I know a lot of writers who say they've been writing as long as they can remember being able to hold a pencil. There are those that say they've been keeping a journal since they got their first diary, the kind with the lock and key that you'd hide and eventually end up losing. Well, I wanted to be one of those girls. I wanted to keep a journal. I imagined that's where I'd collect all sorts of deep thoughts. But you know what? Every journal I ever started lasted about three days before I said forget it. Writing for myself was boring. I already knew what happened and how the story ended, and writing just to listen to myself, well, I could think the same things in my head and it didn't require knowing how to spell.

In college I kept a journal for all of two weeks. It was my junior year and all sorts of tumultuous things were going on with my boyfriend. But at the same time I was having, shall we say, a wild streak with a ton of fun in a sort of reaction to all that was going on. So the situation was heartbreaking and a blast at the same time. I found the journal the other day and, oh my god, the girl who wrote that was a nut case. I could only laugh through my mortification. If she only knew one day she'd giggle at the drama. Still, she did some things that were so crazy, I'm glad she got them out of her system when she was 21 when the prospect of going to jail, apparently, wasn't so much of a concern.

I'm still not a journaler. I'd rather write for other people. But so much of what I write has actually happened to me, my books are a journal of sorts. Or maybe I'm just too lazy to imagine things and it's so easy just to use real life. In any case, were you a journaler? Have you ever gone back and read some of your entries? Did you cringe? And do you use your real life in your books like me?

The World You Never Knew

One of the things I hear from readers a lot--and I take it as a great compliment--is that I seem to be able to slip easily into a teenage mindset. That I remember well what it feels like to be fourteen or sixteen or nineteen. I'm not sure that's true, but it's nice to hear. What I do believe is that a part of me is still very much fourteen and sixteen and nineteen.

On a practical level, though, what that really means is this: I remember what it felt like to not have a job, to not have kids, and to believe that the good guys always win in the end--that cooler (and smarter, more sensible) heads would prevail.

Some of you, reading that last bit, are thinking: "dumbass, I'm a teenager and I don't believe that. I'm not that naive." Well, I know you're not, and that's exactly my point. At some point (and I think I know when) a wall went up between the teenagers that WERE and the teenagers that ARE. And that means it's no longer enough for me to *remember* being a teenager; I have to go and find out what the experience of being a teenager is now.

So, back to that Wall. Its bricks are grim reality, determination, and an acknowledgement at far too young an age that the previous generations have royally screwed the world. Its mortar is the absolute certainty that there is NO guarantee the good guys will win in the end, that it will take a new generation of smart, determined leaders to blow off the cobwebs of corruption that are holding the old ways in place.

A few years ago, John Mayer sang about "Waiting for the World to Change." Now, Barack Obama is campaigning on the promise of bringing about the change he was waiting for. All of it appeals to American teens and twentysomethings who already know it's gonna take a fight to stop global warming, to get honest leadership, to spread peace.

That's the hopeful side of Life After the Wall Went Up. But there is a much, much darker side as well.

See, that Wall I keep talking about, the one that separates *my* teenage years from the ones my oldest son is just embarking upon? Its foundations were laid on September 11, 2001. It grew even higher in late summer and fall of 2005, when government at all levels abandoned the people of New Orleans in the days before and the months and years after Hurricane Katrina.

Maybe that sounds far-fetched to you, but it's not. It's just the truth. My grandparents lived in a world BEFORE people knew that atrocities like the Holocaust were possible in modern times. After World War II, a Wall went up between generations, separating what people believed BEFORE and what they believed AFTER. My parents can recall the era of change and hope and excitement and prosperity--the era historians call "Camelot"--of John F. Kennedy's presidency. They lived in a world BEFORE people knew that an American president could be assassinated in modern times. And I spent my teen years in the 1980s, in a world BEFORE there had ever been an enemy attack on American soil in modern times. A world BEFORE terrorism meant anything at all to America, except as something that happened on the other side of the globe. A world before 9/11.

Teenagers and people in their early twenties never knew what it was like to live in the world I grew up in. Sure, for the most part, what it means to be a teen hasn't changed that much in twenty years. But even though most may not realize it, their lives and attitudes ARE different. Both in the hopeful ways I mentioned above, and in the grim acknowledgement that 9/11 happened, and it could happen again...that Katrina came, and the government turned its back, pointed fingers and blamed others, and left people to save themselves.

Every generation seems to have one of these Walls. But the Wall is different this time. After the Holocaust, most of the world said "never again." After JFK, and RFK, and MLK, most of the world said "never again." And in their hearts, they believed it. But NOW we say "never again," even though so many people only half believe it, and instead are waiting for the *next* thing. We hear government officials telling us all the time that it's inevitable that there will BE a *next* thing. A superflu pandemic that kills millions. A global meltdown that kills millions and makes many millions more into refugees. A dirty bomb nuke in a major U.S. city, or a nuclear attack from abroad. Total economic collapse.

After the Wall Went Up on 9/11, the American people became convinced that, though they might not know what the *next* thing is, it's definitely coming. One of these days, SOMETHING will happen.

To that, I have two responses. First...Duh. There's always a *next* awful thing. Just as there's always a next wonderful thing. Always new fear, just as there's always new hope.

But, second...this certainty. The people who will be ready, the people who will ACT when the time comes, are the people who are too young to remember the world they never knew, the world before the Wall. They're the ones who understand (earlier and perhaps better than any previous generation) that they have to fight for the future they want.

So whether it's environmental disaster, medical tragedy, religious jihad, or....(as in my novel SOULLESS) the walking dead....the ones we can count on are the ones who already KNOW they have to act to safeguard their future. See, John Mayer comes from a generation of slackers, all of them sitting around just waiting for the world to change.

But the next generation...they're ready to change it.

And those two facets--the grim truth about today and the bright hope for tomorrow--are a big part of the story BENEATH the story I'm telling in SOULLESS.

See, and you thought it was just about zombies.

Letting Go

I’m the worst at letting things go. I’m possibly the biggest packrat ever. Seriously, I have two closets and two dressers because I can’t part with any of my old band t-shirts or dresses. Well, maybe that’s a bad example, those are more of collections. Especially the dresses, I’ve been buying vintage dresses since I was thirteen. But that’s another blog. I also have several boxes full of crap in those closets. I’ve got notes from junior high and high school (like the notes my friends passed to me, not the notes I took in class), old magazines with articles on my fave bands, and then items that were important to me for some reason or other. I was forced to part with a lot of these things when my mom moved out of my childhood home into a condo and I could no longer use my old bedroom as storage. I whittled my grade school and high school mementos down to one box. Well, and my mom graciously allowed me to keep a bunch of stuffed animals in her storage space and she also has a “memory box” of a lot of my old clothes. I can’t help it, I’m a Cancer and we’re really nostalgic!

I do have to say it was fun when I got the cover of I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE to be able to dig out my old combat boots that totally match the pair on the cover. My boots are pictured above along with the army jacket I wore daily and Hello Kitty lunchbox I carried around junior and senior year of high school during the big punk rock grrrl phase (and note that the photo is taken in front of my cassette collection. I don’t listen to cassettes anymore but I still have all of them, there are those and then two cases in a closet).

My inability to let things go translates directly into my writing, too. And I’m not just talking about the file cabinet full of journals, drafts and now that I write and revise almost entirely on the computer, the file folders on my flash drive filled with numbered drafts. I have a very hard time being able to say I’m done with a project and handing it off to my agent or editor. I had to do it last night with my second book. You would think this would be easier because I’ve already gone through it once, but it seems that everything has been harder this time around (though maybe that is selective memory). I’ve been comparing the experience to my aunt’s childbirth experience. Her first son was a moose, but out he came, no problem. Second son was two pounds smaller, but she had to get a C section.

I think the main thing is that it is a different kind of pressure. My agent shopped IWBYJR for over a year before it finally landed with MTV Books. I was on the verge of going back to school for a library science degree and giving up on my dream of writing. I kept telling myself if I could just get this one book published I’d be satisfied. Yeah right. Now I’ve tasted the thrill of the (soon to be) published author world and I want to stay in it. But my contract was a one book deal with an option clause, so MTV gets the first look at Book 2. This seemed like a good idea at the time because if I didn’t work well with them, it would be easy to walk away. But my editor is my dream editor and I absolutely adore being a part of this MTV Books community. So, yes, *huge* pressure. My editor *must love* this book. And it’s a different book than IWBYJR, it’s darker, it doesn’t have the same kind of hook, and it’s a very big story that I’ve had a hard time reining in and getting to fit together seamlessly.

I missed 3 deadlines with this book. All of them were personal deadlines, but still. The first was the beginning of January, so I could begin the new year with new projects. Well, I got sick over Christmas break, had a total nervous breakdown about the direction of the book and hadn’t even started the revisions by Jan 1. So I told my agent Feb 1. Probably a bad idea because I had copyedits for IWBYJR that took up the first week of January. Then came page proofs, I knew I had to send those Feb 18, so I told my agent I’d send her Book 2 then as well. Then I’d be done with everything IWBYJR and Book 2 (and by the way Book 2 does have a title and you can read about it on my website, but I don’t want to go into it too in depth here because I’m in such a paranoid state now that I fear I will jinx things). Well, it was all looking good, I just had one part I wanted to fix on Feb 17 and then lo and behold my basement floods. Sigh. My dear boyfriend took care of the basement while I wrote, but because of the stress I still couldn’t nail it. I asked darling agent for a two day extension. I told her that today (Feb 20) is Kurt Cobain’s birthday and I felt that if she sent it out then, it would bring me good luck. I apologized for the dorky nature of my request, but she wrote back to tell me she didn’t think it dorky at all. This is why she is my agent.

So I after three hours of angsting over a 10 page section, I sent it off last night. I still wasn’t entirely happy with that pesky section, but the point is to find out if my editor likes the concept enough to buy it and if she does, I know she gives damn good revision notes that will help me smooth the rough patches. Right? (Assurances/advice from more experienced authors would be very appreciated.)

To make myself feel better about letting go (because my dorky choice of a “lucky” final date was not enough), I’ve created a list of things that getting Book 2 off my plate makes room for.

1. The much neglected boyfriend
2. The much neglected friends (saw BFF for the first time in a month tonight and will start making the rounds of long-owed phone calls tomorrow)
3. Fulfill that New Year’s Resolution to blog daily. Because I’ve come to love blogspot so much, I’ve got a new blog at http://stephaniekuehnert.blogspot.com. I will continue to mirror it on my myspace, but myspace has been irritating me lately so I don’t want it to be my primary blog. Come visit me at my new home. It’s still under construction, but it’s lonely.
4. Read more. I’m on a vampire kick. Reading an advance copy of Wicked Game, which rocks and then I *finally* jump on the Twilight band wagon.
5. Catch up on all the entries to the latest contest I am running and actually create a spreadsheet to organize them.
6. Do my taxes. First year I’ve made money off writing, so it’s going to be complicated. I’m dreading it.
7. Dive into the next two book ideas that I’ve been journaling on and mentally composing for the past three months!

Now if only I could come up with a list to motivate me to clean out those closets… What about you? Are there things that you can’t let go of or could you pack up all your belongings in hours and go world traveling? (That would be the only thing to motivate me, but even still I don’t think I could do it…)

Making myself take a break

This week, I'm going on vacation.  A real, honest-to-goodness, no one but me and the husband vacation.  Why is this mention-worthy?  Because it's been eleven years since the husband and I went away together by ourselves.  Fourteen, if you consider that I was six months pregnant with the second child (AKA, the Diva) on the trip eleven years ago.  Now, I haven't been completely travel-free, obviously, since then.  Because we lived away from both our families for many years, any time we had off, we generally had to dedicate to trips home to see the family.  Then, we finally caved and moved back to Florida so we could be closer to family and wouldn't have to spend all our vacations on family trips and wouldn't you know it?  The husband's work schedule and mine rarely coincided.  Which is really pathetic when you consider I'm a full-time writer and I work from home.  But there was always a conference or a research trip and then I was working, working, working, because I love nothing more than working.  A vacation?  What's that?  It's an imposition and time that would be taken away from working—what if I get a great idea and I can't work on it?  What if?  What if?  What if?

Hi, I'm Barb and I'm a workaholic Virgo.

Thing is, I'm getting rather crispy 'round the edges.  I'm frustrated with the project I'm working on and I'm tense waiting for my next round of revisions and all sorts of things I've never been before with respect to writing.  So I know I need a break.  I know I need to get out of my cozy little environment and shake up my surroundings and just get out and see new things and, you know, other people, and get out of my routine.  Because I'm just self-aware enough to know that change can be the best inspiration and motivator.  And the irony is I love travel and adventure and seeing new places and things.  But I'm a Virgo, through and through and practically have to be pried out of my Aeron chair with a crowbar.  And the husband, God love him, is the ultimate homebody—he'd be happy to hang out at home in his sweats on a vacation, so he's not going to be the one with the initiative.

But again, thank goodness for self-awareness and that Virgo thing, because another very Virgo trait of mine is I loathe wallowing.  So when it looked like I might be headed straight for a good old-fashioned wallow, I finally did something about it.  And we're going on vacation.  Somewhere neither of us has ever been—San Diego.  That picture above?  That's our view.

And no, I won't be answering the phone.  

So what do you do when you finally find yourself hitting the breaking point?  Or are y'all a whole lot smarter than I am and actually have lives?

Numero uno

I get a lot of e-mail from readers who want to be writers, but they're not sure how to get started. I thought it would be interesting if we all shared how we wrote that first novel.

Here's how I did it. In 1990, I was 20 years old. I'd just taken a college creative writing class and caught the bug to write. I'd taken plenty of writing classes before, but they were taught by short story writers. This one was taught by a novelist, so she required us to turn in chapters of a novel as our final project. That's what hooked me. I've never been sent by a short story. Novels send me, and I was finally writing what I wanted to read.

When the class ended, I didn't want to stop. Unfortunately, I graduated from college and had to get a job. Although my major was English, not journalism, I found myself with a copyediting job at the major newspaper in Montgomery, Alabama's capital. This was about an hour's drive from my apartment. It was also an evening shift, 3 p.m. to midnight, because the paper was a morning paper. (Let's not even talk about my weekends, which were Tuesday and Wednesday. Party on.) So here's what my day looked like:

8 a.m. Get up, shower.

8:30 Type what I'd written the day before on a TYPEWRITER. I kid you not. Computers were exorbitant back then. You'll be happy to know the experience of typing an entire 100,000-word novel on a typewriter, then revising it and typing the whole thing AGAIN, did drive me to buy my first computer before I finished my second novel.

9:30 Write, LONGHAND, with breaks to buy food and pantyhose. Yes, people still wore pantyhose to work back then. The pantyhose were the bane of my existence, besides the typewriter.

1 Change into work clothes.

1:30 Drive to work.

3 Work

4 "Dinner" break. We took it so early because the night would get increasingly crazy as the reporters hit deadline and the stories rolled in for copyediting. The other copyeditors often would go to dinner together. I couldn't afford this, and I also saw this time as precious. I would bring a peanut butter sandwich and go sit on the steps of one of the state government buildings surrounding the newspaper office--my favorite was the state capitol--and write some more. It was during one of these hours in the hot late afternoon of summer, sitting on the steps of the Alabama Forestry Commission building, that I finished my first novel and immediately wrote the first page of my second.

5 Work.

12 Drive.

1 Sleep.

8 a.m. Start over.

Yes, I did sometimes hang out with my friends rather than writing during the middle of the day--but not often, because they were still in college classes. And no, I didn't watch TV. I didn't have one. I was spartan, baby, and loving it. I really did get a lot of joy out of writing, which is why I'm still doing it, right now, at the kitchen table, at 4:30 in the morning before my son gets up.

That's my story. What's yours?

Jennifer Echols

Ah, Vegas

Last time I promised some tidbits about my long and storied relationship with Las Vegas so I guess it's time I deliver! First I guess I should try to count the number of times I've BEEN to Vegas. Um, yeah. So things get a little blurry already. But let's see.

There was the time I went with my two Irish roomies when we were all sharing an apartment in Brooklyn. There was the time I went for a wedding when one of said roomies got hitched; that was the time I hired an Elvis impersonator. There was the time it seemed like a good idea to go there with an ex boyfriend; we saved some money by staying at the dusty old Stardust for a few nights then checked into the Hard Rock Hotel for our last night and did not see daylight for 24 hours because we thought the Hard Rock was so cool that there was no reason to leave. Then there was the time, last year when I booked a trip to Vegas with my husband before realizing I was pregnant. Is it awful to admit that it wasn't QUITE as much fun that time? I know I'm forgetting one, though. Maybe that's for the best.

The challenge of writing What Happens Here, which is mostly set in Vegas, was writing from the perspective of someone who lives in Las Vegas. I've only ever been a tourist. But two of those trips above were "research trips" (Hello, IRS, man!) and I did the best I could. The main characters in the book are transplants from elsewhere anyway, like a lot of the residents of the greater Las Vegas area. I guess that's me cheating a little tiny bit?

So for no particularl reason in no particular order, here are the top five things I love about Vegas:

The Easy River pool at the Monte Carlo hotel. You can rent a tube and just float around and around and around....It's shaped like a figure 8.

The replica of Rome's Trevi Fountain outside Caesars Palace mall. Does YOUR mall have such a kick-ass fountain?

The half-scale Eiffel Tower @ Paris. I mean, come on. How can you not love feeling even just a little bit like you're in Paris?

Let It Ride. A really fun card game that makes you feel like you're not actually losing as much money as you are.

Lance Burton. Okay, so his magic show is really cheesy but I'm still dumbfounded by half of the tricks he does.

I also like the slogan that ultimately gave my book its title. "What happens here stays here" is about as good as tourism slogans get, wouldn't you say? Actually, the only other one that comes to mind is something like "Philadelphia: It's better when you stay the night" or, um, how about "It's better in the Bahamas"? I guess that's a pretty good one. Anyway, I digress.

Are there things that YOU did in Vegas that you think should stay there? I'm not sure I'm ready to tell. :)

-Tara

FELINE REHAB by Alex McAulay

So anyway, what you see in the picture to the left is our cat BronBron trying to open a bottle of wine with her teeth. The reasons behind her actions are unclear... unless she has secretly become a raging alcoholic! I'm particularly amused by the feral look in her eyes, and her bared fangs. She wants her liquor, goshdarnit! Anyway, I just hope she doesn't become a bad influence on our other cat, Ishmael, and lead him astray... Ah well, at least BronBron has discovered the most important substance in the life of a writer (just kidding!)

"Revision Time"

Recently, I received my revision notes on INVISIBLE TOUCH from my editor, and I was relieved there wasn't anything too major. Much of it was beefing the story up--feelings, sensations, and experiences. You know, that fine gloss to hopefully make your book shine.

So I have my trusty highlighter and pen for notes, and I'm checking off line edits off as I go. While writing the first draft, I had a boatload of story lines. Some very small, some major. I didn't want to drop any of them. Here's my drastic attempt of keeping track of them all. Unfortunately, I still dropped one small one!



Now with the revise, my first step is to go through and fix the small edits, then as I go through again, I'll add scenes that will strengthen threads. Then through again to add more gloss and description, then... LOL! So many layers.

Care to share your revising technique?

Teen ♥'s u

In the Winter 2008 issue of Teen, editors asked their Very Important Teen advisors about their top page-turners (p. 96). Graffiti Girl by Kelly Parra and Plan B by Jenny O'Connell both made the list. Also included are old faves Sula, Native Son, and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, so I'd say this is excellent company. Congrats chicas!

Here Comes Moby!

Okay, so while Moby Clique doesn't actually hit stores until March 4, the early reviews are in, and it might just be "the best book ever written."

So, I admit, maybe that's not a direct quote from the review.

I *might* be paraphrasing a bit, but they said something similar, I swear. Check out the new review at www.teensreadtoo.com.

In other Moby news, as it turns out, you can currently buy advanced copies of the newest addition to the Bard Academy series on Amazon.

I don't know how long you could've been ordering the third Bard book. You think they might tell us, or inform us in some official capacity, but I am always the last to know. I only just found it recently, and that's because I semi-regularly stalk myself on Amazon to see what people are saying about me. Yes, this means I could be a pathetic narcissist, but I prefer to think of it as "market research."

Thankfully, I didn't find any new negative reviews on the old Bard books (I've got my eye on you, ANONYMOUS!) and a couple of new positive ones, which is always nice.

And, by the way, before I forget, Happy Birthday, Jenny!

I have a bunch of things I'm excited about, and these are two of them. Last Friday night I opened my email and discovered the covers for LOCAL GIRLS and RICH BOYS. I opened up the cover for RICH BOYS first, for no particular reason, I didn't even know which one I was opening at the time. And all of a sudden I came face-to-full-screen with six pack abs. I can honestly say I actually muttered, "Whoa" out load. I was totally not expecting guys on the cover. Sure, the word boys is in the name, but the main character is a girl. I really didn't know what to think. Then the more I looked at it, I was like, "Sure, I could live with these hot guys on my cover." I love the GIRLS cover as well, but for entirely different reasons (although I must question how the hell those girls could possibly ride bikes in skirts that short). The funny thing is, totally by coincidence, there's a scene in the book where Kendra is actually wearing a skirt very much like that, so I guess it was meant to be.

Other things to be excited about: last weekend I also had my new web site posted (http://www.jennyoconnell.com/), which I love.

And then Friday my new voice recognition software arrived so I can actually speak my chapters instead of typing them. Who knows if it will actually make things go faster, as I'm hoping, but I thought it might be fun to try. Of course BOYS is due to my editor on Friday so I don't have enough time to learn to use the software before this book is done, but maybe for the next one.

And then, finally, my birthday is coming up!!! Yeah! I love birthdays, don't mind getting old at all. Every year I have more fun and I can only assume that's because as I get older I get better (and not just because I invest heavily in moisturizer). This year I turn 40 on Super Tuesday - coincidence? I don't think so.

We interrupt this blog to bring you an example of high-tech diamond-shine brilliance

If you're more of a LiveJournaly person than a Blogspotty person, boy have I just made your life easier. At Little Willow's suggestion, I've created a syndicated feed for this blog on LiveJournal. Just add us as a friend here.

The Odd Man Out

Like Justine, I missed the first round. It would've been on Christmas, so I hope you'll forgive me. Aside from the holidays, I was buried in various deadlines. (Still am, but can't let it slide by a second time.) Fortuitously, I'm currently revising the manuscript for my first novel for MTV Books--SOULLESS--and plan to deliver the new draft on Monday.

So, here I am...Odd Man Out. What am I talking about? Well, let me put it this way...SOULLESS is a dark, gruesome novel about the walking dead and the deterioration of human society. A superficial look at the array of talent and titles in the MTV Books lineup might make some people wonder what I'm doing here. But SOULLESS isn't just a zombie novel. It's also a story about 21st century teens making hard decisions, and the lines you might be willing to cross to save yourself and the people you love.

And I've never minded being the odd man out. In college, my group of friends were people who didn't have a group of their own. As an adult, I'm the answer to the old Sesame Street song "One of These Things is Not Like the Others." A curiosity. An oddity. Growing up, I was often one of the only guys (and often enough, the ONLY guy) in the mix. It's still common. I've never been that comfortable with the kind of back-thumping, beer-chugging "guyness" of certain guys, always gotten along better with women. Maybe that's because my parents were divorced when I was young and I was raised by my mother. Or maybe it's because, with my mother working 70 hours a week, my brother and I were often looked after by my older sister and all of her girlfriends.

I'm not the only guy in the MTV Books lineup, of course. (Hi Alex.) But SOULLESS is a departure for the line, I think. The Odd Book Out. On the other hand, anyone who has read my Jenna Blake (Body of Evidence) books, or the Prowlers quartet, probably already knows this, but SOULLESS might not be as big a departure as it appears at first glance. The situations are more extreme, but the dynamics remain, and are all too real.

I should probably have introduced myself earlier. :) My name is Christopher Golden. I've been a full-time writer for more than fifteen years, writing novels, short stories, comics, video games, non-fiction books, and now screenplays. (Well, not RIGHT now...the Writers Guild of America is on strike, and needs your support!) I read constantly, when I'm not watching movies or (way, way, way too much) television. I'm sure I'll talk later about what I'm watching and reading. Meanwhile, come visit: www.christophergolden.com or http://www.myspace.com/christophergoldenbooks

So there you go. A little about me, and a little about SOULLESS. Next time, I suspect I'll talk a little about the state of the world, the cult of celebrity, and the dread that lurks at the back of all of our minds in the 21st century--all themes that play a major role in the novel.

Coming soon!

COMING IN JULY 2008

I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE
by Stephanie Kuehnert

A raw, edgy, emotional novel about growing up punk and living to tell.

The Clash. Social Distortion. Dead Kennedys. Patti Smith. The Ramones. Punk rock is in Emily Black’s blood. Her mother, Louisa, hit the road to follow the incendiary music scene when Emily was four months old and never came back.

Now Emily’s all grown up with a punk band of her own, determined to find the tune that will bring her mother home. Because if Louisa really is following the music, shouldn’t it lead her right back to Emily?

COMING IN JULY 2008

LOCAL GIRLS
by Jenny O'Connell

Kendra and Mona are best friends, local girls who spend their summers catering to rich tourists and the rest of the year chafing against small-town life. Then Mona's mom marries one of the island's rich summer visitors, and Mona joins the world of the Boston elite, leaving Kendra and Martha's Vineyard behind. When Mona returns the following summer, everything is different. Now Mona spends her days sunbathing with her private school friends, while Kendra works at The Willow Inn--a job she and Mona once hoped to do together.

Unlike his sister, Mona's twin brother Henry hasn't changed. He's spending his summer the way he always has: with long, quiet hours fishing. Early mornings before work become special for Kendra as she starts sharing them with Henry, hoping he can help her figure Mona out. Then Kendra hatches a plan to prove she's Mona's one true friend: uncover the identity of the twins' birth father, a question that has always obsessed Mona. And so she begins to unravel the seventeen-year-old mystery of the summer boy who charmed Mona's mother. But it may prove to be a puzzle better left unsolved--as what she is about to discover will change their lives forever...

COMING IN JULY 2008

RICH BOYS
by Jenny O'Connell

For seventeen-year-old Winnie, summer can't arrive fast enough--anything to get out of the house and escape the cold war brewing between her parents. With her older sister Shelby spending the summer in Boston, Winnie's left to deal with the situation all by herself. Which is why she's happy to spend all day away from home at a cushy job--camp counselor at the prestigious Oceanview Inn.

When the Barclays, a wealthy summer family, offer Winnie an additional babysitting job in the evenings after work, she jumps at the opportunity. Little Cassie Barclay is fun to take care of, and hanging out in the gorgeous Barclay mansion overlooking the harbor is far more pleasant than being on the front lines of the battle between her parents.

Then Cassie's older and devastatingly attractive stepbrother Jay arrives on the island after a disastrous first year at college, and he seems to want nothing more than to wreak havoc for his stepmother and the rest of his family. Winnie soon discovers that life in the Barclay home isn't so perfect after all, and what was supposed to be a carefree summer escapade is quickly becoming more complicated than she ever thought possible...

A Few of My Favorite Things (that might surprise you)

The first ever article about me as an author came out last week in my local paper, the Forest Park Review (for some reason direct links to the article don't seem to work so to read it just go to www.forestparkreview.com, then in the menu on the left click on "Hometown" and the article about me is called "Writing Her Own Soundtrack" and dated 1/15/08).

I enjoyed talking to the reporter, he was very nice (though he did make me older by a year in the article which as we all know women don't like very much and my agent's name was misspelled), and I do enjoy the article, but it did give me my first taste as to how I may be portrayed by the media. Part way through the interview, the reporter told me that I'd shattered any stereotypes he'd had coming in. From my website he'd expected a rebellious goth girl, but instead found me very articulate and friendly. I kind of wanted to say that I am a writer with a master's degree so of course I'm articulate and to correct that I'm a punk girl who had a goth phase, but hey, I just thought it was cool of him to admit to that and there is a bit about it in his article, too.

Next he asked me to tell him something about me that people wouldn't expect from a rebellious punk rock writer type. Honestly I thought it was the most fun question he asked, so I want to name a few of my favorite things that might surprise you here:

1. As I told him, I love soap operas. One Life to Live, in particular. I've been watching it for almost 15 years. I got hooked the summer before my freshman year of high school. I tape it every day (because I'm not high tech enough to have a Tivo or actually I'm too cheap. I figure I have a functioning VCR so why bother?) and I watch it while I eat dinner to unwind from my day job and get into writing mode. I love that soap operas have outrageous plot lines that I could never get away with. Watching them gets the creative juices flowing. And I actually have learned a lot about how to push the plot line forward through dialog or how to slow the plot down using evasive characters.

2. Greek mythology. I've loved Greek myths since I was a little girl. I've especially loved the Persephone story (and the image of her I used above), maybe because I think the name Persephone sounds like a cooler version of Stephanie. But seriously, I want to do a modern retelling of it or use it as an overarching metaphor in a book. I tried in the one I am working on now, but it didn't work, so it's going to have to stew a little bit longer.

3. Exercise. I'm kind of a freak, but I actually enjoy working out. Pilates relaxes me, kickboxing makes me feel both bad-ass and silly at the same time, and just going on the elliptical with my iPod and some trashy VH1 programming on the TV at the gym (preferably Rock of Love--because I'm a punk rocker with a soft spot for 80s hair metal) during my lunch break helps me get through the day.

What about you? What are some things you love that people probably never would have guessed about you? Or if you are a writer, what about your characters? Do you have a prom queen who is a secret chess-whiz? A goth girl who loves romance novels? Let's talk about what makes us or our characters unique because that is the best way to breakdown stereotypes and that's one of my favorite things about art/writing, it's universal and it forces us to look past our preconceived notions.

Flotsam & Jetsam

I'm going to take a page out of Alex's book (blog?) and just talk about random stuff.

Blank page-itis- Just started a new project last week.  In some ways, there's nothing more simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying than that blank page is there?  All of the possibilities are there—the story just waiting to be told.  But... it's also a blank page meaning you eventually have to start.  And then once you do, the possibilities immediately narrow—the characters, the story, they start taking shape and in some cases, taking over.  The minute you put that first word down, that's it—you're cooked, one way or another.  But is it going to be perfectly sautéed or burned to a crisp?

Trends and timelessness- I read earlier this week where the Broadway musical Rent was going to be closing in June after a twelve-year run.  I've never seen the show on stage although I'm familiar with the music and the general premise (modern reinterpretation of La Bohéme) and I've seen the movie, which oddly, didn't do a lot for me, mostly because it felt dated and not in a good way.  I think it was a case of we're not quite far enough removed from the era in which it's supposed to take place to feel nostalgic about it, so it simply comes off a bit stale.  Which made me think about publishing and YA.  Other than the heyday of chick lit, I can't think of another genre that can be so much a product of the time in which it's written.  I know I've picked up some YA titles and they toss around brand names and slang and reference music and movies that were very of the moment when the book was written, but given the glacial speed at which publishing moves, by the time the book actually makes it to a shelf, might already be dated.  I know for some types of books it doesn't really matter, but that's a personal pet peeve of mine.  I want, in so much as it's possible, for my stories to have a timeless feel to them.  So I try to either use slang that's stood the test of time or make up my own—I might reference a current musician, but I try to balance it out with musicians who've been around forever.  It's not completely foolproof, even for the best of books.  I mean, you read Judy Blume's Forever and there's no denying it was written in the 1970s—however, it still maintains a timelessness.  What about you guys?  Any particular tricks you use?

Title stasis- I'm in the same boat as Jenn, sort of.  I need a new title for my '09 release.  We haven't gotten to the list-making stage, but I'm fairly sure it's not that far off.  It's a modern reinterpretation of the Carmen story and its original working title was A Thin Line, truncating the phrase, "a thin line between love and hate."  Problem is, it doesn't really evoke the Carmen feel very much.  Right now, my favorite title possibility is Roses in My Hands which plays into the performance aspect of the story and also evokes an important plot point.  To me, too, it also gives the visual imagery of a fiery gypsy with a rose tucked behind her ear.  But maybe not so much with the Carmen thing, however.  We'll see.

Okay, I'm sure I could blather on forever—haven't even talked about how jazzed I am that Mad Men took the Golden Globe for Best Series, Drama and Best Actor, Drama (Jon Hamm), but I've got people coming to replace carpet in my house.  Carpet that they should have put down right the first time, but didn't.  Feel my joy.  No, really, feel it.

I need a new title

Last week my editor let me know I need to think of a new title for BOY IN BLUE, which will be published by MTV Books in March 2009. It’s about a 17-year-old who avoids prosecution for a high school stunt by spending spring break on night patrol with the 19-year-old rookie cop who arrested her.

I’ve actually had good luck with inventing titles lately. I named my critique partner’s two latest books, and both titles have been accepted by her publisher. But I haven’t named my own published books. My editor at Simon Pulse came up with the title of my latest book, THE BOYS NEXT DOOR, while we were still discussing the proposal, before I ever wrote a word of Chapter 1. I named my first book QUEEN GEEK because the heroine was the first female drum major of her high school marching band. (This was before I’d ever heard of Frank Portman’s KING DORK, I promise.) But another book named QUEEN GEEK was purchased by a publisher a few weeks before mine. So a chick in the marketing department at Simon Pulse came up with the title MAJOR CRUSH. I absolutely love this title, and at my editor’s request, I renamed a character in the book after the marketing chick as a thank-you. (Hint: This character’s boyfriend in the book is named Gator after a kid my son was in kindergarten with. The marketing chick should consider herself lucky that I was not feeling more mischievous. I went to high school with a boy named Booger.)

And I can’t say I’m surprised my editor wants me to change the title of BOY IN BLUE. It’s extremely common for editors to ask authors to come up with new titles for their books--or to simply rename the books without consulting the author at all. My friend Kelley St. John was consulted, but her editor turned down 84 of her titles (read them here!) before renaming her first book GOOD GIRLS DON’T.

In this spirit, I’ve forwarded my editor a list of 40 or so titles invented by me, my critique partners, and my writing buddies. I didn’t include two by my six-year-old: RED WHITE AND BLUE LIGHTS (which makes sense--he knows what a police car looks like) and ROCKET BLAST (which makes no sense whatsoever unless you are six-year-old boy who lives for seeing things crash and explode. No rocket blasts in the book? Doesn’t matter. ROCKET BLAST will sell sell sell!).

But I fully expect my editor to say no to every one of my new titles. None of them are really jumping out at me. And I do have a bit of anxiety while waiting. The title may help determine the cover, and the cover is the most important component of a book that sells well, other than the book itself. Which will look most appealing to a reader: the cop angle? I'm guessing my editor thinks not. The night angle? The crime angle? The romance angle? (I love the cover of NICK & NORAH’s INFINITE PLAYLIST--the black and white blurry photograph of them kissing on the hardback edition, not the purple paperback.) The fact that the heroine is missing out on her dream of spring break at the beach? The titles I sent consider these possibilities and more.

But with wonderful MTV titles coming out soon like I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE and WHAT HAPPENS HERE, I have confidence that mine will be just as provocative and creative, whether I thought of it or not.

What are some titles you love--for your books or someone else’s? And where do your titles come from?

Jennifer Echols

When is a book ready to be written?

This is my first, introductory post I should have written over a month ago.

Let’s just say, I am late. Very late. Sorry about that. Part of the reason I’m late has to do with a much bigger and much less forgiving deadline: the one for my book LORD OF BONES, the sequel to my first novel BLOODANGEL. BONES comes out July 1, and was a true bitch to write, mostly because I sold it on the basis of a proposal and fifty pages when the rest of it just wasn’t ready to be born yet. Before I could write the story, I had to find the story, and finding the damn thing took me two drafts and many months before I scrapped it all and had to start over again. So what was supposed to be a ‘revision’ basically became ‘writing a whole new book’ and…I got it in late. Way late. But at least I got it in, and, well, lessons were learned.

So when is a book ready to be written? Part of becoming a published novelist isn’t just learning how to write a publishable novel – a difficult enough feat in itself – but also about how you work as a writer; how the writing process works for you. With BONES – and also with UNINVITED, my supernatural thriller with MTV Books – I learned that so much of writing takes place in my head away from the keyboard. I need the time and space to mull things over, let them steep, find their own ways of relating to each other, to deepen and grow. The ideas, images, stories and characters that knit up into a particular novel live with me for years.

For example: UNINVITED. The basic premise came to me over ten years ago, when I was still in high school. I wanted to write about a runaway teen who unexpectedly returns home one day, completely out of the blue, after an absence of at least a year or more. No one really knows why he left, and no one really knows why he came back.

But he’s not the same. And maybe he’s brought something else with him – some kind of menace, some threat. Because I read stuff like Stephen King and Dean Koontz and Clive Barker and Anne Rice and Christopher Pike, I knew that that ‘menace’ would be darkly supernatural in nature. And because my favorite movie at the time – one of my favorite movies – was LOST BOYS, partly because its theme song ‘Cry Little Sister’ kicks such ass (and was also a big inspiration for my novel) -- I thought maybe that menace would be vampires. (This turned out not to be the case.) And I figured that the story would be more interesting told not from that runaway’s point of view, but a younger sibling, someone who could see those strange changes in a way no one else could.

So that was the idea at the center of the book. But that was all I had – just that idea – nothing else around it, no reason that compelled me to write it. Not yet. Years passed, and more years passed, and I came back to that idea from time to time and still never did anything with it. I got deep into the writing of what would be my first published novel, BLOODANGEL. (By the way, even though BLOODANGEL is not an MTV Book, it was acquired by the same editor who would later change publishers and buy UNINVITED for MTV.)

And then…well, BLOODANGEL is written for adults, but part of the story is told from a supernaturally gifted teenager named Ramsey, who turned out to be the most popular character in the novel, judging by reader emails (most of them from adults). And I realized that I really like writing younger characters, and wanted to write a novel solely in that teenage perspective. Which made me think again of my mysterious runaway, and the threat that follows him back to his hometown. This time, though, images and characters began to weave themselves into that central premise. A moonlight rave in a valley that ends in tragedy. Lean, glittering-eyed, wraith-like figures who form a motorcycle tribe like no other. A beautiful blond man standing in the mist below your window….unfurling wings dark and lush as midnight. An intricate tattoo that wards off evil. There was even a ‘talking’ coyote. In fact, it was the coyote who kicked things off, who got me writing the novel that had finally decided to be written.

Justine Musk

Florida?!?! Really?!?!?

Last night I booked a trip to Florida for March--the husband, baby, and I will be visiting my inlaws, and I never thought I'd EVER be excited about such a thing. Going to Florida to see my inlaws? I mean, COME ON! I'm more of an Italy, Ireland kind of gal. Which is why it was so much fun for me to write the parts of WHAT HAPPENS HERE that are set in Europe.

Chloe, the main character, goes to Europe with her family at the beginning of the book, visiting London, Paris, Rome and Venice. I was about Chloe's age--she's 16, i was closer to 14--when I went to Europe for the first time so it was neat to think back to my first impressions and to try to capture the wonder of travel. Back then, the last thing I wanted to do was be seen with my parents so that was sort of tricky since I wasn't exactly old enough to run around the streets of Paris by myself. But I was still grateful for the opportunity and thankful that my parents, neither of whom had ever been abroad before, had the drive to save up money and take us to Europe at a relatively young age. I really think it fostered my love of travel and my life has been richer for it. I even lived abroad--in Dublin--for about a year and a half after college.

A lot of the experiences Chloe has in Europe closely resemble my own: she visits a lot of the same tourist attractions (Buckingham Palace, Versailles, the restaurant in Rome that claims to have invented Fettucini Alfredo, Piazza San Marco in Venice, many many more); she has her portrait drawn by a sketch artist in Paris; she gets lost in Venice; she takes a boat ride on the Seine in France and has one of the best meals of her life to date in a tiny restaurant on a cobblestone street in Paris. Just thinking about it all makes me want to hop on a plane.

In the last few years I've taken some of the best trips in my life—my honeymoon in Belize, a sort of second honeymoon to Hawaii (a free week in a hotel there was one of our wedding gifts, if you can believe it!) and an amazing trip to Italy (for fun) and Ireland (for a wedding, also fun). I think the trip to Italy was probably the best trip I've ever taken (the food, the food!) but then again Hawaii was arguably the most relaxing week of my life ever.

Most of What Happens Here is set in Vegas, of course, but Vegas, well...Vegas requires its own blog posting. More on that aspect of the book and my long and storied relationship with Vegas next time. In the meantime, what's the best trip you've ever taken and why?!??!

-Tara

"My Brain is Tired" by Alex McAulay

Okay, so this will be a pretty random assortment of tidbits--it's basically just what's on my mind as I sit down and write this at 3AM! Anyway, I'm up late because that's when I always write (my wife Lisa is a total morning person, so it's amusing when we negotiate our schedules). I thought I'd make a list of some of the things that have been on my mind recently... and bear with me, because when I said this would be random, I really wasn't kidding! Oh yeah, and the list is pretty shallow too, because I've spent most of the last month watching movies, playing guitar, and hanging out with Lisa. I heard there was a political something-or-other in Iowa last week? Who cares! I'll vote for whichever candidate has the nicest hairdo (just kidding!)

HERE ARE MY RANDOM THOUGHTS, ETC:
1. There Will Be Blood is one of the best films I've ever seen. The plot initially sounded boring (a guy looks for oil in the early 1900's?) but the film is amazing. I kind of want to see it again, even though I just saw it. It's fascinating and bizarre, like Citizen Kane as if directed by Stanley Kubrick.
2. Not all famous people are mean! Tonight Lisa and I went to a screening and Rosanna Arquette was there with her teenage daughter. They were so sweet! The movie was Baby It's You, an obscure early-80's teen drama/comedy starring Rosanna, and every time she had a kissing scene in the movie, her daughter in the audience covered her eyes in disgust! (they were sitting right in front of us, so we weren't stalking them or anything... really... I, er, promise.....) But it was so funny--her daughter was clearly freaked out at seeing her mom kiss some guy onscreen.
3. Watching Twin Peaks on DVD is fun, even though the second season is really awful. Anyone remember Twin Peaks? What a great show.
4. My laziness. Really, I can't even think of a single New Years resolution. I just don't care enough to try to change anything about myself. But I'm afraid I'm going to get stuck in my ways, like my grandpa who once shoved a computer off a library counter and broke it because, "Computers don't belong in libraries!" My mom and I told the librarians he had mental problems, so in the end he didn't have to pay for fixing it (of course he didn't have any mental problems--he was just grumpy and eccentric, but he'd always been that way). So maybe my resolution should just be not to attack any computers? I think I can handle that.... maybe.
5. Someone sent me a copy of that YA book The Luxe. I haven't looked at it yet, although the cover art is cool. Has anyone read it? And what's up with so many YA books being "Alloy" productions these days? From what I understand, Alloy is some sort of book packager. Does this strike anyone else as weird? I think our government should break up that monopoly! (And if Alloy is, like, really cool and I just have no clue what I'm rambling on about, then forgive me, and Alloy rocks!)
6. Pizza. I really like it. Why is there no decent pizza in LA? I want dripping, oily, greasy, nasty New York style pizza like you can find on every corner in NYC. I don't want "chive and cauliflower" pizza with lemon sauce. Please! If someone can FedEx me a greasy pizza then I'll vote for you for President if you ever run for President, okay???

"Back To The Old Seasons"

Happy New Year, MTV authors & Friends. :)

Recently, I’ve turned over my draft of INVISIBLE TOUCH to my agent. Yes, I’ve lost perspective after staring at it for the past two months, and once I get her thoughts back, it’ll be a rush to get the book to our editor by deadline. (Don’t we all have the same editor?)

I’m taking a couple of days of downtime to rejuvenate the writer mind. The way I do that is by catching up on shows.

Ever since signing up with a DVD mail program, I’ve been hooked on renting television series. Shows that may have gotten lots of buzz, but not the ratings or old seasons of my favorite shows that I’ve never seen.

Here are the television series I’ve worked my way through over the past year:

Veronica Mars Season 1, 2, & 3

Seriously hooked. Interesting characters and fun, mysterious plots. I wish they hadn’t rushed VM to the FBI for Season 4. I would have kept watching her and Logan through college.

Gilmore Girls Seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (Season 7 still to go)

I take breaks in between GG seasons, otherwise I have GG overload. So I’ll get to Season 7 eventually. But really great, heart-warming characters.

Dark Angel Season 1 (Currently watching Season 2)

I was pretty much hooked on DA when it aired, and now I’m going back through all the action and the conspiracy of genetic engineering.

And next up will likely be Las Vegas Season 1.

Love the humor, characters, and action of the show, so I’d like to see how it all began.

How about anyone else? Do you rent the DVDs for old shows or are you just not into television?

Resolutions 101

I have always been lousy about keeping resolutions. Oh, sure, I’m always super excited about making them. That’s the easy and fun part. Imagine how your life could be different if only you, say, spend every minute of your free time at the gym or never again eat any products made with refined sugar. I wrote a short story on the subject of a person who can’t seem to stop making resolutions (you can find it in In One Year and Out the Other), and while she had over three hundred of them (I’ve never quite been that bad), I will say that my list of resolutions is usually pretty long.

Here’s a sampling of some of the fun ones: Travel to Japan, Adopt a Dog, Buy a House, Watch Highlights of Dancing With Stars so I can Keep Up in a Conversation With Mom, Learn To Salsa, Try Some New Food Even at a Restaurant You’ve Been Going to For Years (i.e. stop ordering the EXACT same thing every time), Learn to Cook Something that Doesn’t Involve a Can of Soup/Ready Mix/and/or a Take Out Menu, and the related – Actually Cook Something Seen on a Cooking Show Instead of Just Watching Them and Getting Hungry.

Then there are also the not-so-fun ones: Go to the Gym More than Once in Ten Years, Quit Watching Shows That Make You Want To Eat, Vacuum Regularly and Not Just When Company is Coming Over, Pay Down Credit Cards Even the Ones You Don’t Count in Your Accounting Like Gap and Macy’s, Stop Spending So Much at the Dry Cleaners, and the related, Do More Ironing.

My list of resolutions is usually about ten or twelve things, and a lot of the same ones keep popping up over and over again. At the end of the year I’ll usually have accomplished at least two of them, usually the easier and cheaper ones (Dancing with the Stars? Check) but not the rest (Salsa? Not yet). It may seem a very inefficient way to sort through the clutter of one’s life, but I do eventually get some things done (not the ironing, but I did pay down my credit cards! Even the Gap one). And at one time, writing a novel was on that list, and it stayed on my list for years. But eventually, I did that one, too. Not just once, but several times over. So I have hope for Japan, yet. The gym? Not so much.

So here’s my question to all of you: What’s been the toughest resolution you’ve actually kept?

Last Monday I crossed the finish line for LOCAL GIRLS, handing in revisions one whole day early!!! (only because I thought the deadline was Monday, otherwise I would have squeezed every last second out of one more day). And then I settled down to read a little (Sarah Dessen's THIS LULLABYE). Stuck in between the pages were all these pink sticky notes with ideas I'd had the last time I was reading - ideas for the book I just handed in. Of course, since I forgot about said ideas on pink sticky notes, I didn't put them in during the revision round (smack to the head).

That's pretty much how I feel until the book is in print, like there's more I could do, another scene that will make it all come together, a sentence that makes it oh so much better. Even after the book is in print I feel like that. Imagine how thrilled I was for one reader to point out that there's a typo on the last page of LUKE. Gee, thanks for pointing that out, like I can change it now. Still, the reader made me feel personally responsible for assaulting her sense of all that is correct grammatically, like I knew the mistake was there and thought, ah, to hell with it, who cares about one little mistake... even though the mistake makes Emily's graduation date one thousand years before she was even born. Yeah, I need to be told that like I need a hole in my head, or to have every single typo pointed out to me in painstaking detail. In any case, typos aside (and I can put them aside because I have no control over whether or not my changes are actually implemented in the end when some typesetter is putting together his hundredth book for the week and he doesn't care if Emily ever graduates, or who Emily is, no less what the date is), I hate turning in a book because it means I have to stop fixing it, and I'm always sure there's more to be fixed.

So here's my question for the other authors: ever gone back and read one of your books only to cringe at a line, wonder why the hell you had a character do something, or just basically wished you'd done something differently? Or do you just accept it for what it is and move on?

Mix Tape Queen

Right now I'm revising my second novel (or I'm supposed to be, actually I'm procrastinating by writing this blog instead). As you might have guessed there is an underlying musical theme to it. No rock stars like in I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, but the characters are the kind of kids who would tell the story of their life with music. So when I was writing the book, I carefully picked out a song that represented each character. In fact, at one point I had a song for every chapter. Ok, maybe it was another procrastination technique, but I loved it because it was like making a big mix tape (or CD for those of you born after 1985 or iTunes playlist for you really high tech folks). And back in the day I was the mix tape queen.

I lay claim to that throne because I started creating mixes the really hard way when I was ten. I taped songs off the radio. It sounds simple enough, but trying doing it in the perfect order. You see, the Stephanie Kuehnert mix has to have flow, sound-wise and theme-wise. A portion of the "Stephanie and Katie Summer of '03 Driving Mix" (which is a three-disc set because I always get carried away) follows a geographical path: "Santa Monica" by Everclear leads into "Malibu" by Hole leads into "Dizz Knee Land" by Dada leads into "Olympia" by Rancid. Waiting for a specific song to come on the radio so you can record it in exactly the right order, that's a science!

Fortunately, technology has advanced. By eighth grade I had a CD player and by the end of high school, I had a pretty sweet stereo system that allowed me to use songs from CD, cassette, and vinyl. (You had to know I'm the type to have a serious vinyl collection, right?) I kept making mix tapes instead of CDs until 2002 because for the most part I listened to them in my car, which still had a tape deck. I'm a serious devotee of the driving mix. In fact, I prepared for getting my driver's license by making a mix tape and I made a new one at least once a year, many of which I shared with my best friend Katie. Now, I no longer have a car so I make playlists for my iPod to make Chicago public transportation more bearable. Also my friend Eryn and I travel together once a year and we alternate who makes the mix CD. It's one of the best parts of our trips!

Then, I make writing playlists. You might have heard the one I made for I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE on my website or myspace, but while I was procrastinating a few weeks back, I created my ideal soundtrack for IWBYJR. It follows the storyline of the book perfectly in song, how cool is that? I can't use Project Playlist or anything online to duplicate it because it has some harder-to-find songs on there, so I'm burning it on CD instead and my fabulous webmistress Jenny Hassler has agreed to design some hott artwork. It's going to be part of the prize for my first contest and you can enter to win the CD along with some early IWBYJR promo materials by simply signing up to be a member of my street team. Street team members are volunteers who spread the word about IWBYJR by putting up banners on their myspace or other website, passing out promo goodies (which I send you) around town, or just telling people about the book. Not a huge commitment, but if you sign up before January 15th, you're eligible to become one of seven lucky folks who gets a mix CD from yours truly, the Mix Tape Queen. Who knows, it might become your favorite mix ever.

And if you're wondering what my favorite mix ever is, it's a tape that my friend Tom made junior year of high school. He used some serious old school mixing skill on it, blending snippets of songs from the radio (he demonstrated how overplayed Bush's "Glycerine" was that summer by putting it on there three times), his record player, and best of all, the only full version of a song that he put on was "Loser Fan Club" by the band he fronted in junior high, the Skexies (if anyone remembers what movie that band name comes from I might have to reward you with a mix CD just for that!). I may be one of the few people on earth in possession of a recording of that early Tom Smith classic and now that his latest band Office is getting rather popular that rarity might become pretty desirable. Not that I would ever eBay my favorite mix!

What about you, what's the story of your favorite mix tape/CD/playlist? And authors, name five songs that would go on the soundtrack for your book. Here's a little peek into the IWBYJR ultimate soundtrack: "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" by Sleater-Kinney (of course), "I'm Not Dead" by Pink, "Suddenly Cool" by the Methadones, "Ragged Company" by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, and "New Wave" by Against Me!, but you gotta enter the contest to find out more!

Caught in No-Man's Land

It hit me, reading the blog entries here, that I'm kind of in a unique position.

I'm the only one who doesn't have an upcoming release with MTV Books and I'm not going to—at least, not at any time in the foreseeable future.  I do have a young adult release coming up in early '09, but that's with a different publisher and I don't know—I'd feel kind of odd talking about it here, even though it's all I want to talk about because I'm in the throes of revision for it and it's all that my creative brain is full of right now.  Plus, I just really, really like the story.  

The other side of the No-Man's Land coin is that I don't have any particularly recent releases.  Adiós is more than a year back and Accent was released nearly five months ago, so neither of them constitutes any kind of fresh news.  Any of the typical blog stories—where did I get my inspiration, what influences me with a particular story, tell us about the characters... it all feels as if I've already answered them a hundred times before.  

This is where things get tough for me—as I mentioned in a column for my agent, I find it difficult to sell myself.  Ridiculous, no?  But it just goes against my general nature to go tooting my own horn.  But it's an evil necessity.  Actually, contrary to what this post may sound like, I do enjoy talking about my books—a lot.  I just worry about wearing out my welcome! :-)

So anyhow, I will make  concerted effort to talk my lovely MTV Books up, especially since I'm very proud of both of them and they've taken me some incredible places.  And anything that anyone wants to ask me about either—I'm more than happy to answer.  Deal?

Okay.  I'll start then—I found out last Friday that I made my very first Best of list.  If you scroll on over to page three of the article, you'll see that author Mary Castillo chose as her best book of 2007, none other than IT'S NOT ABOUT THE ACCENT.  Merry Christmas, baby!  Especially since I'm there alongside such luminaries as Junot Díaz, who wrote what is unarguably the most celebrated Latino novel of 2007, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Dude.  How unbelievably hard does that rock?  My book on a list like that.  It boggles the mind, really.

So, anyhow, that's kind of where I sit—and the deal utterly stands.  Anything anyone wants to ask me, I'm more than happy to answer.

Barbara Caridad Ferrer

What’s in a name?

I name my characters very carefully for reasons I have developed as both a writer and a reader.

As a reader, I’m annoyed when more than one character name in a book starts with the same letter. When the book gets really good and I read faster, my eyes use that initial capital letter as shorthand and skip over the rest of the name. If there are two or three R-characters, I get confused. So when I write a book, I jot down the alphabet and make sure I don’t use more than one main character name for each letter. This is a habit I developed on my own, but I’ve since heard that some editors ask writers to change names when several start with the same letter. Affirmation makes me feel 50% less neurotic.

As a reader, I’m also taken aback by strange character names. Some names don’t sound like names, and lately writers love to give heroines boy-names. If I have to think too hard about a name, I’m pulled out of the story.

As a writer, when I begin a new manuscript, I’m embarking on a lonely journey of several months. I do everything possible to keep myself on the edge of my seat. So my characters have names with special meaning to me or the story, even if that meaning will never be apparent to my readers.

In the manuscript I just finished, the heroine is named Zoey because at first I pictured her looking like Zooey Deschanel, but I think Zooey has one too many O’s, and I could not be bothered with repeatedly looking up the key to type an umlaut (Zoë). By the time I finished writing, I’d changed the character until she looked nothing like Zooey Deschanel--but I have to start somewhere, and I still like the name Zoey.

The hero of that story is an Olympic-caliber swimmer who works on his dad’s charter fishing boat and is very unhappy about it. I named him Doug, which means “black water,” according to the baby naming website. I spend a LOT of time on the baby naming website.

One of my favorite characters I’ve written is the heroine of BOY IN BLUE, which is coming out in March 2009. I named her Meg. I have a cousin my age named Meg, and I grew up thinking Meg was the coolest name in the world, MUCH cooler than Jennifer.

Here is how I came up with the name of the hero. I live in Alabama and my critique partner Vicki lives in Utah, but somehow over months of e-mailing and calling each other, we had become best friends without ever meeting in person. We finally met at a writers’ conference in Reno. Between playing blackjack and listening to the (excellent!) Johnny Cash impersonator in the bar, we had the sort of strange conversation you have with someone when you are best friends but are meeting in person for the first time and are trying desperately to make sure you will still like each other afterward. Somehow we got on the subject of the names of our characters and strange names of people we’d known in real life.

Vicki: I went to school with a guy named John Actor. It flowed off the tongue so well that no one ever called him John. Everyone called him Johnactor, one word.

Jenn: That would be a great name for a character. Johnafter.

Vicki: I said Johnactor.

Jenn: What? [The casino was loud.]

Vicki: I SAID I DIDN’T SAY JOHNAFTER, I SAID JOHNACTOR.

Jenn: Oh. *pause* Johnafter is a better name for a character.

I came home and wrote a book about John After, a.k.a. Johnafter, a 19-year-old rookie cop with a Dark Past.

If you’re a writer, how do you come up with character names? Do you give it a lot of thought, or is it just me? We would love to hear the story behind characters' names in your books.

If you’re a reader, what do you love about character names, and what annoys you? I’ll try to keep that in mind for the next manuscript. ;)

Jennifer Echols

2008? Really?

I have this problem where I can't seem to think about next year until I've bought my dayplanner, which I did last week. So all of a sudden I realized that it's going to be 2008 in a few weeks, and that my book, What Happens Here, which "isn't coming out until 2008!" is going to be coming out soon. May, when it pubs, will be here before I know it.

The most exciting book news of the week for me is that National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr has contributed an amazing quote for the front cover. See all that white space up top? Picture, if you will, this there:

"A compulsively readable tale of complicated friendships, life-changing loss, and the search for authentic experience in a world full of artifice. It's a story of coming to terms with the fragility of life as well as its mettle, and with with the failures of those we love along with our own...in other words, growing up."
—Sara Zarr, author of Story of a Girl

Pretty exciting stuff indeed.

Not exciting: reviewing the copy editor's marks and notes. I'm grateful, for example, that the copy editor pointed out that I referred to a B&B in Italy when, technically, it's a pensione, but I mean, come on! Zzzzzzzzzz. And on that note, I should get back to it, so that when What Happens Here comes out in May, there won't be any big mistakes in it!

I suppose I should also start thinking about New Year's resolutions? Does anyone have any that are rarin' to go?

"The Race"

I’m participating in a race.

A race against time. More specifically a deadline for my second MTV title, INVISIBLE TOUCH. :)

Deadlines are something we as writers are not always comfortable with.

I was reading Marjorie Liu’s blog the other day--she’s currently gone under for her deadline--and only comes up for air for a few minutes to post this:

Hair = Gross.
Food = Down to applesauce, frozen spinach, and ice cream, followed by gnawing on my own leg.
Cats = Frightened of hair, and making peculiar noises in the kitchen.
Poodle = Hanging in there.

Haha! Oh, and she also mentions what Meg Cabot is writing on her blog:

I don’t know about other writers, but when I’m towards the end of writing a book, I am completely unfit for human companionship. Like, I pretty much stop bathing and I can’t speak in complex sentences anymore.

For the welfare of others, I try to avoid human contact when I am at this stage of one of my books.

And other humans know to avoid me, as well. It really is safer that way.

I get it. I get what they are going through. The race against time to finish the book and get it into the hands of the editor so we can all be happy and meet the schedule.

The thing is, I wish I could become a hermit and stay in my jammies all day, but my family might abandon ship! :) Instead I’ve bought stock in French Vanilla Café, and my mind is muddled as I drive here and there, you know, from the late-to-bed-early-to-rise schedule. And suddenly I'll remember something that needs to be done that day, and I rush around like a craaazzzaay woman, trying to get it done all the while the book is lurking around in my brain.

So tell me, Authors…what’s your life like as that deadline looms over you and you're speeding toward the finish line?

Ski Trips from Hell... the story behind OBLIVION ROAD

So my new novel, Oblivion Road, is about five friends who get stranded during a ski trip in the Colorado wilderness. Readers often ask me where I get the ideas for my books—and I usually don't have a good answer for them! Ideas are such whimsical, odd, dreamlike little things. But in the case of Oblivion Road, the idea came directly from the experience of one of my friends. Back in high school, my friend Mark flew to Denver to go skiing for a week with his older brothers, right before Christmas. He was really psyched about the trip, and he was a great skier. (I almost went along myself, except my parents made me stay home because we had relatives coming into town).

As it turns out, Mark and his brothers never made it to the slopes. Their rented van broke down about an hour away during a massive snowstorm, and there was no way for them to call for help. They ended up spending the night out there, in the brutal cold, figuring that the next day someone would come along and rescue them. No such luck! Sometime around the next afternoon, they realized that they hadn't seen a single car, and came to the horrible realization that the road must have got closed because of the blizzard. They had to hike about two miles to a ranger station, where luckily, they managed to get help. But they knew they'd avoided a horrible disaster by the skin of their teeth.

So this was the genesis of Oblivion Road. I always kept their saga in the back of my mind over the years, but I wasn't sure if it was enough of an idea to support a whole novel. Then one day, I was thinking about it, and realized, Hey, how could I make things even worse for them? And I came up with the idea that while they were stranded, someone would stumble out of the snow, and that the person would be an escaped convict. From there, the novel just took on a life of its own.

Anyway, while I'm on the cheerful subject of skiing horror stories, there was one scene from real life I wanted to work into the book, but couldn't. Another friend of mine from college was in Vermont once, skiing a double diamond, when he slipped and fell going fast on an icy patch. Through some bizarre feat of physical contortion, his ski actually snapped off, and the metal tip punctured his skin—and the ski went all the way through his leg! He had to get taken down the mountain on one of those emergency sleds, and it was about six months before he could walk again. Ah, wintertime! So if anyone's got any juicy skiing horror stories, please feel free to share... (or maybe not...)

http://www.alexmcaulay.com/

My Inner Lit Nerd

I'm in the middle of moving and I'm reminded of two things: 1) packing completely and totally blows, and 2) I have a shopping problem. Having fifteen pairs of black shoes never seemed like a problem until I actually have to take them somewhere all at once.

Of course, what's really tough to pack are all my books. I have a scary amount of reading material. When I went to the U-haul to buy book boxes and requested thirty, the guy behind the counter asked me if I lived in a library. Well, yeah, kinda. I'm a writer, so naturally it follows that I like to read.

I've always had a book addiction, and it hasn't gotten any better with time, or with the invention of Amazon. It's part of the reason I dreamt up Bard Academy in the first place. The idea of a boarding school haunted by famous fictional characters, well, that's my idea of heaven. I've always been a lit nerd.

I get attached to characters - both the ones I dream up and the ones created by other people. To answer Jenny's question, yes, I do think about what might continue to happen to my characters after I've finished writing a book. It's hard to put some of them to rest (Miranda of Bard Academy fame has a particularly loud voice, and she doesn't like not being the center of attention).

But I also think about characters I've read about in other books, which is part of the reason so many of them pop up in Bard Academy. Well, I've postponed packing long enough. I have twenty-nine more boxes to fill, which brings me to a question for you: If you had to move, but could only take five books with you, which ones would they be, and why?