, it wasn't planned. It just happened. It all flowed, sort of... organically. Maybe I'm just sort of a crunchy granola when it comes to the idea of series—I have to start with a story and write it without stressing out over whether or not it's one that can be sustained over the course of three or more books. I don't want to worry that I'm going to get sick of the characters or the world and feel as if I'm trapped writing about nothing but for the foreseeable future.

I want to continue to stretch my wings as a writer—try different things, explore different worlds, and I worry that committing to a series would be like clipping my wings.

Yet... I've got an idea brewing. Just a stand-alone idea. But even so, in the back of my mind there's a little voice whispering, "You know... this has potential."

When even the voices are saying it...

Who knows? I think I'll take a wait and see attitude and just finish this one story.

What about you guys? Do you think in terms of stand alones or series? As a reader, which do you prefer?

Pick a Name, Any Name

2010-09-05T15:51:00.002-05:00

Oh, it's not that easy!! So far, the names of characters for my books has come pretty easily. I just knew what they'd be named. But names conjur up all sorts of associations so I never know if people will feel about the characters like I do. For instance, I knew a certain girl named X growing up. She was mean and terrible. And I always associate her name with that type of person. An author could write a story with a main character named X and she could be the nicest person in the world and I'd still think, "mean girl."

My maiden name was Guli (pronounced goo-ley). So people called me Jenny Guli. And if someone met me only once or twice and I saw them again I'd inevitably hear them say, "Hi Julie!" I cannot tell you how bothersome that was to me. Very annoying. But I understood how it could happen - they took the J and the ooley and I became Julie! I hated it.

Now if I'm talking to someone on the phone they're like, "hey, you're a nice Irish girl..." But I'm not Irish. My husband's name is. I'm Italian and German. The whole O'Connell thing doesn't really mean much to me, but I know that Irish people have a very strong connection to the motherland, so to speak. To me, it's just a name.

So I'm always thinking about my characters' names and what they'll conjur up in a reader's mind - confusion? association with a horrible person? a relative? a certain ethnicity or background?

Do readers even care about a character's name?

Writing When and Where

2010-08-31T09:30:00.005-05:00

I have not been able to get to this beloved blog as much as I would have liked to over the summer so I thought I'd write about my WRITING TIME AND PLACE. I crave writing time, it is food for my brain. If too many days pass and I don't have any time to write, I get cranky! So now that school is back in session and two out of three of my kids are in school, I am back to my writing schedule.

Basically, I designate three mornings a week to writing. I get a sitter for my baby and walk (run) off to my pseudo office at Starbucks! The comfy orange chairs are reserved for my friend and critique group partner Christina Gonzalez (The Red Umbrella) and I. Well, really they are not reserved but we wish they were. On these days I try my best to write at least 1000 words. Christina and I work on our own stories but pause to discuss ideas or gossip (I'm not gonna lie:). The other two school days I write during my baby's nap, while giving the dirty dishes and pile of laundry the evil eye!

Then when I'm editing or really in the middle of a manuscript, I sneak some writing in at night or on the weekends. At these times I either write in my home office or on the couch with my laptop. By nature I am a night owl and enjoy writing when all is quiet but since I can't maintain my college day hours, I have switched my schedule a bit. But no matter what, I am always thinking about my characters in the shower, waiting to pick my boys up at school or while making dinner.

Okay, back to my work in progress, which for now is titled, Tarnished. I would love to hear when and where other people write.
Happy Writing!

Who are your writerly crushes?

2010-08-30T04:21:00.000-05:00

I think I develop a new writerly crush every time I read a really really good book so I have tons of them, including all of the authors I blog with here. But I will try to limit it to a few *cough* ten *cough* here.

My first big writerly crush was Sylvia Plath. She seemed to speak directly to my soul with her poetry. I spent much of the beginning of high school trying to emulate her. And failing miserably.

My next major writerly crush was on Francesca Lia Block, whose books I discovered at the end of high school. I love the Weetzie Bat series and The Hanged Man best. She writes about very real, very painful issues from not fitting in to rape, abuse and anorexia--all things that I and/or people I knew were dealing with as teens. But she wrote these stories with such lush language and imagery that they read like a fairytale. I still strive to master language the way she does. And I wish I could write magical realism like she does as well.

I was actually lucky enough to take classes from two of my biggest writerly crushes, Irvine Welsh and Joe Meno. I admire Irvine's work because he writes about the real world and pulls no punches. He writes in the dialect of his characters and he doesn't hold back when it comes to realistically depicting a situation, even if that situation is totally ugly. Joe Meno wrote what feels like the bible for kids who grew up punk in Chicago in the early 90s like me: Hairstyles of the Damned. But in that book, Joe does what Joe does best, which is gets to the heart of the character. He writes emotion and character quirks better than anyone. He just captures the human spirit on the page in every single book he puts out.

I also have major writerly crushes on those that create new worlds so masterfully. Something I would love to do and am trying to do in a project that is set aside right now, but I will get back to soon. I'd love to write something otherworldly or dystopian, but I fear I'd never get it down quite the way the masters like JK Rowling, Melissa Marr and Scott Westerfeld do. I am amazed at how lost I can get in the worlds they create, worlds that become as vivid and real as the one I live in every day. I only hope I can take the more fantastical story ideas that I have and do them some sort of justice. But those are three of the authors I will read over and over to gain inspiration.

Two of my biggest writerly crushes write the kind of fiction I do best, contemporary, realistic stories that are raw and gritty and just REAL. That's what I wanted as a teenager, stories that reflected the things that my friends and I were going through. Laurie Halse Anderson and Ellen Hopkins do exactly that. I could only dream of writing stories as important and compelling as Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak and Wintergirls. Every time I re-read Speak I know why I write. And Ellen Hopkins blows me away on multiple levels. Not only are her stories powerful, realistic tales that teens need, she does them in free verse. That's another thing I'd love to try my hand at some day, but fear I'd fail as badly as I did when emulating Sylvia Plath. So I guess I'll keep writing my edgy contemporary YAs as regular narrative. But the other thing that makes me admire Ellen so much is the way she constantly takes a stand about censorship. Her books are so important for teens to read and when someone tries to take them out of the hands of the readers that need them, Ellen speaks up. Yeah, that's huge writerly crush material for me.

Last, I just want to mention my newest writerly crush, Julie Buxbaum. I'm currently working on a book that is a little older, about a bartender mother who is approaching 40 and her daughter who has just finished her first year of college, so I wanted to read some adult fiction as I haven't in a while. I asked for recommendations on Twitter and was pointed to Julie Buxbaum's After You. It was such a powerful story about grief and the ways in which we overcome it and the writing was just SO good. Julie writes spot-on dialogue, she nails vivid little bits of description, and she weaves backstory in so well, which has always been one of my biggest struggles. So I've been using this book re-teach myself about writing. Those are my favorite kinds of writerly crushes, when I can be blown away by their words, but also learn from them.

What about you? Who are your writerly crushes?

Who are your writerly crushes?

2010-08-29T09:22:00.007-05:00

My biggest writerly crush is Jennifer Crusie, who writes adult romantic comedy.

You may ask, "Why do you have a crush on somebody who doesn't even write what you write?" Well, I DO write adult romantic comedy. Just not very well, apparently. And for the first time in years, I'm not even working on one at the moment because I have so many YA projects.

It's not that I don't love writing YA. I do. But my plan was always to write adult and YA romantic comedy, back and forth. The YA romantic comedy, Major Crush, sold quickly, kicking off that half of my career. The adult romantic comedies never did.

Luckily I have Jennifer Crusie to write those books for me. I have a terrible habit of reading a book--even a great book, even a classic--and thinking, "I would have done this differently." With Ms. Crusie I rarely feel this way. The last of her books I read was Fast Women last Thanksgiving, and I remember reading a few pages and saying to myself, "I AM SO GLAD TO BE READING THIS JENNIFER CRUSIE BOOK!" It's a nonstop party in my mind, I tell you.

Here is how much I love her books. I don't often recommend books to my mother because she is extremely picky and very snobby about romance novels in particular. She is more of a high-falutin' literature kind of girl. But Tell Me Lies is my favorite Crusie, I had just finished it, and I loved it SO MUCH that on a whim I sent it to my mother for her birthday. A month later I checked in to see if my mother had read it, and whether she had liked it. Not only had she read it and liked it, she had proceeded in that month to read all of the Jennifer Crusie books. ALL OF THEM.

So I guess it is not just me.

Even I have not read all of them. Here is my Jennifer Crusie TBR pile:

And I am thankful I have so much left to read. I savor them.

My gosh, have I sold you yet? Are you wondering where to start? As I've said, my favorite it Tell Me Lies. People who already like Crusie seem divided on whether that book is their favorite, too, or whether they hate it with the white heat of a thousand suns. It is one of those polarizing titles. The one everyone seems to love (though it is not one of my favorites) is Bet Me. I'm also partial to Welcome to Temptation and Crazy for You. Another good place to start would be Maybe This Time, which will be published on Tuesday! Congratulations Ms. Crusie!

Mine is pre-ordered.

I'd like to interrupt regular programming to say....

2010-08-27T16:39:00.002-05:00

My book is out! Thanks to the fantastic team at MTV Books, and to Stephanie Kuehnert for the fantastic cover quote!

Who are your writerly crushes?

2010-08-25T15:24:00.009-05:00

I’ve had dozens of writerly crushes over the years, but I’ll limit this blog to my top six. I discovered my first crush when I was a misfit preteen who liked animals more than people. (Some days I still do!) Paul Gallico wrote lovely allegorical novels featuring animal characters who were often mistreated. The allegory flew over my head, but I fell in love with Thomasina the cat, Ludmila the cow, the Snow Goose, and his other charming creatures.

A later crush was Richard Peck. I’m a sucker for a man with a sense of humor, so crushing on him was inevitable. I laughed through Ghosts I Have Been and the rest of the Blossom Culp series, moved to A Long Way From Chicago, and spent A Year Down Yonder, giggling like a love-struck fool. What a guy!

My crush list wouldn’t be complete without Lois Lowry and J.K. Rowling. I’m in awe of their ability to create imaginary worlds down to the smallest detail. Lois Lowry’s works have sensitive characters and a mystical quality that draws me in and holds me spellbound. J.K. Rowling fashioned a world in which the setting has as much personality as the humans—and nonhumans. Speaking of world building, reading Uglies gave me a major writerly crush on Scott Westerfeld whose futuristic world blew me away.

The last crush on my short list is Michael Palmer, a best-selling author who weaves mystery, murder, and obscure medical conditions into page-turning thrillers. When I joined Facebook, I worked up the nerve to message him introducing myself and telling him about my first novel, fairest of them all, which was in publication. He sent me a gracious reply, congratulated me on being published, and invited me to get in touch if I was ever in Boston. How could I not have a crush on an author like that?

That’s my short list of writerly crushes. With so many spectacular books being published all the time, I expect many more writerly crushes in my future.

Who are your writerly crushes?

2010-08-23T18:10:00.004-05:00

I have two writerly crushes, and I was thrilled to actually spend time with one of them only last week! My favorite author is Bret Easton Ellis and I was fortunate enough to interview him when he came to Australia to promote his new book "Imperial Bedrooms", a sequel to the debut novel that made him a literary superstar 25 years ago, "Less Than Zero."

I was a bit nervous about meeting him but he was just the most lovely person you could ever meet: kind, funny and generous. He's even more of a hero to me now because he is so supportive of up-and-coming writers. It made me feel inspired about my work again and ready to dive back into another manuscript. It's so wonderful when your heroes turn out to be fantastic people. Meeting Bret was definitely one of the high-points of my life.

My other literary crush is the gorgeous, down-to-earth, regular joe Mr. Stephen King. I started reading King when I was nine and he has been an enormous influence on my work. I'll be in New York in a few weeks and we plan on driving to Maine to see his house! Tragic, I know. Is it wrong that I want to give him a cuddle?

Who Are Your Writerly Crushes?

2010-08-22T12:16:00.007-05:00

Writerly crushes, huh? This is an interesting question because my reading is so all over the place. And truth is, I have a lot of writerly crushes because in every book I love, I find something to admire about the writer.

However, in narrowing things down, the one that immediately came to mind is Anne Rivers Siddons. Specifically her first novel, Heartbreak Hotel.

That cover is what it looked like when I discovered it, hidden in the bowels of my high school library. I've since worn through about six different copies. I love this book and the way that Siddons writes in it, because it's so lush and alive. She brings to life within the first three pages a very specific type of heroine, that could have only existed in that place, at that time (being a college town in Alabama in 1956). It's very much a coming-of-age story, where Maggie, the heroine, learns about herself over the course of one summer, within the context of the bigger events surrounding her and what has always transported me into that world is the beauty and lushness of Siddons' language and cadences. (Yeah, I sound more than a little lovestruck, don't I?)

Another one of my writerly crushes is screenwriter Richard Curtis (Four Weddings & a Funeral, Notting Hill, Love Actually).

Even though the ending of Four Weddings completely annoyed me (I've long suspected that some American woman did bad things to him at some point, because he's not very kind in his portrayals of them, all the way back to his adaptation of Bridget Jones's Diary.) the reason I love him as a writer is because he's not afraid to make the hard choices and take the easy way out in every story he tells. He gets all of the nuances of love and humanity and isn't afraid to let his characters make mistakes. Big ones. That they can't always recover from. That's the sort of emotion I try to infuse my work with. It's a work in progress.

One more crush I should mention is Barbara O'Neal/Barbara Samuel.

And not just because she's got a great first name. She has such a beautiful command of her craft, both strong and ethereal, which is really quite a trick, when you think about it. Her lush, evocative use of language just makes me want to go back and practice until I Get it Right.

Oh, and because I wouldn't be me without mentioning some musicians, I love the stories that Sting and Mary Chapin Carpenter tell within the context of their songs. In four minutes, they can spin epics. I could go on forever, but I'll leave you with just one example from Chapin's latest CD, The Age of Miracles.

She has a song, "Mrs. Hemingway," that's an imagining of the story of the love affair between Ernest and his first wife, Hadley (about whom not much is known, comparatively speaking).

Two steamer trunks in the carriage
Safe arrival we cabled back home
It was just a few days before Christmas
We filled our stockings with wishes
And walked for hours
Arm in arm through the rain, to the glassed-in café
It held us like hothouse flowers

Just right there, in those few lines, she's drawn this lovely, poignant, vivid picture. I wish I could find a link to a recording, but there don't seem to be any, because the music really adds to the ambience-- just a lovely, gentle waltz that speaks to another time.

Okay, I'll quit waxing rhapsodic now and let someone else have a shot.

Who are Your Writerly Crushes?

2010-08-20T10:41:00.005-05:00

When I saw this question I didn't have to think that hard. I'd just finished reading Sonya Sones' WHAT MY GIRLFRIEND DOESN'T KNOW for the upteenth time while on vacation (I'd brought a bunch of new books, was disappointed with them, stopped reading them and reached for Sonya's book because I knew it was guaranteed pleasure).

So I'm fine with admitting that my writerly crush is Sonya Sones. I love her books so much. I wish she could publish them as quickly as I read them (impossible).

What makes them so special? They're written in verse, for one thing. Sounds odd, right, they're poems! But they're not! But they are. Yet Sonya's books are brilliant. Every word counts. How she can convey so much on a single page with maybe 50 words is beyond me. And she manages to make an entire book out of it!

If you haven't read Sonya's books, please do so. Every one of them is perfect. And you will wonder how the heck she manages to do so much with so little.

What's In a Name?

2010-08-17T20:14:00.004-05:00

I always wonder about how authors name books - or even if they do!! I've named all of my books except two.

I could not for the life of me think of names for what became LOCAL GIRLS and RICH BOYS. I thought the title BAREFOOT SUMMER would work for LOCAL GIRLS, but my editor was like, "Eh." In the end, it was my editor who came up with the titles for those books. They're short. They go together. They describe the books. Supposedly. I have to admit, I didn't, and don't love those titles. I think they sound kinda dumb. As in vapid and stupid. I mean, I do love the pictures on the covers, but when combined with the titles they look really just stupid. As in bubblegum, pop song, air bubble stupid. And I think they're not like that. The girls aren't dumb. The boys aren't dumb. It's not about silly people, yet the names sort of seem silly. But, I couldn't come up with anything better. So they stuck.

I called THE BOOK OF LUKE by its title from the start. But when it came time to submit the manuscript to my editor I wasn't sure she'd go for the biblical sounding name. So I offered up ALMOST PERFECT as a title. Turns out my publisher loved the LUKE title. And so it stuck over the alternative.

PLAN B was PLAN B from the first words I typed on the page.

My adult books were always what they were except DRESS REHEARSAL. Which I changed to JUST DESSERTS to play off the character's profession midway through. My editor loved DRESS REHEARSAL and so I changed it back.

The book I'm writing now doesn't have a title. My friend's 9 year old daughter came up with the title HEARTLESS. But that just sounds so mean, and it's not a mean book. So I'm waiting for that a-ha moment when the perfect title just pops into my head. I sure hope it happens soon. I hate not having a name. I hate looking at the first page of my manuscript and reading "Book #5." I want a title!!!

So how did you come up with your book's title? Or did you?

Let's get physical

2010-08-16T05:55:00.005-05:00

I have a confession to make. I don't exercise.

I used to. Not so long ago I was at the gym every day, sweating it up with the best of them. But then my love of the gym was overtaken by my love of writing, and as my word count went up the daily visits with the treadmill fell by the wayside.

For a while I didn't really think about it. I'd traded one obsession for another, and I figured as long as I still ate healthy food then my lack of exercise wouldn't be a problem. But I just got a big wake-up call.

Last week I woke up with what doctor's call a 'tension headache.' It's the same as a migraine but without the pain of a headache. My head felt like it was in a vice and I could feel numbness spreading across my nose and cheeks. It felt like someone had rested a hand on my head. Oh my God, I thought, I'm having a stroke!

So I went to the doctor and he introduced me to this term called 'tension headache' which is apparently something people get when they are really stressed, have bad posture and don't exercise. When the doctor asked me if anything could be causing me stress I laughed in his face. "Oh please, I'm a writer!" I cackled, "What do YOU think??"

So he sent me off to a physiotherapist and now I have to go three times a week to fix my neck, which is the source of the tension headache. If I got my ass off the couch every once in a while this probably wouldn't have happened. I keep making excuses for my lack of exercise, like I'm too busy with my writing, but then I remember reading an interview with Augusten Burroughs, and HE exercises every day and is really buff, and still manages to churn out the odd book or two. But still I can't seem to find the time, and I'm paying the price for it.

So tell me, do YOU find time to exercise around writing, and if so, please tell me how!!!

A little bit of summer fun

2010-08-16T03:12:00.000-05:00

Whew, it is hard to believe that it is the middle of August and summer is almost over. As usual, I feel like I missed it.

The past two years I've had a book to promote during the middle of summer and that seemed to take up all my time. Last year, I also had a wedding to plan. This year I thought I might get a little bit more enjoyment out of summer, but between constantly sick cats, severe weather that has led to two basement floods, and the race to finish my work-in-progress before my agent goes on maternity leave.... Not so much. To make matters worse, the work-in-progress does not feel like it's progressing at all and I'm not going to have the satisfaction of a finished book by Labor Day, possibly not even by the end of September. This is just not my year.

But I did have a few pleasant summer moments to look back fondly on.

First: visits with friends. I did not do nearly enough of this. I never seem to have enough free time to see everyone that I want to see. But I went on two very lovely picnics, one with my best friend on the fourth of July and one with my thirteen year-old pseudo-niece. There is just something simple and perfect about eating outdoors. And I had the chance to visit with some out of town friends. One came in from Los Angeles and we had a barbecue. And then I spent my birthday in St. Louis with some friends of ours and we went to the City Museum there which is basically like a big indoor/outdoor playground for grown-ups (well, and kids too, I guess). So I did get to go on a roof-top ferris wheel with my husband:

And tunnel through the giant indoor cave system with my friend Jenny:

Two, I was able to pay slightly more attention to my garden this year. I haven't been able to weed it as much as I would like and it kind of looks like a mess because things are either overgrown due to the extreme rain or drying out due to the extreme heat, but I'm starting to get some actual vegetables from it. Here you see a handful of green beans, some pickling cucumbers, two types of hot peppers, and a lot of tomatos:

My town also got a farmer's market this year so I've been able to buy a lot of fresh local produce as well. And speaking of fabulous things in my town, this brings us to the biggie....

Last but not least, I finally FINALLY went to my town's pool this year. So what, you are probably thinking, but you see I have wanted to go to this pool since I was a little kid when we lived in the neighboring town. My parents never took me because we lived two blocks from a pool, so why drive to one. This is the pool of my childhood fantasies:

Yep, those are two big waterslides you see in the center there. And not pictures are the drop slides, which are part slide, part free fall into the diving pool.

The weekend after the second flood, I made the spontaneous decision to finally visit the pool because really, what can cheer you up better than waterslides. I also decided to lay by the pool and read a little bit, as that was a favorite childhood past-time of mine. I'm much less tolerant of the sun than I was back then, but aside from that, it was highly enjoyable.

The pool will be at the top of my list for next summer as well along with ACTUAL VACATION. I'm hoping to have the time and money for a road trip to South Dakota or possibly all the way to Montana with my husband. We shall see. But I guess I better get back to writing that book to earn that vacation money.

How has your summer been? Busy or relaxing? And what were your favorite adventures?

The hard part

2010-08-13T17:09:00.002-05:00

On Wednesday I turned in my next novel, which will be published by MTV Books in July 2011. This is the one I’ve been referring to as THE BOOK WITH THE TITLE SO FABULOUS THAT I DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME. Actually it may not have that fabulous title after all. My literary agent doesn’t like it. I am always taken aback when I find out I am not as brilliant as I thought...although it happens pretty often and I ought to be getting used to it by now. Anyway, I came up with a title that’s less fabulous but also less likely to scare the children.

Assuming my editor likes the book and accepts it (see above re: finding out I am not as brilliant as I thought), soon all will be revealed to you: the not-fabulous-but-less-frightening title, the back cover description, the glorious cover itself...and I will get a revision letter. But that’s not the hard part! I love revisions.

Okay, there was one time when I didn’t love revisions, but that’s because I didn’t agree with them. Five times out of six I have agreed with the revision letter, and it hasn’t taken me long to use the editor’s advice to create a version of the book that’s better than the one before. If writing a novel is like cooking from scratch, including grinding the fresh spices and other stuff that does not actually go on at my house, revising a novel is like popping a frozen dinner into the microwave. It’s all right there for you and it’s easy!

The hard part—for me, the excruciating part—is coming up with the next book. I’ve had so many ideas for books rejected during my little baby career that I second-guess myself, and I’m afraid to start anything at all. I did get an idea while I was on vacation in Myrtle Beach in June, and I did a lot of research for it while I was there. But I'm afraid it’s not good enough.

So I will clean the bathrooms. I will clean the garage. I will organize my closet. I will cook gourmet dinners--I mean, I am not grinding spices or anything, but it's better than the frozen chicken fingers we've been having while I was trying to finish this book. I will read a lot. And then one day about two weeks from now, my husband will say, "Why are you so grumpy? Have you stopped writing? Can you please go write something and cheer up? Jesus!" I will start writing the new book before I really think I'm ready, and that's how the hard part will end.

Basically Speaking

2010-08-09T10:45:00.008-05:00

Last week I got an email from my brother Dan, who lives in Virginia. He’d gone to lunch with his friend “Sam” who’s writing his first novel. Sam knows I'm an author, so he was picking Dan’s brain for my secret to getting published. Like most authors, I receive lots of questions from people asking for the key to getting their books published. If I knew the answer to that, my novels would have been on the shelves 16 years ago. Even though there is no magic formula, writers can follow some steps to improve their chances:

ü Read widely in your genre, concentrating on books that have won awards for excellence. While it’s great to read the classics, be sure you read works that have been published in the last year or two. Writing trends change, and it’s important to keep current.

ü Write frequently in your genre, every day if possible.

ü Study writing techniques. Attend writing workshops, take college classes, follow authors’ blogs, visit writing chat rooms, subscribe to writing journals or e-zines, and read how-to books.

ü Join a professional writing association. On the Web you can find an association for almost every genre: mystery, romance, science fiction and fantasy, nonfiction, and children’s writing, to name a few. These associations provide almost endless opportunities for networking and education.

ü Join or form a writing/critique group. Hopefully, you will meet like-minded writers through your association, but you can also check local bookstores and libraries to see what writing groups meet there. Look for writers who are at or slightly above your level of expertise so you can pick their brains for ways to improve your skills.

ü Be certain your writing is up to professional standards by getting feedback from other writers, editors, and agents. Many writing conferences give you the opportunity to sign up for critiques from professionals at an added charge as well as breakout critique sessions with other writers that are included in your regular conference fees.

ü Be open to suggestions and criticism. All the feedback in the world is useless if you ignore it. Polish your writing until it is the best it can possibly be.

ü Research publishers through their Web sites, catalogues, and market guides. Target your submissions and follow all guidelines to the letter.

ü Keep trying, learning, and improving your skills until you meet with success!

Pictured above are some of the members of PAL of Central Iowa: Kimberly Stuart, Wendy Delsol, Wini Moranville, Kali VanBaale, Susan Maupin Schmid, me, Rebecca Janni, Mike Manno, and Sharelle Byars Moranville. We have books published in a variety of genres.

Battle of the Ideas

2010-08-07T10:33:00.005-05:00

I thought I'd share my idea process with you since I just finished writing Graveyard Shift and am about to start a new novel. Usually when I get about three quarters done with a book, I start entertaining new ideas for my next novel, storing them in the back of my brain. Sometimes I might write a quick synopsis for the idea or share with a friend via email and then it's back to work.

Well, this time around the ideas flooded in. By the time I finished Graveyard Shift I had about five viable ideas for novels. They ranged from historical YA to funny middle grade to contemporary YA. I liked all of the ideas and really wasn't sure which one I felt most compelled to write first. I even thought about going back to an older novel that needs work but that I still love. I did put together a synopsis for one of the ideas that my editor suggested and that I intend to write as long as he's interested. But while I'm waiting to hear back from him, I thought I might take a stab at one of the other ideas.

So I let them duke it out in my head, waiting to hear which idea screamed the loudest. In the meantime, I read a couple of fantastic novels, surfed the internet for inspiration and a lovely procrastination tool too:)! But still I was not sure which one to go with.

Then a few days later I went to Macy's to get my makeup done for my last Indigo Blues signing at Barnes & Noble. I would say that I'm a diva (getting my makeup done and all) but really I hardly ever wear makeup and thought I'd let the lovely expert fix me up, instead of risking looking like a clown. Anyway, while the Estee Lauder girl asked me to look up so she could apply mascara to my eyelashes an idea hit me. I had just been reading an article on my iPhone which didn't have much to do with my idea but somehow triggered my new story plot. I'm not ready to share yet as I'm still formulating the plot points but it's a mystery YA, a little different from my other books but filed with romance and tension and high stakes.

Once this idea hit me, I knew it was the one I wanted to run with. I just had to wait for that gut feeling. So there you have it folks, for me I have to wait for the right idea to get my adrenaline pumping! And now I just have to find the time to write the book!

What's the best and/or worst experience you've had at a writers' conference?

2010-07-30T10:23:00.002-05:00

I've never had the pleasure to go to one of the big industry conferences like RWA (Romance Writers Association) or SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators), I belong to both of those organizations, but didn't even know about them (or in the case of RWA, why I should join them) until after I was under contract to publish my first book. And since that point, I haven't had the time or money to go. I really hope this changes soon, possibly next year, as I imagine there is a lot to learn and a lot of fun author bonding time to be had. More than anything I kick myself for not joining these fine organizations before I was published because I probably would have known a lot more about the industry and other aspects of writing if I had. So aspiring authors, I highly recommend joining both organizations (if you write stories with even the teeniest bit of romance or if you write for children/teens, if not, there are other orgs out there, I just haven't had personal experience with them.)

I got most of my "writing education" through attending school for writing and I went to more academic writing conferences like AWP (Associated Writing Programs). These were definitely fun, though usually more than half of the panels didn't apply to me because they were about poetry or ummm something super literary that honestly made me feel dumb and like my books were fluff. But one of my coolest conference experiences was being on an AWP panel in 2009 when it was here in Chicago that was about pop culture and literature and (I believe) proved that if you write about superheroes or rock stars or make references to B-movies, your books can be just as interesting and powerful as those uber-literary books (in fact I'd say more interesting, but that's just me.)

I also enjoyed the socializing aspect of these conferences, though um... at 2 out of the three AWP conferences I attended, I enjoyed it too much, and got way too drunk with my literary friends and missed things I wanted to see because I was hungover. But um.... hopefully I've learned that lesson.

But definitely my ultimate conference moment was meeting my agent. This happened at a very small conference that my writing program at Columbia College Chicago puts on annually called Story Week Festival of Writers. It lasts a week and there are readings and panels with authors as well as people in the industry like agents and editors. All of the events are free and open to the public, but the advantage to being a Columbia student is that the teachers handpick some students to meet with the Story Week guests. In the past I'd gotten to meet with author John McNally, who in a half hour session, showed me how to inject humor into my darker stories to make them more accessible and also make the darker sides have more impact. John and I actually went on to become friends and he was the one who later helped me plan that AWP panel on pop culture. Then I'd also gotten to meet with Johnny Temple, publisher of Akashic Books, who also gave me some great feedback and that was pretty much what I thought I was going to get when I was told that I'd be meeting with agent Caren Johnson, who at the time was with Peter Rubie (now she goes by her married name Caren Estesen and runs her own agency Caren Johnson Literary Agency).

Caren read the first chapter of what would become I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone and I entered the office she occupied hesitantly with a notebook at the ready. The first words out of her mouth were, "I loved this. I want it. When can it be done?"

I was two-thirds of the way through the book at that point and seriously having writer's block. But as it was March, I decided a summer would give me enough time, so I told her, "Umm Labor Day?"

The cool thing was that she wanted my friend Katie's book, too, so I had someone to celebrate with. She took the two of us out to lunch and I stepped out of the academic world and started to learn about real writing industry stuff for the first time. I danced around giddily at Story Week's best event, Literary Rock N Roll, where writers read from the stage of Chicago's greatest rock venue, The Metro. (And if I ever get invited to do that event, it might become a top conference memory.) I felt like I was living in a dream world. I knew that this was not how authors generally found agents, so it seemed like a Cinderella story.

Of course, the part of the Cinderella story we never hear is how Cinderella's married life with the prince actually works out and how she adjusts to going from living among the ashes and evil step-sisters to being royalty. I'm sure it wasn't all happily-ever-afters and of course neither was my journey. I did a lot of hard work and revisions for Caren before she decided the manuscript was ready to shop, a little less than a year after I met her, and it was more than two years after I met her that I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE actually sold. During that time, Caren changed agencies and opened her own, Caren Johnson Literary Agency, but she always stuck by me and continued to encourage me when it seemed like IWBYJR wasn't going to sell. She believed in the book more than I did at times.

So I didn't just meet an agent that was interested, I met an agent who was truly passionate about my work and really believed in me... and honestly now that I think about it, I don't believe any other conference experience *could* top that, even being invited to be a part of Literary Rock N Roll. I was invited to read at the Harold Washington Library as part of Story Week, which was a huge honor and what made it even better was they had Caren back that year, so she got to attend my event and go to dinner with me, my mom, and my critique partner afterwards. That was another cool moment.

So my conclusion is that conferences are definitely worth it, even the little local ones--maybe especially those, since you never know who you'll meet!

What's the best and/or worst experience you've had at a writers' conference?

2010-07-26T12:02:00.005-05:00

I started going to writing conferences long before I was a published author. I arrived at my first one not knowing anyone or what to expect, although I was sure everyone would be much more experienced than I was. Some writers were, but many others were first-timers, too. I was thrilled to have my manuscript critiqued by a “real” editor who wasn’t completely horrified by my writing. But by far the best part of my experience was all the friendly, encouraging people I met.

Since then I’ve tried to attend at least one writing conference a year. I’ve been privileged to meet wonderful children’s authors like Sid Fleishman, Bruce Coville, Jane Yolen, Lin Oliver, and R.A. Nelson. I’ve lunched with agents, editors, art directors, and dozens of writers. And I’ve learned that people who write for children are the friendliest, most supportive, most helpful people I know. We celebrate each other’s successes and commiserate about our setbacks.

Now to answer the question of my best and worst conference experiences. By far, my best experience—although I didn’t realize it at the time—was meeting my fabulous agent, Rosemary Stimola in April 2005. I’d sent in a middle grade manuscript and requested that she be the conference speaker to critique it. She didn’t like it, but she liked some things about my writing and the first page of a work-in-progress called Crowning Glory. Two years later I completed the manuscript and queried her. The result was my first published novel, Fairest of Them All. That conference experience is pretty hard to top!

My worst experience, which was mostly just annoying, was also with an agent who was also supposed to critique Crowning Glory. I’d sent in the required first 10 pages and synopsis long before the conference deadline. During our meeting he commented several times that there was nothing that set my manuscript apart from all the other “beauty queen” stories out there. I bit my tongue until he’d finished and then I asked, “Doesn’t the fact that her hair falls out make it different?” He flipped through the 10 pages I’d sent and said, “I didn’t see that here,” to which I replied, “It’s in the synopsis.” His response, “I never read those.”

There was $35.00 flushed down the john!

That conference experience was my only “bad” one, and it’s been far outweighed by everything I’ve learned and the memorable people I’ve met. When the next conference registration form pops up in my email, there’s a good chance I’ll be signing up.

"What's the best and/or worst experience you've had at a writers' conference?"

2010-07-19T20:26:00.004-05:00

I haven't attended a lot of conferences. In fact, I can count them on one hand - 2 "major" industry conferences and maybe 3 minor ones. And I haven't had any badly memorable experiences at any of them. In fact, only good experiences. Probably because I never attended a conference until I was a published author, so I was usually speaking on a panel or signing books. And that's a blast. And nothing I'd ever complain about.

My favorite conference experience: I got to meet, sit next to and talk extensively with Ruppert Holmes, singer of the infamous "Pina Colada" song. The man is brilliant. Hadn't even known he was a writer. He is funny and smart (used to write songs for porn movies and has greatly amusing stories). The thing is, I LOVED that song in sixth grade, owned it and knew every word of the lyrics. It was a watershed moment for me. I went home and called my best friend from sixth grade and told her. She was equally in awe of the greatness I had shared a table with during an autograph session.

I haven't attended a conference in four years. And the one thing I really enjoyed, and sorta miss now that I'm reminded of how long it's been, is hanging out with other authors. Authors are fun and friendly and a great crew to hang out with. And four years is way to long to go without such great company.

MTV Author Snapshot: Kathy Charles

2010-07-18T23:58:00.035-05:00

Hello everybody!

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Kathy Charles and my debut novel, John Belushi is Dead, will be released on August 24 by MTV Books. John Belushi is Dead (or JBID as I shall forthwith refer to it) is about teenagers living in Los Angeles who are obsessed with dead celebrities. I am so excited to be here, and look forward to getting to know you all through the MTV Authors blog!

I thought for my first post I would just share some of the things in my life that are important to me, so you can get a sense of the type of gal I am. Let us begin! Heeyah!

My favorite book: It's a tie between 'Pet Sematary' by Stephen King and 'Lunar Park' by Bret Easton Ellis.

My favorite movies: Mulholland Drive, Annie Hall, An American Werewolf in London, L.A. Story.

My favorite dead celebrities: John Belushi (of course!), Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, James Dean.

My favorite music: Neil Young, Frank Black, Modest Mouse, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Arcade Fire, The Doors, Marilyn Manson, Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

If I could have lived during any period in any place it would have been: Laurel Canyon in the 1970s, right in the heart of the music scene. Joni Mitchell and Neil Young would have been my neighbors.

Starsign: Libra.

My day job: I work in the film industry as a sound post production supervisor. This means I coordinate the final sound mix for a movie before it goes to print. It's a pretty stressful job but it's also very creative, and I get to meet lots of interesting people.

Weird stuff I'm into: I'm a big true crime buff and I'm interested in serial killers, cults and the paranormal. Yes, I'm weird. I know.

Why I write: Because it's fun! I'm a big fan of popular culture and am really interested in how it affects our lives and shapes who we are. Music and movies have had such an enormous impact on the person I am, and I'm interested in exploring this relationship between people and pop culture in my writing.

My writing habits: I write after I get home from work and on the weekends, but only after I've walked my very demanding little pug dog. When I'm working on a first draft I write 1000 words a day on weekdays, 2000 words a day on weekends.

So there you have it! Me in a nutshell. I can't wait to start blogging with all the other wonderful MTV authors, and if you'd like to know even more about me you can check out my website where I also blog about the weird and wonderful stuff I'm into. Until next time, adios!

What's the best and/or worst experience you've had at a writers' conference?"

2010-07-18T19:12:00.003-05:00

I am a huge fan of writers' conferences and attend at least two every year. One of the main reasons I go is to get to hang out with author buddies and meet new ones too. There is something in the air at comnferences because I am always super charged to write when I leave them.

I've never had any really bad experiences at a conference, thankfully. I've heard editors tell stories about how writers follow them into the bathrooms, even trying to slide their manuscripts under the stalls. I've certainly seen some interesting "characters" breeze through conferences. You know the ones who wake up in the morning and decide to write a book and have it published the next day! Not surprisingly, these people do not usually come back the next year. They're probably off to try a new hobby like brain surgery or rocket science. But I must say that most everyone I meet from writers to editors to agents at conferences are so helpful and sweet.

The best thing that has come out of conferences for me is buliding relationships with other authors, editors and agents. Publishing is really a small world and you will run into people again and again! Plus, I have picked up a lot of great writing tips and strategies from other presenters.

I taught my first SCBWI YA workshop this past June (see pic above of me) with my Flux editor Brian Farrey and it was such a great experience. Not only do we have a lot of talented writers in South Florida, but it was also wonderful to work alongside my editor and actually meet him in person. I hope to lead a lot more conference workshops in the future because I really enjoy sharing what I have learned over the years. As writers we spend a lot of time, well, writing and it is really nice to get out of the house and socialize with people that have the same interests! So what are you waiting for? Go, get out there, and sign up for a local writers' conference in your area. You'll thank me:).

The DIY Writer's Retreat

2010-07-16T12:08:00.007-05:00

Sunday afternoon, I'll be driving a couple of hours northwest to a cabin in a state park with my mom and a friend. Vacation? Well, for my mom it is. She will be bird watching and hiking and catching up on her reading. For me and my friend/critique partner Jenny, it will be a writer's retreat.

I've applied for artist's residencies in the past and never gotten in (of course this was pre-publication so maybe now my resume would hold a little more weight). I was incredibly disappointed at first, but then I realized I could do it myself. All I needed was

1. A location away from civilization. Preferably without reliable internet access.

2. A few creative people to go with me to share inspiration, cooking duties, and a bottle of wine at the end of the night.

In the summer of 2005, I had to finish my first novel because I'd met my agent at a conference at my school and she'd loved the first chapter and I told her I'd have it to her by Labor Day. I was still in grad school at the time and had three other good friends who were very serious about their writing and willing split the cost of renting a place to write for a week. I wanted to go somewhere in Southern Wisconsin since that is where I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE is set. We found this place in Mineral Point, Wisconsin:

We went for five days (or maybe it was six?) and spent all day writing, then one of us cooked a vegan friendly meal (my friends are so awesome and accommodating of my dietary choices), and we built a fire and drank a ton of wine. Probably too much wine. This is all of the wine the four of us drank in a week. Mind you, we were grad students:

Despite all the wine-drinking, it was very productive and I hoped to be able to do it again.

Then in 2007, when I was halfway through writing BALLADS OF SUBURBIA, a former professor of mine told me about a writer's retreat he'd created in a house in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada. Right by the sea! And he invited my friend/critique partner Katie and me to spend 10 days there for free! All we had to do was pay airfare! So I asked my parents for money for my birthday and Katie and I flew to New Hampshire and then drove north. We stayed in the house with two other guys, writers from other colleges, and another guy who wrote and also watched over the house for my prof.

This was by far my most productive writer's retreat. I got up early in the morning and bundled up (it was late November) to walk down to the sea:

Then I did some pilates, showered, ate breakfast and sat down to write.... usually for 10 to 12 hours with lunch and dinner breaks. (Katie and I usually cooked together. We'd lived together before and had a good cooking rapport.) Then I collapsed on the couch with my fellow writers to watch TV (House or Degrassi) or a movie. I think we only went out drinking once. I finished half of BALLADS and did a revision on it in those 10 days.

Last year, I was struggling to get a novel started, so I asked my friend/critique partner Jenny if she wanted to go somewhere to write for 5 days. This time another professor volunteered to let us use her summer home near Iowa. Jenny and I wrote by day, then one of us made dinner, then we did a mini-writer's workshop and settled down for a glass of wine and watched Veronica Mars. I also read a ton that week. It wasn't as productive writing wise as I had been in the past because I was struggling to start something--actually an early, very different version of what I'll be working on this year.

This year, my mom was grumbling about how she hadn't taken a real vacation at years (she has spent her time off doing things around the house) and she'd love to go to a state park or Michigan or Wisconsin. So I ran the idea past her of going to a cabin with Jenny and me, explaining that we'd be writing during the day, but we'd cook a meal at night and could have some wine and watch movies or tv shows. Mom loved the idea. And knowing that our financial situations aren't as good as hers, she agreed to foot half the bill! (In return, Jenny and I are doing most of the cooking.) So we found a nice cabin near a state park with a full kitchen, a TV (not that we really needed that, we can watch DVDs on our laptops), and probably way more cushy amenities than we actually need.

My plan is to work on my "bartender book." I've recently posted two teasers from it on my blog here and here. I am 130 pages into it and hoping to finish it by September so my agent can get it out to the world before she goes on maternity leave. It might be quite a stretch because I'm a much slower writer than I'd like to be, but my agent and I have decided that I really need to write and try to sell full manuscripts rather than partials (and my anxieties over that and that process of coming to that decision is detailed here.), but I'm really in the zone with this book, so I'm hoping my natural binge habits will emerge on this trip and it will be quite productive.

I've also got some excellent meals planned thanks to the new cookbook that my hubby got me for my birthday. I picked up a couple bottles of wine from Trader Joe's. And Mom got me seasons three and four of the Gilmore Girls for my birthday, specifically so we'd have them to watch on this trip. (The Gilmore Girls has been a huge inspiration for the bartender book because of the quirky mother/daughter relationship.) I've also got a stack of books to sort through to bring with me for nightly reading. (Among the top contenders: Tell Me A Secret by Holly Cupala, the latest in Jeri Smith-Ready's WVMP series, the latest in Alyson Noel's Immortals series, and possibly The Lightning Thief since I haven't read that series yet, but I think I might need more contemporary women's or commercial fiction if anyone has suggestions since those are the categories that my agent says my new book falls into.) Mom is also adding board and card games to the mix this time--she has a fine collection of them, mostly word related so they should be good for the muse.

I am beyond psyched for this trip and while I am planning to apply for a fabulous looking writer's residency in Washington next year (because I always am looking for an excuse to visit Washington), I am happy with my DIY retreats.

Fellow writers, what kind of retreats have you done or would you like to do?

Synopsis + Bio = Torture!

2010-07-08T15:43:00.007-05:00

Before Fairest of Them All was published, I was one writer among thousands hoping to catch an editor’s attention. I revised my stories eight or nine times and proofread each one meticulously because I knew editors expected polished manuscripts. I studied formatting guidelines and followed them to the letter. My margins were exact, my headers and page numbers were placed just so. A slave to every single detail, I spent countless hours creating a manuscript that was a work of art.

Flushed with success and a little woozy from switching the font size from 11 to 12 and back again 50 or so times, I grabbed my trusty market guide and turned to the first publisher on my list. Looking for contemporary young adult fiction from 50,000-70,000 words. Couldn’t be more perfect! Query with synopsis and brief author bio. How hard can that be?

A dozen or so synopses later, I can answer that question. Writing a synopsis is like painting a mural on the wings of a hornet. You have to make the most of a very small space, and there’s no room for error. All that’s required is condensing your 300-page novel into a page, a paragraph, or—my personal favorite—a single sentence. Remember to describe the main characters, setting, and plot while capturing the voice of your story. And don’t be too wordy.

Coming up with a brief bio is equally difficult. What does “brief” mean? 100 words? 200? More? Should I include my education, publishing experience, interests, significant other, pets, blood type, and/or favorite shade of nail polish? When I Googled to find some examples, I got 25,000,000 hits on author bios. Just terrific.

It’s embarrassing that I can write a 50,000-word novel but can’t come up with a coherent summary of it. Two months ago my agent asked me for a one-sentence synopsis of my upcoming book, A&L Do Summer. After ten pathetic attempts I finally wrote something she didn’t have to change--too much. I can only imagine how much hair she pulled out as she read and politely rejected each one.

That’s my sad story. Does anyone else have synopsis/bio phobia? It would really help to know I’m not alone.

Vacation, all I ever wanted...

2010-07-07T11:02:00.002-05:00

Summer vacation is in full swing-- around here, it's mostly meant no alarms, no homework, just basically taking it easy. I suppose this either makes me the world's best mom or the world's worst mom, depending on who you're asking. My kids, so far, think it's great, because there are no demands on their time. I think it's great because there are no demands on my time. I'm sure there are super moms out there who think it's terrible, since I don't have every moment of their summer planned to the nth degree. But I'm sort of a purist that way-- I happen to think summer's about being a kid. Which isn't to say we're not doing anything. We're in a new, glorious part of the country, with lots to explore, lots of different festivals and events to go to, and best of all, weather that doesn't leave you feeling damp, gross, and thinking you're breathing through a warm, wet washcloth. We're also taking advantage of the type of city we live in, with both kids going to a computer/software camp in August. Gotta love living in a cradle of technology.

There's also a family vacation on tap in a few weeks in the form of a cruise. My in-laws will be celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary in November, but they decided to celebrate early, to take advantage of summer vacation with my kids, so they're taking all of us on an Alaskan cruise. (Also taking advantage of our convenient location as a cruise ship port.) Frankly, I'm beyond excited for this vacation. The husband and I went on an Alaskan cruise for our honeymoon-- in fact, it's when we first fell in love with this part of the country and decided that we'd one day live here-- and the cruise will coincide with our eighteenth wedding anniversary. (Who let us get married that young? I mean, really?)

The cruise itself ought to be interesting. I mean, it's a family vacation and the dynamics, as in all families, can be... interesting. I keep coming back to two thoughts: one, lots of potential material and two: big, freakin' boat. If things get too crazy, I see a lot of spa time in my future.

It'll be good to be relaxed, too, since on my return, I'll be attending my first Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference in Los Angeles and I'm absolutely freaking. out. I haven't missed RWA in over six years and I'll be the new kid on the block and I won't know anyone and... and...

Yeah, I'm a big chicken.

So, now that we're into July, any summer plans for you guys?

See the World

2010-07-06T14:40:00.002-05:00

I've been receiving a lot of emails from readers around the world lately, from Ireland to Spain to Brazil. And that's very cool. And makes me feel very boring here in a suburb of Boston.

I also just finished reading a book about a girl who travels to China in the second half of the story, and I really enjoyed it. Which made me realize that I always love books about exotic places, places I'd like to go. But I also love stories that take place at home, in a 'normal' location.

I've always had an idea for a sequel to PLAN B where Vanessa and Reed head to Europe for the summer where he's filming a movie. Thing is, even though I've been to Europe a few times, to really write about it well I think I'd need to spend a lot of time there. When I wrote LOCAL GIRLS and RICH BOYS I spent a ton of time on Martha's Vineyard with a notebook and pencil taking notes. I think it's so important to get the details right. I seriously doubt research via the Internet could substitute for the sounds and colors of being there in person to actually feel what it's like.

One of the emails I received recently from a girl in Europe asked in Martha's Vineyard was a real place. That made me even more concerned that I get the surroundings right in my books. If someone is experiencing a place for the first time through my book, I sure want them to feel like they're right there!

What about you? If you write, do you have to experience it yourself to get it right? Or can you imagine what it's like? Do you like reading about places you haven't been to? If you've been somewhere and read about it, have you ever been disappointed when an author got it totally wrong?

How do you deal with rejection?

2010-07-01T16:47:00.002-05:00

You'd think that after dealing with more than a year's worth of rejection for my first novel, I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, before it finally got picked up by MTV Books that I would have this handling rejection thing down pat.

Not so much. I'm an emotional Cancer girl. I'm a volatile creative type. I still suffer from really low self-esteem at times. Rejection, bad reviews, and the general instabilities of being a writer (not having any control about how many copies of your book are printed, how it is promoted, and whether you will ever make something resembling a living off of it) always send me into a horrible tail-spin. I can't tell you how many times I've considered throwing my pen (or laptop, I guess) down and quitting because clearly I am Not Good Enough.

But the thing is I can't quit. There is always a story that needs telling. While I was trying to figure out an alternate career path and berating myself for spending so many years and so much money on not one but two degrees in Creative Writing while IWBYJR wasn't selling, I was also writing BALLADS OF SUBURBIA. Because I couldn't NOT write it.

So I guess that is when I developed my two prong approach to coping with rejection:

1. Freak out.

2. Write my way through it.

More often than not, I am doing both at the same time.

I freak out in different ways to different people. My agent gets the emails where I try to figure things out. My critique partners and writer friends get the emails that are part plans-of-action, part rants about the unfairness of it all. My husband and mother get the full-on nervous breakdowns.

And then I piece together the plans that I make with agent and critique partners, as well as the writerly sympathy, advice and anecdotes from critique partners and writer friends and the plain old cheerleading and nurturing I get from husband and mom and I go back to work.

I was lucky after IWBYJR sold. I got a teeny bit of respite in that BALLADS OF SUBURBIA sold before IWBYJR even came out. For about a year there I was floating on cloud nine. Then IWBYJR got some bad reviews (don't get me wrong, it got lots of good ones, but I really focused on the bad ones for awhile), the print run for BALLADS got cut, and at the beginning of this year, my third book got it's first rejection. I only freaked out a little bit with that one because I already had an idea for tweaking it and selling it as a women's fiction book rather than a YA and I had this brilliant idea for another YA that I was already writing.

Then the partial for that YA went out on submission and started piling up rejections. When my dream editor said no to it. I lost it. Worst nervous breakdown yet. But somehow, I got up the next morning and continued work on my revamped women's fiction project.

The rejections kept coming and I kept writing. I took what I could from them to strengthen my writing in general and I will steel myself and look at them again for more specific pointers in the coming weeks. Once the women's fiction project goes out, I will turn back to that YA project. The partial has been rejected by 11 editors, but most of them requested to see the full if if I write it. So I'll will. Because I have to. Because it will keep me strong while the women's fiction project inevitably picks up some rejections. Because both are stories I need to tell.

I will cry. I will write angry emails and emails questioning my abilities as a writer. I will write brainstorming emails. I will eat too many salty things on one day and too many sweet things the next. I will do kickboxing workout DVDs to work through the aggression (and the over-consumption of salty and sweet things). I will probably drink too much on at least one day and keep my husband up all night as I alternate between rage at the unfairness of it all and depression that is nearly as bad as it was in my teenage years. The next morning, I will be hungover and sulk on the couch watching bad TV.

But ultimately I will drink lots of tea and sit down at my computer. I will get lost in the story and hanging out with the characters that I love. I will continue to write because I have to, because their story needs to be told, because despite my often pessimistic, volatile Cancer artist girl personality, I believe that an editor will see that too.

How to handle rejection like a professional published author

2010-06-28T18:54:00.002-05:00

1. Call critique partner. Whine.

2. Tell critique partner you need to get off the phone so you can go cry.

3. DO NOT CRY.

4. E-mail agent. Whine.

5. Text husband. Whine. Strangely, husband claims later that he never received this text, though he responded to the one you sent right after this about your son's friend insisting that you crawl onto the roof to retrieve his Nerf darts.

6. Run five miles.

7. Clean. Vacuum or mop every floor in your house. Dust furniture you didn't even know you had. While cleaning, think to yourself, "It's good that I get rejected every once in a while. Otherwise the baseboards would never get scrubbed." Also: "I am so glad I am a professional published author. If I'd gotten this rejection before I was published, it would have taken me months to get over it. But now...gosh, I hardly feel anything."

8. Eat your own weight in ice cream.

9. Sleep.

10. Wake up in the morning feeling refreshed, almost as if you were never rejected, and your beloved main characters were never shot execution-style and buried underneath your front lawn.

How do you deal with rejection?

2010-06-25T13:59:00.007-05:00

Would you believe I’ve never had a manuscript rejected? Of course you wouldn’t. Facing up to rejection is a huge part of being an author, and it doesn’t go away for writers who’ve had 5, 10, or even 30 books published. If you're going to stick your neck into the publishing world, you'd better learn to deal.

Rejection hangs around even after you’ve sold your manuscript. The publisher may reject your title—Fairest of Them All was originally Crowning Glory, your main character’s name or age—Ori grew from 14 to 15 in one stroke of an editor’s pen, your favorite subplot--Rhonda's secret past went down the drain, even your book’s ending.

I’m pretty flexible when it comes to changing names, ages, and book titles, and I’ve deleted some of my favorite passages with minimal pouting. I haven’t been asked to change an ending, yet. That could be tough. But it’s been my experience that editors know what they’re talking about, so I’d try to listen with an open mind.

Back to the big question. How do I deal with having a manuscript turned down by a publisher or two or seven? Before I wrote Fairest of Them All I collected enough rejections to earn my Masters Degree in Rejectionology. For a couple of years, I let being rejected get me down to the point where I stopped sending out manuscripts. And it took several swift kicks in the rear—and tons of encouragement--from my writing group to help me get my courage up and try again.

Now that the giving-up stage of my writing life is over—Oh, yes it is!—this is my new process for dealing with rejection:

1. Forward the offending email to my writing group. I’m guaranteed a “How could they?” response within the hour.

2. Print out the email and turn it face down on my desk for a day--two days if it's really harsh.

3. Turn the email over and try to objectively read the details. One of the many perks of having an agent is getting meaningful feedback from editors. The generic “It’s not right for our list” we writers get from the slush pile doesn’t give us anything to go on.

4. Take another look at my manuscript and see if the feedback makes sense.

5. Drink wine, eat chocolate, and do what needs to be done!

How do you deal with rejection?

2010-06-23T11:17:00.004-05:00

To quote Jenny: "Not well."

I mean, come on, rejection sucks. You can prepare yourself for it. You can tell yourself over and over that this is a subjective business (true), that one man's (editor's) trash is another's treasure (also true), that all it takes is one person to love it (true), that they're making enormous mistakes and are going to kick themselves mightily like all the editors who passed on Harry Potter (okay, not likely, but a girl can dream, right?) but in the end, all you want to do is stomp your feet and shake your wee fists at the heavens and call everyone involved in saying "no" big ol' poopyheads (even if you know that's not in the slightest bit true-it's a business after all). Then you go eat lots of chocolate, drink wine, and watch Love Actually for the 483rd time. (That last one might just be me...)

And you know what? That's all okay. Up to a point. I've been told wallowing is good-- up to a point. I actually suck at it-- I have this mentality that demands I be all stoic and suck it up because I was well aware of what I was getting myself into when I signed up for this writing gig. And regardless of situation, I also have very little patience for extended wallowing-- actually, I have very little patience for wallowing period. But here's the thing-- sometimes, you just have to give yourself permission to wallow.

I never realized how important that could be until the most recent rejection, which came just a couple of weeks ago. I won't lie- it was spectacularly rough. You spend enough time in this industry, you'll hear every editor you come in contact with talk about how they're so tired of the status quo, how they want something different, unique, that gem that every editor wants to discover, the book that will really touch people. And if you have ambition and anything resembling an ego-- and yes, I do--you imagine that it's your book, the manuscript you love and have given your all to, that will be that book. And in this case, it's a book I have huge faith in, that I know is good, because despite all the rejections it's received, it's never been because the book wasn't good. It's because it was different. And editors don't know what to do with it. I think that's the hardest rejection to receive, in a lot of ways-- the one where you get the compliments on your craft and your storytelling and the fact that you've tackled an emotional, difficult subject with sensitivity and skill and made it work, but...

Oh, that "but..." is a bitch, isn't it?

And I knew it going in. I knew this book was difficult and it would take that one editor who loves it as much as I do and who has the power to push it through (because let's say it again, this is a business). Publishing is rough right now. And as much as editors might say that they want something beyond the status quo, so long as the status quo continues to sell, it's what's going to be bought. Yes, there are always going to be exceptions to the rule and yes, it stings that I couldn't be that exception (there's that ego thing again), but in the end, it is what it is. What am I going to do, quit?

As if.

So we come back to how I deal-

My writing group, the Tiaras, has a twenty-four hour rule. We're allowed to wallow in the muddy, boggy, chocolate-and-wine-soaked, romcom movie depths of disappointment for twenty-four hours. Then we haul ourselves out, shower, and sit our butts back down in the chair and get on with it, whatever form "it" takes. For some, it's the next project, for others, it's deciding where next to submit, for me, it's making a plan. Hello, Virgo here. I planned my midlife crisis fer heaven's sake! So it's a case of assessing where I'm at with everything, talking to my agent, deciding whether we're going to continue to submit or shelve the project for a while, and what the status is of my current projects. Even if nothing is set in stone, I feel better for having laid it all out with her-- it's just my particular quirk.

Oh, and more chocolate never hurts.

How do you deal with rejection?

2010-06-17T17:31:00.005-05:00

Rejection, I am all over you as long as there is hope! It’s par for the course and I’ve learned to pause and then quickly move on. I did not get published over night so I definitely had my fair share of rejection, which propelled me to hone my craft and keep on going.

However, if I never had hope, I think I would have quit a long time ago. That’s why it’s so important to surround yourself with positive people that respect what you’re doing. I am very happy to be part of a critique group that has definitely helped me grow and been there for me when I received those dreaded rejection letters. Also, my husband has always believed in me and supported me in my quest to be an author. To have him to lean on is awesome.

When I receive a rejection it definitely hits me but I quickly say, what next? If there is something to improve on I do and if not I just move on. Not everyone is going to like everything so I try not to take it personally. Besides, I have more important things to worry about. Like right now as I'm writing this blog, I'm also feeding the baby, cooking Boca burgers with the hopes that they'll pass as hamburgers, and playing referee in the fight over which one of my sons has a better secret passowrd!

I’ve heard rejection only makes you stronger and if you offer me chocolate I might agree with you, but I would be just fine without it! And on that note, I’m sending out good vibes to all on whatever type of rejection you’re fighting!

First Drafts & First Chapters

2010-06-15T06:51:00.001-05:00

For the past week I've been struggling with the first chapter of my work-in-progress (some of you know I have two works in progress, but in this case I mean the bartender book).

This book has had many different first chapters. To be far, I started writing it without really categorizing it (much like I did with I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone). Then I decided that I should try to write a book that was solidly YA. The partial I wrote didn't sell and I realized it's because the story was all wrong so I started it over as a book that will appeal to both adults and teens, but likely be called "women's fiction." (I really still hate labels as much as a I did as kid... so restrictive.) Anyway, the story is on the right path and I struggled so long with writing the perfect first chapter. And then I had one of those rare moments of clarity: my fighting cats jumped on my bed and I realized, Bar fight! Perfect!

Only it wasn't. My agent read it and pointed out it's flaws. I grumbled about it, pondered for a few days and realized she was right. Then I got this brilliant vision for the perfect intro that would capture the characters and the place and be chock full of imagery. I thought it would be about five pages. Right now it's a twenty-five page mess. *Sigh*

So what's a girl to do? Go back and look at drafts of old novels and reassure myself that I always suck in the beginning and things will be okay.

Well, um as it turns out the first paragraph of I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone has been virtually the same give or take a word since day one. Okay, so I knew the beginning of that book pretty well, but I struggled in other places. There was a terrible case of writer's block 2/3rds of the way through the first draft. And that book went through so many titles....

Ballads of Suburbia was a little more fun to re-examine. It only had one other title. The version of it that I wrote during my first year at Columbia College was called The Morning After, which was what I'd always wanted to name a band when I was in high school. I wrote a full draft of The Morning After and honestly, it's probably a completely different book except there is a main character named Kara with boyfriends named Adrian and Christian and she also has a more innocent fling with a guy named Liam. Her brother in that version is named Sam and I guess ultimately I decided those characters should be merged and that I liked the name Liam better. Speaking of names, Maya was Lana and Cass was Acacia (she would be Ava for most of the time I wrote Ballads actually, before one of my critique partners pointed out that I had too many names with double a's). Oh and while I use the real name of the park that the characters hang out in, Scoville Park, I give the town a fake name, Lincoln Prairie. I'm not sure what I thought I was doing there... Instead of starting the book with Kara returning to her hometown four years after a heroin overdose, I started with Kara returning to Scoville Park in the spring of her junior year after not hanging out with her friends for some time because she's been trapped in an emotionally abusive relationship with Christian. This was actually much more autobiographical than Kara's storyline in Ballads ended up being.

It starts with a very melodramatic reference to Kurt Cobain's suicide involving shotguns shoved down scratchy, song-torn throats and "exquisitely scarred poetry." *shudders* The whole thing is so overwrought and angsty, that I can't even bear to post the first paragraph, but here's a line describing the park that I still like for some reason even though it makes NO sense.

The bark of the trees smelled like ashtrays and through the sparse tufts of grass there was a muddy path that lead to where they all sat in the sun staring at a statue dedicated to soldiers who fought in long gone wars that they didn’t remember, understand what was fought for, or feel what was lost or won.

I don't why on earth I felt that tree bark could smell like ashtrays, but I still like the idea of it. Somehow it's so very Scoville Park.

Basically the first chapter of "The Morning After" is beyond cringe-inducing. I learned *a lot* from going to school for writing.... but my first drafts are still usually way off from how the book ends up.

This is the beginning of the first chapter of the first real version of Ballads, which I started writing in my last semester of grad school while my agent shopped I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone.

Now at this point I came up with the idea for starting with the epilogue and it is largely the same except for some extraneous information about Stacey and Cass (who was called Ava at the time) that I cut:

Sirens and lights welcomed me back to the suburbs of Chicago after my four-and-a-half year absence. It seemed fitting. Symbolic, considering they had also heralded my exit. And it could not have happened anywhere else: only a Berwyn cop would pull Stacey over for rolling a stop sign, cash in on her total lack of insurance, but not notice the pot smoke lingering in Stacey’s long, auburn ponytail, my cropped, black hair, and beneath both of our winter coats.

Stacey had spent two hours on the phone convincing me to come back from California for winter break that year. I planned to spend the first three nights with her, her husband, Jason, and their four year old daughter, Lina—a situation I was still having trouble grasping at twenty. My mother didn’t even know I was back yet, nor did the only other high school friend I’d kept in touch with, Ava. Stacey was the one who needed me.

Ava had turned out to be more stable than any of us, devoted to nursing school and her boyfriend of two years whom she lived with in Wicker Park (as Stacey said, “Only losers like me still live around Oak Park.”). Ava had managed to pull together a completely normal life while Stacey was a walking disaster and I vacillated in between the two of them. I had the successful-college-student, laid-back-west-coast-transplant façade, but I hadn’t stuck it out and healed like Ava. I’d run, and the reason I hadn’t risked coming home was because I feared that if I did, I’d find out that I was still the same fucked up kid I’d been at seventeen, like Stacey thought she was.

Right before we got pulled over, Stacey was saying, “God, Kara, I’m such a fuck up. The night Jason took Lina, I tried to drown myself in the bathtub.” She rolled her cerulean eyes and exhaled a dark, nicotine-tinged laugh. “Do you know how hard that is? Your body really fights to survive even when your heart is broke so bad and your mind wants to die. I laid in the tub swilling tequila for hours, till the water was ice cold, dunking my head underneath, and trying to force myself to stay down. I fell asleep in there, but I didn’t fucking die. I woke up wet and miserable and still without my kid. So I begged Jason to take me back. Told him I’d sober up, that I wouldn’t cheat again, and I’m working on it, ‘cause I need my baby with me.”

We were on East Avenue between Cermak and Roosevelt Road where there’s a stop sign, like, every block. Stacey paused at them all, tapping her brakes, then moving on. I mean, honestly, when there’s no traffic, what Chicago driver comes to a full stop? “Fucking motherfuck!” Stacey cursed. “Don’t the goddamn Berwyn cops have anything else to do? Shit!” She slapped the steering wheel hard with the heel of her hand as I turned my head to gaze at the flashing red and blue behind us.

Then there is the actual chapter one of the book (the chapter after the epilogue since my epilogue functions as a prologue...)

It’s the ballads I like best on movie soundtracks—hell, on any album. And I’m not talking about the kind of song where a diva hits her highest note while singing about love or a rock band tones it down a couple of notches for all the ladies out there (though Poison’s “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn” is a classic, by rights). I mean a true ballad, according to the dictionary definition: a song that tells a story in short stanzas and simple words, with repetition, refrain, etc. I’m talking about the punk rocker or the country crooner telling us the story of their life in three minutes, belting out that chorus a few times to remind us of the way they messed up love and success yet again. That’s the music I’ve gotta face, my own cycle of despair.

But my story is going to take a little longer than three minutes to tell even though the concept is pretty basic: the fallen girl child. Like Persephone from the book of Greek mythology I got for Christmas in second grade. Maybe I imagined myself to be Athena, but my tiny fingers traced the drawing of little Persephone, hands thrown to the air, mouth open in a scream as Hades took her away from the bright sunshine and flowery existence that she had known. Even though her mother would eventually save her, Persephone was doomed to relive her mistakes with every winter, with every chorus. And she probably never got to be the perfect, beautiful goddess she was supposed to be.

I am definitely not the girl I was supposed to be, the genius girl that my parents, teachers, and guidance counselors wanted to mold. And I don’t mean the kind of girl who works on movie soundtracks, that’s fine, I suppose. I mean, I’m a functional human being with a career path, but I’m marred. Like Persephone, I’m an ice queen on the inside instead of content like I used to be, all because I wasn’t supposed to stumble down that path, take those turns, follow those curves. And I don’t really know how it happened. It’s like one day I got out of bed and then I closed my eyes—you know, the reverse of what you are supposed to when you wake up in the morning. Starting in the spring of my sophomore year of high school, I did that every day for a little over a year.

Cue the music here. Cue Dinah Washington crooning “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes!” But that’s already been done and that’s not my ballad, mine would be something by PJ Harvey or the Screaming Trees because if Ms. Polly Jean and Mr. Mark Lanegan had a bastard child, it would be me.

I’ll begin with the setting of my movie, what you’d see as the opening credits rolled: Oak Park, Illinois. Oak Park isn’t one of those suburbs—you know, the type with no grid system, no streets or avenues, all courts and lanes that twist through subdivisions, which center on a strip mall or a manmade lake. No, it’s nothing like that. It doesn’t have what Maya’s grandmother would call “ticky-tacky box houses”—you know, where the only thing that varies from one house to the next is the paintjob. Pale blue, pale gray, and a bunch of other shades of pale that god knows how you tell apart at night, especially if you’re drunk or stoned. I’ve heard stories about kids walking into their neighbors’ houses, accidentally climbing into bed with their friend’s sister, and getting the cops called on them. But I don’t know anything about it first- or even second hand.

‘Cause I didn’t grow up in one of those suburbs with wide lawns and narrow minds. Even though Hemingway coined that phrase about Oak Park, I’ll give it more credit that that. The lawns were broad and beautiful, true, but the people kept their minds open for the most part. I just can’t say the same about their eyes—not when it came to their kids. But, you know, it was the early nineties and there was a recession and property taxes were high and the kids needed stuff—well, we needed something and we let stuff be that thing. Anyway, everybody’s parents seemed to work long hours in Chicago, that’s where their minds and eyes were most of the time.

Of course, we didn’t live in one of those suburbs with an hour commute into the city—in fact, you can just cross Austin Boulevard and there you are on the west side of Chicago. But Oak Park is definitely not the city, which made a big difference to me because I lived on the south side of Chicago in Morgan Park until the summer before second grade when my dad got promoted. My brother, Liam, was about to enter kindergarten and my parents decided he should do so in “better public schools” now that they could afford them. Even though I didn’t really remember the old neighborhood, I claimed it as my real home for years because I didn’t want to be a suburban kid. It felt like a stigma I didn’t deserve. I mean, I remember that winter when Maggie Young, the most popular girl in the class of 1990 at Washington Irving Elementary, came up to me and asked if my coat had a YKK zipper. When I checked, responded that it didn’t, and Maggie made it into another reason to shun me—we were seven, for fuck’s sake!—I knew I could never be one of those kids from the suburbs.

The final book version of the first chapter begins with:

The summer before I entered second grade and my brother Liam started kindergarten, Dad got the promotion he’d been after for two years and my parents had enough money to move us from the south side of Chicago to its suburb, Oak Park.

Then I describe Oak Park briefly and we go into a scene with Maggie Young--an actual brief scene not just Kara's narration of it.

In the original first chapter, Kara sounds a lot more like Emily from I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, which is fair because I'd just finished that book, so I was stuck in her voice. She also explains a lot, tells instead of shows, which is a MAJOR first draft problem for me, but I also think it's part of the process for me to get to know the characters. I needed to know that Kara was the bastard child of a PJ Harvey and a Screaming Trees song. (I actually wrote that down on a sticky note somewhere and listened to both of those artists repeatedly during revisions.) Like I wrote those few lines in the epilogue about Cass/Ava because I needed to know that she became a nurse. I needed to know that Kara wanted to be Athena but was drawn toward Persephone... though actually that was also me. The original version of Ballads had more references to Greek Mythology that I cut because I thought that was better saved for another book.

Actually, now that I've gone through this whole analysis, I'm not sure I feel better. I'm half-worried that the newest version of the first chapter of my bartender book will end up cut to pieces.... though wait, didn't I want to trim it down? Maybe this will help me. I guess I should go find out.

As for my fellow writers out there. Do you write crappy first drafts? Do you do a lot of voice-heavy telling instead of showing like I do? Or what are your early draft bad habits?

How do you deal with rejection?

2010-06-13T17:03:00.002-05:00

Not well.

Work in progress

2010-06-12T05:24:00.006-05:00

Besides publicity for my Simon Pulse book, ENDLESS SUMMER, which came out in May, and my MTV Books novel, FORGET YOU, which will be published on July 20, I am hard at work on my July 2011 MTV Books release, entitled THIS BOOK HAS SUCH A COOL TITLE IT WILL BLOW YOU AWAY or MY EDITOR HAS NOT DECIDED WHAT THE TITLE IS YET. The deadline for this book is August 1, but I'm trying to finish the first draft by June 25 and the second by June 30 so I'll have plenty of time to send it to my critique partners and think about it and stop myself from making some horrible glaring error before I turn it in to my editor.

Even so, I was thrown for a loop last week when my editor asked for the first two chapters to show to the sales force. I had the first two chapters, but they were nowhere near polished, and one of them needed a lot of research that I hadn't planned to do until later.

I did complete the research, polish the chapters, and turn them in last Monday. And part of me feels a lot better about this book now that the beginning is set in stone, sort of. But I really would have preferred not to let anyone see my work, even the very beginning of it, until I was finished writing the entire novel. Normally I would go back and make huge changes to chapter 1 after writing chapter 20, because I'm not absolutely sure what goes on in chapter 1 until then.

I don't write in order. I write some of the beginning, some of the end, some of the middle, a conversation three-fourths of the way through, back to the beginning, a hilarious scene three chapters in... In other words, I write the whole book at once, not a chapter at a time. I realize most people don't do this, and I have tried writing a book in order, with disastrous results. This makes it really hard for me to sell on proposal--writing the first three chapters and a synopsis of a book, selling it, and then finishing it. In fact, the only book I've ever sold that way was ENDLESS SUMMER, but that's because it was a sequel, so I already had those characters' voices in my head.

I feel like this is a real handicap for me. But hey, writing a novel is difficult work, and if I have a quirk while doing it, well, I'm afraid I'm going to have to live with it.

What about you? Does this writing ~~process~~ mess sound familiar or completely insane?

From My Point of View

2010-06-09T13:37:00.011-05:00

Several years ago I had Lasix surgery in Kansas City, and for the past few months my distance vision has gotten worse. So the Friday before Memorial Day, Mike and I drove down to KC for a check-up, which for me resulted in a procedure to “tweak” my correction.

I’m not a person who expects the worst-case scenario—although it’s happened to me enough times that I should. As a result, I wasn’t prepared for my vision to be so blurry that I couldn’t read, write, drive, watch TV, or even see my own face in the mirror for five long days. (Well, the mirror part wasn’t THAT bad!) About the only thing I could do was pull weeds in my garden and hope I was pulling more weeds than flowers.

While I was stumbling around in a haze, reassuring myself minute-by-minute that my vision would improve, I saw things from a different perspective. For instance, a person who has been sightless would be ecstatic to have even my blurry vision. Someone losing her sight would cling to each fuzzy image in case it was the last thing she ever saw. A woman training to be a pilot would freak out, try to hide her condition, or both. The person's reaction would depend upon her viewpoint.

When we write, we see the world through the eyes of characters that are often very different from ourselves. Yet we need to “know” what those beings feel and think, love and hate, want and fear. Since we’ve all lived though our teens, we can draw on those experiences when we craft our characters.

It’s not quite as easy—though still doable--to adopt a viewpoint further from our range of experience. Danielle Joseph and Jenny O’Connell have both written from the male p.o.v. R.A. Nelson uses the female first person quite effectively in two of his books. In THE HOST, Stephenie Meyer writes from the p.o.v. of a female alien symbiote. Hmm. Thinking back on some of my past relationships, maybe that's not too much of a stretch. But you get my point.

I feel pretty confident that I can switch sexes and ages and even become mythical creatures if my story calls for it. The one area where I don’t feel comfortable is in creating a viewpoint character from another culture. For example, I’ve been in Jamaica several times, and I’ve spoken with a number of the people, but I wouldn’t attempt to write a novel from a Jamaican’s point of view even if I immersed myself in their culture for years. In other words, I'd take a stab at being a male troll with wart issues, but I'd feel like a fraud writing as a teen living in a culture I don't understand inside out.

Do you think I'm a chicken? Are there any first person viewpoints you wouldn’t attempt? I’d love to hear your take on it.

Concert time!

2010-06-06T10:14:00.004-05:00

So, tonight, I'm going to my first Seattle-area concert. It's not in a little hole-in-the-wall club or at the Paramount or Key Arena. Nope, tonight we go outdoor, to the White River Amphitheatre where Sting will be performing his greatest hits (both from the Police era as well as solo works) with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra.

I love going to concerts-- from dark jazz clubs to symphony halls to arenas to stadiums-- And they all have such unique memories attached. My first rock concert: Rick Springfield when I was fourteen years old. Hey, don't mock-- forget the pretty boy actor on General Hospital, this cat could rock out. It was a fantastic concert that even my sister, who grew up on seeing Cream and Led Zeppelin and The Who, loved. I had such a giggle when I spotted him at BEA in New York last week and kind of wanted to tell him he popped my concert cherry, but figured a) he might take a statement like that wrong and b) not like I could get all that close, what with the middle-aged ladies clamoring to take pictures. (Yeah, yeah... I know how old I am, but I don't clamor.)

My first week at college, my roommate and I bonded over an REO Speedwagon concert-- I still remember Kevin Cronin's impossibly curly hair and breaking the heel of my boot on the cracked sidewalks walking back to our dorm from the Tallahassee Civic Center (crummy acoustics, but best place to have a large concert in town). College gave me some great concert memories: The Moody Blues, Pat Metheny (oh my heavens, bliss!), the first time I saw YES, when it was such a magical, transcendent experience that if the entire stage had levitated and raised towards the heavens, I wouldn't have been surprised (and that was without smoking or ingesting anything-- I was a boring concert goer that way). College also brought me the first time I ever saw Sting-- on his Dream of the Blue Turtles tour, with Branford Marsalis as one of his band members. Best moment? Singing "Roxanne" with nothing but his guitar and Branford on his soprano sax as counterpoint. *le sigh*

Jimmy Buffett was... interesting. Good thing I was in college when I saw him. I think it's probably the best time to take a visit to Margaritaville.

Jazz trumpeter, Chris Botti is another concert favorite, mostly because I can see him in a multitude of different venues. The man is a touring beast. I've seen him at open-air jazz festivals, in arenas, at concert halls, and my favorite, at the Blue Note in NYC, with some guy named Sting, coming up to sing a song with him. (Chris got his start as a member of Sting's touring band-- the music world, she can be crazy-incestuous that way.) I've seen Josh Groban perform a couple of times (yeah, I know but seriously, he's a very, very good and naturally gifted musician), but while I love watching him perform, I do not love his die-hard fans. There's a pack of them who will follow him from concert to concert, sort of like Dead Heads, but without the mellow, herb-assisted goodwill. Nope, these ladies are aggressive and entitled and do their very best to ruin the concert experience for everyone around them because they won't stop talking, they shriek during the on-stage chatter because they already know the punchlines to the jokes, and they think they're being noticed from the stage. Got news for them-- I've been up on many a theatre stage. You can't see squat.

It's because of people like that, that my concert-going has become more selective I don't really love out-of-control screaming throngs, so a lot of rock concerts have gone by the wayside for me (it'll be interesting to note the makeup of the crowd tonight). However, there are some artists I'd make that exception for-- I'd love to see Jason Mraz, because I think he's an amazing musician as well. The Dave Matthews Band is renowned as a jam band and I love nothing more than to see musicians just go off and let the music take them where it will. There are tons more, but I could keep blathering until the cows come home and still keeping going.

Which brings me back to tonight and Sting. I mean, seriously, commence the squeeing and bouncing. At least, that's what I'm doing. Sting is absolutely one of my favorite musicians,and has been an artistic inspiration since I was probably ten years old. To me, he embodies everything I respect in an artist-- he's talented, but refuses to rest on his laurels, chafes at being contained in any one box, is always expanding his knowledge of world music and allowing it to inform his own work, and is always, always, expanding his horizons.

Kind of how I want my writing to be.

Any concerts you're looking forward to this summer?

ETA: BTW, my recap of the concert and how Sting reasserted himself as my total writing Yoda is up on my regular blog.

Summer Reading Slump

2010-06-05T13:19:00.003-05:00

I am in a book rut. I've started maybe four books in the past four weeks and only finished one. The thing is, all of the books are supposed to be "good." They got good reviews on Amazon, they're about topics I normally find engaging. They're my "type."

And all this has me worried. Because either 1) I have no taste in books and don't know what "good" is (not a good thing if you're a writer), or 2) there are no originally entertaining ideas left which means that my work in progress will be met with the same so-so reception by readers.

Or maybe I'm just in a pre-summer reading funk. I want a book I can't bear to put down, one that makes me laugh and keeps me captivated. I felt like that when reading John Green's AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES last summer. I felt like that reading Tara Altabrando's THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS (a fellow MTV Books author).

I've decided to accept the blame. Like that age old reasoning, "It's not you, it's me." So I'll continue to buy books and try them out, and at least feel like, regardless of my reaction to the story, I'm supporting fellow writers - which is so important these days!!! What about you? Ever gone through a "dry spell" where you couldn't find any books that that hit the spot?

My Take on Paranormals

2010-05-31T12:30:00.002-05:00

I'm not picky when it comes to the type of book I read. I've always loved reading books set in this world or other worlds or in this world with the addition of ghosts, vampires, zombies, aliens, or other creatures from myth.

Sometimes I read books for a complete and total escape. Sometimes I read them hoping to find a reflection of myself or something to inspire me or help me solve an issue that I'm dealing with. The best books for me do both at the same time, and in my opinion, both realistic fiction and paranormal/sci-fi/fantasy can do this. I really enjoy escaping into the world of Alyson Noel's Immortals series, which is paranormal, but those books have also helped me cope with grief. I expected to find reflections of myself in Tara Kelly's Harmonic Feedback, a contemporary realistic YA novel, but I also got so swept up in the main character Drea's life that I read the book all in one day. I'm currently watching two TV series, Battlestar Galactica with my husband, and The Gilmore Girls with one of my girlfriends. On the surface, they couldn't seem more different. But I am just as swept up in both. I care about the characters, the plots are engaging, and the writing is excellent (at least so far, I've heard BSG goes downhill). Those are the main elements I'm searching for in story. However I'm also looking for a unique take.

This, my friends, is where I start to get picky.

I won't pick up a book just because it is about vampires--in fact my inner goth girl makes me *incredibly* picky about vampire books. The vampire books I've loved most lately are Jeri Smith-Ready's WVMP series because the idea of vampires running a radio station, connected to the era they are from by music is completely unique. (Not to mention, the heroine, Ciara, is a chick that kicks butt and even though her vamp boyfriend is hot, she doesn't put him up on a pedestal while putting herself down and whining and swooning....) Of course, I won't pick up a realistic fiction book just because it deals with a certain issue I'm interested in either--if that was the case I'd probably be watching a lot more afterschool specials and Lifetime movies. I'm sure there are plenty of those about teenage pregnancy, but I'm willing to bet the characters wouldn't be as well drawn as Rand from Holly Cupala's Tell Me A Secret. (Got a two chapter preview of it at BEA and now I am dying for more!) So no matter what world a book is set in, it needs an interesting premise.

I'd have to agree with what Barb wrote on this topic earlier, though--that thing about paranormal/urban fantasy being the trend is that there are a lot of books out there that are very superficial and don't have the most engaging premise or plot or characters. And yet there they are on front tables of bookstores, getting attention just because they fit the mold. Meanwhile, some very compelling realistic YA stories aren't getting the attention they deserve because they don't. That definitely bugs me.

But I have to admit, I'm also working on a paranormal/urban fantasy novel. I'm not doing this to conform. I haven't tried to conform since sixth grade when I learned that conform was boring and made me feel icky inside. Like Barb, I write the stories that I want to read but can't find. And there is a story of finding inner strength, facing your demons and nightmares, and surviving grief that I need to tell. I tried to tell it as a contemporary realistic YA because that is my comfort zone as a writer. But after struggling with a couple drafts of the first fifty pages, I realized my agent was right, I need to allow otherworldly elements to come into the story. And I needed to challenge myself.

It's funny that as a writer I've always limited myself to realistic fiction even though my reading habits are probably fifty percent realistic fiction, fifty percent genre fiction. I don't know why I've been so scared of it. I guess it's because in addition to plotting out a story, you have to create an entire world and rules for that world. Even though it has taken me a lot longer to get the story going because of this (or maybe not... I tend to struggle at the beginning no matter what), I'm having a lot of fun with it. I have no idea if it will sell, but I'm definitely hoping so. I've been keeping it under wraps for the most part and all I will say is that it's inspired partially by this book that I loved very much as a child:

And this movie that I loved very much as a teen:

Now that I've taken the plunge into writing books that incorporate otherworldly elements, I think it is something I will continue to do. Of course I will continue to write realistic fiction as well. Since I love reading both, why not try writing both?

What about you? Do you read both? Write both if you are a writer? Were you/are you scared to write to both like I was?

My take on paranormals

2010-05-30T18:36:00.005-05:00

My all-time favorite TV show is The X-Files (for the first six or seven seasons, anyway), but I don't consider myself a fan of paranormals. Why? Well, what I loved about The X-Files was the sexual chemistry between Scully and Mulder, and the impeccable writing. NOT the aliens. I was such a die-hard fan that I watched even the alien conspiracy theory episodes just so I wouldn't have missed any plot lines when we returned to the wonderfully written stand-alone episodes.

In a similar way, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back (not just ANY crappy old Star Wars movie, mind you, but specifically the first two that came out) are two of my favorite movies ever, but I don't consider myself a fan of science fiction. I love them because of the sexual chemistry between Han and Leia, and because George Lucas researched how to write a captivating story before he wrote these stories, and it worked.

What interests me in a story is the plotline itself, attention to writing, chemistry between the characters, a sense of humor PLEASE, and a happy ending THANK YOU. If you want to do that with vampires, that is okay with me. But I would never, EVER pick up a book BECAUSE it had a vampire in it, and I find that way of thinking very foreign.

So I guess it makes sense that my adult paranormal manuscript making the rounds in the publishing industry right now is romantic and funny. Whether it would pass muster with die-hard paranormal fans, I don't know. And maybe it won't find a publisher because of that.

I'm finding the current paranormal craze difficult to navigate. It is hard to go into a bookstore to sign your new release and have the bookseller tell you you're not on the featured table simply because your book doesn't have vampires in it.

But this too shall pass. In the 1990s when I was first trying to get a book published, Goosebumps were the craze, and the very limited YA sections of bookstores contained almost nothing else. (Today we probably wouldn't even consider Goosebumps YA--they would be Middle Grade.) I kept writing YA romance, and finally in 2005, the market and I met.

We will meet again.

What's My Take on Paranormals?

2010-05-24T16:51:00.008-05:00

For this discussion I’m going to lump fantasy and paranormal into one category, mainly because I don’t think there’s a clear boundary between them. And some of what we refer to as paranormal crosses the line into science fiction, too.

Unlike many of my MTV sisters who’ve weighed in, I’ve read quite a bit of paranormal fiction. Some of my reading came about because I taught middle school. I’d hear my students talking about books they loved, and I had to know what the buzz was about. I read the first Harry Potter because my sixth graders said I “had to,” but I read the rest of the series because I was hooked. Harry, Hermione, and Ron are believable teens facing real teen problems. They struggle with their classes, relationships, and bullies. They just have the added distractions of fighting evil forces and trying to save the world.

The way I see it, good writing is good writing. If the characters are well drawn and the plot pulls me in and holds my interest, I’m a happy camper. Barbara struck a chord with me when she mentioned the series Angel. I am a huge fan of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, Angel, and more recently Supernatural and Reaper. These TV shows are rife with vampires and demons, but what I enjoy is the juxtaposition of horror and humor. The characters—good and evil--are cracking wise even when they’re fighting for their lives. The Harry Potter books are filled with humor, too, with talking portraits, a nearly headless ghost, and a willow tree that knocks around anyone who gets too close.

I read and enjoyed Twilight, but not enough to continue the series. I agree with Jenny on this--Bella was too whiny, and it seemed as if she swooned on every other page. And I thought swooning h been banned for at least 100 years. Besides, as a matter of principle, I never get involved with a man who is prettier than I am. Bella might want to give that some thought, too.

Before I hop on my metaphysical broom and take off, I have to mention my absolute favorite teen fantasy/paranormal/science fiction of all time—Lois Lowery’s The Giver. This is a book with compelling characters, a fascinating plot, and an ending that had readers arguing and speculating for years. As I said before: good writing is good writing.

What's My Take on Paranormals?

2010-05-22T10:20:00.007-05:00

Oh, this is a complex, even loaded, question for me. I'm really, really picky about paranormal. It (along with sci-fi and fantasy) has never been my favorite flavor of reading. I don't like made up names and critters that I have to stop and think about while I'm reading because I like a thread of reality to weave throughout what I'm reading to serve as a touchstone.

But here's the irony: I really love a lot of the paranormal/sci-fi/fantasy that you find in television and film. I guess it's because I'm so highly visual, I relate better to it when I can see it. But again, it's somewhat loaded because I don't like the fanged/furry/scary just for the sake of having a Critter of the Week—my favorite kind of paranormal has psychological underpinnings that can then be related back to the "real" world.

Take the television show Angel for example: it wasn't just a show about a vampire. It was a vampire cursed by Gypsies with a soul. Talk about implications. Having to fight the baser nature of the beast within. And because Joss Whedon is a mean SOB this way, he then added the twist that if Angel ever consummated a relationship with his soulmate, said soul went bye-bye and he reverted back to being Angelus, badass vampire extraordinaire. (Who was more fun than earnest, brooding Angel, but that's another post altogether...) The fun of Angel wasn't in the critter of the week, but rather in how he navigated this return to the land of the living after nearly a century of keeping himself isolated from people.

More recently, I was hooked on the now-cancelled Flash Forward. (Really ABC? You thought lizard-people were more interesting and worth bringing back for a second season? Feh.) I mean, think about that concept: a mysterious group engineers a global blackout whereupon people flash forward to their future selves and what they see (or don't) drives the plot forward and triggers character development. This is the type of show that's far more in keeping with what I love about the genre—the meaty psychological stuff that really messes with the characters because I am all about the character torture.

Jericho, Miracles, Farscape, Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes—all shows I love where humanity and character development are at the core. It's no mistake that my favorite overall season of the revamped Doctor Who was 4, with Donna as the Companion—she humanized The Doctor in ways we'd not seen to that point.

I'm also a fan of a lot of anime that has paranormal elements—Witch Hunter Robin is my favorite of these. It has phenomenal character development and tremendous storytelling that starts out feeling like it's episodic in nature, but then, about halfway through the series, you realize it's developed into this huge arc and things that felt like little throwaway lines and gestures actually have deep-seated implications. That's my kind of storytelling. Simple concept that evolves into something bigger, but in such a gorgeous, organic manner, you don't even realize it until you're completely sucked in and strapped down for the entirety of the ride.

However, coming back to books, it just seems that in the current flood of paranormal, very little of it engages me as a reader on those fundamental psychological and emotional levels. It, unfortunately, feels kind of superficial and it leaves me feeling... like I want more.

As a writer, you can imagine that I would find the idea of taking on a paranormal as monumentally intimidating. If I can't find what I want in what's already out there, what makes me think I could come up with something that would satisfy my lofty standards as a reader? That doesn't depend on a creature of the week or a fancy, made up vocabulary?

But... isn't that why a lot of us started writing? Because we wanted to create the kinds of stories we want to read?

And on a far, far more shallow level—another reason I've never taken on writing paranormal is because in today's market, paranormal is almost synonymous with series and the thought of taking on a series makes me want to curl up in a corner, sucking my thumb. I know myself as a writer—the idea of being roped into a series for however long it would go on makes my rebellious soul stamp its feet and shake its wee fists at the heavens. Not to mention, the world building—even if you set a story within the "real" world, you have to establish rules for why things are the way they are in your version of it and... and...

Well, you get where I'm going, right?

But the Girls in the Basement (you know, the ones who sit in the background and chatter and give you more ideas than you know what to do with?) they have a twisted sense of humor where I'm concerned. They don't care that the idea of a paranormal fills me with dread.

They gave me one anyway. More Urban Fantasy than anything else and it's really, really cool. But still—

*insert heartfelt whine here*

It's slow going, because I feel like I'm learning how to write all over again, but the Girls, they won't shut up until I at least give it a try.

Wish me luck.

What's My Take on Paranormals?

2010-05-21T09:36:00.003-05:00

Like, Jenny I am a big fan of realistic fiction and that is what I've mostly gravitated to my whole life. I will admit that I've never read any book from the Twilight series or Harry Potter. There are just so many books on my reading list and those were not on my top. I certainly might read and (love) them someday but for now I have plenty of other books on my nightstand that I'm dying to dig into.

I will say that this past year I have read three paranormal books and really LOVED them all. First was Jeri Smith-Ready's Wicked Game, Carrie Ryan's Forest of Hands and Teeth and Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver. They were all so well written and it's the characters that really drew me in.

Also, the manuscript, Graveyard Shift, that I just completed is what I call a reality-bending book. It is set in the real world but has one element that deals with spirits. I had so much fun writing this book because I loved being able to stay in the real world and just bend the rules slightly.

I'm a strong believer in write what you love and love what you write! There are certainly plenty of books out there for all different interests. So happy reading!

What's My Take On Paranormals?

2010-05-20T08:47:00.003-05:00

I am not the right person to answer this question.

I have read one "not realistic" teen book in the past three years. And that was Twilight. Vampires. And you know what? I was more interested in the "normal" characters than the other worldly. And here's where I admit that Bella bugged me, to the point where I wanted to slap the girl. Really, all she did was pine and be all angsty the entire book. I wanted her to grow a set and think about something, anything, besides a guy. But obviously I'm in the minority here, given the proof in how successful the series is. So what do I know?

Since the huge boom in paranormal stories I have attempted to read a few. But I never made it terribly far (like past the second chapter). They're just not for me. I'm not a fan of historicals, either. It's just my taste, which have probably not served me terribly well given the popularity of paranormal books.

But they say that you should write what you love. And I love regular girls in regular worlds dealing with the regular things a girl has to deal with in high school. And in my high school we didn't have shape shifters, vampires, werewolves, ghosts or aura-seeing clairvoyants who spoke to the dead. At least I don't think we did.

Rediscovering the Writer's High

2010-05-15T11:20:00.004-05:00

Last night I told my husband we were going out to celebrate. We went to the really good Mexican place, the one we can't really afford and we even got an appetizer (it was basically mashed potatoes wrapped in a crunchy corn tortilla with chocolate mole sauce. Seriously chocolate smothered mashed potatoes! How could I resist?) and coconut margaritas. Earlier while I was running errands, I swung by the new location of Bleeding Heart Bakery (which isn't actually that new, I just hadn't gotten over there yet so it was new to me) and picked up vegan cupcakes.

What was the cause for celebration?

As I told my husband, I haven't sold a book and sometimes lately it's felt like that will never happen again, but on Thursday (the 13th, which if you read my blog entry on here is my lucky number so I did time that intentionally), I sent 100 pages of writing that I was very pleased with to my agent and I've spent the past few days on an incredible writer's high--you know, like a runner's high, total adrenaline driven exhilaration?--and I haven't felt that way in over a year. I am officially in love with writing again and I wanted to celebrate it!

I've been really struggling for about a year now. Struggling to balance my writing with promotion of my books that are already out. Struggling with my own perfectionism. Struggling to find my rhythm. Struggling with the disappointments of my career. Struggling to find direction for it.

BALLADS OF SUBURBIA came out. It was a book that was very difficult to write, a book that caused me several nervous breakdowns including one just a day before the revision was due in January of 2009 when I realized the manuscript was 4,000 words too long and I had to cut and rearrange things. My editor told me to take a couple extra days and just do what I had to do. I think I spent the first of those days sobbing and rocking myself and probably making my husband, who had just proposed to me at Christmas reconsider if he really wanted to marry this crazy lady. Then I did what I had to do with the help of my critique partners who were staying up just as late as I was to re-read and comment on the revised sections I sent them. And when I finally sent that manuscript in, I'd never felt more accomplished. Then a few weeks before it was due to land on shelves, I found out that the print run was being slashed in half and I needed to stop what I was doing (which was happily writing) and promote the hell out of it, which I did, but it still came out to very little fanfare because it was a second book and the economy was in the toilet. It didn't get reviewed by PW or Kirkus, both of whom I wanted another shot with because, dammit, I felt this book was awesome and better than my first one. I hardly ever even saw it in bookstores.

And that's about the time when I became bitter. I also started pushing myself really hard because I needed to sell another book. It felt like my life depended on it.

I don't churn out books as fast as many of my peers seem to. It might seem like I'm quick because BALLADS came out a year after I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, but I actually came up with the basic plot for BALLADS and wrote a shitty draft of it two years before I started writing IWBYJR. It took me three years to write IWBYJR. And while I was working on IWBYJR, my brain was working BALLADS out. Then IWBYJR took a year to sell and another year from sale to publication so I had two years to work on BALLADS. Once I hit my stride, I can really move, but it takes me a long time to wrap my head around a book. Maybe if I did more prep work like really detailed outlining and character sketches, it would be different, but I've tried to do these things and it's just not how I function. I cook in a similar fashion. I skim the recipe and then I just dive in. I have moments of panic because I really should have cut up a bunch of things first or I didn't realize how long a certain step was going to take and dinner was supposed to be ready NOW, but it all works out in the end. Oh and I never measure the spices. I throw in what I think it needs and then I usually end up adding things the recipe didn't even call for. That's just my personality.

So when I write, I start with a concept and a couple characters. When I wrote IWBYJR, I wanted to write a girl rock star book to pay homage to female musicians I loved growing up. I had Emily. I had Louisa (though she was from a separate short story, but I quickly realized she needed to be Emily's mom) and then I just started writing a bunch of scenes with them. I'd stop and outline from time to time. I'd ponder structure and arrangement. I knew exactly where I wanted to the story to begin and eventually I figured out how I wanted it to end. With BALLADS, I knew I wanted to write about the darker, ugly side of suburbia, the things no one talked about when I was growing up within it. I had Kara, Christian, Adrian and Maya. I knew Kara would overdose on heroin. It wasn't til I re-envisioned it from that first shitty draft that I knew it would begin with that overdose and then go back and tell the story of how she got there.

But last year, I felt panicked. Needed to sell another book ASAP. I had a couple ideas that had been stewing, one of them since fall of 2007 when I started toying with some characters in between working on revisions of IWBYJR and finishing a draft of BALLADS for my agent. There was a daughter who was very responsible and very politically aware, kind of an older Lisa Simpson or, actually, a lot like I had been as a sixteen year-old riot grrrl. Her mother was a free-spirited bartender. Then there was another book dealing with grief and music and Greek Mythology. That book, I realized via discussion with my agent, needed to have paranormal elements, something I've read a lot of but never tried to write. It would take me longer, so we decided that I would work on the first idea first and use that for my option book with MTV. We also decided that since my books keep falling in this black hole between YA and adult that I would skew it more YA even though I would lose a lot of the bartender mother character that I loved. I wrote fifty pages of it, sent it into MTV and turned to the paranormal book. I plotted and outlined a lot more than usual with the paranormal book because it was new ground.

We got word back from MTV Books after three long months. The answer was no. A very sad, filled with regrets No, but still No. My bubble burst.

But then there was talk of what if the book was skewed more adult than YA and pitched to a different Simon & Schuster imprint. This conversation inspired me. The book had felt wrong anyway as a YA. It was missing something. I told my agent I wanted to take a crack at it as an adult novel, but first I wanted to finish the partial of my paranormal which I was very excited about. I thought this was going to be *the* novel. My big break. The concept seemed incredibly unique. It was different from what I'd done but still had the feminist punk edge that comes naturally to me. I finished the partial. At that point my agent and I had been going back and forth for a year with it (because at first I was resistant to it being paranormal). Finally, we both felt it was good enough. It went out. I turned my attention to back to the other project, but I was distracted because any day now my brilliant concept was going to sell.

I am not usually an optimistic person. I've struggled with depression since childhood. As a teen, I medicated by cutting and in my early twenties I medicated with alcohol. Finally I got on track and mediated with writing. I'm a newlywed who is very much in love and I've sold two books. My life is good and I am supposed to be happy. And yet, due to my personality or brain chemistry or whatever, I am still prone toward negativity and depression. I can't help it and it frustrates the hell out of me. But I was really really optimistic about this paranormal book. So optimistic that I was able to put the No from MTV Books behind me with remarkable ease.

But then it didn't happen. The paranormal didn't sell in the blink of an eye like I'd hoped it would. My dream editor passed on it as did several others. All positive rejections, many of which stated that it was too big of a risk to buy on partial, but if I wrote the full they'd look at it again. But I was crushed. And I found out about this three weeks ago on my husbands birthday--his thirtieth no less. And I had a total meltdown on his birthday (after the celebrating, I managed to force my way through that, trying to be unselfish, though he could totally tell I was bummed). HUGE meltdown. I think the MTV rejection finally hit me then too. I was screwed. I was not good enough. I would never sell another book. I would never be able to make a living off of this and this is the only thing I love doing. I'd be a bartender forever. A bartender with a master's in writing. What a failure. I told my husband he should leave me because I was a loser. Yeah, seriously, I was fucked up. I haven't been *that* bad since the cutting and heavy drinking years.

But hubby is a freakin' saint so he talked me off the ledge and I woke up the next morning to an email from Jeri Smith-Ready who has become a real mentor to me (and she has a new book out that is brilliant and you should buy it, SHADE, check it out), who also said some very wise things including pointing out that selling on partial had become really hard to do and I should consider writing the full, which I probably will end up doing if the one editor on my agent's primary list who still has it, ends up rejecting it. Right then, though I had another thing to work on, the YA to adult conversion of the book that MTV Books said no to, but there was a glimmer of hope that it could be reconsidered as an adult book for a different imprint.

I had to write my way through my depression like I had in my early twenties, but HOLY COW was I distracted. I had emails to answer and blogs I wanted to write and twitter and facebook. I'd taken an approach where I was forcing myself to write an hour and a half at a time and then I could take a fifteen minute break. It was my way of weaning myself off of my many distractions. However, since I was spending so much time just sitting and staring at the blinking cursor, I decided I need to try something new. The fast and shitty rough draft. This wasn't an entirely new concept to me. In fact, it's basically how I got scenes started in my workshops in college. We'd always have to write in class in the teacher would coach us through some seeing-in-the-mind exercises to visualize our scene and then instruct us to write as much as we could as fast as we could and that would get me going, then I'd go home and revise. It worked quite well for me. So, two weeks before I had the total meltdown, I'd decided that since I knew generally speaking how I wanted the first 100 pages to evolve, that I would just speed write my way through them.

I'd done that and was ready to revise and had told my agent (stupidly) that I'd have 100 pages ready for her eyes in a week. Then I had the total meltdown, but I woke up the next morning after the pep talk from my husband, got the email from Jeri, and both things reminded me that I was a writer and what I had to do was write. In fact, writing was all I could do. And fortunately revising is that part I really love. Getting that first draft down is painful for me. I like having the words on the page, no matter how bad they are and then puzzling with them and making them work.

But those hundred pages of words REALLY sucked. They were mostly dialogue and very rambly. Still I dove in and I quickly realized there was no way in hell that I would be able to finish in a week. So I emailed my agent and told her, I'd need at least one more week. She said no biggie, it was just a soft deadline. And I continued to puzzle. I was still distracted by email and twitter and blogging occasionally, but I was no longer needing my breaks after every hour and a half of writing time.

Then two days before my second soft deadline, I realized I'd really screwed something up. There are two major catalysts in this book that push my characters onto a new path. I'd written one of those catalysts like an afterthought, told it in a flashback because I'd been in a rush to get to a certain point. This is definitely one of the pitfalls of the fast and dirty drafting method. Sometimes you go off in the wrong direction and end up way off the path your book needs to go on. Fortunately this happened toward the end of my 100 pages, but it meant I'd have to change around the beginning and the structure of the chapters, both of which I'd been struggling with. Actually, I realized, I needed to change my timeline. At first, I didn't think I could. The book involves a pregnancy obviously certain things have to happen at certain times to make a pregnancy storyline realistic. It also involved one character briefly going to jail, but again, the timing needed to be realistic. Fortunately I have a neonatal nurse mother and a lawyer brother, so I picked their brains and was able to adjust my timeline.

I went to my bartending job with my head in the book, trying to puzzle out how to readjust the structure and the beginning. The story alternates between the 39 year-old bartender mother and the 18 year-old daughter. I'd started with the daughter because I was more comfortable with her. She is just a couple years older than the YA characters I'm used to writing. But it had been nagging me all along that since this was supposed to be an adult book, I should probably start with the mom. I needed the right scene for her though and I couldn't figure it out.

I served drinks and made notes, served drinks, made notes. Kind of wished that all my customers would leave so I could focus, but told myself that being half-focused was good because it would allow my mind to work. This was probably the first sign that passion was finally returning to my writing. I wanted to write. I wanted to figure my story out. I didn't feel like it was an obligation, something I had to force myself to do like I have been for the past year.

By the end of the night, I still hadn't figured things out, but my cats solved that problem for me the next morning. I'd been tossing and turning, barely sleeping and frustrated about it because I knew I needed to get up and write. Now I had a new personal deadline- May 13th, lucky 13, I had to meet it. Then, right as I finally was sleeping, the freaking cats jumped on the bed, fighting. I scolded them and then I jumped out of bed, thanking them because I knew the scene I needed to write: a bar fight.

It took me all day to write eight pages, much longer than I wanted to spend on them, but I thought it worked. I sent it to my critique partners to see what they thought, asking them to take a peek at it over the weekend if they could. One of them got back to me in less than 12 hours (the nice thing about having a CP in Australia is when you send her things at night, it's morning for her and sometimes she can get them back very quickly) with a couple of suggestions, but overall she loved the idea. So Saturday, I incorporated her suggestions and some new ideas of my own and worked until I had to go to the bar. No twitter, no facebook, no email. No time for it. I was writing. The next day was Mother's Day, so I took it off to be with my mom. She, along with my husband, is my biggest cheerleader, so as we spent the afternoon weeding the garden, she was happy to be a sounding board for my ideas. The next morning, I got up and wrote, ignoring twitter, facebook, email, etc. It wasn't urgent. The idea was. I had writer's group that evening with my other CP. I wrote two bits of scene and made notes and came home at 10 pm, apologizing to my husband, saying I couldn't hang out with him. I needed to pull an all nighter. I wrote until 3 am. Got up at 10 am the next day and started writing again. Took a break to work out and watch 90210, then apologized to the hubby again and said I needed another all-nighter.

I'm a binge writer. It started in college. I worked two, sometimes three jobs, and usually had one day off to get my writing done. I'd journal throughout the week, but then I'd spend a whole day writing. When I was finishing a major draft of BALLADS, I went to a writer's retreat in Canada and wrote 10 to 12 hours a day for 10 days. I finished half the book plus did a complete revision. This is how I work best.

But I had to build up to it because in the past two years since I published my first book, I'd been balancing promotion and email and social networking and blogging and all of it felt very urgent like I couldn't just ignore it for a week. Until I did. I'd tweet my progress for the day and my reminder that I was working at the bar and people should come visit me. But on Wednesday, I didn't actually want anyone to visit me. Usually a dead night at work panics me (a large part of my fear over the past year is that I'm working in two unstable businesses--bartending and writing--and I'm the kind of person who needs stability. I don't need to be rich, I just need to know I can pay my bills for the month.), but Wednesday I brought my laptop to work hoping I could write instead of deal with customers.

At that point I'd made it all the way through my 100 pages and I'd absolutely fallen in love with the stories and the characters. One of the main settings for the book is a bar, The Bar, I call it, and it's based loosely on the bar where I work. I love where I work. I love bartending and meeting new people and I've collected a lot of stories over the roughly five years I've been doing it. Bringing what I've lived into this story has been so much fun. And my mom character, Ivy, is hilarious. I like writing a dramaedy instead of a straight up drama for a change. I've been eating up shows like Gilmore Girls and Weeds and Californication over the past couple years and now I get to pay homage to them like I paid homage to my girl rock stars in IWBYJR. Also, Ivy is obsessed with soap operas as I have been since the age of 14 and I get to have fun with that. Zoe, my eighteen year-old daughter character, is a vegan like me and politically active and hugely into punk and about to learn the same lessons and face some of the same bitterness as I did at 18. On my last day of writing, Wednesday, I suddenly made some discoveries about the characters. The last ten pages I wrote truly surprised and that was so much fun.

On Thursday, I did my final polish of the 100 pages. And, wow, I realized, it was actually GOOD. I know there are parts that need some more work, but it's time to step back and let my agent and critique partners read it. But I almost didn't want to. Who cares about the email and everything has piled up, I was having fun. I'd remembered why I loved writing again. I was freakin' high!

I don't know what will happen next. Ideally my agent will love it, I'll tweak it slightly, and we'll send to the editor that I've discussed it with, who I do feel comfortable submitting on partial to even though this is not climate for it. While she is reading it, I will go back to my paranormal with my newfound passion and work on the full manuscript of that. Ideally this book will sell so I will feel more comfortable about taking my time with the other one. But it might not. My agent might not think it's ready yet or she might think I need to write the full manuscript of this one too. My career might unfold more slowly than I want it to. But right now that doesn't matter.

Three weeks ago, I was at my lowest of lows in years. Today, I'm blissfully happy and reminded of why I write--not to sell books, but to weave stories and have fun with characters.

I'd taking a well-earned break to read and catch up on TV (and email, I guess...), but I'm hoping to keep riding this momentum for a long while.

And I apologize for such a long blog entry. It's partially because other than to post interviews, I have not blogged in a long time and partially it was self-indulgent. I wanted a record of how my process works. But hopefully this will help other writers, too and give you ideas about process and remind you that even at your lowest, you can find a way to fall in love again.

Holding my breath

2010-05-13T07:33:00.005-05:00

I’ve sent out advance reading copies for FORGET YOU, which will be published by MTV Books on July 20, and so far I’ve seen nothing but good reviews. There may be bad reviews out there, but I have not seen them, which I think is a good place to be. The reviews I’ve seen are from Naughty Book Kitties, Princess Bookie, Girls Without a Bookshelf, Chick Loves Lit, Lorraine’s Book Blog, and Myriad Words, plus a review from Asamum that pegs what I was trying to do in this book so accurately, I got a little creeped out. Because of these book bloggers who have been kind enough to post early reviews, I’m no longer worried about the reception of this book when it finally comes out.

But ENDLESS SUMMER is a different story. It will be published by Simon Pulse in eleven days (!!!) and I did not get advance copies, so I will not be able to send books to bloggers until it’s already in stores.

A few months ago I was feeling a lot more confidence in ENDLESS SUMMER than FORGET YOU. ENDLESS SUMMER is the sequel to THE BOYS NEXT DOOR, which came out in 2007. I wrote the sequel because readers asked me to. It’s the only sequel I’ve written, mainly because in general I don’t like sequels. Too often it seems the author poured everything she had into the first book. By the second book, the characters have nothing left to achieve. So I thought about this sequel for three years before I finally wrote it, and I’m very proud of the result.

The copy that will go on sale also includes THE BOYS NEXT DOOR in the same volume. This means it is an Extremely Large Book, about 600 pages, and it has a beautiful cover.

I’m hoping, and I think Simon Pulse was hoping when they designed it, that it will really stand out on a shelf full of black-covered paranormals. In short, I hope that even with no advance reviews, readers will judge a book by its cover.

Before my work was published, I never gave much thought to covers. I figured I would write the best book I could, and readers would judge my books on their merit. It was a huge surprise to find that covers can make or break the sale of a book, and authors have little or no say in the matter. That’s why I am so gratified that Danielle and Barbara have such gorgeous covers for their upcoming 2010 releases—and why I am really happy to be published by MTV Books, where they understand that the cover is important to point-of-sale, and it even affects the reader’s perception while she’s reading. It’s unnerving, really, to give up that much control over how people will perceive your work. So when you get a great cover, you rejoice, and trust, and hope.

Still holding my breath, though.

Mindless Creativity

2010-05-09T17:37:00.002-05:00

I have one of those minds that never shuts down even when there’s nothing to think about. That’s why I can’t get to sleep and, when I do, why I have all those crazy dreams I wrote about in a previous post. Sleep deprivation aside, a whirling mind makes it difficult to focus on writing.

Which brings me to the value of engaging in mindless tasks. My morning run is a perfect example. My legs, lungs, and heart are working hard, but my brain is on cruise control. I run basically the same course every day, often in the dark, which limits my sensory input. After a few minutes, the rhythm, quiet, and darkness shut off my conscious mind and let my subconscious take over. That’s when my best creative thinking happens.

You don’t have to be a runner to benefit from mindless tasks—any boring, repetitive activity will do. One of my spring projects is to cover the berm beside our driveway with river rock. So far I’ve hauled in and spread three and a half tons of rock, and I have at least two more tons to go. Scooping and tossing rocks provides hours of mindlessness—and days of sore muscles afterward.

Our acreage provides plenty of mindless tasks to give my subconscious a chance to shine. Lawn mowing is one of the best. I pop in my earplugs, rev up the engine, and drive off. An added bonus of mowing is the vibration, which relaxes me even more. There are problems with being too relaxed, though, like running into low hanging tree limbs, woodchuck holes, and bushes I planted just a little too close together. It would also help if I remembered to take my foot off the gas to stop instead of trying to pump the nonexistent brake pedal.

When I get tired of mowing and scooping rock, I pull weeds and plant flowers. And there’s the chore I always put off until last—mucking out the guinea cage. If I wait long enough sometimes Mike gives in and takes over that nasty job.

Whatever mindless task is occupying my mind, I keep my miniature recorder nearby to capture any creative gems before they slip away.

So, do you use mindless tasks to spark your creativity? If not, I’ll be happy to point you to my asparagus bed. By the time you clear out the weeds you’ll have enough material for a thousand-page novel.

To fanfic or not? What's the right answer?

2010-05-06T11:04:00.006-05:00

There's been something of a kerfluffle going on around the blogosphere this past week, which makes it different from any other week... in no discernible way, really. But this is kind of an interesting kerfluffle in the questions it raises with respect to fanfiction. Author Diana Gabaldon [OUTLANDER] has some pretty strong opinions on the matter, which is, of course, her right. Especially as it concerns her work. But it kind of didn't end there. She made some pretty broad sweeping generalizations about the writers of fan fiction that were really at the root of said kerfluffle. (Just Google Diana Gabaldon & fan fiction and you'll no doubt get lots of links, but here's the original post.)

My biggest beef was with the implication that fan fiction writers can't possibly be "real" writers. Personally, I think that's a load of hooey. I know many fine writers who have no interest in pursuing publication (for my purposes, publication meaning producing original work for which they're given a contract and royalties from an established publishing company) who nevertheless practice their craft within the realm of fan fiction simply because they enjoy writing and they enjoy playing the "what if" game with established characters.

And here's the thing, I can't exactly point the finger at fan fiction writers and get my self-righteous on, because that's exactly the medium I used to relearn the craft of creative writing after too many years spent in academia. It found that it gave me a framework within which to practice dialogue, situational writing, and a little bit of character growth, within established characters and settings. I only wrote fan fiction for about ten months or so, because it only took that long for me to get twitchy and want to do something that was purely "mine" where I could control every aspect of the creative process and not feel constrained by someone else's work.

Was it right? That's up to the individual, but because fan fiction wasn't just about personal enjoyment, but also something I did as "practice" before moving on to my own work with the intent of eventually being published, I did have a few personal rules that governed my foray into fan fiction:

1) I only played with television characters. To my way of thinking, they were already being written and shaped across episodes and seasons by multiple writers, so mine was just another voice, adding another layer, if you will. I also stayed firmly within their established universe. Crossovers never appealed to me.

2) Yes, I wanted feedback. I'm human and I wanted to know I didn't suck. So I did put my work "out there." Maybe not the smartest thing, in retrospect, given my ambitions, but I was very new to the internet (it was over ten years ago) and all things considered, it was only exhibited in a very limited scope to a very small circle. You won't find any of my efforts on fanfiction.net or any of the other big archives.

3) I never, ever pretended these characters were in any way mine. Meaning I tried to stay true to the characters as already established. I tried to use clues that the show writers seemed to be leaving for the viewers on which to base my "what if" scenarios. Or I played fill in the blank, writing "missing scenes." But always, always, I tried to respect that I was only playing in someone else's sandbox with their toys.

4) I never, ever thought my work was the equal of the original creator or that I should be considered as some sort of "professional writer," simply because I had written fan fiction. I was a writer, but not a professional.

I think where fan fiction writers kind of get themselves into hot water is when they start feeling as if their work is somehow the equal of the original creator and that they somehow are entitled to the same measure of respect or acknowledgment. And thing is, they're not. I'm not saying that with respect to craft, they might not be equal (heck, in some cases, they may well have surpassed the original-- I've certainly seen examples of fan fiction that's better than the original, but that's neither here nor there). However, so long as they are playing with someone else's creation without their permission a fan fiction author is not and never will be considered the equal of the original creator. And for the love of all that's holy, don't go up to a published author and say that your fan fiction is better than the author's. Yes, I've seen that happen and the response wasn't pretty.

Which actually leads me to my next point: most authors don't want to hear from fan fiction writers about the work based on their material (it's actually a legal liability); most authors are actually pretty darned offended by it and too many fan fiction authors don't respect that. They desperately want to be seen as a peer, but the only way for that to happen is to leave fan fiction behind and establish yourself as a writer of original work. Or somehow find a way to make the fan fiction pay off for you-- it's actually great practice for screenwriting or for writing licensed novels. (Or even for finding a way to put a new spin on a classic. *ahem*) Seriously, I think it was my background in fan fiction, in part, that allowed me to think outside the box when taking the idea of Carmen and crafting it into the story for STARS.

These are just my opinions and frankly, it's not something I expect to deal with any time soon. I think there are some genres that lend themselves far more readily to fan fiction than others. (Sci-fi/fantasy, most definitely) But given my history with fan fiction, it's definitely something I take into consideration.

I can honestly say that if someone felt compelled to create fan fiction based on any of my work, I definitely wouldn't want to see it. Again, the legal liabilities coupled with the fact that I'm wicked protective of my characters and it would probably bring on a case of Hulk! Smash! Rage! if I were to see any examples of them behaving in a manner in which I never intended. Which makes it kind of ironic, I know, that I even delved into fan fiction, but it was actually writing fanfic that started developing those defensive feelings of protectiveness. I wanted to have my own characters to play with—my own situations—and I didn't want any other influence beyond that of my own twisted imagination.

As a final note, yes, I still have a few of the word docs on my computer and they are appropriately cringe-inducing, but you know, at the same time, I can see glimmers of the writer I was going to become, so one thing I'll never say about fan fiction is that it's a waste of time.

What about you guys? Anyone been faced with the question of fan fiction with respect to their work? How do you feel about it?

Hudson Children's Book Festival was a Blast!

2010-05-06T10:21:00.005-05:00

I attended the second annual Hudson Children’s Book Festival this past weekend and it was amazing. Over 5000 people walked through the door from 10am to 4pm and every single kid received a free book. There were over 100 authors/illustrators there ranging from those who write board books to middle grade to young adult. In the photo above from left to right is: me and the super talented: Michelle Zink, Jennifer Hubbard,Neesha Meminger and Megan Frazer.

My table was nestled between Jan Cheripko and Aimee Ferris. Besides being authors, Jan works with at-risk youth and Aimee used to be a dive master—so cool!
I was also on a panel called Common Ground: Connecting Teens through Books & Music with authors, Michelle Zink, Maryrose Wood and Megan Frazer. We each read a scene from our books and played a snippet of a song that inspired us to write our novels. We even have our play list up on iTunes of the songs that we selected for the presentation.

I stayed in Hudson for the weekend and my hosts, local teachers, Val and Karen were amazing. I was ready to move in! Authors Ellen Jensen Abbott and Anne Haywood Leal, also stayed with me. We hung out late into the night chatting on the porch and drinking local wine.

On my drive back to Boston I stopped at a cemetery in Columbia County that was the perfect setting for the manuscript I’m also done writing, Graveyard Shift. I took many photos of the graveyard. It felt a little strange being there all alone on a bright Sunday morning but a girl has to do her research!

So why attend a book festival? I love chatting with readers, writers, teachers and librarians and there’s no better place to do this than at a book festival. You should definitely check this festival out next year. It will be on May 7, 2011. Don’t live near Hudson? There are plenty of book festivals across the country, just check which one is coming to a town near you. Happy reading!

Seasonal Allergies... Writing When It's Nice Out

2010-05-05T08:09:00.005-05:00

It feels like summer is finally here (we had 11 kids in our pool on Sunday... doesn't make for a relaxing afternoon of reading on the patio). I've never written a book during the summer before. I'm more of a fall/winter writer. Cannot get motivated to sit indoors and write when it's nice out.

I remember writing the Island Summer series (LOCAL GIRLS and RICH BOYS) from September - January. It was cold and yucky out and I was writing about the summer on Martha's Vineyard. It was so nice to imagine the beach and the sunshine and how green everything is on the island during the summer. Ironically, this weekend when it was in the 80's and sunny I was writing about December and snow and Christmas for my next book. Gotta admit, not nearly as much fun, considering I'm so glad that winter seems to be over.

What about you? Are you a seasonal writer? Are you more productive at one time of the year vs. another?

What totems, rituals, or superstitions do you have?

2010-04-30T10:42:00.000-05:00

Am I superstitious? Definitely. I knock on wood, cross my fingers, and wish on numbers, stars, eyelashes, and really whatever I can wish on because I've got a lot to wish for. But I also have an odd reversal of a common superstition.

You see, I was born on Friday July 13... and after a thunderstorm no less. Yes, the universal lucky number, 7, and the universal unlucky number 13, are my birthday. I was once told that if you are born on Friday the 13th, it makes Friday the 13th your lucky day. I definitely took that to heart... not that I can think of a Friday the thirteenth that was particularly lucky for me... But thirteen remains my favorite number with 7 being my second favorite and I'm also partial to 17 (sold my first book on April 17), 23 (husband's birthday, though I liked that number long before that, so somehow it makes senses I married a guy born on that day), and 27 (the age that many rock stars die, but for some reason I like it)... as well as 6 since 6+7=13... Yeah I'm really weird with numbers. And strangely this made me very lucky at roulette the last time I was in Vegas. . I like to send my manuscripts into my agent or have her send them on to editors on certain days or during certain time periods that I consider lucky. I was very pleased when she submitted to my editor BALLADS OF SUBURBIA on Kurt Cobain's birthday and sure enough, it sold! Thus far we haven't been so lucky with the manuscript that went out around the time he died, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed and wishing on 11:11 and that sort of thing that I didn't curse myself. Also, even though I'm pissed I didn't meet my personal deadline to submit a manuscript to my agent today, I'm hoping I can send it on 5/7 which sounds like a good number. And back to 13. I decided to get married on 10/3 because, you guessed it 10+3= 13.

I also have 13 piercings in my ears (10 in one and 3 in the other) and if I don't have all 13 earrings in, I think it's unlucky. I used to wear all these rubber jelly bracelets. It started with 7, then became 13, and finally 27, which was kind of out of control and I didn't take them off for a couple of years so they shrunk. Then I interviewed for a more professional job and had to cut them all of. So now I have other jewelry superstitions. I have a lucky bracelet. It's got little tiny old postcard images of my favorite city, Seattle. I also have a ring that belonged to friend of mine who passed away. He was a big guy so the ring is too big for any of my fingers and I wear it on a chain instead. If I'm dressing up, I put it on a black satin ribbon, but I don't go out (other than on those minor errands where I barely brush my hair, let alone find all of my jewelry) without that ring. One night I went to my bartending job and realized that I wasn't wearing my bracelet or necklace. Seeing that there were barely any customers in the bar (BAD LUCK!), I texted my husband and insisted he bring my jewelry to me. When it comes to bartending, I also for some reason associate certain barrettes or items of clothing to luckier than others for a busy night.

I also have my rituals. I practice Nichiren Buddhism, so I chant every morning when I wake up. I wasn't raised religiously and I still consider myself an atheist. To me Buddhism is more of a philosophy, you don't pray to a higher power, you chant to find the Buddha or greatness within yourself. So that's why I try to start my day by chanting, to get myself into a positive mindset that I can do anything... though of course since I am a very superstitious and ritualistic person, I also think that if I *don't* chant, bad things will happen, which is really just silly. I mean after all, I was born on Friday the 13th, I should be a very lucky person... I'm just waiting for that luck to catch up with me!

What about you? Got any lucky numbers or other charms or rituals?

What totems, rituals, or superstitions do you have...

2010-04-29T06:20:00.004-05:00

I am having a Jan moment in which I am trying to think of totems, rituals, or superstitions...and unlike Jan, I am speaking with no (intentional) irony when I say that I don't have any.

I definitely did when I was growing up. The things other authors have listed here sound very familiar. But that was bound to end, because I am a logical person. I mean, a REALLY logical person, so logical that I'm not a lot of fun sometimes. On top of that, I taught freshman English at three different large state universities, and those classes were all about making a logical argument. If I had any whimsy left in me, teaching those classes beat it out of me. Honestly, my favorite TV show is Mythbusters!

And if that were not enough, there was the bee.

It was November 2004, a lovely crisp fall Saturday in Atlanta, where I was living at the time. We were planning a move back to Birmingham, so we were having a garage sale. The day started out great. We got rid of some bad furniture we'd been lugging around through several moves. And then the haggling started. People started coming up to me and asking if I really wanted a quarter for this baby shirt, because it had the tag cut out of it and they couldn't tell for certain what size it was, etc. I mean, PEOPLE, do not malign the merchandise at a GARAGE SALE. Come on.

So the morning wore on and my mood got pootier, and about noon I watched the post office truck stop by my mailbox and move on down the street.

Now, I will admit, at that point I was an unpublished author, and I did have some lingering superstitions about the many query letters I had out to agents--for instance, the longer I waited to check the mailbox, the more likely something good would be in there. But it had been a long morning and I could not resist, so I went down and peered inside.

There was a letter. From the agent of a huge best-selling author. I had queried this agent because at that time, the huge best-selling author had just come out with her very first book--but it was similar in style to the book I was shopping, and the author was from Atlanta like me, and I thought this author would really go places (boy was I right--her books are piled in Sam's Club right now, in my view the ultimate aim of any author).

I opened the letter.

It was a revise-and-resubmit. A rather scathing one, actually, asking me to compromise the very parts of my book that I loved the most.

I was SO DISAPPOINTED. My heart broke (again).

And as I was standing there reading it, a bee zoomed out of the mailbox, zipped down the back of my shorts, and stung me on the ass.

This was a Sign that I should stop trying.

I could have believed it. I was tempted to believe it. Believing it would have been so much easier than pursuing a career as a novelist! But I did not.

And I have not believed any Signs since. I believe only in my own hard work.

What totems, rituals, or superstitions do you have?

2010-04-25T14:22:00.006-05:00

My first reaction to this question was, “I don’t have any rituals or superstitions. What will I write about?”

The blog question was on my mind when I got up at my usual time and took my two dogs for their morning walk. Rituals? Man, I couldn’t think of a single one. While Mike and I were running, as I do every morning without fail, I asked him if he could think of any rituals I have. “Hmm. Not really.” When we arrived at home, Sassy and Gizmo were waiting at the door for the chicken treats I give them when I finish running—2 apiece, as always. Darn it! Why couldn’t I come up with anything?

While the dogs were munching at the bottom of the stairs, I double-checked my closet to make sure my outfits for the week were hanging in the order I planned to wear them. Coordinating shoes, watches, and jewelry were lined up neatly underneath, and I’d piled the week’s underwear nearby. All set there.

If only I could think of at least one ritual to write about! Maybe some brain food would help. I ate my breakfast of two kinds of cereal with skim milk, took my vitamin supplements, and left for my part-time job at exactly 7:15.

Frustrated, I decided to give up on the rituals and try for superstitions.

With luck, I’d think of something during the commute. But I made the mistake of commenting on how light the traffic was, and the next thing I knew the freeway came to a standstill. I should have known better than to jinx myself like that. When I arrived at work—late—a huge scanning job was waiting for me. As I loaded papers into the scanner I made sure never to add thirteen at a time. No sense pushing my luck. Then one of my coworkers noted that for once it wasn’t supposed to rain over the weekend. We both knocked wood, just to be certain. The best part of the day was the drive home. I hit every green light, so the package I’d been waiting for would be on my door step.

It wasn’t. Tomorrow for sure.

Okay, I don’t have any rituals or superstitions, but I have totems. If I’m facing a scary situation, I wear the gold chain my mom left me and attach the opal slide—my birthstone—Mike gave me. If I need extra luck or courage, I wear one of Mom’s watches, too. Being surrounded by love is the ultimate totem.

Hold on. I do have one superstition. I don't announce a book sale until it’s a done deal. Now that it is, I’m excited to announce that my humorous YA, ASPEN AND LAUREL DO SUMMER will be coming out next year!

Knock on wood.

What totems, rituals, or superstitions do you have?

2010-04-22T10:18:00.008-05:00

I'm pretty much as Virgo as Virgo gets. Which means I'm a ridiculous creature of habit. Which means a lot of things that might not come off as seeming superstitious probably look that way. Who knows, maybe they started out as superstitions that evolved into habits. Totems and rituals, those I have plenty of, just because, once again, creature of habit.

Anyhow, so what totems, rituals, or superstitions do I have?

I always step first with my left foot. I was in band/drum corps for so many years, it's just habit. But it feels weird if I don't do it.

I won't wear all black or all white to a wedding. Even though I know the "rules" about such things have relaxed somewhat, it was so drummed into me that it was bad juju to do so, I don't dare risk it. I'm too afraid my grandma's gonna swoop in and smack me upside the head. (Plus, someone wore white lace to my wedding and it was kind of obnoxious, so there's that, too...)

Every morning, I have to check my news sites and email while drinking my coffee. And I really, really like being left alone while I do so.

I have to write with the same kind of pen (a Pilot G-2 1.0, preferably black, although I'm also partial to purple if I can find them).

I have to have a fresh blank journal for every manuscript I start. Also, a title. Even knowing the title's going to change, I can't just call it "Story X" or leave the title blank. It twigs me monumentally.

I always have to have music going and I create a new soundtrack for every new manuscript. In fact, that's one of my measuring sticks for how developed a story idea is-- if I can create a soundtrack and have it really evoke a particular mood or characterization, I feel as if I'm really onto something and that the writing's going to go smoothly. (Or at least as smoothly as these things can ever go.)

As far as totems go, I don't have a specific one, but several and my collection keeps growing. They're generally things that I've collected or mean a lot to me or simply make me happy. I have several stuffed Opuses, dating back to my high school days, but my favorite is "Crazy Love" Opus, who's wrapped in a straitjacket printed with little hearts and lives on one of my secondary desks. Back when I thought I was going to write romances, he was my mascot. Now that I know being a romance writer is a little beyond my ken (and my Barbies, too) he's still my mascot, mostly because he represents that craziness that is going into publishing and the hearts remind me that I put up with the craziness because above all, I love to write.

On my desk and bookshelves are smaller figurines: Guido from Cars (Pit stop!) and a folk cow suspended above a house that I bought while a guest at a writing retreat in Tennessee. My agent gave me a carved rooster, since roosters are our "thing" based on a line in STARS that she said was her favorite. Then there are the "boys." My heroes (or anti-heroes, since they're not exactly the most upstanding fellows). I have Nicholas Wolfwood, from the anime Trigun. He's a bad boy renegade priest (of which I have one in my latest MS). Then there's Commander Norrington from the Pirates of the Caribbean series, but not the stuffy, white-wigged version. No, no... I have the scruffy, been beaten down by circumstance version. (I'm using Jack Davenport, who plays Norrington, as an avatar for another story.) And probably my favorite action figure: Gambit, from the X-Men. Oh, do I have myself a soft spot for gamblin' thievin' Remy Lebeau-- neat, neat character in that he's very much a loner, very much an opportunist. Doesn't display an outward loyalty to anything other than his own best interests, but often does the right thing, especially once committed to a person or group. And I have a character named Remy in a story as well.

Superstitions, maybe not so much, but totems and rituals are definitely part of this Very Virgo personality.

What totems, rituals, or superstitions do you have?"

2010-04-20T10:54:00.002-05:00

I also think this is such a fun topic and if I were writing about my grandmother, I could go on forever. Granny never let us open an umbrella in the house, put our handbags on the floor or walk under a ladder just to name a few. I think about her whenever I do these things and often feel guilty if I put my bag on the floor so I move it after a few minutes!

So here's what I do, do:

1. If my clock every reads 11:11, I make a wish.

2. I also make wishes on eyelashes and have my kids do the same.

3. As a kid I recited the alphabet while turning the stem of an apple and whatever letter I was on when the stem came loose, was the boy that I was "supposed" to date.

4. I like to sleep with the overhead fan on and one leg out of my comforter. When I was sleeping over my cousin, Mandy's house when I was about nine, she told me that that was the best way to sleep and I guess she was right.

5. I never write in a book unless it's to sign one. Even in college I wrote my notes on a separate sheet of paper.

6. In high school my friend, Nell and I decided to keep a sacred M & M in a beautiful small Chinese box that I was given for my Bat Mitzvah. All was fine until my dog Lady ate the sacred M & M.

This topic definitely lends itself well for character development when writing a novel. Can't wait to hear what everyone else has to say about their totems. rituals or superstitions.

What totems, rituals, or superstitions do you have?

2010-04-19T18:41:00.006-05:00

I LOVE this question!! One oddity immediately came to mind, and then a second, and then more. So here I go:

1. Ritual. When pumping gas I have to stop on the zeros - as in $29.00 or $32.00. So I'll say something like, "If I stop on the zeros then...(fill in the blank, for example, "The next lottery ticket I buy will be a winner")." It's a little bargaining thing I do, and it's hard. I can't slow down to make it happen, I just start counting when I get to .50 and then try to hit the timing right. And once I stop I can't start again, it's either under, over, or right on. And rarely right on. But when it is I get happy. It's so stupid.

2. Superstition. I won't pick up a penny unless it's heads up. A tails up penny is bad luck, so I won't risk it.

3. Ritual. I always wish on the first star I see in the sky, and I always recite, "Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, wish I may, wish I might have the wish I wish tonight."

4. Superstition. I once read that you shouldn't say "I wish..." when wishing on a star because then what you're really wishing for is a wish (so, for example, if you say, "I wish I'd win the lottery" then your wish will come true, you will continue to wish to win the lottery). Instead you should say, "I will win the lottery." So when I make my wishes on stars I don't say, "I wish..." I just say what it is I'd like to come true.

5. Superstition/Ritual. My two best friends and I get our tarrot cards read at a place called the Tremont Tea Room. We do it about once a year and it's so much fun. So much of what we've been told has come true. And just in case you're a non-believer: we went our junior year of college for the first time. I had my tea leaves read. The person asked me who Joe was. I was like, what? She showed me how the tea leaves spelled out Joe inside the cup, and I swear they really did. He was my boyfriend. She also told me that she saw me writing beside a very large lake. There was a lake on my college campus but I'd never written beside it. I forgot about it. Until 11 years later when I was writing my first book, sitting in my condo overlooking Lake Michigan. And I once had past life regression done in Chicago. The woman told me that in a former life I lived in Greenland and my child drowned and it's made me stay away from water. Well, I don't like the water, never go in the ocean (pretty much because it's cold, but also because I wonder what's crawling around my toes). There was no way this woman could have known that, for all she knew I was a lifeguard who used to be on a swimteam. I could go on and on and on. It's so much fun.

I think that's it! If I think of more, I'll post later.

Free-spirited adventures in Seattle with my BFFs (a photo blog, of course)

2010-04-14T09:23:00.000-05:00

When I travel or have anything big going on in my life, I like to do a photo blog to catch up with my friends and readers. (For example, here's a photo blog about my spring projects. Here is the beginning of a week's worth of wedding photo blogs. And my five-part I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE tour photo recap begins here.) I also partially do it as a scrapbook. I don't journal or put together photo albums the way I used to even though I never thought I'd let the digital version of those activities dominate my life so much. But it has. I guess that's why blogging is really personal for me and why my entries get so long and in depth sometimes... and why sometimes I feel like I go on streaks where I don't have anything to blog about because either interesting is going on or I have to remind myself that my blog is not my diary and I probably shouldn't share everything (though I'm terrible about that actually. You'll find me complaining about my cat's diarrhea problems quite a bit lately on twitter. Sorry about the TMI.)

Last week I was on my annual Seattle trip. In case you haven't heard, I am absolutely in love with Seattle and until I can afford to move there (like one of my lucky lucky fellow MTV Books authors who just got seriously the most gorgeous cover ever for her forthcoming book WHEN THE STARS GO BLUE. Seriously how eye-popping is that cover!!!), I visit once a year. Oh yeah and last year there was a photo blog for that....

This year something about the trip felt different, like I wasn't sure how I was going to blog about it or even what to tell people about my trip. I've been to Seattle so many times I know exactly where I want to visit (Pike Place Market every morning for either fresh fruit or a vegan cinnamon roll; Capitol Hill, the U-District, and Ballard for shopping; The Central, The Comet, and Nite Lite for drinks; Bamboo Garden, Araya's, Mama's Kitchen, and Roy's for dinner; and of course Viretta Park or the we fondly call it, Kurt's Park, the park next to the house where Kurt Cobain killed himself that is like an unofficial memorial site to him) and though I always find new adventures (this year we went to the Washington Arboretum, the Museum of History and Industry, the Japanese Tea Garden, and checked out the Georgetown neighborhood which led to more must-visit eating and drinking spots to add to my list), every time I go it feels more and more personal. Like I'm just going to hang out with an old friend (yes, I am personifying the city) and I almost don't want to talk about it, I almost can't explain the good times we had.

And this year the feeling intensified because I went with two of my best friends in the world Jenny (who does a fabulous job on my website I must say) and Eryn. We don't live in the same city so when we travel together or visit each other approximately once or twice a year that is all we see of each other. And there is something about these girls that makes me feel like I'm in high school again.... well, no, when I was in high school, I was all angsty and awful... they make me feel like how I thought high school should be, all goofy sleepovers and inside jokes. In fact it feels like our whole trip was this big inside joke about partial holidays (when I objected to a security guard saying it Easter was a national holiday because "what about separation of church and state," he said "oh uh errr it's a partial national holiday"), chickens and Martha Washington (there was an anime convention in town, people were dressed up really really strangely. A friend later told me that the chicken might have been an emu because I guess there is an emu-like creature in Final Fantasy? But I still have no explanation for Martha Washington), fashion changes and things being really intense.... like more intense than pulling your hair out of your shirt collar (I visited my friend Polly while I was in town and her three year-old daughter had some major gems that I couldn't help adopting), denim minis (I was on the quest for the perfect one) and *sigh* Asher (the artist that tattooed my friend Jenny and she totally fell in love with).

So yeah, I tell some of my other friends and husband these stories and they laugh a little, but honestly it feels like my trip was one big "you kinda had to be there" and I honestly like it that way. I had these great moments with my girl friends where I got to be totally myself and totally silly. I wasn't thinking about the writing I was struggling with (actually I had a big novel breakthrough the day before I left which helped me go in high spirits) or worrying about my writing career or my cats (in case you haven't heard, they have this ongoing case of diarrhea...).

So here are some goofy photos that probably won't make much sense, but they are proof of what a good time I had.

The shape of the fake meat at Bamboo Garden will bring out your inner fourth grader:
Denim Minis (can you guess which is mine?):
Impromptu America's Top Model style photo shoot in the building with the ATM in it...:
Until the security guard in the top right got mad and told us no photos were allowed. I guess it's a top-secret Starbucks location...

Impromptu secret dress-up session at a clothing store:
Rocking out at the Hard Rock Cafe:
Molesting Jimi Hendrix:
I know what the sign says, but we may disregard it...
Oh we can take a nice photo every once in a while:
Or we can be totally silly. We did three photo booth themes. This one was "make out":
But silliness aside, one thing we did get in tribute to our favorite city and even more importantly, our friendship, was get tattooed together.

Jenny was in love with her artist, Asher, but we didn't get a good photo:
Here I am, in the zone:
And the results, cherry blossoms for everyone:

As usual, we were sad to say goodbye to Seattle and especially to each other:
I promise a less goofy photo blog on my blog sometime soon. I did visit a really interesting place with my friend Polly, a beach where homes crashed down in a mudslide fifteen years ago and the remains are still there. It's quite surreal. So I'll have that and more tattoo pics and nature-y pics and of course the standard tourist shots like these upcoming this week:

But now that you have seen my goofy friend pictures (and probably take me wayyyyyyyy less seriously than you used to, but that's a good thing), tell me about your friends like Eryn and Jenny who make you feel like the ultimate free spirit. What kind of adventures have you had with them?

For a rainy day

2010-04-13T12:21:00.002-05:00

It's not raining today. Here in Alabama it's sunny with a high of 82 and everything is in full blossom. And I just made a breakthrough in writing my new book.

I am a plotter at heart. I try not to be. I am a very organized person when I have time, and that's precisely the problem. If left to my own devices, I will plot and plot and plot a book and never get down to writing it.

So in the past few years, I have just started writing without knowing exactly where I'm going. But that causes me a lot of anxiety. And then, one day...the storm clouds part and the sun breaks through, and I have figured out my direction.

That is always a great moment for me. I remember where I was standing in 2005 (on my back porch) when I finally figured out why Johnafter in Going Too Far was so concerned about his bridge. That book, which had really troubled me up to that point, gave me nothing but joy the rest of the time I wrote it.

And today, I am happy to report that I've had the same sort of breakthrough on the Novel With a Title So Cool I Am Not Ready to Reveal It.

My writing career has had its ups and downs, to be sure--sometimes biggies in the same week. In fact, I was feeling really down about another book yesterday. So I'm posting my triumph and happiness here today, as a reminder for the next time I wander through a rainy day. Sometimes the sun shines and the air is perfumed with flowers.

My International Book Promotion Tour

2010-04-10T13:59:00.005-05:00

It’s mid-April already when our thoughts turn to showers, flowers, and our yearly contributions to the IRS. And we're all trying to scrounge up enough deductions to lower our tax debt to zero dollars or less.

Listen up, all you authors, I’ve found the solution to your tax problems.

On March 31, my guy Mike and I embarked on an intensive seven-day international book promotion tour at Sandals Whitehouse in Jamaica. On our very first evening we dined with prospective buyers from such far-flung locales as Toronto, Texas, Pittsburgh, and Jamaica, naturally. As it happens, one of our dining companions was a middle school librarian. Not missing a beat, Mike told her about FAIREST OF THEM ALL. With a winning smile I recited my memorized synopsis, and she ordered a copy from Amazon that very night.

If that’s not book promotion, what is?

For the rest of the week Mike and I celebrated our success with rum cocktails and scrumptious meals interspersed with kayaking, sailing, snorkeling, reading, relaxing, and walking along the beach. As you might have guessed each activity was meticulously planned with book sales in mind.

By the end of the week I was able to report one confirmed book sale. But who can say how many more copies will sell as a result of that contact? One hundred? One thousand? Ten thousand? The potential sales are limitless!

This afternoon as I prepare my taxes, flushed with success—and sunburn—I’m confident the IRS will say, “No problem, Mahn!” when they see I’ve deducted the entire cost of my Jamaican book promotion tour. Don’t you?

And we came to the end...

2010-04-06T20:04:00.003-05:00

Last week I received an email from a reader. She wrote, "I really enjoy writing stories and books but I'm never sure how to finish them." She asked me for advice. But you know what? I didn't really know what to tell her.

I always begin a book knowing how it starts and how it ends. It's the middles that I strugle with. Unfortunately, the middle is the majority of the book!!

I'm not a fan of hugely happy endings. The kind where everyone ends up happy and then they walk into the sunset. Because, well, that's just not real life. Even when one of my stories has a "satisfying" ending, I know there's still trouble down the road. That's just the way it is.

I tried to think of books with endings that disappointed me, but I couldn't think of any off hand. What about you? Any endings that left you wanting more? Do you like your stories wrapped up in a bow?

The things that make it all worth it

2010-04-06T13:11:00.003-05:00

Today I received permission to go public with my new cover. The book is called WHEN THE STARS GO BLUE and it's a contemporary retelling of Bizet's CARMEN. This is the book that has had the type of journey that can make a writer both wonder why on earth we keep doing this and also revel in all the reasons we continue doing this.

In twenty-five words or less, I sold this book, then it wasn't sold anymore (insert over fifteen months of work and revisions here) then after yet more work, it finally sold again, to an editor who completely gets it, to a house that loves it, and who have all made me feel as if I matter as a writer. As writers, one of the most tangible pieces of validation we receive is our book's cover. It shows that the publisher, the editor, the art department, they're paying attention, they want the best image possible to represent the story contained within the cover.

I mean, yeah, it's about trying to get a book buyer's attention and selling lots and lots of copies, but forevermore, it's the visual representation of your book and if they don't get it right, it can feel as if no one's paying attention and you're sort of adrift, trying to explain what your book's really about.

I was exceptionally blessed with my MTV covers. Both ADIÓS and ACCENT had very evocative covers that conveyed the story. This one, though... oh boy, is this cover just absolutely perfect. It's stunningly simple, yet at the same time, there are so many little elements that call out to the story. That the cover model is so obviously Latina. The pulled back hair, speaking to the fact she's a dancer. The rose-- oh my, the rose is so very important, since a rose plays a major role within the story. The wistful, dreamy expression on her face.

Oh, it's just so, so lovely. I made noises that had dogs in Australia howling and I haven't been able to stop petting my screen because yes, I'm just that sad. *g*

Anyhow, lemme just show you...

What Jobs DId You Dream of Having as a Kid?

2010-04-05T12:43:00.008-05:00

I thought of this question because my boys, eight and five, love talking about what they want to be when they grow up. My eight year old is adamant that he wants to be a cop and my five year old waffles between a magician, president and a fireman.

It's so cool to think that when you are a kid, you have the world before you and you can be whatever you want. So here are the things I dreamed of being as a kid, in no particular order.

1. A movie star
2. An author
3. A professional ice skater
4. A singer
5. A lawyer
6. A DJ
7. A teacher
8. A commercial maker
9. An artist
10.Clothing store owner

I really have always wanted to be a writer ever since first grade when we wrote and illustrated our own books. I still have my laminated book today--that I often share at book signings and school visits. Anyway, I loved dreaming about what I would be when I grew up and couldn't wait to start working. Eventually, I realized that I wasn't going to be a pro skater or singer but I did work as a DJ for a while and earned a master's in Marketing and Advertising. I also taught for seven years and even though I never owned a store, I worked in retail in high school and college.

I love to paint as a hobby and hope to take an art class again when the kids get older and of course, I use my lawyerly arguing skills with the kids just about every day! And okay, so I'm not a movie star, but I do hope to see one of my books up on the big screen. My dream is have a cameo role in one of my movies.

So there you have it, all my jobs and dreams along the way have made me a better writer. I do believe that experience is everything and that it really fuels your imagination!

So what did you dream of being as a kid?

What do you love most about being an author?

2010-03-31T09:34:00.000-05:00

This is a very timely post for me because I'm in the middle of two of the most anxiety-inducing parts about being an author for me. One, my agent is sending my new projects out on submission (eeeek! cross fingers and toes for me please!) and two, the project I'm starting to distract from that anxiety is just not cooperating! I know the story and the characters but I can't seem to get it going. Ugh!

So yeah, I really need a reminder of why I love being a writer... so that I don't give up in a fit of anxiety or frustration.

There are so many things about being an author that are exciting. The whole process of watching your book go from something you scrawled in notebooks and revised many drafts of on your computer into a book, an actual real book that ends up on bookstore shelves is extremely exciting. I still get a kick every time I see it or someone tells me about seeing it on the shelf somewhere.

Meeting the authors I admire and being actually considered an equal (no, I still really am not an equal... am I?) when inside I'm a screaming fangirl is pretty awesome. As is having those authors as a support system and becoming real friends with them.

Getting offered ARCS is pretty sweet too.

And it is definitely good to know that even if I don't sell another book (oh please please please let me sell another book, though) or ever make it really big, I did the thing that I'd wanted to do since I was five, the thing that as a jaded and screwed up sixteen year old, I never thought I'd be able to do. That is very satisfying.

But as for I love most, it's definitely interacting with readers. It's those heartfelt letters that sometimes start "You probably get a million of these, but hopefully you'll still read this one..." (I don't get a million and I always always read and do my best to respond in a timely manner) and then go on to tell me how my book impacted them. I've had readers tell me that it simply opened their eyes to another world and gave them more empathy for what fellow teens may be going through. I've had older readers tell me that oh man that brought back some memories and I nailed it. And then I get the ones where I actually *helped* someone. My words, my characters, they inspired someone to get out of a bad situation, they helped someone realize they were strong and could survive the really ugly things life threw at them.

I also love doing events. Getting ready for the events I always feel so nervous and worried that no one will show up or whomever does will hate me or I'll screw something up somehow. But then I get there and the people who come to see me always make me feel better.

A few weeks ago I did a reading in Madison, Wisconsin. I did it because I wanted an excuse to visit friends up there, but I also did it because last time I was there, two girls made me feel like such a superstar, I had to go back and see them again. This is me with Chelsie and Justinne, who I met via MySpace and Chelsie's book blogging and have been my cheerleaders since I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE came out... maybe even before. that is what is awesome about book bloggers, they make you feel so welcome even before your debut.

And yes, we did intentionally pose under the sex books. We found it kind of hilarious. That is what I love about talking to the people who come to my events. They are easy to laugh with like old friends.

Another person who became a real friend to me during my IWBYJR visit to Madison was Erik Shager who is a teacher in an alternative high school program called Work and Learn. I don't do as many school visits as other YA authors and I think it's partly because my books are on the edgier side. But the cool thing about Work and Learn being a different kind of program is that I don't have to censor myself. I can just go in and tell the students my road to publishing, including all the bumps on the way. And I dunno, maybe I'm making some kind of difference or at least giving them a taste of something interesting to read. I can't tell you how psyched I was when one of the girls I met this year messaged me on facebook to tell me she'd ordered BALLADS OF SUBURBIA and was looking forward to reading it. Here I am with some of the girls from the class. Julia, the girl on the far left, added the cool text. Also pictured from left to right are Ashley, Claira, and of course me:

One high school event I was invited to this year was a day long, multi-author extravaganza called LitWorks. The kids there literally treated me like a rock star. They came right up to me, telling me how much they loved my books. I really didn't even feel worthy! You can see how much fun we had in this slideshow that the organizers put together:

Then yesterday, I got the ultimate compliment. A reader told me via Twitter that she was thinking of getting a quote from Ballads, "Secrets lead to sickness," tattooed on her! As a tattoo fanatic, well you can imagine how much that meant to me.

So thank you readers! You are definitely the best part of my job!

What do you love most about being an author?

2010-03-30T07:52:00.005-05:00

I grew up in the 1980s, during the Cold War, under the shadow of A Nation at Risk. In school we were taught to face the front and do our own work. There may even have been an intimation that you'd better not share because people might steal it from you. Like the Russians! I functioned very well in this environment, because I'm introverted anyway. If you met me in the morning you would think I was shy. If you met me at night, when I'm tired, you would think I was a dork. Actually I like to think of myself as an American spy.

So when I finished my first novel at age 20, I never let anyone read it. I just started sending it to literary agents, and when I ran out (yes, I probably sent it to every literary agent in existence), I sent it to publishers. When it didn't sell, I wrote another novel. Wash, rinse, repeat, seven times. And though I did have literary representation for a couple of books and I got some nibbles from publishers, I never made a sale.

For book eight, I decided to do something different. I was still deathly afraid of sharing my work with anyone. But not sharing it clearly was getting me nowhere, and the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I am not a good spy.

So I joined writers' groups, both online and in person, and my life changed for the better.

It really is that simple. Writing makes you weird. Or, being weird makes you a writer. In any case, it is hard to be weird. Even the most supportive family and friends do not understand you. Introverted or not, it does you good to be around other writers, who are the only people in the world who know what you're going through. In the bad times they hold you up, and in the good times, they celebrate with you and really appreciate what you've achieved.

Here is my good time! After Going Too Far was named a finalist in the RITA last Thursday, I went to a meeting of my local writers' group, Southern Magic, on Saturday.

Here is what greeted me when I walked in the door. You may know Laura Hayden as an award-winning author of multiple genres or as the director of the RITA awards ceremony in Nashville on July 31. I know her as the president of Southern Magic. Here she is on the floor, bowing to me and saying, "I'm not worthy!"

Southern Magic is about supporting each other in our publishing endeavors. But we feel strongly that author support goes well with a sugar rush. So we have a complicated awards system that often involves cake. Here is mine, brought by best-selling suspense author Christy Reece.

As I said at the meeting, what I love most about being an author is sharing it with my friends. And here they are, including Jean Therkelsen (in the white sweater, with balloons), who had an even bigger celebration because she just made her first sale, a three-book deal to Kensington. Congratulations, Jeanie!

Now that I examine this picture, I'm not sure what Laura (front and center) is holding, but I'm sure it's funny.

I had a lot weighing on me last week before I found out my book was a RITA finalist. I've got a book I adore on submission--and that is a very vulnerable feeling. I expect the proofs and the advance copies of Forget You to show up any hour now, and I'm also hard at work on my MTV Books release for next year. But the weight is not so weighty as it was, and with friends like these to share the burden, it seems a lot lighter.

What do you love most about being an author?

2010-03-25T11:40:00.002-05:00

Due to unforeseen computer issues, I missed my posting day, but I'm totally going to make up for it today.

There are a lot of things I love about being an author, but one of my favorites is when fellow writing friends get all the kudos they deserve. In this case, it's our own Jenn Echols who deserves all the chocolate today for her RITA final.

Yep, you heard me. GOING TOO FAR, Jenn's beautiful, beautiful book is a Romance Writers of America RITA finalist in the Young Adult category!

CONGRATS, JENN!!

And this is one of the very best things about being an author.

What do you love most about being an author?

2010-03-24T16:42:00.008-05:00

I've always been in awe of authors who can weave characters and plots into stories that make me gasp or laugh or sob so hard I can’t breathe. (If you’ve ever tried reading Where The Red Fern Grows to a class of sixth graders, you know what I’m talking about!) Having the ability to write something so strong and true seemed like the coolest thing in the world.

When I started writing, I appreciated even more the mental gymnastics required to knit together words that would bring my characters, actions, and emotions to life. Which makes being an author the perfect job for me because I'm in love with language. I get major satisfaction from digging into my thesaurus for words that will slip into my sentences like the key pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and create pictures for my readers. To put it simply, I like to play with words.

Being an author has put me in contact with many creative, fascinating people I probably wouldn’t have met otherwise. Each author, bookseller, agent, editor, blogger, and event promoter I’ve met has given me fresh insight into writing and publishing. More importantly, they’ve enriched my life with their friendships and encouragement. Authors are the most supportive people I know—in person or in cyberspace.

And I am so honored to hear from teens and adults who are fans of my book. When a teen writes, “I found your book very addicting and read it all in one sitting because I could not put it down!” or someone simply says, “I loved it!” I smile, and sometimes my eyes water a little. And then I thank them. Because nothing amazes me more than a stranger who reads my book and takes the time to tell me she enjoyed it.