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.

What Will You Be Writing in 2010?

I'm baaaaaa-aaack!

Didja miss me?

No, my return to the blog doesn't mean that I'm writing for MTV Books again, but as Jenn has assured me time and again, once an MTV Books author, always an MTV Books author. So with that in mind, here I be. All happy and excited because I've just completed a dream of a move across the country from Florida to Seattle, Washington and it's as glorious as I expected it to be. I'm also happy and excited because on November 23rd, my novel, WHEN THE STARS GO BLUE is going to be released. The road for this novel has been long and twisty and fraught with more drama than any soap opera or family reunion you've ever attended, but it's finally happening and I'm so incredibly happy. (I just saw the early version of my cover and OMG, I can't wait until I can go public with it because it is sooooo amazingly beautiful. I cried like a baby when the email popped into my box.)

So first order of business will be finishing my revisions which are due very soon. However, after that, I get to turn to new writing, which brings me back to this month's question of what will I be writing this year. Well, first up on my list is finishing the women's fiction manuscript I've been pecking away at for the last couple of years. It's hard because it's set in the sixties which presents the challenge of it being somewhat historical but it's a time period for which we have a lot of documentation in forms that haven't existed for other historical eras. There aren't just books and newspapers, and scholarly texts but we have film and television and music and more magazines than you can shake a stick at. Plus, so many different angles to explore, the real trick is remaining very focused and not meandering.

But I'm actually in the homestretch of that manuscript, so hopefully, it'll be done relatively soon (she says very, very hopefully...). Which leaves me with starting a brand new project. For the first time in nearly two years. Oh... what to write? I have so many ideas, it's like a smorgasbord! There are a couple of YA projects I've had tickling the back of my brain, and a couple of really interesting women's fiction ideas, one of which just kicked me like a cranky donkey the other day. I was surfing my regular news feeds and saw an intriguing headline. Clicked on it and OMG, discovered an awesome story idea about letters and forbidden love and all that good stuff. Definitely one to keep on file.

So, I don't even know exactly which one I'm going to write yet, but I do know that in my new home, in the incredibly creative, inspiring surroundings in which I've found myself, I'm gonna have a great time figuring it out.

It's good to be home.

(And yes, that picture is the view from my backyard. See what I mean about inspiring?)

What Will You Be Writing in 2010?

The first thing I'll be writing is my July 2011 romantic drama for MTV Books. I can't tell you the title yet. I don't know whether it will be approved for one thing, and for another, I don't want anybody to steal it before it's final. The title is the best thing about this book right now. It's not as brilliant a title as I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, but it's close.

I'm really excited about this book, and I'm so grateful that my editor and I are on the same page. I turned in the proposal in December, but since then I've had some second thoughts about it. The whole plot seemed a little too Goody-Two Shoes and made me want to slap myself. So I called my editor about it, and the first thing she said was, "Can you make it a little less Saved by the Bell?" See? My editor Gets It.

The book is due on August 1. That may seem like a short time to write a novel--six months--but since I had two months to write my last novel for Simon Pulse (and they wanted to give me only six weeks!!!), I think this timeframe is luxurious.

A little too luxurious, maybe. I find myself putting off getting started. It's not that I usually procrastinate about writing. I don't. It's that I absolutely love writing a book that I have a contract for, and I want to savor the feeling as long as I can. Just as if I had only one cupcake, I would gaze at it longingly for a while before actually eating it. I hate writing myself out of a contract--turning in everything that's due, and then having to write on spec and hope that a publisher buys it. I have written eleven still-unpublished novels that way



and I think that is enough already. But I guess I will be writing #12 come August 2.

What Will You Be Writing in 2010?

This year I’m plunging into the paranormal. As a lover of fantasies, ghost stories, and all manner of creepy tales, I've been longing to take a walk on the supernatural side of the street. Now that I've crossed over, I realize that playing with the creepies and crawlies is a lot of fun.

Newspapers, magazines, and other print media usually provide the sparks for my ideas. But this story glided into my head like smoke on the wind. Speaking of smoke, several friends who’ve heard the plot inquired if I was smoking anything when it came to me. I wasn’t, but I can see why they might wonder.

Without giving too much away, here's a peek at the plot:

Amber Raymond is a 17-year-old high school junior navigating the maze of friends, parents, teachers, and boys in the technological world of 2010. Amethyst is the 3,017-year-old ruler of an ancient civilization where magic is commonplace and sorcery can work for good or evil. Now Amethyst has one final chance to break the curse that has frozen her people in a living nightmare. If she succeeds, she and her consort Malachite will be reunited and her people will awaken. If Amethyst fails, they are condemned to an unspeakable fate. When Amethyst pops into Amber’s world, she challenges Amber’s beliefs about reality and spins her life in a whole new direction. With an art scholarship, clueless parents, and a cute boy to keep track of, the last person Amber needs in her life is a headstrong ruler on a mission. And that's before things get dangerous.

So, what do you think? I'd love to hear your impressions.

My goal is to complete the first draft by summer, so we’ll see how that goes. Whether or not I do, I’m having a blast on the wild, supernatural side of writing!

What Will You Be Writing in 2010?

Hopefully, a book! I've been a slug for over a year now. After writing 2 books in 7 months I was burnt out and took a break. But the break is over (or my agent will kill me).

I loved this question because it has forced me to do what I needed to do - come up with a way to describe the book I'm working on. So here goes:

Unlike her high school classmates, Haley doesn’t let herself look forward to graduation or make plans for the future. An unexpected diagnosis two years ago changed everything, and now without a heart transplant her illness has put her on a time clock. But then a tragic accident gives Haley what she’s been waiting for and the chance to go back to being the girl she was before, complete with friends and a boyfriend who expect her to pick up where she left off, like nothing's happened.

Only it’s not that simple. Because now Haley’s keeping a secret that threatens to turn her world upside down and keep her from ever going back to normal. And as she finds herself growing closer to the one person who poses the greatest risk to exposing the truth, Haley has to figure out if she's willing to take the risk of losing the normal life she's craved, or make a choice that will change who she is forever.

Does that make any sense? I sure hope so!!

In addition to this book, I also hope to finish a middle grade book I've been writing with my son - RYAN PICKLER: BORN TO BE RAD, about a skateboarding, cheese-fearing fourth grader who is trying anything and everything to get to see his skateboarding hero.

And that's my year ahead!

What Will You be Writing in 2010?

I will be writing a lot in 2010 and am excited about it! I'm almost done with a partial of my latest novel, Graveyard Shift and hope to get it to my agent for review in the next couple of days. This story deals with spirits, love and humor and takes place in a small town outside of Boston. I'm really enjoying writing it! And the best part is that a great deal of the story takes place in a graveyard, ooo, scary.

After I'm done with Graveyard Shift I may revise one of my older manuscripts. I've grown a lot as a writer these past couple of years so I want to dust off an old manuscript or two and put my newly learned skills to the test.

Also, on my wish-list is a middle grade series idea. I got really pumped about this after I attended a workshop by author Michael Grant this past weekend at the SCBWI Miami conference. He is a force to be reckoned with!

I enjoyed writing from a boy's point of view in Indigo Blues and would love to write a whole novel through the eyes of a boy.

I would also like to blog more so stayed tuned for updates as the year progresses. I'm always game for whatever comes my way so you never know what I might be working on! Now I must sign off so I can finish the partial of Graveyard Shift. It's such a great feeling when you don't want to leave the world that you've created.

What would you like to accomplish in 2010?

Sights from my Honeymoon

Last week my husband and I finally got to go on our honeymoon. (We got married in October, in case you missed the blogs that followed that.) We went to Miami Beach and Key Largo, hoping to escape chilly Chicago.... Of course we were there during the coldest weather South Florida has had in decades. Just my luck. And all I wanted to do was lay in the sun on the beach for one day and read a book. Oh well, we still had fun as you will see by this photo blog.

South Beach:


This is creepy. I don't know how these fish all got stuck on this rock, but they must have somehow and then the tide went out and weird fishy corpses were left behind on this rock. Fish creep me out and dead fish even moreso (plus I feel bad for them), but this was a cool image. You can click on it to enlarge it:

Me and hubby on the glass bottom boat tour in John Pennekemp State Park in Key Largo. It was a rare moment where the sun felt warm enough to take off my hoodie:
On our way out to Molasses Reef to see fishies, we saw birds along the way:

The glass bottom. Wish we'd gotten better pictures because it was incredible, all the colorful fish and especially the huge sea turtles swimming by!
A Mexican restaurant gave us free cotton candy so naturally I put it on my nose:

We went to the Florida Keys Wild Bird Center, where they rehabilitate and rescue birds that were injured (mostly thanks to human carelessness) and saw lots of cool birds:

Admittedly, when this pelican crossed our path, it freaked me out. I was like, um, he won't hurt me, will he? The guy that worked there pointed out that I don't look like a fish...

This might be my new fave picture of me. A new author photo? (if I can sell another book!)
This is Pickles. A smart bird, scratching his head with a stick.
Our last sunset in the Keys:

This is Oscar, the best fed cat in the Keys. He was our BFF at dinner, especially since my husband was giving him steak!

Oscar taking a bath after enjoying Scott's generosity:

This little friend was outside the door to our villa in Key Largo:

It was so cold for most of our trip we heard about Iguanas falling out of trees! But on the last day it finally got warm enough and we met this guy out sunning himself:

And last but not least. Look who I got to have lunch with on my last day in Florida!!!!! It's MTV Books own Danielle Joseph. It was such a blast to finally get to meet her in person and get my Shrinking Violet signed!
So that was my honeymoon in photos. Wish we could have stayed another week and enjoyed truly warm weather, but now we are back in cold Chicago and I am back to work on my writing!

Don't look and it won't hurt

I finished a new manuscript on Wednesday. Here it is!



Yes, it’s in a laundry basket full of my late grandmother’s parfait glasses, next to a comforter set I bought for the guest room in November, which is piled with all the sweaters and coats and scarves I have worn this week, all of which is shoved against the wall next to a broken cable outlet I’ve been meaning to do something about. The rest of my office looks the same way. That’s because when I am making a push to finish a novel, my house starts to look like an episode of Hoarders. Happily, now that I am finished writing, I have the leisure to clean.

As soon as I read the book!

Thursday and Friday I had too much work to do for my “real” job. I couldn’t find a single spare minute to take a look at this pet project I’ve been working on between other manuscripts and proposals for more than a year. This morning I’m up at 5 a.m., raring to go...and yet I hesitate. I have a feeling this manuscript is fabulous, but I’m afraid I’m remembering it wrong, and when I read it I’ll be disappointed.

Worse, maybe it really IS fabulous (imho) and, heart-breakingly, it won’t sell to an editor. I’ve been down that road before (and posted about it on Jeri Smith-Ready’s blog here). As long as it stays in that laundry basket, it is still a best-selling novel. IN MY MIND.

On the other hand, if I never read it, I will never get around to cleaning, and if I never clean, I really will turn into an episode of Hoarders, and you will find me ten years from now buried under tons of manuscripts and Fritos bags and the body of my dead cat.



I guess I’d better read it.

I received a Kindle from my husband for Christmas (because I asked for one, even though I then changed my mind but it was too late, he'd already ordered it). So I am officially a reader of e-books. I purchased my first e-book on New Year's Eve and finished it on New Year's Day. It was non-fiction and I enjoyed it. So I bought another book on New Year's Day and finished it on January 2. I enjoyed that, it was a teen book.

But then something weird happened after reading both of them. It was like I was hungry, ate a meal, and then, after eating, I still didn't feel full. It was like I'd consumed empty calories. And not because I didn't like the books, because I did. No, it had something to do with the way I read them.

I couldn't figure out why I felt so unsatisfied, but then it came to me.

When you read a book you hold it, turn it over, see the cover sitting on your night stand, see a picture of the author - you live with it. The physical book itself becomes part of the experience. But that whole part of it is gone with an e-reader. Sure, you have a "Kindle" experience, but not a "book" experience. You read a story but you don't live with the story like you do when reading a book.

So you read and know you should be satisfied, but it doesn't stick to your ribs.

That said, I think I read faster precisely because of that very reason. I scarfed it down instead of savoring it like a good meal. It's also really easy to order a book so I've found I could buy a lot more books and instantly satisfy my craving for a particular title - which is a good thing for the industry. We need people buying more books. But I still wish they were books, and not e-books.

I've already ordered a bunch more e-books. Will be curious to see if I continue to feel the same way.

If you own an e-reader, what do you think of my analogy? Am I totally off base?

A Polar Bear in a Snowstorm

When I was trying to think of a topic for this month’s blog I felt like the little kid who showed his teacher the picture he drew of a polar bear in a snowstorm. Completely blank.

I blame my blankness on the weather—blizzards followed by subzero temperatures followed by wind chill warnings followed by more blizzards plus subzero temperatures. Every weather report includes a mention of our relentless winter nemesis, Bitter Lee Cold. Snow piles higher than my head line our driveway (The pictures were taken two snowstorms ago.). The piles of snow along the streets are twice my height. And when I choose to risk my life by running outdoors, which is more often than you’d think, icicles form on my eyelashes, my nose hairs freeze, and my toes go numb.

How do I retain my sanity? Here’s the short list:

1. Friends—Snowed in or not, we still connect. We forward lame e-mail jokes, chat on the phone to hear another human voice, and keep up to date with Facebook and Twitter. Once in a while, I even get to see them face-to-face!

2. Pets—My dogs and cats are ready and more than willing to snuggle up and comfort me when cabin fever makes me crazy. And Sassy and Gizmo are eager to take a walk in any kind of weather. Fresh air—even if it’s subzero—is energizing. And I get to congratulate myself on surviving another excursion into the frozen tundra!

3. Great books—My idea of heaven is being propped in bed in my flannel pajamas, buried under a mountain of covers, and transported to a different world by a magical book.

4. Writing—The YA fantasy I’m writing takes place during April and May, which requires me to conjure warm sunshine, springy green grass, shorts, and flip-flops. If I concentrate really, really hard and turn my space heater on high, I can almost feel my toes!

Think spring--please!!!

Ten things I'm looking forward to in 2010!

Like most people I am ready to dive into the new year! This past year I gave birth to a baby girl, followed by my book baby six weeks later. Needless to say it was a very busy and exciting year! The economy definitely sucked but I still managed to get to many festivials, book signings, school visits and conferences to talk about what I love: writing!

So in 2010:

1. I hope to sell a couple more novels and can't wait to get back to work on my latest manusctipt: Graveyard Shift.

2. My second novel Indigo Blues hits the shelves on July, 1 2010! So I'll definitely be doing some promoting for that over the summer and fall--yay!

3. Reclaiming my sleep, (baby is now in sleep boot camp) thus allowing me to write more and more.

4. Hoping that Shrinking Violet's second printing is gobbled up so there can be a third and so on....

5. I also look forward to spending more time with my family because it's amazing how time flies!

6. Finding time to exercise--big time.

7. Cooking more. I love trying new recipes. Hopefully my new crock pot will make things easier.

8. Blogging more. I have really learned a lot from this online community and hope to contribute even more.

9. Scrapbooking. Thought if I write it down I might do it. Son #1 will be eight next month and most of his baby photos are still in a box. Bad, I know.

10. I plan to read a lot more books this year since baby will be sleeping soundly through the night, right:)?

So what are you looking forward to in 2010??