Iron Wolf vs. Space Mountain

So, *goes to check countdown clock,* it's exactly 17 days until I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE comes out. 17 days.... Deep breaths. Try not to hyperventilate. It's getting to be crunch time. I feel like I have a lot to do and very little time to do it, especially with working 40 hours a week. I have a big pile of blogger interview questions to answer and guest blogs to write. There have been a couple newspaper interviews (!!!) and if you look to the right, you'll see a whole bunch of traveling ahead for me. It's exciting (I've daydreamed about publishing a book since I was about six), it's overwhelming (I've been getting roughly five or six hours of sleep a night to cram in everything I need to do), and it's terrifying (what if the book is a big flop and all of this is for nothing?). Basically it's one big ass roller coaster ride and I hope that when I get off I feel like I did on my first big roller coaster, the Iron Wolf at Great America (ie. I wanna go again, again again!) and not like my mom did after Space Mountain at Disney World (she puked a lot).

One of the biggest, scariest parts of the roller coaster has been planning ROCK 'N' READ. Perhaps you remember me blogging about it back in April. I got really excited about it and then I shut up. Why? Because it really looked like it wasn't going to happen. We had all kinds of trouble nailing down a venue. Alexa Young, my partner in crime on this, finally thought of Virgin Megastore at Hollywood & Highland in Hollywood, and then they had to mull it over, which took a long time because it's actually a lot more complicated than you think to pull together authors from a bunch of different publishing houses, not to mention add bands to the mix. So we didn't get a confirmation until Monday... and they need posters and stuff by the end of next week... and it's too late in the game for our publishers to design the posters to I had to enlist the help of my two amazing friends Jenny and Elise. And Jenny is throwing together a website for us, too, www.rocknread.net, but that link might not work yet because the hosting service is being slow to register the domain. If it doesn't work, please try it again in a couple days because it will be cool, I swear. I mean, check it out, Jenny already designed these great banners for us!

(And feel free to put it on your site.)

We've also been gathering bands and authors at the very last minute. Authors we pretty much already had (and they include: N.L. Belardes, Cherry Cheva, Megan Crane, Kim Culbertson, Stephanie Kuehnert, Alyson Noël, Rebecca Woolf and Alexa Young), but bands are hard to get until you have a venue lined up, so we were scrambling a lot this week. We got some great California bands though, Lucid Nation, Noah Stone, Norfolk, and Dirty Spanglish, and we may still add some more.

So yeah, that basically took most of my week and was a very bumpy ride. I still haven't determined if it's Iron Wolf or Space Mountain. At least I have Alexa to hold my hand when I turn green, though!

But whether the publication roller coaster for I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE is Iron Wolf or Space Mountain, I'm pleased to officially announce that I will be riding again. Okay, so this was officially announced on my own blog awhile ago, but since this is MTV Books' blog, I had to wait until it was super official. And it is. I received the contract for my second book BALLADS OF SUBURBIA. Of course, even though I was stressed and not nearly as pretty as I would like to be, there had to be photo documentation.

Since IWBYJR isn't even out yet, I probably shouldn't go on at length about BALLADS, but I do want to say that I'm thrilled and relieved to remain a part of the MTV Books family 'cause I really love it. BALLADS will come out next summer and according to my contract it's "a young adult novel about a young woman's journey through the darker side of suburbia, and what it teaches her about herself." That's not very specific. More specifically it's about a girl named Kara who starts hanging out with the punks and the misfits at the park in the center of her suburb. She grapples with some pretty dark stuff like self-mutilation, divorce, and heroin addiction. You can read more about it including an excerpt here.

There is also a playlist that I updated just last night there. While I was procrastinating dealing with Rock 'n' Read and IWBYJR stuff. Cause that's what I do, I make playlists in iTunes... I even tried uploading this one to iTunes. It didn't have all of the songs (and the project playlist on my website has more, but still frustratingly not all), but I'll share it anyway:

Consider it music to ride roller coasters by. What about you do you like roller coasters or not? Share some literal or figurative roller coaster ride stories with me!

It's summer, which means travel time

This is going to be a cross-country sort of summer. First I'll have to pick up my kids from Cashiers, North Carolina, where they'll be visiting with their grandparents. Then it's down to Miami, so my son can go to his favorite day camp down there and from there, I'll fly with my daughter to New York where she'll be attending Camp Broadway. It's really not as pretentious as it sounds. It's just something fun for her Diva-self to do. Then, after catching my breath for a couple of weeks, it's off to San Francisco and the Romance Writers of America National Conference. This is my event-- something I look forward to every year, the opportunity to network and see friends I haven't seen for the past year, and get dressed up in something other than sweats and t-shirts. It's one of the most energizing events, from a professional/creative standpoint and the fact that this year it's in San Francisco, one of my absolute favorite cities on the planet, just adds to the anticipation.

(I also get to present at the RITA awards, so I'm very excited about that as well.)

On the downside, however, I'm fully expecting all of this travel to be exhausting and I know that I'm going to be more than ready to come home and retreat into my cave. The upside of National being held during the summer is that most of us have greater freedom to travel. The downside is that by the time you come home, the last thing you want to do is travel again. Which is quite the bummer sometimes, because I do have some dream trips I'd love to take and most of them involve a powerful car and the open road. I absolutely love driving and traveling by car. From a writing standpoint, it's actually my favorite plotting time—I've always made up stories while driving. And from a creative standpoint, I get so much out of seeing places up close and personal—it never ceases to amaze me how varied and amazing the United States is from state to state and even from town to town.

You know, I even still have the old AAA atlas that's all marked up in colored pencil with the routes I was going to take:

U.S. 1 from Key West all the way to Maine.

The Pacific Coast Highway.

And my most desired road trip? The Mother Road, Route 66, all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles, preferably with stops along the way at every kitschy roadside attraction.

Mind you, I have regular, run-of-the-mill vacations I'd love to take. I mean, I certainly wouldn't turn my nose up at a week at a secluded beach house in Hawaii. But give me a full tank of gas and a road? It would have to be a pretty amazing beach house to make me give that up.

So, what are some of your dream vacations?

For Father's Day...

One of my favorite things to do is to listen to a song over and over and write down all the chords so my dad can play along on his banjo. Like writing novels, I’d love to this anyway, but I love it so much more knowing someone else will enjoy it too.

And I want to give back to my dad, who gave me my love of music in the first place. His dad, who passed away Memorial Day weekend at the age of 98, played trumpet in his high school band, led the George Washington University Glee Club to a first-place finish in a contest at Carnegie Hall in 1930 or so, and worked as a church organist until he was 95. My dad grew up just as immersed in music. He played trumpet in the high school band too. In college he played guitar in a folk quartet that recorded a few radio commercials here in Birmingham. And when he went to medical school, he taught himself to play the banjo. Now that he’s retired as a doctor, he wishes he’d worked as a musician all along.

But there is no accounting for taste. I was a music major in college, and ever since he’s been bringing me songs and asking me to figure out the chords. Then he blasts the chosen song on his stereo (seriously, you can’t stay in the same room with him when he does this, it’s that loud) and follows along with my notations until he has the banjo chords memorized. The chosen song could be absolutely anything. I’ve figured out the chords to bluegrass and country songs--as you might guess because he’s a banjo player--but also rock songs and classical tunes, anything he decides is worthy. Probably the song he’s blasted loudest and most often over the years is the Whitney Houston version of “I Will Always Love You,” and now I can’t hear that song on the radio without banjo notes echoing in my head.

Unfortunately he’s developed an elbow problem recently. He is banned from playing the banjo for a few months until his arm heals. But he hasn’t stopped his search for worthy songs. He can’t play along with them, but he still wants to blast them on the stereo. A few weekends ago when I visited, he told me he’d heard the most gorgeous song by what had to be the best singer ever, and he sang a few bars for me.

Me: “Uh, Dad. That’s ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ by Bette Midler.”

Dad: “Yeah! Can you--how do you say it--get it off the computer for me? Do you know how to do that?”

So I downloaded “Wind Beneath My Wings,” threw in “The Rose” for good measure, and burned them to a CD for him. He was elated. Later in the week my mom called and said my dad wanted me to download “The Navy Hymn” for him. When she told him she wasn’t sure I could download something like that, my dad told her, “Jennifer can do anything.”

I went through the versions of “The Navy Hymn” on iTunes to pick the one I thought he’d like best. I played, “Oh hear us when we lift our prayer/For those in peril in the air,” over and over, until I swear I could hear the Blue Angels flying in the missing man formation over my house. Finally I settled on an instrumental version by the Marine Corps Band with a kick-ass low brass arrangement (I have been in marching band myself, so I am allowed to say things like “kick-ass low brass arrangement”) and took my dad the new CD. He was beside himself with joy. He cranked up the stereo. The windows of his house rattled for about an hour. Finally my mom and I went in to check on him. He was lying on the sofa in the living room, letting the chords wash over him. When he saw us, he yelled over the music to us:

Dad: THAT IS SO BEAUTIFUL. CAN YOU HEAR THOSE CHORDS?

Mom: HOW COULD WE POSSIBLY AVOID IT?

Later he wanted more versions of “The Navy Hymn,” so I showed him how to use iTunes and burn CDs. I haven’t checked on him since last weekend. God knows what he’s downloaded, but I hope his elbow feels better soon so I can write out the banjo chords for him.

What do you enjoy doing with your dad?

A room of my own...again!

I used to have a lovely home office. And then I had a baby and she took it over. But we're about to renovate our house, claiming the apartment downstairs, and the thing I'm most looking forward to is having an office again. [That and not having to hide stuff behind the bed when we have company!]

These days, when my sitter comes so I can have some time to write, I have to leave the house and go to cafes. This has its perks, of course. Better coffee than I make at home, yummy Greek breakfasts, the occasional good looking man to gaze upon (like the one guy who comes in to my neighborhood Starbucks on Fridays looking all broody and studying tomes by Jean Paul Sartres). But there are downsides, too. Like how it's annoying if I can't get a seat by an outlet. And the one guy that goes to the Greek cafe who never ever ever stops talking on his cellphone. And frankly, sometime I just don't feel like making myself presentable to the outside world by 10 am.

So lately I've been thinking a lot about what this new office of mine is going to be like. Technically, it'll be my old office, since we're likely to move the baby into a bigger, brighter room. But I want this office to be somehow better, more inspiring than my last one, which was full of lots of, well, junk. I know there will be a desk, and probably a comfy chair for when I'm reading print-outs of my drafts. But beyond that...well, I don't know! Something inspiring on the walls? Maybe a masseuse? Any ideas for me as I plan the way forward?

Tara

"Branding"

When I started writing, must have been six years ago, one thing I've always thought about was Author Branding...what kind of image do I portray in my writing? What is it about my stories that's different that I can help with marketing myself?

I tend to write fiction with an Urban edge.

What exactly is Urban??

Is it street fights, fast cars, and drugs?

haha. Not all the time.

WordNet:
urban (relating to or concerned with a city or densely populated area)
urban (located in or characteristic of a city or city life)

It's life in a populated area.

Graffiti Girl may have taken place in a small town, but Graffiti is very much part of the Urban lifestyle.

And now I've written Invisible Touch, a story of girl with a peculiar psychic ability, still with that Urban lifestyle in a town setting instead of the city, but it's there. I don't know if it's all because of growing up in a small town that has outgrown its limits or being raised ten years in the California Bay Area that makes me write about it. But it's behind my eyes as I write. It's probably all those 80s - 90's movies I watched in big cities with cops and bad guys. haha.

And as I stray a little into Sci-fi, it's still there. Real problems with character journeys taking place much of the time on the streets. My characters have homes, and they are young, just trying to live with the life that surrounds them. The life that sometimes isn't so wonderful and can throw obstacles in your way before you know it.

I came across this description of my writing for Graffiti Girl @ RomanceWiki:

Graffiti Girl stands out from other contemporary Young Adult fiction due to its unusual setting and subject matter. While certain aspects of teenage life cross all boundaries, it's refreshing to see a novel set outside the white urban teenager world. Graffiti artists are often demonized in our culture, yet Parra's exploration of this world reveals the human aspect of this world.

I'm glad someone else sees that I try to bring real life issues to my fiction.

Trying to put my finger on the kind of fiction I write has always been tough. Because branding yourself one way which readers may not understand, can detour readers sometimes.

So I don't know if author branding works with marketing, but it makes it easier to tell people the kind of fiction I write. Can you brand your writing?

Contests Galore for I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone

Butting in here and speaking out of turn, but I wanted to let everyone know that there are several opportunities to win I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE going on right now. Yep, you heard me correctly. The book isn't out for over a month, but you can win it before you can buy it!

Melissa Marr, author of Wicked Lovely and Ink Exchange is running a contest on her live journal. You tell us three of your favorite grrrl power songs and the 6 entries that excite us most get a signed, early copy of IWBYJR. Deadline is June 6. Enter here!

Then I am running a contest on my website where you can win an early copy of IWBYJR, signed cover flats, and a gift certificate to DownloadPunk. Deadline is June 13.

Finally, I just stumbled upon this contest at ELLEgirl, not only would you win IWBYJR, but a bunch of other great YA books.

Last but not least, you can win a copy from me in person this weekend if you happen to be in the Chicago area. I'll be at two different festivals. Check out my gigs page for more info!

Happy entering and good luck!

Ah, summer!

Don't you just love summer? I know it doesn't officially start until June Whatever, but frankly, I think it's pretty much anytime after Memorial Day weekend. Barbecuing, sunshine and ice cream. It's all good.

Of course, Miranda doesn't have a great summer in Moby Clique, which makes her all the more ready to get back to campus. You know it's not a good summer when you're actually eager to get back to school, much less a haunted campus!

I don't have too much to report other than it's finally starting to get warm here in Chicago and I'm going to take full advantage of every day of sunshine since they're prety much numbered around here. In Wuthering High movie news, the producer has a director (and possibly) a screenwriter on board, so things are moving along there. You never know what will happen with these things, but if you want to see a Bard movie on the Big Screen just keep your fingers crossed. You never know.

Speaking of movies, anyone looking forward to any summer blockbusters this year? I have to admit I went to see Speed Racer the day it came out! I was a huge fan back in the day. I asked my dad to paint a five on my tricycle, I was so into the cartoon. I'm not quite sure why, although Speed is kind of cute, in a Japanese anime kind of way.

Feeling Lucky?

There are some people who always seem to get lucky -they get the best gift in the grab bag, they manage to get picked out in a crowd to compete for some fabulous prize, and they always find the last empty seat in a game of musical chairs. Well, I've never considered myself terribly lucky (but I continue to buy lottery tickets, none the less).

In fact, the one time I had my chance to win something I was in a totally different state with no way to claim my prize. I was driving up to Massachusetts from Connecticut to visit two colleges and while I was flying at 70 mph up Route 91, there was a radio station on Long Island announcing my name as the winner of a pair of INXS tickets - if I called in the next twenty minutes. Well, this was back before cell phones, so my friends heard my name called but they had no way to let me know - and, obviously, the station didn't get reception in Massachusetts. My dreams of claiming my prize died before I even knew I had a chance.

Well, I've decided to change that because now I'm the one in charge! I'm having my own contest! LOCAL GIRLS and RICH BOYS come out on June 24 and I decided to give stuff away - specifically some very cool t-shirts I designed myself. It's so easy to win. No talent required. No calling in twenty minutes to claim your prize. Just a push of few keys on your keyboard. Check out my blog for more details. The contest begins June 6.

So what about you? Are you one of those people who walk away from the carnival carrying the big stuffed dog nobody else could win? Or are you like me, driving along unaware that lady luck will be rocking out to INXS without you?

A quickie post!

Just wanted to post the link to an IM chat/interview I had with the amazing Sara Zarr. If you haven't read "Story of a Girl" or "Sweethearts," I highly recommend that you do. Sara was kind enough to give me a big fat blurb for the cover of "What Happens Here" and also to invite me to talk about the book on her blog. You can find out chat here.

Memorial Day, and Minding the Gap

Mostly Monday morning mutterings and ramblings today...

It's Memorial Day, and we're having a big ol' cookout. Screaming kids, burgers and dogs, beer and lemonade, music. It's the kickoff to summer, and it's going to be 80 degrees and pure blue sky up my way. But nobody says "Happy Memorial Day" because while what we're celebrating is saying goodbye to winter (in almost Druidic fashion, it's definitely about the change of seasons), the holiday is about remembering the men and women who have put their lives on the line (and often lost them) in service to America. Almost seems like a disconnect, but I'm thinking it isn't. We're celebrating the people who have protected the country by engaging in that most American of pastimes...the big ol' cookout. :)

Another way Americans celebrate Memorial Day? We go to the movies. Saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull the other day, and loved *every* silly minute of it.

Also...seeing that we're talking about music, and top albums, and that sort of thing, I figured I'd mention my two favorite musical acquisitions of 2008 so far: "Rockferry" by Duffy, and "The Cost" by The Frames (that one's really amazing). Also, at the Indiana Jones movie, I ran into my friend Tracy, who asked a "desert island" question. You know, "if you were stuck on a desert island and could only take....what would it be?" This one was ONE CD. If you could only take ONE CD, which one would it be? Hmm. One CD, possibly forever. I mean, sure, after a couple of months you'd hate the CD and smash it (never mind where you'd be playing it on a desert island, but that's not the point of these things). (Reminds me of a fantastic short story about hell called "The Jane Fonda Room," I think. Can't remember the author, either. But it's about a guy who loves Jane Fonda movies with a passion, dies, ends up in a pleasant afterlife where everyone gets stuck in a room to watch their favorite movies. He watches Jane Fonda films over and over. Eventually he realizes that he's not in heaven, but in hell.)

But I digress. ONE CD for a desert island. Easy. Bob Marley, LEGEND. There really is no other choice. (All right, Amy Winehouse, maybe, but thinking of her just makes me sad, and that CD hasn't lived in my brain long enough for me to decide if it's as perfect as I think it is.)


Last thing. Another cover, just for fun. I hope that Jen doesn't mind that it's not an MTV book, but...last week, another publisher released MIND THE GAP, the first colloboration I've done with my good friend Tim Lebbon. Though it's not a YA novel, it's certainly YA friendly, as it focuses on a teenage London girl named Jazz, whose mother is murdered. Her killers are looking for Jazz, and the girl needs a place to hide--she finds it amongst a band of homeless thieves in the London underground...and *then* things start to get weird. There's a supa-cool trailer for it at http://www.thehiddencities.com/, where you can also post YOUR OWN ghost encounters. Here's the crazy cover.

Stephanie's Top 50 Albums

Two weeks ago, I made a new friend, Frank. A music and writing person. I absolutely love meeting people who are as passionate about both those things as I am. Oh and tattoos too. A group of us ended up staying out at the bar for much longer than intended and Frank told us how his music snob co-worker had challenged him to create a top 100 albums of all time list. I love music. I love lists. I was intrigued.

My boyfriend and I discussed this after we got home and I easily rattled off my top three:
1. In Utero- Nirvana
2. Live Through This- Hole
3. ...And Out Come The Wolves- Rancid

They are albums that never left my 5 disc CD changer from their release until I graduated high school and that stereo died. For numbers four and five, I knew the bands but had to seriously mull over which albums to choose. I ultimately chose the albums that had exposed me to the respective bands.

4. Social Distortion- Social Distortion
5. Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me- The Cure

My boyfriend couldn’t even name his top five. Party pooper. (Though maybe he will give it some deep thought and leave it as a comment…)

Over the weekend, Frank emailed me his top 20. His choices were much cooler than mine. Though I was excited to see that we both have …And Out Come the Wolves in our top 5. And the fact that the Muffs s/t album is in his top 20, assures me that this will be a lasting friendship, not just someone who I thought was cool after I’d had a few.

Since I recently completed my 9 month task of listening to all the albums I hadn’t heard in awhile on my iPod in alphabetical order from Abbey Road to 40 oz of Freedom (the iPod lists numbers last), I needed to come up with some new creative way to use my iPod to entertain me. Yeah, I’m a freak, but if you had to put up with Chicago Public Transportation, you’d find bizarre ways to entertain yourself as well. So I decided to start on the top 100 albums list. At this point I am to 50 (actually to 53, but I figured I’d stop at a round number for our purposes).

I will list what I have below. Hopefully it will appeal to your inner music nerd and inspire you to check out new bands. It's probably the biggest window into my soul, I could provide you with. You may not think me very cool after reading the list. You may make fun of me on occasion (especially regarding number 50. I don’t care, I loved that band when I was eleven and it lingers). It would be a lot easier to make a list of current favorite albums, many of my current favorites had to be shoved out for albums like Abbey Road, which I don’t really listen to anymore, but that album bred my love for rock ‘n’ roll and therefore deserves a high place on the list. Also for example, there are many punk albums I love more than Nevermind the Bollocks, but it was my exposure to punk, so it is high up on the list. Both Calculated and Disintegration depress me too much to listen to anymore, but those albums saved my life at certain times, hence in the top 50. This was very difficult to me. You have to understand that I have 604 albums on my iPod and about 100 more that are not on the iPod. But anyway I’ll stop blathering and just give you the list.

Oh wait, one more sidenote, I decided that box sets weren’t allowed on the list, but my Johnny Cash box set deserves an honorable mention, as does Nirvana’s With the Lights Out. I listen to both of those very frequently.

Continuing the list:

6. Sweet Oblivion- Screaming Trees
7. Frenching the Bully- The Gits
8. Nevermind- Nirvana
9. Coral Fang- The Distillers
10. As the Eternal Cowboy- Against Me!
11. Abbey Road- The Beatles
12. Call the Doctor- Sleater-Kinney
13. Pretty on the Inside- Hole
14. MTV Unplugged in New York- Nirvana
15. Fontanelle- Babes in Toyland
16. Bleach- Nirvana
17. Nevermind the Bollocks- The Sex Pistols
18. Little Earthquakes- Tori Amos
19. Siamese Dream- Smashing Pumpkins
20. London Calling- The Clash
21. How to Clean Everything- Propagandhi
22. Dirt- Alice in Chains
23. The White Stripes- The White Stripes
24. Bloodletting- Concrete Blonde
25. Superfuzz Big Muff Plus Early Singles- Mudhoney
26. Dry- PJ Harvey
27. Tim- The Replacements
28. Substance- Joy Division
29. Let's Go- Rancid
30. Sparkle and Fade- Everclear
31. Sing Sing Death House- The Distillers
32. Pretty Hate Machine- Nine Inch Nails
33. Goddamnit- Alkaline Trio
34. Operation Ivy- Operation Ivy
35. Goo- Sonic Youth
36. Murder Ballads- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
37. Searching for a Former Clarity- Against Me!
38. Sex, Love, and Rock 'n' Roll- Social Distortion
39. The Sufferer and the Witness- Rise Against
40. Disintegration- The Cure
41. Calculated- Heaven's to Betsy
42. Metallica- Metallica
43. Automatic for the People- R.E.M.
44. Mania- The Ramones
45. Doolittle - Pixies
46. Incesticide- Nirvana
47. The Muffs- The Muffs
48. Viva Zapata- 7 Year Bitch
49. The Winding Sheet- Mark Lanegan
50. Caress of Steel- Rush

Yep, so that’s it. I won’t subject you to the other 50 when I finish it. This was probably overkill as it was. I thought really I should make a top ten for Emily, my main character in I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE. But the problem is that some of the bands would be fictional. Maybe I will add a top ten for her on my website after the book comes out though… For now, I will share that her number one would be Horses by Patti Smith.

Now I would like everyone to join in my music nerdiness and share your top five or your character’s top five!

Every Book is Special

I had an unbelievable ride with Adiós to My Old Life. Seriously, it was total dream come true territory, with the good reviews and the awards and the fantastic fan mail from not simply teen readers, but readers across the board. Which was why I worried, when It's Not About the Accent was released out into the world. Like a second child, it was very different from its elder sibling, although if you looked close, you could still see the family resemblances. But like a lot of younger siblings, it sort of coasted under the radar. It's also suffered the downside of having had such a distinctive older sister—the inevitable comparisons, whether they're fair or not.

At the same time though, it's also had the end result of making the recognition Accent's received seem all the more sweeter for it. I got my first Publisher's Weekly review and it was good. (Deep sigh of relief.) The reader letters I received for Accent seemed a little more thoughtful and in many cases, far more poignant, due no doubt, to the subject matter the story tackled. And it also made it really special when I came home a few weeks ago to a phone message informing me that Accent had finaled in the Young Adult Category of the Oklahoma RWA Chapter's National Reader's Choice Award. It's special because the finalists are chosen, as the contest's name says, by readers. No writers allowed here, which, when you think about it, is kind of cool. As much as peer recognition is special, so is the recognition that comes from the people you hope are out there buying your book or will recommend it to other readers.

So thank you, Oklahoma RWA, for recognizing my second child and seeing that she's in her own way, as special as the first. See y'all in San Francisco!

How’s the weather?

Nowadays when I read what people chat about online, it seems America is becoming more homogenized in its experience, largely because of the leveling effects of TV (we all watch the same shows) and shopping (we all have a McDonald’s, a Barnes & Noble, and an Anthropologie—I hope!). But one thing that will always differ vastly from region to region is the weather. My critique partner called me to say it’s snowing where she lives in Utah. Here in Alabama it’s sunny and 80 degrees, but it looks like we’re about to get more tornadoes.

You might not think of Alabama as being part of Tornado Alley, but it ranks fourth among the states for number of killer tornadoes, third for tornado deaths, and first for the percentage of tornadoes that are F2 or stronger, cause a death, or both (lots of interesting statistics here if you are really wonky like me). You may not remember the freaking F5 (ie, largest, most powerful, scariest possible) tornado in Oak Grove, Alabama in 1998 that leveled parts of the high school and killed 34 people. But you probably remember the tornado in Enterprise, Alabama in March 2007 that leveled parts of the high school and killed 8 students. We're constantly bombarded with news about disasters happening to strangers, but hearing that a school was destroyed in your home state makes you realize it could happen to you. The local school systems must feel the same way. They have let out school early five times this year because a storm was coming.

A storm was coming last week. All morning I expected to get an automated call from the school system saying school was being dismissed early. The call never came. In the afternoon I drove to the school and waited in the carpool line with the other parents, as usual. Then I got a call from my critique partner in Utah: “Are you watching The Weather Channel? You’re about to get hit by a tornado.” Just then the phone beeped with another call. The automated system was informing me that school was being held over rather than letting out early because the tornadoes were already too close and no one should be out driving.

I looked at the car behind me, blocking me in from the back. I looked at the car in front of me, blocking me in from the front. I looked toward the southeast, where the tornadoes come from. I switched the call back to my critique partner and asked her to have my posthumous book royalties donated to the local high school marching band.

But by this time, every parent in the line had gotten the automated call, and everyone was walking up the hill to the school to check out their children. When I got back to the car with my son, the line of cars was moving, and we made it home before it even started raining. We watched the local TV channels (all the local channels broadcast nothing but weather when there’s a tornado warning) and gauged the exact moment when we needed to run to the basement.

That was Thursday. Friday was beautiful and sunny. Saturday night the eerie wail of the tornado siren woke us at 1 a.m., but the most violent part of the storm was passing north of us. The nice thing about everyone here being completely freaked out by tornadoes is that we have a great warning system and lots of information. We know the line of storms will develop in the Midwest (thanks, Midwest!) and gather strength across Mississippi. It will tear up Tuscaloosa and poor Oak Grove before it hits here in Birmingham. If the “areas of circulation” (read: possible tornadoes) on the weather radar enter our county, the warning siren will sound. But if they’re already north of us, we can go back to bed. It’s important to check. A few months ago when the siren went off at 3 a.m., the area of circulation moved right over our house. We spent quality time in the basement.

And now, another line of thunderstorms has formed across the Midwest, headed our way. Thank goodness tornado season is almost over. You can never be too careful at any time of year. We’ve had some doozies in December. But for the most part we will be okay if we just duck our heads and wait for June. And I’d still rather have tornadoes than hurricanes or earthquakes or blizzards or floods or OMG volcanoes, because tornadoes are my natural disaster, the enemy I know.

What’s yours?

My book is out!

And so “What Happens Here” was released this week! YAY! It was a really fun week, actually, which isn’t always the case when a book is released—not for me, anyway. Sometimes it feels, well, sort of anticlimactic, because usually you’ve already heard that people have seen the book in stores and Amazon has usually been shipping it for a week or two.

But this week, I participated in a really great reading at a branch of the New York Public Library the day after my pub date. I read from “What Happens Here” for the first and hopefully not last time and got to hear some other great young adult writers—like Libba Bray and Nico Medina and David Levithan and more—read from new works of theirs.

After that, I went out for an amazing meal with a few friends. It was the perfect way to mark the occasion.

Some fun stuff. I’ve been doing a bit of guest blogging. You can read about my brushes, such as they are, with Hollywood fame on author Maggie Marr’s blog here.

And you can read about how it was that I came to write YA here.

There’s also a fun interview with Jocelyn of Teen Book Review here.

I’ve got some other neat stuff coming up, like a chat with the awesome Sara Zarr and a Book Notes essay (about the music I listened to while writing “What Happens Here”) over at Largehearted Boy’s blog. Stay tuned in the days and weeks to come!

Tara

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...

COMING IN SEPTEMBER 2008

INVISIBLE TOUCH

by Kelly Parra

Secrets. Everyone has them. Some are bigger than others, and sometimes the only way to keep them from consuming you is to whisper them on a weblog. Kara Martinez hides a surreal secret that she reveals only on an anonymous website--Kara sees signs of premonition. When one vision leads her to a dangerous boy from a rough side of town, she is thrust into a conflict between teen rivals. Despite her family’s concern, she can’t stop her growing feelings for him or the brutal images she sees on others around him. While those closest to her begin to look into the secrets, Kara must stop one fate from turning deadly and its fatal outcome from becoming her own.

COMING IN OCTOBER 2008

SOULLESS

by Christopher Golden

Times Square, New York City: The first ever mass séance is broadcasting live on the Sunrise morning show. If it works, all the spirits of the departed on the other side will have a brief window—just a few minutes—to send a final message to their grieving loved ones.

Clasping hands in an impenetrable grip, three mediums call to their spirit guides as the audience looks on in breathless anticipation. Then the mediums slump over, slack-jawed—catatonic. And in cemeteries surrounding Manhattan, fragments of old corpses dig themselves out of the ground. . . .

The spirits have returned. The dead are walking. They will seek out those who loved them in life, those they left behind . . . but they are savage and they are hungry. They are no longer your mother or father, your brother or sister, your best friend or lover.

They are soulless.

The horror spreads quickly, droves of the ravenous dead seeking out those they left behind—shredding flesh from bone, feeding. But a disparate group of unlikely heroes—two headstrong college rivals, a troubled gang member, a teenage pop star and her bodyguard—is making its way to the center of the nightmare, fighting to protect their loved ones, fighting for their lives, and fighting to end the madness.

"Blurbage"

I haven't shared the cover for INVISIBLE TOUCH (September 16th) on the MTV blog, so I'd thought I'd take the opportunity since I received some cool blurbage. :) :)

I really love the cover! I feel the cover is eye-catching and conveys a paranormal and urban feel that I believe INVISIBLE TOUCH has. I'm eager to get the slogan for the novel so I can start blabbing about it. haha.

Here are a few quotes from some awesome writers who took the time to read TOUCH.

“A magical blending of mystery, romance, and deep and dangerous secrets. Kelly Parra’s Invisible Touch is an action-packed coming-of-age novel, sure to keep readers turning pages and begging for a sequel.” – Laurie Faria Stolarz, Bestselling Author of Blue is for Nightmares, and Deadly Little Secret

"Invisible Touch is a fast-paced, gripping book full of teenage secrets, alienation and hidden pain. It’s also incredibly tender and full of hope and made me stay up all night to finish it." ~ Amanda Ashby, author of You Had Me at Halo and Zombie Queen of Newbury High

"Readers are going to delight in this fast-paced, gripping story, and be kept spellbound until its surprising finish." ~ Tina Ferraro, author of How To Hook A Hottie

Thanks for letting me share!

~kelly parra

Working Until Dawn

Ah, I hear you Christopher! Workaholics Anonymous, I've been a member pretty much since age 14. And I am really rotten about keeping up my own blog (caralockwood.blogspot.com), especially these days, as I'm working on two adult novels at the same time. I don't recommend this kind of overbooking for anyone's sanity.

But, this month, I wanted to tell you about some work I've actually finished (ah, the lovely sound of that phrase), including a short story/essay you might like. I'm in a new anthology celebrating Stephenie Meyer that hits Borders bookshelves in a few weeks.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a HUGE fan of Stephenie Meyer. She’s the author of the Twilight series. Twilight, of course, is the improbable but touching love story between teen Bella and Edward, a vampire. It’s a book I wish I had written, mostly because it’s so darn riveting. I can’t put any of Meyer's books down! Who cares if they’re 600 pages? I’m going to sit there until I finish the darn thing.

For those of you die-hard Twilight fans like me who are impatiently waiting for the release of new book, Breaking Dawn (or the Twilight movie in December!), there’s hope for a Twilight fix before then. The new anthology (published by Ben Bella books) is called A New Dawn, and it’s all about Meyer and her series.

Several authors (including moi) write about the books. My essay is all about the REAL town of Forks (yes, it does exist, and, yes, it is very, very rainy). But there is also a budding Twilight tourism explosion there, as dozens of people flock to the place so they can see first hand where Bella and Edward first meet. The anthology is edited by New York Times bestselling author Ellen Hopkins, and has a fresh take on Bella, Edward, Jacob and the rest of Forks, Wash.

The anthology is only available at Borders, and it should hit stores by June 1. For those of you interested in reading an excerpt, go to www.teenlibris.com/teenlibris3_NewDawn.html.
And to read more about Ben Bella books for teens, head to www.teenlibris.com.

Covers and Jealousies

All right, first, an apology. Last month I didn't manage to get around to blogging. Since I've never managed to do my own personal blog more than four or five times a year (I keep trying to improve, but my workaholics anonymous meetings get in the way), I'm still feeling pretty pleased with only having missed one of my rendezvous (es? What *is* the plural of rendezvous anyway? If it's rendezvouses, that's pretty silly looking, don't you think?) with the MTV Books blog.

Where was I? Here. Same spot I'm in right now, behind my desk, working on the screenplay for the film version of Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire (a novel I wrote with Mike Mignola). Once the WGA strike was over, it was like someone fired a starter gun and the producers were cheering us from the stands while we raced to get it done as quickly as possible. And now it's done, and we wait.

Not to worry. I have plenty of other things to keep me occupied, including a ton of different projects going on. In fact, I've got the copy-edited manuscript for SOULLESS on my desk right now, and am about to start going through it, replying to editorial queries, etc. Everyone seems pretty pleased with it, and apparently even the copy editor loved it, so that gives me a happy.

So, the title today? Covers and Jealousies. I saw the photo that accompanies Jennifer's blog entry below about her vacation and found myself extremely jealous. This whole week the weather in Boston has been glorious, but sadly, the chain that keeps me attached to my desk doesn't stretch as far as my deck. There IS a vacation coming up...to Disney, with our three kids, and if any of you think that's a real vacation, I'm guessing you don't have kids. :)

As for covers...I've had great ones and I've had awful ones. I'm really thrilled to be able to say that the cover for SOULLESS falls into the former category. I love it. Simple, sexy, and creepy all at the same time. I'm a moron when it comes to tech...never have time to learn this stuff...but here, let me see if I can attach it...

There you go. Sweet, no? :)

This is what I did all last week, sat on a quiet beach every day and read books (those are really my toes). It was exactly what I needed and actually got me ready to write again after turning in the island summer series. I always find reading gets me excited to write again, probably how watching sports makes atheletes want to play themselves.

So after a week of sun and relaxation I headed back to Boston and real life. On the flight back to Boston I happened to sit down next to a man who noticed the book I was reading and asked if I liked it. I told him that I'd already read it ten years ago and wanted to read it again. We chatted briefly about the book and I thought, "Nobody cares that much about what anyone's reading - except a writer." Then I saw the manuscript he placed on his tray. And we started talking and it turned out he was a writer. It was Robin Cook. Now, I've never read any Robin Cook, although I'd have at least 20 books to choose from. But last summer our friend was on the Vineyard with us and he was telling me I had to read Robin Cook (our friend is a doctor and so is Robin).

We talked practically the entire way back to Boston and so, sadly, Robin didn't get much editing done on his page proofs - which are due to his editor this week. Turns out the main character in his latest book is named Jennifer. I told him that one of the main characters in RICH BOYS goes to Wesleyan, Robin's alma mater. He has a house on the Vineyard and I told him that I have an event there the last week in July for the launch of the Island Summer series. We're hoping to get together this summer.

Even though I've never read Robin's books, I rememembered a commercial on TV for COMA, his first book to be made into a movie. And the thing is, Robin doesn't just write, he's still a doctor, has some amazing ideas on how to bring book marketing into the 21st century and is just an all around interesting guy. For a writer, talking to someone whose had such an accomplished writing career is like talking to a rock star. Fascinating stories about how he got started and the craziness along the way. It got me to thinking, if I could pick any writer to sit next to, who would it be? Who would make my jaw drop? I have to say, although he wouldn't have been on my list a week ago, Robin is now at the top. Marilyn French (author of THE WOMEN'S ROOM, which I wrote my college essays on), Edith Wharton, Norma Klein (author of my favorite teen book of all time, IT'S OKAY IF YOU DON'T LOVE ME), Wallace Stegner (author of CROSSING TO SAFETY, one of my favorite books of all time), they'd be on the list, too. If I hadn't met and spent time with Judy Blume last summer, she'd be on the list as well.

So who would you like to hold captive in First Class for several hours? And what would you talk about?

All in all, the perfect end to a perfect vacaction. I couldn't have written a better ending myself.

Presenting: Rock and Read!

+ = total awesomeness


About four years ago, I got to read onstage at the Metro, my favorite concert venue in Chicago (or really anywhere). They were hosting a literary event for Irvine Welsh. I'd taken a class with him, and me and my classmates were invited to open for him. Obviously, wanna-be rock star that I am, I was thrilled to read on the same stage at a legendary venue where just about every musician I love has played and I've seen so many amazing shows (including this one from October 1994, my number-one favorite show ever.)

I was also petrified. It was the biggest audience I've read in front of to date (the other time I read with Irvine being a close second). I read a scene from the first chapter of I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE. I really wanted to be gutsy enough to read a section where I got to sing a line from "Gimme Danger" by the Stooges, but even though the line was supposed to be sung off-key I was too freaked I'd screw up. As it was I totally lost my voice after I read as part of some strange extension of my stage fright. My friend Jenny read a piece where she got to sing a Metallica song and she got some of the loudest applause of the night.

It was a rush, one of the biggest rushes of my life, and even though it involved so much anxiety. Like a roller coaster I want to do it again and again and again. Now I may finally have a chance to.

Since I sold IWBYJR everyone has been telling me I should do events with bands. Awesome, definitely, I've always thought. Um, but other than approaching my friends in bands, I wasn't really sure how to go about it. So I've been planning this West Coast tour. MTV Books is not sending me (it is very rare that any brand new author would be sent on a tour), I'm doing it on my own dime mostly because I want an excuse to see my friends out West and, well, getting a book published has been my dream, who knows if it will happen again, so I plan to celebrate it and live my superstar author fantasy to the max. I'd been trying to arrange unique events for myself outside of the typical bookstore reading/signing. Other than finding a fabulous reading series in San Francisco, I hadn't had much luck. Then I met my new favorite person, Alexa Young.

Alexa and I are both a part of a yahoo group for YA authors and she posted on there that her first book, Frenemies, is out May 13th and she wasn't really sure about doing appearances or bookstore events or anything. I saw that she was from the Los Angeles area and sent her an email with some advice about what I was planning. I also mentioned that I would be in L.A. and would love to do some sort of event with her, maybe a bookstore thing, but I was really interested in doing something more creative, like a literary rock 'n' roll event with bands and authors. After expressing her initial doubts about how me and my book were too cool for her and her book, which I immediately squashed with assurances that I'm really a big dork and not at all a pretentious hipster type, Alexa got super excited about actually doing the kind of event I mentioned, which she dubbed ROCK AND READ.

Finally, I'd found a like-minded, adventurous soul to play literary rock star with and one who has some pretty good connections in L.A. for getting us a venue and maybe some bands. So we're doing this. We've set a date, Sunday, July 13th (which happens to be my 29th birthday, what better way to ring in the last year of my twenties!), we've contacted a few authors and bands and are hoping to score our ideal venue this week. We're dreaming big, thinking this could be the book world's Lollapalooza. Maybe it could be a yearly thing, or we can bring it to other places like Chicago (where I can work my connections) and New York. Maybe we can raise a lot of money for great literacy charities. Maybe we can get a reunited Sleater-Kinney (whose song I got IWBYJR's title from) to headline or Social Distortion or the Foo Fighters... Okay that is totally me dreaming, but hey...

However, in order for ROCK AND READ to really happen and be as amazing as Alexa and I are hoping, WE NEED YOU! If you're an author (hello, fellow MTV Books authors!!!) or in a band in the Los Angeles area (or one who thinks this is such a cool idea that you will pay your own way to get there) and you're interested, you should get in touch with me by leaving a comment or sending me a message on myspace. If you can suggest authors/bands, please do or better yet, put me in touch with them. And if you live near L.A. and love books and music, save the date for ROCK AND READ on July 13th.

Thanks for letting me share my enthusiasm and I'll be sure to keep you updated.

PS. For anyone near Monterey, California, I'm also totally thrilled to announce that Kelly Parra and I will be doing a signing at the Borders Express in the mall on July 16th. I'm soooo excited to meet Kelly and if you would like to meet Kelly and me, please come!

"Pizza Vs. Lobster" by Ansel Adams, Jr.

Yet again, I find myself bored and snapping photos of our cats. This shot displays the lovely Ishmael, also known as Prussian, Prish Prush, King Prush Orca, and His Blobs. Today, Ishmael is trying to make a difficult choice between tasty day old pizza and his stuffed toy lobster. I understand his dilemma, and now, I've captured it for posterity! In other news, I continue to work on my next novel for MTV Books, SHELTER ME, so that I can keep buying pizzas and lobsters for Ishmael.

Elle Girl Giveaway is happening right now!

Okay, so here's your chance to win a copy of "What Happens Here," as well as other great books like "The Adoration of Jenna Fox" and the new Meg Cabot....

Elle Girl Giveaway

Good luck!

-Tara

Sawadee!

My husband immigrated to the United States from Thailand when he was two years old, and he hasn't been back. We keep meaning to go, but there is never a convenient time to spend 24 hours straight on an airplane. Now he has decided that he wants to see the village where he was born and meet his relatives before he turns 40. We are 38, so we'd better get going. We're planning to spend ten days there next year.

Luckily we have a built-in guide and translator going with us. My sister-in-law didn't come to the United States until she was 18, and she's been back to Thailand six times. Already she has given us the three top tips for Americans traveling to Thailand:

1. It is hot.

2. It is hot.

3. The hottest day of the year is whenever you are there.

It's all very difficult for me to imagine. I'm going to start reading up, but I know the experience will be wildly different from what's described in the travel books, especially since we'll be out of the tourist traps and off the beaten path more than half the time.

Have you ever been on a vacation that wasn't just a trip, it was an adventure?

Something relating to MTV proper...imagine that!

I cannot tell you how long and eagerly I've waited for this night to arrive. I confess to being mildly obsessed with "The Hills" but I have not been able to watch the season premiere yet. And now—I mean, after I post this—I'm going to finally get to watch it. You see, since I recorded it there have been all manner of life interruptions—sick relative, sick baby, busted dishwasher...and, well, a husband who refuses to watch it.

I know a lot of people think the show's totally fake and vapid but I have to say that I'm continually impressed by Lauren Conrad. She makes mistakes but learns from them; she's slyly funny; she has awesome facial expressions; she's just, well, cool. The other person I dig is Heidi's mom. [Okay, so I already hit play!] I find it hard to believe that that woman--so seemingly normal!--actually raised Heidi and am generally fascinated by how a person like Heidi—just so completely sure of herself and entirely, I don't know, crazy?—comes into being. And then finds someone equally crazy to go out with!

And now some French hottie is taking Lauren to the Eiffel Tower. Ah, to be young and in Paris! I'm actually jealous of L.C.! And fear her little trick with her ball gown is going to end in disaster. Why, Lauren, why????

Alright, enough. OH! But one quick tidbit...Ellegirl.com is going to be giving away 5 copies of "What Happens Here" closer to the release date. Stay tuned for details!

Brain Freeze

I must apologize for being late with my blog entry this month! My only excuse is that I was spending some time down south in Dallas with my mom for an extended spring break, and when I got back to Chicago, the cold weather simply gave me a big brain freeze.

Since moving to Chicago (where we had SNOW two days ago), I'm always surprised when March rolls around and we still have to wear our parkas and mittens. I grew up in Dallas, so part of me, my inner-Tex-Mex girl, says I'm crazy for living north of the Mason-Dixon line. When I was a kid, March was a time when it *might* actually get warm enough to dip your foot in the pool. Here, the pool is still frozen!

At any rate, I've got news! Wuthering High has been optioned by a movie producer who is interested in making it into a movie. Of course, these things are always a long shot, so there are no guarantees of it actually being made and showing up in a theater near you. Still, it's exciting news.

And this is all because of Zoe, a very astute 13-year-old, who convinced her stepmom to read Wuthering High. One thing led to another, and now it's been optioned! So, a big thanks goes out to Zoe! You've got great taste in books!

Since we're on the topic of books made into movies, what is your favorite? I have to say that for me, it's a tie between Ralph Fiennes' "Wuthering High" and Colin Firth's "Pride and Prejudice." What can I say? I'm a sucker for the classics.

What's your fav?

I'm not a movie person. My friends all know that when they say, "Hey, Jen, you have to go see Juno, it's awesome," I'll nod and wait for the DVD. Maybe. Most of the time I won't even make it to the DVD (because I'm way behind the times and still actually have to go to a store to rent a movie -mostly because, like I said, I don't really like movies and having them arrive in my mail seems quite useless). The thing is, most writers I know love movies, probably because they use another form to tell a story. And we're story tellers, right? But I find that most movies disappoint, and if they're the film version of a book, they pretty never stack up to the experience I had turning the pages.

But tonight my aversion to film changed. Sort of. I still don't care if I ever watch another movie, but I've become an addict of Windows Movie Maker. I decided to kill time between books by making a trailer for LOCAL GIRLS and RICH BOYS. Had no idea how to do it, but last night I opened up Movie Maker for the first time and had a hard time shutting down. Tonight my daughter got involved, and as we scored the storyboard and rearranged videos and photos I felt like we'd both hit our stride. Making sure the music aligned with what viewers saw was challenging, if only because it felt like each second counted and being off by just one made a huge difference. It's not done yet, but I love it. LOVE IT! Making movies is way more fun than watching them. Surprisingly the hardest part of the whole thing is writing the copy to go along with it. All of a sudden each and every word matters because we only have 60 seconds to tell the story. I'll post the trailer here next month when it's my turn to blog again.

In the mean time, what do you think of movies? Do you find yourself as blown away by the trailers as I do, only to watch the first twenty minutes of a film and discover they used the best content in the 60 second promo? Do you find that book to movie adaptions rarely measure up?

UPDATE: Trailer is finished!!! I posted it above, took about 7 hours total to create from start to finish - a very fun 7 hours. Such a blast, Spielberg has been put on notice...

Knowing who (and where) your friends are

When people (myself included) talk about my forthcoming book I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, the focus is usually on the musical aspect of the book (along with the mother and daughter relationship). I really loved writing the rock ‘n’ roll stuff as I’ve said so many times, but what I’ve neglected to mention is how much I enjoyed exploring the friendship of Emily and her best friend Regan. It’s one of my favorite relationships in the book and I hope my readers find it as meaningful as I do and that it reminds them of that really awesome friendship they had growing up (and hopefully still have).

I’ve said it before and I’ll clarify here again, I never draw events directly from my own life for my fiction (I save that for creative essays), but certain things about my real life definitely inspire my fiction. Emily and Regan’s friendship has a lot in common with my relationship with my real life BFF, Katie. Unlike Emily and Regan who knew each other from birth, Katie and I met my sophomore/her freshman year of high school, but she has been one of the most important people in my life ever since. Like Emily and Regan, she and I both had a tough girl façade in our teen years. We had a hard time trusting anyone but each other and sometimes we were so busy acting tough, we couldn’t even share our feelings with each other which led to the occasional “ick” as we liked to call it. This is something Emily and Regan face as well.

Teenage friendship and the concept of “fitting in” interests me immensely and I write about it a lot because it’s something I struggled with all my life. I usually had one or two good friends, but I desperately wanted to be a part of a group of friends, you know, like the gang on 90210 or something. But I was to weird and poorly dressed to fit in with the popular, preppy kids. I didn’t play sports or participate in clubs. In high school, I hung with a group of misfit types who were into punk and indie rock, but I always felt like I was living on the outskirts for some reason or other. I actually graduated high school early because I wanted to get out there and find my place in the world ASAP.

I didn’t find it until I was in my early twenties and I started taking classes in Columbia College Chicago’s Fiction Department (pictured above). I went back to visit my home away from home on the 12^th floor of a building on Michigan Avenue yesterday. I took the day off work to attend some events at their fabulous Story Week Festival of Writers. I got up and put on jeans and a T-shirt (ie. “real” me clothes, not the stuffy office garb I usually have to force myself into Mon-Fri), grabbed my backpack (I miss carrying around a back pack. I’m one of those nerds who seriously loved school—for the learning, not so much the socializing, at least until college), and hopped on the L to go downtown. (You can read all about my love for downtown Chicago and the writing events I was looking forward to in my own blog.)

I felt a little weird at first being among students I didn’t recognize, but soon enough I spotted some friends who are either teaching now or still finishing their grad degrees. And honestly, I felt more comfortably at ease with Fiction Writing student strangers than I had many of my “friends” at high school because I knew that we both had the same wide-eyed love for books and writing and nobody was trying too hard to be someone they aren’t. And maybe that’s because it’s not high school anymore. But I like to think it’s because bookish folk are usually not judgmental. They have a wider worldview that they gained from their reading, not to mention, maybe like me, the took so much crap for being nerdy or different, they don’t like to put others down.

I enjoyed informative writing panels, feeling like a student and totally at ease. Then I went over to the building that housed the Fiction Department and I’m such a dork, but when I stepped off the elevator, I breathed deeply to take in that familiar scent, which I can’t really describe to you any better than I can describe the smell of my own home. It’s just familiar, comforting, perfect. Then I walked into the office where I spent 5 years working while in school and I was greeted with shrieks and hugs from my old co-workers and friends. The office looks more professional every year compared to the mismatched, poorly painted place it was when I started working there, but the purple couch is constant. I sat there and talked to my old friends for an hour, even kinda wished I could sit behind the old front desk (even though it was a actually a new desk and Meredith told me that for the first week they had it, no one wanted to sit there and they all edged around it liked nervous dogs). I was so giddy when Nicole showed me that they put my book cover and an article about me in the display case I can't even tell you. I sure as hell wasn't in any display cases at my high school!

So, yeah, that’s my home, my place, my people. I didn’t find them until my mid-twenties, but nowhere else on earth can make me happier because that is the place where I can be 100% truly me. And I guess it makes sense that I feel that way among fellow writers. What about you? If you are a writer, do you feel most at ease around fellow writers? And whether or not you’re a writer, tell me about the place where you feel most at home and the people that make you feel that way.

PS. I just wanna remind everyone that I have a contest running on my website that ends March 31!

Hey Ma! Finally something MTV Books related to blog about!

You know how I've lamented that I never have anything about my MTV Books to blog about?   Well, I finally do and it's a doozy!  I found out last week that Adiós to My Old Life, AKA, my Little Book That Could, was nominated for YALSA's 2009 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults in the Fame and Fortune category.  

This is what the letter said:

The Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults Committee is to prepare annually one to five annotated lists of at least 10 recommended titles, widely available in paperback and selected from popular genres, topics, or themes.  The purpose of this list is to encourage young adults to read for pleasure.

Dude... how cool is THAT?  And the fact that it's a YALSA list?  Even cooler.  (YALSA is the Young Adult Library Services Association, a part of the larger American Library Association.)  

Librarians rock.  Whoever nominated Adiós rocks.  Anyone who's read and enjoyed Adiós most assuredly rocks.

Can you tell I'm just a little giddy about this?

Four bottles of fish sauce on the wall

Mmmm, have you read Caridad’s novel It’s Not about the Accent? I love the heroine’s connection to her Cuban grandmother through cooking wonderful food together. Food as symbol and substance of culture and home is one of my favorite themes in writing. There’s Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, and The Book I Have Read The Most Times In My Life, Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read this book every time I have the flu and it makes me feel so much better. Boy can Ma cook. Laura Ingalls Wilder makes even broiled pig’s tail sound good.

But you will never find me using this theme. My family comes from England, Scotland, Germany, Scandinavia--pretty much anywhere in the world known for bad food. My grandmother cooked wonderful dessert--pralines and meringue cookies--but that was about it. My mom can make a mean chocolate chip cookie. Don’t push her any farther. She makes lasagna with cottage cheese instead of ricotta and I’m actually not sure she knows the difference. Cooking is just not something that interests her. She would rather read. In this tradition, as a wedding present she gave me my very own copy of The I Hate to Cook Book, which she has been using since she got married herself.

However, I married into a family with a rich ethnic food culture. My husband has already started fasting in anticipation of Easter dinner, because his mother is making Thai food. That’s right--while you are eating ham and turkey on holidays, I am feasting on sticky rice, lop gai, sum thum, lop neer, egg rolls with peanut sauce, and pad Thai. Occasionally she also throws a curve ball like pankadow,* Chinese bitters,* or one of the previously mentioned dishes with tripe substituted for the meat.†

Bless her heart, over the years she has made an effort to teach me to cook for her child. She has brought me a rice steamer basket that looks like a hat, a double boiler that looks like a spittoon, a papaya dicer that looks like a weapon, a mortar and pestle, and four bottles of fish sauce. But she has been making these dishes since she was a little girl, picking a papaya for sum thum off the tree in her front yard on her way in from school every afternoon. She’s one of those cooks who knows her stuff so well, it’s hard for her to explain it to someone else. Especially someone who grew up thinking lasagna was supposed to be made with cottage cheese. However, my husband and I have made a pact. This is the year we will learn to cook Thai food, and we will be paying special attention this Easter.

How about you? Can you cook? What special dishes have been passed down through your family? Are they really good, or do you just think they’re good because you’re used to them? And do you ever write about them?

*Not recommended.

†Avoid.

Tattoo you?

I know, I know. It's lame to complain about the funk that comes after a vacation. So I'll focus on the positive. My trip to Florida was GREAT. I ate so much shrimp that I should've turned into one, and I got to go swimming and played minigolf and went to a cool rooftop bar called the Glider Lounge, where you sat at big tables with bench seats and the whole thing glided back and forth on a track. I had a bird's eye view on a hula hoop contest on the beach. Right on!

There were all these henna tattoo places around and I was so very tempted to get one because I've always wanted to and then I started to wonder, Am I too old??? I thought the same thing when I tried on a mini-skirt in a Gap outlet but then I bought it anyway. So next time, henna tattoo for sure.

There was a time in my life when I was a bit of a pool shark. And I thought that if I ever got a tattoo, I'd get an 8 ball. But then I realized that you have to be really consistently good at pool to get an 8 ball tattoo, don't you? So I got to wondering what kind of tattoo (henna or otherwise) I'd get now and thought it'd probably be an anchor. I met my husband because I wrote a song of his called "Anchor" into my first novel [for grownups]. I actually got incredibly lucky in that same Gap outlet when I found three different 8 dollar t-shirts with cool anchor designs on them. One of them is for a fake bar called the Anchor Bar on Coney Island, which is especially cool since I got engaged to Nick on the Wonder Wheel out at Coney, where we went on our first date less than a year earlier.

Anyway, I doubt I'll ever get a real tattoo. Nick has one, a Celtic design on his arm, and I love it but I'm too scared to commit to something because I feel like life changes so fast. Who out there has tattoos? What and where are they? And if you don't have one, do you ever think you'd like one? What would it be????

"Two Ideas"

At the moment I sit between two story ideas. INVISIBLE TOUCH has been turned in. I have pages written for both new ideas. My agent has stated interest in both stories... So which do I side with? Which one to live and breathe night and day for the next coming months?

It's definitely hard to say.

I have a tough time concentrating on more than one book at a time, so I'll have to go with one.

Do I flip a coin? Pick a number? :)

I guess I just write, and let the muse make the big choice for me.

But I'd love to hear how any writer makes a decision when more than one story calls to you...how do you make the decision? What is the tie-breaker for you?

Moby Clique is out!

This week the third installment in the Bard Academy series, Moby Clique, hits stores! You can actually already order it on Amazon.

Yes, Amazon jumped the March 4 release date a tad. The only reason I know this is because my Dad called to tell me the books he preordered arrived in the mail already. Without Dad, I'd honestly have no idea when my books really come out.

Moby Clique is already getting some good buzz, so I hope that continues!

In other Bard news: the Bard Academy series has been option for a possible movie or TV show. Does this mean it will be the next Buffy the Vampire Slayer and will I retire on a giant estate in Hawaii like Magnum PI's myseterious employer? I sure hope so! At any rate, these things take a long time to develop, so there probably won't be any news right away, but you never know. Maybe I'll be hiring mustached bodyguards in short-shorts to drive my Ferrari around before I know it.

Keep your fingers crossed!

I also get a lot of questions about a possible Book Four. Right now, I don't have a contract for book four in the series, so whether there will be a fourth book is anyone's guess. Although, more specfically, I'd wager it's the guess of my publisher's accountant. I never know what that guy is thinking. I can hardly make heads or tails of my royalty statements. Honestly, they're like trying to read Greek. Granted, I suck at math, but even my husband who has a PhD in physics and number crunches for a living says they are impossible to follow.

I'm guessing if Moby Clique does really well, they'll ask for more, so pass the word among your friends!

Oh, and I'm giving away ten signed copies of Moby Clique, but you have to enter by March! (I know that's less than 24-hours away). Head to www.bardacademy.com for more details!