In My Mailbox - 24 April

In My Mailbox is a concept by Alea and Kristi.

The blurbs used here are all taken from Goodreads.

FOR REVIEW:
The Star Shack - Lila Castle

Pete and Annabelle live for their summers together on Gingerbread Beach. They've always believed they were a perfect pair… until junior year, when Annabelle becomes obsessed with astrology. Now they can hardly stand each other. Pete thinks that Annabelle (a Leo) has become a total flake; Annabelle thinks Pete (a Scorpio) has become an uptight jerk.

When Annabelle dares Pete to open a summer business on the Boardwalk generating personalized horoscopes, their fast-paced, hilarious bickering soon rises to a fever pitch. The he-said/she-said advice of the Star Shack is wildly popular and seems able to fix any relationship problem… except their own.

But when one of Annabelle's star charts helps catch a thief, Pete might have to admit that the stars could really hold the key to the future…and to his own heart.

I have already read a little and the duel perspectives have already captured my interest. I tend to think astronomy is a load of bunk but I am already interested in what's said.

PURCHASED:

Pretty Little Liars - Sara Shepard

Everyone has something to hide—especially High School Juniors Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna.Spencer covets her sister's boyfriend. Aria's fantasizing about her English teacher. Emily's crushing on the new girl at school. Hanna uses some ugly tricks to stay beautiful.

But they've all kept an even bigger secret since their friend Alison vanished.

How do I know? Because I know everything about the bad girls they were, the naughty girls they are, and all the dirty secrets they've kept. And guess what? I'm telling.

I think I heard Khy from Frenetic Reader screaming at me to buy this. Of course this was all in my imagination but who knows?

Wake - Lisa McMann

Ever since she was eight years old, high school student Janie Hannagan has been uncontrollably drawn into other people's dreams, but it is not until she befriends an elderly nursing home patient and becomes involved with an enigmatic fellow-student that she discovers her true power.

I thought it was about time....

Confessions of a Serial Kisser - Wendelin Van Draanen

EVANGELINE LOGAN WANTS a kiss. A spectacular, heart-stopping, life changing kiss. Somehow The Crimson Kiss (a romance novel she’s become obsessed with) and Four Steps to Living Your Fantasy (a self-help book she’s reading) have fused in Evangeline’s mind and sent her on a quest for a kiss. But the path to perfection is paved with many bad kisses—the smash mouth, the ear licker, the “misser.” The phrase “I don’t kiss and tell” means nothing to the boys in her school. And worse: someone starts writing her name and number on bathroom walls. And worst of all: the boy she's just kissed turns out to be her best friend’s new crush. Kissing turns out to be way more complicated than the romance novels would have you believe . . .

Review soon approaching. I wanted to like it a whole heap more than what I did.

If I Stay - Gayle Forman

What if you had everything:
A gorgeous boyfriend who was madly in love with you?
Quirky hip parents who totally got you?
A musical talent that could take you anywhere?
What if your biggest problem in life was choosing which path to take?
Follow your first love--music-- to New York City?
Or stay with your boyfriend, friends, and family?

What if one day, you went out for a drive...
And in an instant everything changed?
What if suddenly all the other choices were gone?
Except for one--the only one that truly mattered?
What would you do?

I would buy the US paperback copy of If I Stay. That's what I would and did do. So pretty and I have already given it to my colleague to read...she liked it.

Also purchased:
A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula Le Guin
The Tombs of Atuan - Ursula Le Guin

From NetGalley:
Iron Daughter - Julie Kagawa
A Mermaid's Mirror - LK Madigan

The Status Report - Alexa Young

After a few weeks off, The Status Report is back.

For those not in the know, the idea of The Status Report is for YA authors to relay information on where they are at in this moment in time. It's also a way to keep track of the authors that aren't necessarily in the thick of the publicity merry-go-round. So far Melissa Walker and RJ Anderson have shared where they are at in their writing and this week the gloriously incandescent Alexa Young is stopping by.

Can I just say that the book she's just pitched sounds ridonkulously awesome and very much up my alley! Excited beyond words.

***

Hi everyone! I’m so happy Adele asked me to do a guest blog about what I’ve been up to between projects because, as you may or may not realize, I’m *very* important and quite busy even in my downtime. You want specifics? I’ll give you specifics!

The most exciting recent news is that I just handed in the fourth and final book in the FRENEMIES series, FABOTAGE. (I’m really proud of the fact that I came up with the title myself.) Even though I’m awaiting revision notes from my editor, I feel like I can finally focus my energies on some new projects, which brings me to my next bit of news…

I just pitched some ideas to my agent, and we’re both pretty excited about one of them. The working title is LEARNING TO DIE, and it’s a sort of NO EXIT-meets-BREAKFAST CLUB premise, with lots of surprises along the way. Very dark and twisted and deep and stuff. Of course I still have to write it, but hey—at least the idea is there, right?

I’ve also been hard at work on a bunch of magazine articles, which I write under my maiden name. I mostly do stories about parenting and pregnancy—telling women how to be smart, savvy parents—and then completely ignore all the advice I offer. Fortunately, I’ve got a pretty awesome kid (Jack, age four) who seems to be turning out well in spite of all my screw-ups. I spend quite a lot of time with him, especially now that my husband is employed again (yay!). So, yeah, being a mom keeps me pretty busy too.

I’ve also been getting involved in animal rescue. A few weeks ago, I saved a dog from being euthanized, and we’ve been fostering her. She’s supposed to go to her new and loving forever home any minute now, at which point I’m hoping to take in one or two new fosters. This has been a really rewarding experience, and I encourage all the animal lovers out there to consider fostering or adopting pets.

Last, but not least, I’m going to be participating in the L.A. Times Festival of Books this weekend, with a bunch of other Los Angeles-based YA writers. We call ourselves the LAYAS, and we’ll be competing against each other in a teen fiction trivia game known as LAYAPALOOZA. It should be tons of fun, so if you’re in the area this weekend, you should come on by. I’ll be there on Saturday at 4pm.

See? I told you I’m very important and busy. I'm also not nearly as arrogant or self-congratulatory as this little post might seem. It's called sarcasm, people! :-)

Thanks for checking in on me, Adele, and for letting me share this status report with you and your lovely readers.

XO

Is it just me, or do they authors make you feel incredibly lazy too? The LAYAPALOOZA sounds incredibly fun - how I wish I were in California right now.

A big thank you to Alexa for sharing her progress with us all. There are more authors lined up and can I just say they are equally as fantastic as Alexa!

You can find Alexa's website here and her blog here.

YA Community Thanksgiving - Come One, Come All

Negativity is a bore.

I want to be inspired.

Crack me over the head with what inspires you!

I am deeming it YA Community Thanksgiving and I want you to share what you are thankful for in our community. No negativity, cynicism or defeatism allowed...only shiny thoughts.

Here are the things that inspire me and make me thankful to be part of the YA blogging community.

• Intelligent discussions that take place after an insightful post. I love reading a thread of comments that reveal deep understanding, camaraderie and an exchange of ideas.
• Passionate posts that get to the bottom of a book worm's love. While the heated posts get the most attention, I prefer the ones that share the beating heart of the person behind the blogger. I am really enjoying Khy's (Frenetic Reader)series of posts about different YA genres and what she responds to. They are short, sharp and shiny. Her post on contemporary YA conventions and cliches made me bite my lip and swiftly rethink some of my ms.
• Uniting for a cause whether big or small. Operation Teen Book Drop. Young Adult Authors Against Bullying. Nerdfighters. NaNoWriMo. Devyn Burton's The Book Transfusion. PAYA Auctions (great items up for bid btw). Good can come from a united front...
• Finding a blog with a new take on an area of YA I may not have considered before.Rhiannon Hart's blog did this for me last year. I might be a sci-fi / fantasy / dystopian uber-fan but if anyone could sway me it would be her. Rhiannon's comprehensive reviews are extremely well expressed, original and energetic review often strike a chord and carry me out of my comfort zone. I am currently trying to find someone to do just that with bit lit or historical fiction.
• The music I've been exposed to. Melissa Walker introduced me to Charlotte Sometimes on the I Heart Daily site and I've been smitten ever since. Florence + the Machine were a band that the UK bloggers and authors brought to my attention - boy am I grateful. Considering I am one of those tragic mainstream music types, it's great that the blogosphere is able to direct me towards music that is considerably less dorky.
• Web design is not something I profess to understand but I can tinker with html...now. My knowledge could fill a thimble but thanks to the wildly supportive blogger Catherine Haines, I know that if I screw up my layout up too much... she could help me because she's amazing with web design. We are a varied group of people with amazing skills.
• Open Mic over at Michelle Zink's blog shows what a supportive sharing of one's own writing endeavours resembles. Giving back to the community in a safe setting of love and encouragement.
• Television - Only YA people can catch my references to Dawson's Creek, Roswell or Friday Night Lights and not skip a beat. You are all my pop culture doppelgangers.
• Vlogging - we can sometimes look worn out, have bad lighting, cough up a lung or be too long but we support the effort. You never see criticism in the comments section for vlogs because we judge on content, not what our hair looks like!
• Our intentional spread shows that we represent book worms of many continents. We introduce each other to authors from our countries and in my case, people introduce me to authors from my own. Thank you Jenny (Wondrous Reads) for waking me up to Markus Zusak! Thank you Lenore for encouraging blog support and resource sharing through your mentorship program! Thank you to those people who wrote about Elizabeth Scott, Kristen Cashore, Stephanie Kuehnert and Jennifer Echols - you introduced me to some of my favourite authors! People even follow my Japan adventure blog - it's all about sharing!
• How well read we are. Judging from the results of April's Top YA 100 Titles and the poll (of the same name) that I am currently conducting - we know our stuff...well.
• Support. I got pretty sick last year and I kept it quiet. It only came out once I was hospital ridden and an exceedingly nice individual used their blog to 1) send me a card full of well wishes from everyone and 2)raised money for a poor village in the Third World. It did wonders for my recovery and my joy at being part of this community. We bought a duck with the proceeds :)
• Don't like reading book reviews? That's okay...there's interviews, competitions, discussion posts, cover announcements and guest posts and if you are really lucky you get all these things in one place!
• Lists...we like them, if you like them you're in the right place!
• Buzz is something we can generate really well. I have been really proud of the efforts of bloggers to help debut authors launch themselves into the market. The excitement, the support and the warm feelings are great to experience from within and great to watch from outside.
• Social awareness. Being part of the blogosphere has made me much more aware of injustice. Whether it be the colour-blind covers, the pressure consistently placed on librarians or the banning of certain titles...I am more aware. With knowledge comes power.
• That reading preferences will always be subjective and that's something to cherish.
• Small, individual blogs have just as much to offer as higher profile blogs. Expand your horizons!
• Diplomacy. We have it in spades, how about having it in tractors?
• My friends. I have friends on all contintents, of every personality type, race, sexuality and religion. Friends who share my passion. You are my people. Thank you for being your book loving selves!

In the hopes of sharing blogosphere goodwill, I would love it if you would consider writing your own YA Community Thanksgiving post. Link the EXACT url address of that post below to share the love.

I would also like it if we could make a promise to comment positively on at least five blogs that you are unfamiliar with as part of this unofficial YA community builder. I know this is a lot to ask but I think it is time to spread some love, appreciation and understanding. As a well known lurker, I am also promising to comment on every linked blog.

Manuscripts, Spew and Non-Epiphanies

Last week two kinda crummy things happened to me - 1) you all know about and I won't be discussing anymore and 2) I got vomited on...again...for the second time in three months. I am currently teaching preschoolers here in Japan and it seems that I am the spew-target.

I would be complaining again this but I suspect that spew was magical.

You see, I came to Japan thinking I would be more relaxed and have time to write. Both are true. And yet I couldn't for the life of me start writing.

I'd come over here hoping to channel some of my observations as a newbie to Japan into a YA manuscript. I had a skeleton plot line in my head and planned to fill it in with the colour and people around me. Nothing happened once I got here.

Then a few days later I had an epiphany:

After this fantastic bolt of inspiration...it all kinda died. I couldn't do anything at all. The more nothing happened, the more frustrated and stressed I got.

I'd set myself a deadline of having a ms completed by the time I left Japan. Not just a first draft either, a ms that I was proud of having been critiqued by at least two others. It wasn't looking at all likely.

Two months later and I had all but given up. Until I went to Hiroshima for a long weekend. The second night there was unable to sleep. Every five minutes I was writing something else down in the dark. Needless to say, my handwriting in that barely lit hostel room is nearly illegible. But I came up with some great stuff. It built on my original epiphany but swept away most of the inconsequential stuff that I had originally thought.

My problem had been that 50 words I'd mentioned in the vlog. The fifty words that I was inordinately pleased with, the words that I was overly attached to. The tone didn't match what I wanted to achieve with the novel and so every time I tried to write...it didn't mesh. Once I made the decision to turf those 50 words, I was back in business.(You can read those 50 words at Michelle Zink's Open Mic here. You'll see what I mean.)

I've been noting tracts of dialogue, character profiles and plot for the past few weeks. On the weekend I spent 90 minutes brainstorming motivations and relationships with my friend on skype. I was ready.

When the kid spewed on me, I cleaned up and then started writing. I found a plain exercise book and my Australian flag pen and just started scrawling as my class ate their lunch. All the noting and discussions of the past few weeks merged and I was getting somewhere. At this point, a couple of days later, I am 5000 words in and counting. Not too bad, but not phenomenal either. But it is already 100% better in quality than the NaNo that I successfully completed in 2009.

My aim is still the same. To finish a ms that I am proud of (and have shared for critiquing) by the end of my stay here. December 2010. Let's see if I can do it.

Interview: Sarah Dessen

Sarah Dessen took the time this week to answer quite a number of my questions regarding her writing in general and the novel Lock and Key. She was lovely about it, responding within a couple of days which was both amazing and flattering.

Thank you again to Sarah for making this possible.

Of all the characters you have created, which one do you feel you relate to the most? Which one is most representative of Sarah Dessen as a teen?

I think that Halley from Someone Like You is the most like I was in high school. Sort of a quieter type, with a dynamic friend. Remy from This Lullaby is how I WISH I was. In high school, and now, actually. I envy her confidence and how she can handle just about everything.

How difficult is it to avoiding writing clichés?

I'm lucky that I have a REALLY good editor who calls me on them. I think my biggest problem, though, at least in drafts, is not repeating myself. After eight books I get worried that a character or piece of dialog might be too much like something I’ve already done. So it’s a challenge to keep it fresh.

Abuse and neglect are heavy themes, what motivated you to tackle them in Lock and Key?

I was really interested in taking on a different type of narrator. Most of my girls are from upper middle class families, living in pretty solid environments. I was intrigued by taking a girl who WASN’T like that at all and dropping her into this whole new world. I liked the idea that you’d think it would solve all her problems—having a roof over her head, money, a family—but that it actually brought up a whole other set to deal with. Also, I liked the idea of my narrator having to sort of “save” someone else in order to save herself.

I love the ‘meet cute’ story of Cora and Jamie, what inspired that?

I just really wanted to show that Cora is a caretaker, and that she was not all cold, hard edges, even if she seemed that way on the surface. With Ruby gone, she clearly still had a loving, almost maternal instinct. Plus I felt it was important to see WHY Jamie and Cora were together, as they were so different: he’s so likeable, and she’s harder to know. So it was good to show how he’d first fallen in love with her, so the readers could see that part of her as well.

What motivated the choice that Cora and Jamie would be struggling with fertility?

I was trying to get pregnant right before I started the book, so it was on my mind. But also, it ties back to the idea of family. I liked the idea that Cora needed to mend her relationship with Ruby—her first maternal one—before she was able to become a mom to her own child. It just worked well on the page.

What was the CD making scene between Jamie and Owen like in your mind?

I imagine that Owen was incredibly opinionated, and probably suggested three times as many songs as Jamie actually ended up with. I have a feeling that asking him for music advice means getting an earful, literally.

What were you like as a teacher? What is the most important thing you imparted to your students?

Oh, God. I shudder to think how they would answer this question! I feel like I was so young when I began at UNC in 1998, so green….I had no idea what I was doing. I’d like to think that I really pushed my students to write, though, and to take their writing seriously. And I was really enthusiastic about pushing them through revisions, and helping them brainstorm how to fix things in drafts. I often got more excited than they did, I think, when a story came together. Really, though, I bet I will be more remembered for the kickball games I organized on the last day of classes. Those were fun too, though.

Do you ever intend to write a sequel for any of your books or are the character crossovers your way of revisiting them?

The crossovers I hope will let people know how their favorite characters are doing without me having to do an entirely new story. My experience is that sequels are rarely as good as the originals, and it’s my hope that I’ve left my characters exactly where they need to be, in a good place. That said, if I ever DO write a sequel, it will be to This Lullaby. It’s the only one where I’ve actually thought out what I would do, if I decided to go back to Remy.

You are left alone in the house of the guy you are interested in, do you snoop?

I would probably REALLY want to, but would not. I am a serious rule-follower, sometimes to my detriment.

What are the characteristics of a Sarah Dessen reader?

It’s really hard for me to say. I think that’s a great thing, though, that so many people of so many diftferent ages and interests all seem to be equally enthusiastic about the books. I feel so lucky that there are people out there who really get what I am trying to do.

Thank you so much to Sarah Dessen for taking the time to answer all my questions.