What do you love most about being an author?

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

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

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

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

What Do You Love Most About Being an Author?

I really and truly love everything about being an author. My only complaint is that I wish I had more time to write. I definitely feel that life is too short to spend the time wishing that I had my dream job. So I am very fortunate to be doing what I love.

I have so much fun creating. I mean, there aren't a ton of jobs where you can pretend to be whoever you want to be. Through writing I am able to travel to all sorts of places, real and fantasy. And for the most part people don't call writers crazy for getting into character.

Another part of writing that I love is connecting with readers. I chose to write for teens because I feel like I can relate to them. I have yet to forget what it is like to get dissed by a guy or not make the school play. I hope people enjoy my books whether they are reading them to escape or for pure enjoyment.

Of course, there are days when I am slugging along through a chapter or a scene but that's when I turn to my critique buddies for a fresh eye. Being a writer can be isolating if you let it, but I've met so many fascinating people along my journey.

Other cool authorly perks that I take advantage of:
1. I can work in my pjs.
2. Starbucks has become my own personal office. Boy do I love my office:)!
3. Goinging on FB, Twitter and blogging are all part of my job.
4. That goes for watching TV and reading teen mags too!
5. Buying too many books at my local Borders, all to stay in touch with my industry, of course.
6. Meeting so many other cool authors, readers and bloggers whether it's a conferences or even online. It's a great community to be a part of.

Bottom line, I am happy to be able to do what I love, day in and day out. If I haven't written for a few days, I can get kind of grumpy. Writing is like exercise for my mind. I'm always thinking ahead to what project I'm going to dive into next. Well, off to finish the manuscript that I'm working on--Graveyard Shift.

What do you love most about being an author?

For me, being a writer is a choice. I know that there are writers who say that writing chose them, not the other way around, but for me I wasn't destined to write from the time I could hold a crayon. I've always loved writing, but I love a lot of things.

Being a writer isn't easy in the sense of you just write a story, your story sells, and all is well. Being a writer causes me to obsess over things that make me wonder if it's worth it. I will never write a vampire/werewolf/shapeshifter/ghost story, but that seems to be what sells these days - so do I even continue to write? I have no desire to write a series that follows the same characters from book to book - so should I keep writing my standalone books if series are where it's at? The publishing industry is completely screwed up - do I really want to be a part of an industry that can't get it's act together and seems to become less and less relevant every passing day? It takes months and months to write a book - do I want to spend my weekends pounding away at a keyboard when I could be hanging out with my kids and relaxing?

But I do continue to write, despite all of this. I love being an author. There are two main reasons why: I get the nicest emails from readers. Just Friday I received an email from a reader named Brooke, who said, "I just read your book, The Book of Luke, and I thought it was AMAZING! It took me a day to read! I got so into it!You are such an amazing writer!" Show me another profession where a total stranger will go out of their way to say that they appreciate what you do, that it makes them happy, and that they were willing to spend hours with something you created because it was so much fun.

The second reason I love being an author is other authors. When my first book came out I was living in Chicago and received an email from another writer who lived in Chicago. She just wanted to let me know that she read my book and loved it. And she invited me to one of her readings. I went. We met. She introduced me to a few more of her writer friends and I introduced her to mine. The women I've met through writing are some of the kindest, funniest, more supportive people out there (nothing against male writers, just haven't met that many). Often, they're just women I've met via email, yet I feel like we're all pulling for one another. If one succeeds we're thrilled, if one is having problems, we're there to office advice. Show me another profression where one person's success isn't viewed as dminishing another's, and where everyone is willing to help.

Being a writer is hard, but being an author introduces you to strangers who make you feel like what you do matters, and other authors who are there to lend an ear or a hand when you need it. And I love being a part of that.

Growing Up in Madison, WI

The title of this blog entry may seem confusing if you know. I grew up in Oak Park, Illinois like my characters in BALLADS OF SUBURBIA (though I was born in St. Louis and lived there til I was eight). But Madison, Wisconsin is the place where I actually *grew up* and became an adult.
In a few hours I will be driving up to Madison to visit some friends, as well as students at an alternative learning program, and do a reading (Tuesday, March 16th at 6:30 pm at A Room of One's Own, 307 West Johnson if you can make it!). So it seemed like an appropriate time to share some of my stories about the city.

Madison is a city I love to visit, but don't get to nearly enough even though it is only a two and a half hour drive from me. I lived there for a total of two and a half years, made some really dear friends and some really big mistakes, but all in all I have nothing but love for the place.

I graduated high school early. It wasn't really much of a feat. I hated my high school and living in Oak Park and wanted to escape as fast as possible so I looked closely at the graduation requirements and realized that I could easily meet them all in three & a half years instead of four without taking summer school or anything. I did take health class in summer school the summer before my freshman year, but even if I hadn't I still could have graduated early. As it stood, for my senior "semester" I only had a half day. I took only the classes I needed and had my dean help me arrange it so I could do them all in the morning, leave early and go to work at that fabulous job as a grocery bagger (I mean "Utility Clerk") that I mentioned in my last blog entry.

My friend Tai was already finished with high school (she'd hated hers so much, she'd done a home schooling program) who also wanted to get out of her Chicago suburb. We were both vegan (I was actually vegetarian, but she helped me become vegan), both feminist, both getting more and more into goth, both emotionally screwed up but very devoted to helping each other through these issues. In other words, we were the perfect match for roommates. I'd always wanted to move to Minneapolis because... well this is silly but a lot of bands that I liked were from there (Babes In Toyland and the Replacements) and it was still in the Midwest but a good distance from home. So my dad drove us up there one long weekend... and we were disappointed. Something about it didn't feel right. I'm not sure exactly how to explain it.

On the drive back home, Tai suggested we stop in Madison. She'd visited before and really liked it. As soon as we drove in, I was sold. I loved the way John Nolan Drive took you right over Lake Monona. I loved the downtown area, the pedestrian mall of State Street with all of its unique funky shops. As a college town, Madison felt young and like a place that was safe enough to live on my own for the first time, but far enough away from home. We decided it was our city right then.

We moved into a one-bedroom apartment downtown. This was my very first apartment building (though it looked a little different as I took this last year, 11 years after I'd lived there):

I had the bedroom and Tai transformed the living room into her bedroom. We didn't have much. We gave up the internet (which was only a newfound addiction since it was 1997, but Tai and I actually met through a Riot Grrrl forum on AOL) and cable (which was fine because the only TV I was totally addicted to was my soap opera One Life to Live). But we had my adorable cat, Sidney, who loved exploring our little home, especially from the highest place in the house:

And hanging out in my room or on Tai's bean bag:


We lived a block from a tiny park with a swing set and when you swung you could look at the lake. I sat there and wrote in my journal and went home and typed up pieces for my zine on the typewriter I got along with a record player for graduation. (It was 1997, but I was pretty old school). We were a couple blocks away from a fabulous food co-op that had the most delicious vegan cupcakes. A short drive away was a bigger co-op near a coffee house called Mother Fool's that also had delicious vegan dessert and a veggie restaurant that I want to say was called Seva.

I'm not going to lie, the first day we moved in, I cried. My mom and best friend helped us move. it was the middle of January and I had a sprained ankle, so it was stressful. When we got everything in and my mom and BFF drove off, I plugged in the phone (land line of course, I wouldn't get my first cell phone til later that year when I went to college and that was for emergencies only) and it didn't work!!! My mom and best friend were driving away and I had no way to reach them! I cried like crazy, but of course Tai comforted me. It was something we'd do for each other often and still do to this day.

In the morning everything felt better. We went to State Street and started job hunting. We took a short break to see The People Vs Larry Flynt (I was and still am a huge Courtney Love fan and she was really in prime back then) and eat at what would become one of my favorite restaurants on the planet. Himal Chuli, a Nepalese place with the best dal soup ever. Fortunately (unlike a lot of places I loved in Madison), it still exists and anyone who visits should absolutely stop there and try it. We applied at every shop we could, imagining how cool it would be to work at Four Star Video Heaven (aka the best video store on earth, in a pre-Netflix world it was the only place I could ever find obscure arty or foreign films) or the Triangle Market... solely because the guy who worked there was *really* cute. Of course we ended up with the glamorous jobs of gas station employee (Tai) and grocery store cashier (me, and it was a struggle to get that job because they had weird rules in Madison about hiring people who were under 18 full-time. Tai was 18, but I was still only 17 so I had to prove I was done with high school.)

Everything we did was an adventure. We decorated the apartment. We laughed over the notes we got from maintenance about them coming to clean the "mole off of our windows" (because obviously there were little creatures living in our windows, not green slimy stuff). We grocery-shopped at midnight at Woodmans. We went to the University's alcohol-free goth dance night. We went out driving late at night into the Wisconsin countryside, just randomly choosing roads until we ended up in a small town where we'd sit in the bar and just observe (these little experiments was where I ultimately drew inspiration for Emily's small fictional Wisconsin town in I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE). We didn't have friends. It was just the two of us and Sidney in our own little bubble of vegan cooking, zine-making, late night emotional conversations, and dance parties to the Smiths... for a little while at least.

Then we met the homeless goth boy. That is a story that needs a whole other blog entry. But the long and the short of it was we met this homeless goth boy and we let him live with us for a week, which was obviously very stupid. Nothing terrible happened. We just found out what many girls discover--sometimes boys are very pretty until they start talking and you discover they are morons. He was a dolt and we kicked him out, but we met new people through him. Older people. Over 21 people. Who could get us in to the real goth club... The Inferno.

Here we are headed to our first night there (Tai on the left, me on the right) where we would share one vodka and cranberry very innocently:

The innocence wouldn't last. I'd quit smoking, drinking and drugs at the end of summer before my senior year because I was seeing myself going down a path that ended in heroin addiction like a couple of my ex-boyfriends. I had an addictive personality. Once I realized the freedom I had--no parents around to hide my smoking from and new friends to buy me booze and who held weight in the goth scene so I could hang out at 21+ places without an ID or any questions--things quickly spiraled out of control. And there was a boy. A boy who was very toxic for me, but I ended up being involved with for eight years.

Tai and I were both under the spell of Madison and easy club access and booze and boys and self-destruction. We both had plans to go to college in other states, but we both ended up dropping out of those colleges and moving back to Madison within a year to live with our respective boyfriends. Tai wasn't nearly as in to the whole drinking and clubbing thing as I was though so she got her life together and ditched her toxic boy much faster than me.

I lived in Madison in a drunken haze for two years. Then, around my twenty-first birthday, I decided I needed direction in my life so I decided to move back to Chicago and go to school for Fiction Writing. Madison as much as I loved it, was starting to feel too small for me.

So like I said, it is the place where I grew up. I discovered what it was like to be an adult. At first it was innocent and fun and carefree and then I lost control. But I learned that when you are an adult no one can reign back in, you have to chose to take responsibility. Ultimately I did.

I am a person who lives without regret. Everything I did, even the stupid stuff, led me to where I am now so I'm glad to have gone through it all. And I have nothing but love for Madison. Sometimes I still daydream about moving back there even though I know it is too cold in the winter and too small for me. I know that one of the reasons I love Seattle so much (the place where I hope to move some day) is because it reminds me of a bigger Madison, with larger bodies of water and better weather. So I will enjoy my visit, especially the old friends and the best dal soup I've ever had.

How to promote your novel

Recently my local writers' group, Southern Magic, asked me to lend some words of advice to pre-published authors about promoting their work. As the publication date of Forget You approaches, I thought it might be helpful to show everyone my checklist of promotional opportunities that I'm taking advantage of this time around.

1. I am having a parade through downtown Birmingham.



This will be my sixth promotional parade, and let me tell you, it never gets old. The rush I get as I perform the pageant wave...the way people stop on the sidewalk to stare at me as I pass by...this is what being a famed author is all about.

Now, what always happens after my parade is that I get e-mail messages from a few wise guys who want to make fun of me because the police pulled me over for driving too slowly and, perhaps, weaving. Let me just stop you before you hit send because that policeman is not pulling me over. He is my ESCORT and everybody knows a parade has an ESCORT.

Let me also say this. Last year I heard super-agent Steven Axelrod speak about promotion at a writers' convention. His opinion was that when an author invents a new sort of promotion, that first author is the one who gets all the good out of it. Other authors will rush to imitate it, but they will not have the same sort of success. So I am telling you what I'm doing for promotion for Forget You, but I'm not necessarily advocating that you all follow exactly in my footsteps. I am looking at you, Ms. Ferrer.



2. I am going to be a contestant on "Dancing with the Stars." I do not even need to be paired with a partner/coach. I am going to bring down the house with my rendition of the robot.

3. I am going to decorate a well-known Birmingham landmark with the book cover.



Again, when your little fingers are itching to type me a message about my arrest while I was tying a banner to the base of the statue of Vulcan without permission...the police were just there to make sure I didn't need anything while I was working. Water? Coffee? Champagne? Look, I am trying to help you here, and I do not need your constant sniping. You are just jealous.

Moving on.

4. I am starring in my own reality show. I actually got this idea from the most famous person from Alexander City, Alabama--after me, of course--Terrell Owens. My show is going to be called "The J. E. Show" and it will document my heart-wrenching journey back to town, where I am so famous that I cannot even go to Wal-Mart without being surrounded with clamoring fans. On his show, Terrell went back to visit the high school football team. Likewise, I visited the high school library recently and they did not have a single copy of any of my books. I am sure they were all checked out.

The show was supposed to have debuted already. Unfortunately, there has been a production delay. My eight-year-old son stars in the show--his usual role is to tug and my skirts and coo, "O Mother, that I would be as loved and lauded someday!" but he is not currently presentable on camera. It seems that his third-grade class has been reading Chocolate Fever by Robert Kimmel Smith, and the teacher encouraged them to draw measles-like lesions all over themselves with brown markers. Isn't that adorable! She said the markers were washable. THEY ARE NOT. I have a sneaking suspicion that Robert Kimmel Smith purposefully sabotaged my promotion campaign with his own promotion campaign, but I will not be daunted. I am sure production of my show will resume any day now...when the brown marks wear off the kid's face.

5. And then I am posing for Playboy.

Any questions? I want to help you however I can.

Dream Weaver

During school visits I often ask students if they ever get story ideas from their dreams. Usually a couple of students nod or raise their hands. And I know writers who keep a notebook beside their beds to record their dreams before the images slip away. With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to share some info about dreams—mine in particular.

Most nights I love dreaming. When I dream, my subconscious mind makes me the star of my own adventure. But the first dream I remember was terrifying. I was lying in my crib “wide awake” when a conga line of huge, transparent insects and worms paraded around the railing. At the same time a dark-haired boy and girl were staging a boxing match in the corner of my ceiling. I screamed for my parents because I was certain I was awake.

After that terrifying experience I took control of my dreams. If something awful were about to happen I’d stop the action and change the scene so that it worked out well for me. From then on, I enjoyed my dreams. In fact, I liked some of them so much that I’d carry them over from night to night. In the morning I’d mark my place in the dream, and the next night I’d proceed with the story from the stopping point. Sometimes I’d continue the same dream for several nights in a row until I got bored with it and decided to dream something else.

Another part of dreaming I love is being different characters—male and female--in exotic settings. A point of interest to me is that I’m always my own age or younger, never older. Naturally, I have a range of superhuman talents. I float but rarely fly, escape from evil space aliens, and excel in hand-to-hand combat. Oddly, I can’t read in my dreams. Sometimes I make out a word on a sign, but if I’m handed a letter or a book, the words blur into indecipherable symbols.

Here are a few other dream facts:

I dream in Technicolor, have "normal" conversations, and usually have a task to complete.

If I’m doing something impossible like levitating, I “test” myself to see if it’s real. Since I usually pass the test I'm often disappointed in the morning.

Some recurring elements in my dreams are dessert buffets, animals—real and imaginary, antiques and knickknacks, and having adventures with my high school friends and/or celebrities.

Saturday night, Ellen Degeneres and I had a jumping contest on a high platform above a crowd of people. Although our jumping abilities were closely matched, at the top of my last jump I decided to hover in the air for a while. I won.

After decades of spectacular dreaming, I should have come up with at least one decent story idea. Not even close.

So I’m asking all you writers and dreamers out there, have you dreamed up any stories, song lyrics, poems, etc. that have held up in the light of day? If not, any recurring or bizarre dreams you’d like to share? Come on, they can’t be worse than mine!

Blindly diving off a cliff

So.

I like to think I know myself as a writer. I'm a hybrid between pantser and plotter-- I'll just sit and write for several chapters, getting to know the characters and story, then about five or so chapters in, I'll write a chapter-by-chapter outline. I'm very linear, allowing the story to develop, and interesting bits and bobs to evolve in an organic manner so everything ties together nicely by the end. Generally, I don't start a new story until I'm done with the WIP. I'm very much a character-driven writer, writing very slice-of-life types of stories.

All of that has just gone out the window.

In the last two weeks, as I was chugging along to the end of the current WIP, seeing that lovely light at the end of the tunnel, I was absolutely blindsided by a plot bunny. And oh, what a devious bunny this one has been. Hit me late at night while I was watching the ice dancing Free Dance during the Olympics. I was really tired and drifting and something about the music and the performance and my utter exhaustion conjured up a story and in four minutes and forty-five seconds, I had the entire framework in place.

Next morning, I wondered if I'd been dreaming, then realized, as the entire story came back to me over that first cup of coffee, that no, I hadn't been dreaming, I had really envisioned a complete and total story.

Generally a cause for celebration, right? Not if you're me. Because this is in a genre I just don't do. Those of you who know me, you know how I say that when I was first approached with the idea of writing YA it intimidated me because I'd never envisioned even trying it? This is worse. Like multiplied by infinity worse. I mean, at least with YA, it's not like it was that fundamentally different from the romance/women's fiction work I was creating with adult characters. This, however, is way different.

Like any good coward, I shrieked a good, hearty "Nooooooooooo!!" at my subconscious, but you know how effective that is. As in, it's not. Story would not. leave. me. alone. So I made notes, hoping that would settle the subconscious. Nope. Didn't do it. I whined to my husband, who was no help, whatsoever, saying, "Hey, it sounds like a really intriguing idea." And then further stirred the pot by giving me a character plot bunny addition that was absolutely perfect and made the story take even bigger shape in my head. I whined to my critique partner and really, I should have known better, because she thought it was a fascinating idea with really good breakthrough potential. Finally, in a last-ditch effort, I whined to my agent, without going into specifics. She wanted specifics. I gave them to her and she said, "You must hate me, because I really, really like this idea."

She likes it enough that she's prodding me with sharpened pencils to work up a proposal.

So.

I've set the nearly finished WIP aside (and let me tell you, those characters aren't pleased at being shunted aside) and I'm working on a proposal. The voice in this new one is not fully formed, but definitely insistent. Not only that, but the other day, as I was at my yoga practice, another character let me know he wanted to make an appearance, ratcheting up the volume on the ideas and potential.

I'm unsettled, but I'm not entirely sure it's a bad thing. Some things are exactly the same, such as the research, it's just I have to approach it slightly differently. I have my journals, where I'm jotting ideas down. I've got a music playlist—surest sign that the story is a go. Soundtrack practically created itself.

So I'm diving on into the deep end, feet first, holding my nose, and hoping I surface intact.

How about you guys? You ever take that creative leap into the unknown? How did it work out? Any tips for maintaining sanity or is it just a lost cause?

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff but You Can Laugh at it!

So I got to thinking about some of my pet peeves today and thought it's definitely little things that make your characters stand out so I might have to sneak some of these thinga into my next book.

Things that Annoy Me:

1. When people don't put caps back on the markers. Do you know how many dried out markers I have?! How hard is it to recap?

2. When you call a bill collector and they ask you to call back because all lines are busy (Hello, this happened today and no, I do not want to call back, ever! Has to do with a claim that my insurance did not pay for but was supposed to.)

3. When people wear sandals that are too small and either their toes hang out the front or their heels out the back. Really, is that comfortable?

4.When people chew with their mouths open...don't like to play see-food, especially with adults!

5. Good thing chalkboards are almost defunct, just the thought of scraping chalk on the board gives me chills.

6. When people beep at you to run the red light (not sure if this only happens in Miami) but I do remember it's supposed to be safety first!

7. When young toddlers and even babies are not in car seats. I've seen this quite a few times and usually it has nothing to do with people not being able to afford a car seat.

8. When people are so lazy to park that they park in between two spot. What is up with that greediness?

9. When people clip their nails in public. Once saw this in a subway train and also in a college classroom. Just gross!

10. When people have full blown conversations during the movies and even worse is when they answer their cell phones! Stay home then.

Well, I could go on but these are just a few things that annoy me and definitely could be used to flesh out a character. Of course, no one person should be an offender of all ten or they would but very unlikeable:)! So what are some of your pet peeves? And of course, don't forget to laugh after you make your list because life is entirely to short to get too caught up in these things!

What Jobs Did You Have As A Teen?

Like many of my fellow MTV Book authors, I went to work young. I absolutely adored The Baby-sitters Club books growing up so as soon as my parents deemed me qualified & old enough (I was 11 and since my folks were both nurses, they insisted I take a CPR class in case of emergency), I started my own babysitting club with my friends. We were called Kids Inc as I recall... but I could be making that up. Despite being a packrat, I didn't save anything related to my club. The other members came and went, making me Kristy, I guess because I headed the whole thing up, though I would have much rather been Claudia since I was totally the artsy one and dressed in a funky style like she did in the books. Anyway, we made flyers and put them up around town, had weekly meetings, and brought bags filled with toys and activities to entertain the kids, all like the fictional Baby-sitters Club did. Mostly I just watched the kids on my block, though I had a few other jobs too. And I did this through all of high school. I was over the whole club thing by the time I was thirteen, but I continued babysitting a few afternoons a week for a neighbor with a 6 week old and a toddler who taught piano lessons and needed someone to watch the kids while she did so. I loved those kids, Danny and Sarah, like they were siblings, and I guess they loved me too because when I moved to Madison at 17, I asked to take a picture of the family the last time I watched the kids, and in the photo both kids (roughly 2 and 4 at the point) are sobbing in their parents arms because they didn't want me to go.

The funny thing is that eventually Sarah (who was only 6 weeks when I started caring for her) took her first job as my mom's dogwalker. She's probably a freshman in high school right now, which is makes me feel kinda old, but what really freaked me out was when one of the first kids I ever babysat, a neighbor who was 3 at the time, came in to get a drink at my bar a few weeks ago. "Do you remember me?" she asked with a grin. And once it dawned on me I exclaimed, "Oh my god, no way you are legal to be in here!" But she was. Yeah, I'm officially old.

My first real job with paychecks and all of that came when I was sixteen. I had a driver's license, so I needed gas money, plus I was planning to graduate early and move out of state (I so hated my hometown as a teen!), so I needed to save, and then there was coffee at diners practically every night and punk shows on the weekends and CDs and records I needed to buy... You get the picture. I needed the big bucks, more than a couple afternoons a week of watching Danny and Sarah would get me. So I applied for a job at Dominick's, a grocery store chain in the Chicago area. They were interviewing for deli and bakery at the time and being vegetarian, bakery was the obvious choice and it was what I was initially hired for. I was extremely excited because my grandfather was a baker... and then, after I'd been told I got the job, the manager called and apologized, saying he'd found out you had to be 18 to be in bakery. LAME!

Instead I was offered the glamorous position of Utility Clerk. Basically this meant I bagged groceries and sorted the overstock (ie. the crap people decided at the last minute not to purchase or picked up and then stuck back on the shelf in some random place). And I made.... wait for it... a whopping $3.75/hr. Woo hoo!!! This was under minimum wage, but I think they were allowed to do that because of my age. But then the law changed and my pay went up to 4 or 4.25. When I did move to Madison and became a cashier at a small grocery store, I was so excited when they offered me $4.50. Well, at least I learned early how to stretch the meager amount of money I make; it's certainly helped me be a writer, lol!

I have to say, I was an excellent grocery bagger though. There were parts of my job I detested like handling dripping juicy meat (and especially the time someone bought two skinned cow heads. Skinned, but they still had their eyeballs. It was possibly the most disgusting thing I've ever seen) and standing in the freezing cooler sorting refrigerated goods and overstock. But to this day I prefer to bag my own groceries. Partially because I actually enjoy it and also because it seems like most grocery baggers must not have seen or fell asleep during the training video I watched because they forget essential rules about weight distribution, bagging the cold items all together, and making sure your bread and bananas don't get smooshed. So yeah, it's the self checkout line for me so I can put those early job skills to use!

What about you? What was your first job? Do you still have skills (or nightmares! like ones of cow heads!) leftover from it?

What jobs did you have as a teen?

This question separates the country mouse from the city mice. I grew up outside a small Iowa town where jobs for teens were scarce. The farm kids had a skill set that was in high demand; the town kids cornered the soda fountain, grocery store, paper route circuit. As a country kid without a farm, I scrambled for the leftovers.

The summer after freshman year, I detasseled corn, which is possibly the simplest job ever. First, the crew bosses determine which week in July will be the hottest and most humid. Then they load a bunch of unsuspecting girls into a cattle truck and dump them by a cornfield at 5 o’clock in the morning. Stranded in the middle of nowhere, we trudged between the rows of dew-drenched corn and tugged the tassels off the tops of the plants. The rules were strict: no music or talking. Yeah, right. In a couple hours we were soaked with dew and sweat, thirsty, and seriously in need of a bathroom. Bathroom? That consisted of getting a friend to act as lookout and squat in what you hoped was a vacant row. Two weeks of that were enough for me.

Sophomore summer my mother bravely offered to let me work for her. She was County Auditor with a very cool office on the second floor of the courthouse. By cool I mean it was air-conditioned with indoor plumbing, which put it several levels above being cut by corn leaves and peeing on the ground. Mom was proud of the position she’d earned in county government, and her nerves were shot by the end of August. I wasn’t an awful employee, but my typing and calculating skills were so-so, and I usually skidded through the door every morning just after 8 o’clock. Mom didn’t invite me for a return engagement.

The next two summers and school breaks I worked full-time at the local chicken farm. It was indoors, air-conditioned, and there was a bathroom, but the smell would bring tears to a maggot’s eyes. Except for the owner and his two (gorgeous) sons, the employees were women. Susan, a girl my age from a nearby small town, worked summers and breaks, too, which kept me from being totally stranded with women my mother’s age. Our job was to collect the eggs, dry them, and put them on flats as they came out of the washer on a conveyor belt. On down the line we removed them from the flats and put them in cartons, weeding out the cracked eggs or “checks.” Another part of the job was breaking the cracked eggs into large barrels that were shipped to local bakeries.

The biggest problem was that the eggs marched out of the washer six at a time and they just kept coming. My first week was filled with “Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory” moments as the eggs piled up and I freaked out. We were only supposed to stop the conveyor belt if we had an emergency like a broken egg spreading yolk on the other clean eggs. Until I got the hang of it, I waited until nobody was looking and smashed eggs on the belt just to give myself a break. By the second week I’d become an expert egg-handler, and by the end of the summer Susan and I had the run of the place. Phil, the owner, invited us over to swim in his indoor pool. And I had a brief summer fling with his older son Dirk who was 22 and (Gasp!) divorced. I was 17. Best summer job ever!

I could move on to my shoe store job the next summer with the sexual-harassing, deposit-stealing manager. But as the other bloggers have said, “That’s a story for another time!”

What jobs did you have as a teen?

I'm going to feel like the lamest of the lame, but I really didn't have any jobs as a teenager. Not for lack of wanting, but because as a musician, dedication to my craft was supposed to be my sole job. See, I wasn't just in band or corps as an extracurricular, I was also a classically trained pianist who'd been playing since age four and had every intention of going to college as a music major (which I did and which I wound up transferring out of, two semesters shy of graduating, but that's a whole 'nother story).

So I literally had no time to hold down a job, other than band fundraisers. I'd wake up early, practice piano for an hour, go to school, do the school thing all day, come home, do homework as quickly as humanly possible, try to squeeze in another hour or two of piano practice before either band or corps rehearsals, which generally took up to four evenings a week, somewhere in there, I'd have a two one-hour piano lessons per week. Friday nights in the fall were football games, Saturdays were competitive band contests. In the spring, the weekends became a little freer-- only one weekend a month was devoted to overnight camps for drum corps (where we had our freebie rehearsal space at a minimum security, state-run mental health hospital-- yet another good story for another time...). But with three weekends free, that meant I could practice piano up to five or six hours in a day (Oh, Czerny & Hanon exercises, how I loathed thee...) Then, come summer, I actually was able to relax on the piano practice... but that's because I was on a bus doing the cross-country tour that came from being in a competitive drum and bugle corps, which entailed fourteen hour rehearsals, outdoors, in some of the vilest summer weather, followed by contests pretty much every night, followed by more bus travel, fourteen-hour rehearsals, lather, rinse, repeat.

Good thing I actually loved all of this (with the exception of the Czerny and Hanon exercises *pauses to spit three times and throw holy water*).

And while I didn't have the experiences that a lot of teenagers had, either working retail or babysitting or lifeguarding or anything else that many of my peers did, I did receive remarkable lessons in discipline and really understood at a very early age what it meant to do something through the tears and frustration and sweat and disappointment because you absolutely loved it and just couldn't imagine your life without it. I get that some people may think it must have amounted to a gigantic waste of time because it's not my profession, the way I imagined for so long it would be, but it's proven valuable in so many other ways, indefinable and concrete. Being so dedicated to music opened up huge worlds for me. I learned history and culture and even math through music. It taught me a lot about perseverance and only shored up my own stubborn nature, both of which have come in really, really handy in this crazy business called publishing.

Maybe most importantly, it allowed me a creative and emotional outlet at a time that so many kids are flailing about, trying to find something with which to connect. And though I didn't know it at the time, it was sowing the seeds for what was to become my other great passion and ultimately, my career, because if there was anything a beautiful piece of music did, it was to inspire a story to take root in my mind; stories that I would weave as the buses rolled across miles of landscape and that I'd ultimately write down.

To this day music remains my greatest inspiration, so maybe my "job" as an aspiring musician really did pay off.

What Jobs Did I Have as a Teen?

This should actually read, what jobs didn’t I have as a teen?! I could not wait to get my first job! I began babysitting at 12 and got my first job in a store right after basketball season when I turned 14. My first job lasted two days. I gave my notice and worked two more days. The job was washing dishes at a gourmet deli. Let’s just say I don’t love washing dishes, but my friend worked there and got me the job.

Next I went to work at a greeting card/music store. I worked in the card department which was pretty fun, especially since my friend soon joined me. I lasted there about eight months and then joined another friend at a video/photo store. I guess combo stores were pretty popular in the late eighties/early nineties!

The only rule at the video store was that you couldn’t wear a tutu. Apparently my friend had worn one to work one day and the boss was not impressed! I worked at this store for four years and boy could I tell you stories about some of those customers. We also had a small adult film section that sent us into a fit of giggles every time those “special” customers came in and asked for specific titles. Let me also add that I grew up in a small town, so we got to know a lot of the customers.

I continued to also babysit throughout high school. I worked for many different families and enjoyed hanging out with the kids. Working at the video store really helped me save for some college expenses and provided a lot of entertainment!

I went on to have many more jobs in college—my favorite being the movie theater, especially since I met my husband there. But we’ll save that story for another time!

What Jobs Did I Have as a Teen?

I couldn't wait to get a job. I babysat from fourth grade on. I was a babysitting machine. During the summer I even had multiple families ask me to babysit all their kids at once, a "mini-camp" of sorts that really improved my cash flow. So when I turned 16 and could actually get "a real job," I was thrilled. But the summer I was 16 I didn't get a job, I went to a summer program at the Rhode Island School of Design instead.

When I got home from Providence in August I was SO ready to earn a paycheck! I went through the paper and found a job at a restaurant near my house.

First "real" job: Bun girl/hostess. You all know what a hostess does, but what's a bun girl go? I walked around from table to table with a basket of bread and buns and served people. The thing was, once school started I didn't want to quit. My parents weren't too psyched by the idea of me working during the school week, but they let me as long as it didn't affect my grades. And it didn't. I worked Tuesday and Friday nights and Sunday brunch.

Second job: I've always loved the idea of going to work in an office (you writers out there probably think I'm crazy). So the next summer I got a job working for a company that took newspaper articles and converted them to microfiche for libraries and schools (totally dating myself here, remember microfiche?). A bunch of women would sit in a large room clipping articles from papers all over the country and I'd.... paste them onto a piece of paper and code them so they could be photographed. Not exactly thrilling but I got to read every single article that passed by my desk. Very interesting. I even offered to work overtime and brought home boxes of microfiche at the end of the day and organized them by date and code. Cha-ching!

Third job: The next summer I worked in a jewelry store (Cindy Lauper's husband bought her engagement ring there... god, I'm old). I love jewelry. A lot. So working there was a blast. The store did a lot of custom designs so it was fun to see a piece go from a drawing to an actual piece of jewelry. We had a whole workshop in back where really talented jewelers repaired and created pieces. I'll always remember one customer who had a 14 carat gold, diamond encrusted barrette made for his wife. It was beautiful. Unfortunately, it was also too heavy to stay in her hair and kept falling out. Lesson: an elastic band is cheaper and way more functional than a $5,000 custom made barette.

Fourth job: Then I entered my "yogurt years." The next summer I worked at the Fountain of Yogurt in Arizona. I lived there for the summer by myself in an apartment and every weekend my boyfriend, who was in CA, would visit. I scooped ice cream and pumped Fro Yo (I also took classes at ASU so my summer wasn't a complete wasteland of dumb work). I love ice cream. About as much as I love jewelry. So this was a great job (if not exactly a high paying one). I loved making milkshakes and ice cream sodas and I loved serving kids. And my on-the-job experience would come in handy years later when I found myself behind the counter once again.

Other jobs throughout college: Public Policy intern at Planned Parenthood; Marketing intern at Springfield Chamber of Commerce; Summer assistant at a large Boston law firm; marketing intern at a hospital. And I also babysat all throughout college. So, yes, I like a paycheck. And I like to work. Although sitting on a beach doing nothing is awfully nice, too.

Winter Olympics!

I love the Olympics, I really do, though I don't watch nearly as much of them as I mean to. When I was a kid, I watched them religiously. That was back when they held Winter and Summer Olympics in the same year every four years. An Olympic year felt like a huge deal, something really special and rare. I also had a lot more time on my hands to watch TV.

Now I generally catch the events at work. My other job besides author is bartender and at my bar, sports are always on. Or if sports aren't on, the sports news is on perpetual repeat. And since the only two team sports I really enjoy watching are baseball and hockey (well, I like soccer too, but it doesn't get much coverage in America), I'm bored 50% of the time. Lately it's been especially terrible because while I just don't really care about basketball (like many Chicagoans, I stopped following after the Michael Jordan era), I hate football with every ounce of my being. So for the last few months, my Sunday night shifts have been pure torture. Then, this week, figure skating was on. I was instantly and joyously transported back to my childhood.... well except in my childhood I wasn't watching figure skating with a couple of football-loving men in their fifties who had to give a running commentary about the outfits. ("Men shouldn't wear that. Is that chiffon?" "Isn't chiffon a color?" "Either way, men shouldn't wear that." If I hadn't been so tired, I might have thought to interject that if men shouldn't wear that, should they really be running around a football field in shiny spandex tights?) Of course, lots of mockery was going on about my favorite figure skating outfit of the evening, the German pairs skaters' harlequin look. I'm sorry but this was just too adorable. The only thing that would have made it better is if they did their routine to something like "Coin-Operated Boy" by the Dresden Dolls. They might have gotten the gold then:

Now when I watch the Summer Olympics, I mainly focus on the sports I loved as a kid, but never was very good at, ie. gymnastics, swimming, and diving and there are some sports that I'm not interested in watching at all (volleyball gives me bad gym class flashbacks, wrestling and weight lifting do not interest me & I hear they are adding golf which sounds brain-numbing). There aren't any Winter Olympic sports that I was ever even remotely good at. Though I did love to roller skate as a kid, so I think that's why skating is my fave. I remember the thrill of seriously cruising at the roller rink, or, more often just flying around the park on my roller blades, so I definitely dig speed skating because of that. I love the figure skating costumes and am amazed by the way these athletes dance and leap on ice! On ice! With really sharp blades on their feet! Kind of terrifying if you think about it. In fact, I think I might like the Winter Olympics even more than Summer (despite how much I love watching gymnastics, swimming and diving) because so many of the sports are total daredevil activities often involving high speeds and tricky leaps. I just can't imagine the rush of racing down a mountain on a luge or a snowboard. Though I also definitely wouldn't be able to endure that cold....

Honestly the only sport I have no interest in watching during the winter games is that one where they ski and then shoot stuff. I just don't get it. And I didn't get curling for many years but last Winter Olympics it was explained and demonstrated to me in the bar. The joys of bartending is watching the Olympics with an audience.... even if the audiences does make fun of your favorite figure skating outfits sometimes.

Ooooh and want to win some books while you are enjoying the Olympics? Who doesn't! Author Tera Lynn Childs is running a Contest of Olympic Proportion through out the Winter 2010 Olympics in which she reflects on a sport, pairs a book with it and then you can enter to win said book. Ballads of Suburbia got paired with snowboarding (the edgy daredevil thing), so right now you can enter to win it here.

What are you waiting for? Go enter! Oh wait, but tell me your thoughts about the Olympics first. Do you like 'em? What are your favorite events?

New cover!

Here's the gorgeous cover for Forget You, coming out on July 20.



And you know what that means. Together with Going Too Far, now I have an "author brand"!



I am fascinated by this idea. When an author writes several books for the same publisher, often her books are given a similar look to signal to readers that the novels are the same but different--if you liked the first one, you'll probably like the second, and vice versa. My favorite example of this is, of course, Stephanie Kuehnert's brand, which you can see in the right column. And the most interesting thing is that Stephanie herself seems to be part of this brand, if you know anything about her. She is cool and punk and urban decay.

(Maybe "urban decay" is not the right term. Perhaps Stephanie does not want to be associated with decay. I just have this term on the brain. I consulted my friends from high school recently on what foundation they wear to hide their wrinkles. Armed with this information, I went to Sephora and asked the consultant, and I came away with the ironically named Urban Decay mineral makeup. The Urban Decay people need to listen up to this discussion of branding.)

So. We know Stephanie is cool and punk and...let's leave off the last part. Whereas I am...what am I?



I am an author with chocolate on her teeth at a book signing. In contrast, take a gander at my books. On both covers we have a soft-focus super-close-up of a couple, so we know I write dreamy romance. My (*ahem* still VERY VERY SMALL) author name is printed in a mod font, so we know the books are current and edgy. Going Too Far has a tagline that makes you itch to turn the book over and read the description. But NOW that I am all established and fancy, I have even better things to make you turn over Forget You: a fabulous quotation from Romantic Times magazine, and the fact that I am an Award-Winning Author.

[Son: "But Mom, are they talking about your National Readers' Choice Award for Major Crush? Wasn't that, like, a really really long time ago?" Me: "Cool it, kid."]

And last but not least, we have Pirate Map Font.





And that's my brand.

What are some of your favorite author brands? And have you ever been dazzled by an author brand, only to meet the author later and think, "I can't believe SHE wrote those books!"?

5 Thing You Might Not Know About Me

I was supposed to blog yesterday and I had every intention to do just that. It was my birthday and I figured what better day to share a few thoughts. Well, my day sucked!! And I'm generally an optimistic and positive person, but from start (Internet was down all day, spent 30 minutes trying to fix the printer - and it wasn't even 8:00 yet) to end (my son went to his fourth grade dance and was stood up by his date) it just seemed like everything was either difficult or just went terribly wrong. So my 42nd birthday didn't herald in the next year of my life in the way I anticipated but today is another day and I thought I'd piggyback on Danielle's blog and share five things you might not know about me.

1. I truly believe I am going to win the lottery. Really. Every time I play.

2. I believe that I could eat five Burger King cheeseburgers in less than 3 minutes (a bet I have with my kids that I swear we will actually test one day soon).

3. I named my son after a volleyball player - Troy Tanner. I don't even like volleyball (it hurts my wrists) but we saw Troy Tanner play in a tournament on Chicago's North Beach and I thought it was a cool name (his name is Tanner, not Troy).

4. I do not wear the color black - I know it's classic and supposedly looks good on everyone but black is not my color. I love navy blue. Or brown. But black, not so much.

5. I am deathly afraid of snakes (so much so that when my son thought it would be funny to drape a snake over my shoulders at a neighborhood party I went freaking nuts, screamed, ripped the thing off my neck and slammed it on the ground - only to have him look at me horrified and say, "Mom, it's fake." I'm sure my neighbors still think I'm a headcase). And I am grossed out by pretty much all animals that don't have fur (including worms, frogs, fish... well, you get the picture)

A room of one's own

I have an office.

With a door.

Now, for some people this might not be such a big deal. But for me, this is huge. When I first started writing with the idea that I might make it my career, my "office" was a large pine computer armoire situated along a large wall in the breakfast room portion of my house. This was when we lived in Ohio and our house was a modern take on a colonial, with the entire back of the first floor making up one large living area comprised of kitchen, family room, and yes, breakfast room. It's okay-- my kids were toddlers at the time and it made it easy for me to be able to keep an eye on them. I learned a few valuable lessons, such as being able to work with distractions and what working pattern was best for me. In those days, it was research during the day, in other words, something that could be set aside quickly and picked up just as quickly, then write at night. And oh boy, did I have some late nights back then.

When we moved to Florida, my armoire and I did get a room of our own—sort of. The guest bedroom area in the house was enormous-- big enough to house the guest room furniture, including the queen-sized bed, and my armoire. So there was a door that closed, but with a caveat. I had to desert it whenever my mother came to visit. (Side note: this was when I first started using a laptop as my primary computer-- at least I could pick up and move without much interruption.) This bedroom also had the misfortune of being right next to the pantry. And my husband had this horrible habit of going in the pantry, standing there, and nibbling on food. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to have someone hovering mere feet away while rooting around in the Tostitos bag and nibbling? It was like having an army of crazed squirrels camped outside. More than once I'd stalk out there, grab something, shove it into his hands and yell, "Take it and get out!"

Distractions are one thing, but this was genuinely crazy-making.

(Poor man... what he puts up with, in terms of my quirks...)

Anyhow, once I sold, I announced that there was no reason that I should have this huge room of which I was using maybe one-fifth. So I decided to get rid of the bedroom furniture, install a daybed to serve guests, and buy proper office furniture and bookcases and a comfy chair. And I did. And it was glorious. I was still sharing with the guest room, but now the guest part of the room was relegated to the background.

Of course, no sooner than I had put the finishing touches on the room than we decided we needed to move houses so we could be in a better school district for our kids. So we moved. And in our new house, I really, really wanted a proper office. And the house we moved to had a great space-- upstairs. Which wouldn't have been a problem except 1) my dog, not having grown up in a house with stairs, refused to go up them and if he wasn't glued to my side, he was whining; 2) my kids and husband. Who love playing console games and are kind of, frankly, slobs, leaving stuff all over the floor and tables and any available surface. No way was I leaving them out in the open where everyone could see their mess. The guest room double up wasn't going to work in this house was because it was way, way too small (it barely fit the daybed and a storage armoire), so I was left with using what had once been the formal living room. Completely open to the rest of the first floor and adjacent to the kitchen.

Really, I'm good at working with distractions. Managed to write two more manuscripts, including WHEN THE STARS GO BLUE (the next release), in that space, but it was less than ideal and I definitely felt rootless and sort of shunted aside.

Which brings us to our new house in Seattle. You can bet your sweet bippy I put my foot down this time. I commandeered a room on the main floor so Cranky Dog would be happy. It has four walls. A beautiful window. A huge walk-in closet that I've appropriated for even more storage/working space. I'm surrounded by my pictures and books and artwork and things that amuse me and make me happy. And there's a door.

The irony, of course, is that I rarely close the thing. I like being connected to the rest of the house and knowing what's going on, even if it means a little bit of distraction, but it's the psychological comfort of knowing I can close the door if I want.

It's mine. I don't have to share. But generally, anyone's welcome. Here, have a look. And even though it's not completely finished (because terrifyingly enough, I have more books to unpack) why don't you join me for a tour:

Five things you might not know about me...

Since Danielle got us started on such a fun topic, why not keep it going? Here are five things you might not know about me:

1. The house where I grew up was originally the general store in a little railroad community called Kennedy Station. We lived about 100 feet from the railroad tracks, and in the summers my brother Dan and I waited for the train to come by because our favorite engineer sometimes tossed us candy. Dan and I also entertained ourselves by running along the tops of the freight cars parked on the siding by the grain elevator. I’m still amazed that we jumped the gaps between all those cars without falling and breaking our necks!

2. I’ve never met an animal I didn’t like, and as a kid I tried to make pets of all of them. A partial list of my non-human friends includes garter snakes, mice, turtles, guinea pigs, hamsters, a flying squirrel, parakeets, chameleons, lizards, goldfish, guinea fowl, and, of course, cats and dogs. One family pet was a baby rabbit Dad rescued from Rex the dog. We raised Petey until he was full-grown and let him go in the yard. He never let us touch him after that, but he hung around for years.

3. By now you probably know I’m a runner, but you might not know I’ve run approximately 50,000 miles since I got hooked three decades ago. I ran four marathons--all under four hours--and I qualified for the Boston Marathon twice. My slowest, and first, marathon time was 3:43.19 and my fastest time was 3:17.49. I no longer run marathons, but I still run 35 miles a week. Very slowly.

4. I’m ambidextrous. I write and eat with my left hand and do almost everything else with my right one. I bat, brush my hair, and use scissors with my right hand, but if I’m cutting with a knife I use my left hand. So if you see me with a knife in my right hand, you’re safe—and so is that chocolate cake sitting on the counter. But the cake won’t be safe for long!

5. In junior high my best friend Susie and I discovered an island in the river on the east side of my hometown. An equally wonderful discovery was a rickety wooden ladder leading from the side of the bridge to the wilds below. We found lots of weeds and thorns and mosquitoes on the island, but we also stumbled on a deserted house just ripe for exploration. Susie and I made the death-defying climb to the island many times—and it was worth it!

Those are my secrets. Who’s next?

Five things you might not know about me...

At our recent SCBWI conference in Miami we were asked to write down five things about ourselves that people might not know and then introduce ourselves to someone new.
So here are five things about me that you can not read on the back of my books or on my web site.

1. I used to be a skateboarder in high school. I will admit I was pretty bad, but I had so much fun skating around town with my friends.

2. I was an extra in a Disney movie called Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss when I was fourteen. However, my scene was cut but I got to miss a day of school and earned $25!

3. In fifth grade my friend Fawn and I wrote a letter to Michael Jackson on my Snoopy paper letting him know why we should be cast in a P.Y.T video. Surprise, he never wrote back!

4. I have never watched a soap opera. Ever.

5. In high school a couple of fiends and I dressed really weird and went to an upper class mall to see if people would treat us differently. It was a fun experience and we were stared at.

Would love to hear what you guys have to say!

What Will You Be Writing in 2010?

The short answer to this question is that I hope to write two books. I'm a little bit frustrated with myself that I'm not going to have a new book out in 2010. That of course is perfectionist, straight-A student Stephanie talking (a side of my personality that people who don't know me that well or who just judge me by the way I dress or maybe the kind of characters I write probably are surprised to find I have, but I was totally the stoner kid who secretly cared about school.). The reality is this. I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE took three and a half years to write. I first had the idea in summer of 2002, worked on it through grad school, finished my first draft of it in September of 2005, did some revisions for my agent and then she started shopping it in January of 2006. It didn't sell until April 2007 and of course didn't come out until July 2008. Oh and there were 6 weeks of revisions in there too.

I started writing BALLADS OF SUBURBIA in February of 2006, and it took about a year to write. I did probably did about 3 months of revisions before my agent shopped it and then 6 weeks of revisions after it sold. That one sounds like it went faster, but really I spent a year way back in 2000 when I wrote an early version of the story and then I brainstormed on it while I wrote IWBYJR so I went into it with a really solid idea of the plot and characters.

So basically since February of 2007 when I finished the first major draft of BALLADS, I've just been revising and toying with new ideas and promoting... which took up way more time than I would have liked and that is why I don't have a new book coming out this year. But beating myself up over that doesn't do anything for me and probably the more important thing to acknowledge is that my story ideas take a lot of stewing. If I dive right into them like IWBYJR, they take longer to writer. Or if I let them stew for longer, they go faster like BALLADS. Now I want to make up for lost time and fortunately I've been messing around with 5 different story ideas since I wrote BALLADS. I lost interest in one, but maybe I'll figure it out eventually. I have two newer ideas that need to stew a bit longer, but the two that have been stewing the longest are ready to be written.

Of course right now I am in scary No Contract land. Idea #1 is in my editor's hands though and I'm hoping to have news about it soon. It is another realistic contemporary book like IWBYJR and BALLADS. You've probably heard me talk about it before if you follow my blog or twitter. It's about a seventeen year old vegan, anarchist girl named Zoe (I finally get to draw on my politically active teen days), who is constantly being moved from city to city whenever her mom, Ivy, breaks up with a man. Ivy is a bartender (so I get to use some of my bartending stories, which I'm excited about) and though she won't admit it, she is also an alcoholic. She acts much more like a teenager than Zoe does actually. As Hurricane Katrina is happening down in New Orleans, Hurricane Ivy strikes again, deciding to uproot Zoe from Seattle, the place where they've lived the past two years (and also my favorite city so I get to do research trips out there, yay!). At first Zoe goes along with this because two weeks ago, she ruined her life. Her best friend, an adorable street punk named Bender, kissed her and even though she may have feelings for him, she turned him down because she's still pining for her first boyfriend Gabe, a hot anarchist boy who has broken Zoe's heart repeatedly because he has no sense of monogamy whatsoever. However, after seeing the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina on TV and realizing what truly ruined lives look like, Zoe forces her mom to stay in Seattle so they can face their problems--which only get more complicated of course when Zoe's childhood friend Jake comes to live with them and Zoe's dad the Soap Star (yes, I get to incorporate soap operas, my big guilty pleasure!) reappears too and points out that Jake seems to be struggling with serious mental illness.

Oh god, I am terrible at those descriptions. Can you tell my editor writes the ones on the back of my books? Yeah... But basically it's about Zoe, her emotionally immature parents and her friends all having to finally grow up together.

Yeah, so hopefully that one will sell soon. I wrote a 50 page proposal for it, so then I would have to finish it.

And then there is the top secret project... the series of three books that I think I became a writer to write. I've talked before about how much I adore the Persephone myth and have wanted to do my own version of it. I attempted something last year, just using the skeleton of the myth with a contemporary realistic fiction story (ie what I know best). My agent recognized right away that it wasn't working and urged me to think about going paranormal/urban fantasy about it. I wasn't sure at first. Even though I read and love those kinds of books, could I write one? So back to the stewing.... Elements started to come together.... I remembered watching The Crow as a teen and thinking it was bad ass that Eric Draven was get vengeance on the goons who raped and killed his girlfriend and murdered him too, but part of me thought, shouldn't *she* be able to get back at the guys who raped her? And I always loved and identified with female archetypes like Ophelia and Persephone, but I wanted them not to drown or to fight back when they got carried off. I was a victim too in my teenage years, a victim of abuse... but actually I hate that word victim. I was a survivor. And I wanted to write something where the girls who are victimized fight back... I wanted a girl Crow.

So I took the bones of my contemporary story, which is about a girl whose sister has just died and she is dealing with terrible grief, something that I can relate to having lost three friends to sudden, shocking deaths in six short months, and I gave this girl a very interesting and powerful destiny, which she is about to uncover alongside her sister's best friend Persephone, the daughter of a model and one of the most famous dead rock stars in the world....

My agent has the first 80 pages of this one now and I'm waiting for her notes. But I'm hoping I'll be able to write and sell this one this year as well. I'm more excited about it than any other project I've done. It has all my favorite elements-- the rock'n' roll of IWBYJR, the hardhitting emotional issues of BALLADS, and now my beloved Greek Mythology added to the mix.

Yeah, I'm definitely making up for lost time.