A favourite topic among writers is that oldie, but goodie: “How do you know when your book is done?” I can’t answer for any of you, but I think I’ve finally figured it out for myself.

When I am writing a book, the occasional new idea flits through my head. Some are better than others, and I write those down. I might even journal about them a bit. While writing this WIP, I went so far as to try to do a synopsis of a new idea, which I then passed back and forth with my agent  a few times before finally giving it up as dead. No matter how excited I might get about something new, it never, ever sticks. After a few days, I forget all about it. When I’m working on one book, I can edit another (I alternated editing Restoring Harmony and writing The Right & the Real for the last six months), but apparently, there’s No Vacancy in my brain for a new book idea.

And that’s how I know I’m wrapping up work on a book. Last Friday, as I came into the homestretch on my revisions for this WIP, I got a fresh book idea. A good one. One that I’ve journaled about and it expanded instead of deflated. One that is flooding me with more and more details. One that is making me anxious to sit down and start writing something – a synopsis probably. While there will be months of revisions with my editor ahead of me, this seems like a strong indicator that my initial draft of The Right & the Real is essentially done.

This new book idea is a big relief because when you only have room for one story in your head at a time, you can’t help but wonder if you’ll ever get another good idea or if this will be the last book you ever write.

How do you know when you’ve finished a book?

As always, I’m over at The Debs today. The topic this week is “Covers” and there are some great posts. I talk a bit about mine and the artist.

A fun thing happened when I was teaching my writing class to the Grade 6-7 class. One of the students raised her hand and told me that she’d gotten an email from a teen friend who wanted to tell her all about a book she’d seen around the web that she wanted to read. Yep! You guessed it. It was Restoring Harmony. My student got to say to her friend, “I know the author! She comes to our classroom and teaches us writing sometimes!” Super cool for me, as you can imagine.

Since you all pretty much would have to be blind not to know what my cover looks like, I chose this other nice picture to include today, just because it makes me really happy. It’s a photo of my husband after he walked into the house and discovered eight of his friends had delivered a surprise gift for him while he was gone. A piano! Quite a surprise, don’t you think? You really have to click on it to make it bigger so you get the full effect of his astonishment. Thanks to Allan for the pic.

I’m very excited about this interview because as you all know, I love my agent. I mean, just from his pic, you can tell he’s a nice guy, right? So far, I’ve mostly just talked ABOUT him, but now he’s here to speak for himself. Feel free to say nice things about him in the comments section. With me (and all his other clients who adore him) he’s used to hearing good stuff about himself, but a little more won’t hurt!
Michael Bourret joined Dystel & Goderich Literary Management as an intern while studying film and television production at New York University, and began at the agency full-time in 2000. After ten years as an agent in the New York office, Michael now works in Los Angeles in the West Coast office of DGLM.  There, he continues to represent his own list of bestselling and award-winning clients while also aggressively pursuing new film and television opportunities.

1. What were your favorite books when you were a teen?

I didn’t actually read YA as a teen, so I’ll mention a few younger books I loved: Bunnicula, The Cricket in Times Square, The Castle in the Attic, Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Freaky Friday.

1. Do you have any pet peeves in query letters that make you quit reading?

I have many, many pet peeves!  I hate when my name is spelled wrong, I hate typos in the first sentence, I hate being queried by writers who haven’t done their research.  But in the end, none of that really matters if the query is compelling.  As I’ve mentioned on our blog, the details aren’t the most important thing, the idea, the narrative, the storytelling – that’s what hooks me.

1. What’s the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in high school?

High school was the most embarrassing thing to happen to me!  More seriously, one time I leaned against a container in the dark room and unknowingly got the entire back of my (rather baggy) pants wet.  I looked like I had a very serious bladder problem the rest of the day.

1. What are you reading now?

Client manuscripts!  It’s a busy month.  But I intend to finish The Lost City of Z by David Grann, Jumping off Swings by Jo Knowles (whose Lessons from a Dead Girl I adored, and then I need to read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

1. If you could live anywhere for a year, where would it be? And what kind of a place would you live in?

Northern Italy.  I love big cities, but I’d really love to live in a tiny Italian town, in a small cottage.  I’d want to garden and cook and read and live quietly.  Honestly, I’d probably go nuts after a couple of weeks, but it sounds lovely in my head!

1. What was the first book you sold? Tell us what it felt like to make that sale.

I won’t share what the book was, but I will say that it was very practical nonfiction.  Selling it felt fantastic, and it was only my second submission!  I really thought I’d figured it all out.  What strikes me now is that there is no way I could sell the book in this market.  None.  Our business changes all the time, and I think that’s what I love so much about it!

A while ago, I asked readers to leave questions for Michael and he would choose a couple to answer. The following are two of the submitted ones.

1)      What was it about Restoring Harmony that made you request a full?

It was a great concept: a little post-apocalyptic, but set in a near-future which was entirely believable – and very scary!  It was the kind of book that could have been so many different things, and I was so pleased that there was great narrative to go along with the high-concept idea.

2)      What happens in client Lisa McMann’s upcoming book, GONE?

I’m sorry I can’t share the answer to this one, as you’ll just have to read it!  But I will say that I think the series ends in a way that will be surprising, fulfilling and just perfect.  Not long until you can find out!

Thanks for stopping by, Michael! And if you get tired of that house in Italy before your year is up, just let me know. It sounds like a great place for me to spend some time writing another book!

Tuesday Bonus Post!

I just got an email from a reader and she wrote the most amazing piece on her blog about how Molly, the main character in my book, has inspired her to try to share her own music more. She also gives a lovely review of RH, but this piece is special and I wanted you to see it. It has less to do with me, and a lot to do with this reader and her musical path, and she’s a beautiful writer too, so I hope you enjoy it. Thank you, Rebecca, for making my week.

Way back at the beginning of this year, which is already 1/12 over, I posted here about how my husband and I had decided to try and lower our footprint even more, and so we were parking the truck for one month.

So guess what? We did it. And guess what else? It was totally easy. I’ll admit that it was easier on me than on my husband because I just don’t go out at night that much, so walking everywhere during the day was just fine. The weather was pretty mild too, which helped. A couple of times we car pooled with neighbours who were going by our house to the same destination, and we hitch hiked (no problem getting a ride and safe here) and Victor spent a lot of time on his bike too.

Our three biggest challenges were water, night, and Victor’s gigs. We have a water dispenser and have to refill it at the store about a mile away. We stocked up with 17.5 gallons on Dec. 31st, and then Victor carried one gallon a few times  a week on his bike. And in the middle of the month, we hitched a ride with the neighbour and refilled all the empties.

Victor didn’t have a light on his bike though, so he had to walk to evening meetings. And we got rides with other musicians in the neighbourhood to the music gigs Victor did in January (in 2009, he did 3…this year, he’s done 5 already!)

We were most proud of finding a solution to the following challenge. Victor heard about a house concert at a friend’s house up island. Not our island, but on Vancouver Island. That meant a ferry ride and somehow getting north 35 km and then getting back in time for the last ferry home. He ended up posting an ad on a local Yahoo group asking if anyone wanted to drive and he would pay for the ferry and he got a taker right away and they had a blast! He also took the ferry/Greyhound bus down to Victoria for a rehearsal this past week.

My biggest accomplishment was not so much solving a problem, but increasing my exercise by a lot. Each weekday, I walked about 2-3 miles on my treadmill while writing my new book (see, you knew I could work writing into this post somehow, didn’t you?) and then did the two mile loop to the Village to get library books and a few groceries. On average, I increased my walking about 10 miles per week. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

And how much did we spend on gas for the truck? Yep. $0

Victor wrote about his experience here. And I think it pretty much says what I didn’t. I know that my critique partner, Kim, has been eating all her evening meals by candlelight to save electricity. Have you done anything I should know about and try to do to save energy or reduce my impact on the Earth? I’d love to hear about it!

Today, I’m over at The Debutante Ball talking about snow. Had enough? Well, this is a different kind and you might just like it.

This has been an entire week of promotion. I’ve managed to catch up on a whole lot of publicity stuff I’ve been planning for Restoring Harmony while my critique group reads my new book. It’s back to writing next week though, and I’m excited!

Speaking of publicity, The Book Pixie has spoiled me with a whole lot of great coverage this week. First she gave RH a fantastic review, then she chose passages she thought you might like to hear from the book, and after that, she let me blather on about my favourite utility. And to top it off, she’s even giving away her ARC of Restoring Harmony!

I’m sure you’ve all been waiting with bated breath (don’t you love it when people write baited breath? That cracks me up every time…like worm breath!) to find out who won Eileen Cook’s new book. Congratulations to Thuy from Alberta! And thanks to all who played.

If you live on the same island as me, don’t forget that Molly-lookalike and fiddler extraordinaire, Sarah Tradewell is in concert Saturday night at The Roxy. She’ll be accompanied by my favourite musician of all.

Next week, I have a very special guest for WCW. I don’t think he’ll be giving away any books, but if you’re an unagented writer, you’ll definitely want to check out his interview (hint, hint).

Have a great weekend, everyone!

C. J. Omololu might have a hard name for me to remember (I’ve typed Omululu and Omololulu so far), but her new young adult novel, Dirty Little Secrets, is unforgettable. Here me now, believe me after you’ve read it, it will knock your socks off. I read a lot of books, but when I finished this incredible one, I just sat in my chair, stunned by the sheer amazingness of it (yes, I made up that word, but it works).

I have since handed this book off to two teens who totally agree with me (my favourite kind of teens) and also love this book. It is available February 2nd, but you can pre-order it now, and as soon as you’re done reading this interview, I expect you to all go buy it. And if you can’t afford to buy it, then request it at your library. I was going to give away my ARC, but umm…actually…I can’t part with it. I really can’t! So, sorry all…just go buy it. You’ll only be sorry if you don’t!

And now for the interview with C. J. (aka Cynthia).

1. What’s your favourite website? I’m guessing you mean website that aren’t about shopping. I spend a lot of time on The Tenners at http://community.livejournal.com/10_ers/ and at the writer’s message board at http://www.verlakay.com/boards/index.php. I read a lot of writing-related blogs too, mainly to keep up with what’s going on in YA.
2. What are your hobbies that don’t have to do with writing? That question makes me realize that I need to get some. I like photography and I made silver jewelry for a while.
3. What do you read in the bathroom? Catalogues. I dream about all the stuff I’m not going to buy.
4. What’s the riskiest thing you ever did and how did it work out for you? Marrying my husband when I’d said all along I didn’t believe in marriage. We’ve been together almost 16 years, so it looks like it turned out pretty well.
5. What author or book have you recently discovered that you want the world to know about? Ooh, can I do two? I’m going to anyway Two Tenner books that I just LOVE are Jen Nadol’s The Mark which is just coming out at the end of January and Jaclyn Dolamore’s Magic Under Glass that is also just out. Both are fabulous reads! Full disclosure – we all have the same publisher, but I actually bought my copies and I’d recommend them no matter who published them.
6. If you could live anywhere for a year, where would it be? Someplace with a beach – Mexico or Hawaii. My husband says I’d go island-crazy and want to leave, but I highly doubt that.
7. What’s the coolest writing-thing that’s happened to you since you sold your first book? I was at a writer’s conference just after Dirty Little Secrets sold, and during break I found myself standing next to an agent who was speaking that day. I started to introduce myself (I have no fear of talking to people I don’t know as you can see) when she stopped me and said, “I know who you are.” Totally thrilling.
8. Go on, give us some writing advice. You know you want to! Sit down every day, open up the file (or notebook) that contains your story and do just a little bit of work on it. The hardest part of writing is ignoring all of the excuses for not doing it.

Thanks Cynthia! Oh, and by the way, readers? She also has a picture book for young readers that looks pretty cool. Stop by her website for more info on her and her books!

P.S. Sorry this is posting so late. The power has been out all morning.

You might think I love Goodreads because I can go over there and see what people think of my book (4.17 stars out of 5), or monitor how many people have it on their shelves to read (169) or how many readers have entered the contest my publisher is sponsoring to win my book (399), but I never go over there for those reasons. I mean, that would be kind of sad to be monitoring those kinds of statistics, wouldn’t it?

No, the reason I love Goodreads is because every time I hear about a new book that sounds fabulous I can go over there and add it to my shelf. Like this one, that Janet Reid just wrote about.

It sounds fantastic. But my library doesn’t have it (it’s not even out yet), and my budget doesn’t accommodate pre-ordering it right now. But I can add it to Goodreads and then sometime in the future, when either my library gets it, or I’m flush, I’ll remember to read it!

That’s why I love Goodreads. What about you? Do you use it? What’s your favourite thing about it?

Firday explains how fried my brain is from revising my new manuscript. And I am moments a few hours away from sending it to my agent and critique group, so all I have to say this morning is pop on over to The Debs to help us celebrate Deb Maria’s new book release and find out what happened to my copy of her book.

And don’t forget to enter to win Eileen’s book (scroll down). Speaking of winners, congratulations to Leah! She won last week’s giveaway, Iain Lawrence’s THE GIANT-SLAYER. The book is on its way, Leah. Thanks to all who entered.

Hoppy Weakend evriwon.

You’ve all seen interviews and guest posts here with the fabulous Eileen Cook. It’s not that I play favourites, giving her more press than the rest of you, it’s just that she is one of my best friends AND she’s got a new book out. Plus whenever I feature her I get way more hits than when I talk about myself she’s so funny that everyone enjoys her visits.

Eileen’s new YA book hit the shelves this month. It’s a great twist on popularity and revenge and you don’t want to miss it. That’s why, I will be giving away a copy of Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood right here. That’s right, I want you to read this so much that I’m ponying up the cash myself and will have a copy sent directly to you! And Eileen will send you her autograph on a piece of duct tape (we do live in Canada, after all) for you to stick inside the book. So leave a comment, or send me an email using the address on the contact page by midnight, Tuesday, 26th January. This contest is open to Canadian and US residents only, sorry blog readers from afar…I don’t have that much cash!

And now on to the interview, but first, a cutie pic of Eileen at the beach!

• What are your hobbies that don’t have to do with writing? Knitting. I have developed a serious yarn fetish over the past couple of years. I can’t pass a yarn store without stopping in.
• What’s the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you (or you learned from a book)? I was once told that there are always people who will say it can’t be done, that you shouldn’t take a chance, that it will never work out. Tearing down other people’s dreams is easier for some people than building their own. The secret is to ignore those people and find those who will be there to tell you can, you should and to get busy!
• Where do you see yourself in ten years? I never would have guessed where I would be now ten years ago! I’m enjoying the journey too much to worry about where I might end up. I am pretty sure I’ll still be writing, reading lots and hopefully spending time with good friends and family.
• What’s the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in high school? Most of high school was embarrassing. You should see pictures of me back then.
• If you could live anywhere for a year, where would it be? London! It’s my favorite city in the world. I’ve been several times and I never get bored.
• Are you a sports fan? Who’s your team? When I moved to Canada we started going to the hockey games. Now I’m a full fledged hockey nut.  I’ve been known to paint my face.
• Do you speak any foreign languages? I lived in Europe for awhile and when I was there I spoke really bad French. People would always raise their eyebrow and say “What?”
• What’s the coolest writing-thing that’s happened to you since you sold your first book? Meeting other writers!  You would be a perfect example!
• Go on, give us some writing advice. You know you want to! Read. Read. Read. I believe books are the best teachers.

Thanks, Eileen! Always a joy to have you here. And to the rest of you, don’t forget to enter! And since I’m not on Twitter anymore (except briefly on Saturdays), please feel free to tweet this contest. In fact, if you do, and you tell me, I’ll put your name in the drawing twice!

There are two kinds of people in life: the kind who are happy to let you have the last word, and the ones like me. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that getting in the last word is necessarily a bad thing. But I’ll admit that when my friend Wanda sent me a thank you gift after we hosted her in our home for a week, my first thought was, “Oh, I need to send her a thank you note.” And then I had to remind myself that her gift was a thank you. If I sent a note, would she then have to send me an email, thanking me for my note? And then would I follow with another email, telling her it was my pleasure? Ummm…well, if I’m honest…then, yes. That’s how it would go. At least until Wanda got tired of the thank yous and moved on with her life.

And what do you do when two people who are in regular contact are both the Last Word Type? My agent and I can go on all day long trying to get in the last witty email, the last joke, the last and final closure to what should’ve been a quick exchange. Don’t get me wrong, I think we both have fun doing this, but how much work are we getting done? Luckily, my agent has perfected the last word. He sends an email with nothing but a smiley face. How can I answer that? With two smiley faces? Even I know when I’m facing a professional Last Word Type.

But here’s the deal…with a book due on March 1st, and my first novel being released May 13th, my daily email has already started to skyrocket (all in a good way). In addition to the writing deadline, there are all kinds of promotion things to do, guest blogs and interviews, hunting up indie bookstores, checking my hourly sales ranking on Amazon. What I’ve discovered is that I barely have time to answer the emails I need to answer, let alone thank you for thanking me for thanking you for thanking me. So, as of now, I am going to try to become one of those other people. The one who lets you have the last word!

I’m over at The Debutante Ball explaining about my other career  as a supermodel. You don’t want to miss that!

Lots going on over at The Undercover Book Lover. All week, she’s been featuring Putnam writers and books, and she even interviewed my wonderful editor, Stacey Barney. There is now an interview with yours truly up, along with a stellar review. I hope you’ll stop by. Both she, and her sister, have really supported me and my book, plus they host lots of great contests where you can win books and other book related swag.

Speaking of contests, the winner of The Maze Runner is Eugene! Congrats, Eugene, and thanks for entering. And to the rest of you, don’t forget to scroll down and enter to win this week’s giveaway book, Iain Lawrence’s The Giant-Slayer. You have until next Tuesday to enter and all you have to do is leave a comment, or send me an email through the address on the contact page.

Have a wonderful weekend! Oh, and just so you know, I’m now working Tuesday-Saturday, so if you email me on Monday and don’t hear back, it’s because my husband has hidden my laptop to keep me from working!

When I first moved to the island people would ask me what I did for a living. After I told them I wrote for teens, they would invariably say: Have you met Iain Lawrence?

You see, Iain is not only an extremely talented writer, but he’s one of those “top of the heap” writers and our island is lucky enough to claim him. His book, Gemini Summer, won Canada’s Governor’s General Award in 2007. For those of you who don’t live in Canada, that’s pretty much equivalent to winning the National Book Award in the U.S. In other words, the BIG TIME.

The answer to everyone’s question (had I met him?) was no, which probably didn’t surprise anyone as Iain is the quiet type. I’ll admit it, I basically had to stalk him. I started by leaving a note for him at the library after reading some of his books and telling him how much I liked them. He was very polite when we did finally meet, but I think my exuberance and enthusiasm might’ve scared him a bit! One time he came into the library when I was there and I drew him into the conversation about Nevil Shute and the next thing you know, I had him reading Shute and we were friends after that.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering when I’m going to stop trying to make myself look cool because I know a famous author and get to the interview, but before I do, I have great news! Not only is Iain’s new middle grade book, The Giant-Slayer too fantastic for words, but he’s giving away a copy to one of you lucky blog commentors! Signed! Just leave a comment between now and Tuesday, midnight, 19 Jan. and you could be the winner (U.S. & Canada residents only).

The book is beautiful and just so well written I had to stop and digest it at times. It really grabs hold of you, and on top of that, I think it would be an excellent read aloud book to fifth, sixth, or seventh graders.

Okay, finally…the bio and interview!

Iain Lawrence studied journalism in Vancouver, then spent ten years as a newspaper reporter before he began to write fiction.  His thirteenth novel for young readers – The Giant Slayer, was published in November, 2009.  In 2007, he won a Governor Award for Gemini Summer, the story of a boy and his dog and his brother.

What were your favorite books when you were a teen?

I hoped to become a pilot, so I read a lot of books about flying, particularly the stories of the famous aces of the two world wars.  But the books I remember with the most fondest, and the most clarity, are ones that I had to read for school: The Great Gatsby; Great Expectations; Welcome to the Monkey House; Who Has Seen the Wind; On the Beach.  I wish I could thank the teachers who introduced me to those novels.  I didn’t appreciate them at the time, but I’m certain that they shaped my life.

What’s on your iPod or CD player?

I download episodes of CBC radio programs - usually Quirks and Quarks and As It Happens – and listen to them as I walk the dog.  Music isn’t very important to me, so my MP3 selections are pretty pathetic: Gary Glitter, Bruce Springsteen and the Beach Boys.

What’s the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you (or you learned from a book)?

“All storms pass.  ALL storms pass.”  I can’t remember where I came across it, though most likely it was in a book about sailing.  But it applies equally well to the problems of life.  I always say it just like this, just as I read it, stressing the first word of the second sentence.

What’s the riskiest thing you ever did and how did it work out for you?

I guess that would be my rodeo days.  For my first jobs after journalism school, I worked as a reporter on small newspapers in  BC’s northern interior.  I loved the amateur rodeos so much that I competed in three of them, trying to catch and saddle cows, riding broncos and the rangy cows that took the place of bulls.  My ambition was to earn a belt buckle, but instead I broke my wrist.

If you could live anywhere for a year, where would it be?

I think I would choose northern Scotland, maybe the Shetland Islands.  My mother was born in the Highlands, very near to Loch Ness, and I would like to see the places that meant so much to her, that I heard about so often that I can almost imagine I’ve seen them.

Do you speak any foreign languages?

Nein.

Do you make plans in advance when you travel, or just hope for the best?

I make basic plans, but they always change along the way.  So traveling is pretty much like writing.  I set out with a general idea of where I want to end up, and what I want to see along the way.  And when I stumble onto something unexpected, I’m more often pleased than disappointed.

What’s the coolest writing-thing that’s happened to you since you sold your first book?

I guess that would be reaching the million-copies-sold mark.  There was no announcement, no fanfare of any sort.  But it gave me a good feeling at a bad time.

Go on, give us some writing advice. You know you want to!

Read John Gardner’s “The Art of Fiction” and Jack Hodgins’ “A Passion for Narrative.”  Both are endlessly inspiring, though John Gardner’s thoughts on the writer’s duty are especially so.  My copy of his book has fallen apart, but I’ve become so attached to it that I refuse to replace it.

Thanks, Iain! Great to have you here. And to everyone else, don’t forget to enter to win! And read Iain’s other books. Let’s get him to Two Million! We’ll have a party here then! And in the meantime, drop by Iain’s very cool new website.

I’ve decided two things for 2010 in regards to reading. First, I’m going to branch WAY out from YA and start reading a lot of other stuff. I talked more about it here a few weeks ago. The second thing I’m going to do is keep a running list of everything I read over on the Need To Read page. Normally, I only tell you about books I love. Since I won’t be writing any reviews though, I’m just going to list everything.

If I read more than fifty pages, but stop reading for some reason after that, I’ll make the notation: SR for Stopped Reading.

If I really love something, I’ll put MR next to it for Must Read.

That’s about as much critiquing I have time for, but I wanted to let you know that the list is there, and ongoing, because I thought it might be of interest to you to see what I’m reading now that I’m expanding my list.

I know I’ve been pretty much sticking to MWF blogging schedule, but I wanted to add this bonus post because…I’ve finished the first draft of my new book The Right & the Real!!!! This is really, you know…not news that really matters to anyone except me, so to sweeten the post since you came over here to read a special one, let me add this tidbit: I just found out you can enter to win a copy of Restoring Harmony over on Goodreads (sponsored by my publisher). Technically, this should be part of a Finally Friday post, but I just found out, and after a week of revising my WIP, who knows if I’ll remember next Friday!

Anyway, have a great weekend!

I’m over at The Debutante Ball lamenting celebrating deadlines. Do you have any big ones in 2010?

I’ve started some research into indie bookstores and guess what I’ve found? Yep! Restoring Harmony on lots of their websites (not to mention quite a few cool bookstores!). Unfortunately, the accent mark over the first “e” in my name is kinda messing things up. My name appears as Joalle or Jo’elle but either way, the book is there! Yay!

Not much else going on, just plugging away on the new book. So, so close to finishing this first draft. What? I said that last week? Well, I’m a lot closer now. I have to be, my deadline is closer.

Have a great weekend!

I’m very excited to have James here even though I haven’t read his new book. I know! What is wrong with me? Well, I’m scared of it. My agent, who is also James’ agent told me I might be too wimpy to read it. Okay, wimpy might’ve been my adjective, but he didn’t argue with me. James thinks I should just suck it up and stop being such a baby I would be fine with it though and since he’s generously offered to send me a copy, I’ve decided to give it the old college try.

But better than that, James is also offering up a copy of The Maze Runner to one of you lucky blog readers (click on this link to see his cool website for it!). Yay you! Yay James! So leave a comment or email me using the email address on the Contact page by Tuesday midnight, January 12th and I’ll draw one lucky winner.

And now, let’s find out more about James himself.

James is the author of The Maze Runner, a Junior Library Guild selection, a Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Books of 2009 selection, and the #1 pick for Indiebound’s Indie Next list for winter of 2009/2010. He’s also the author of The 13th Reality series. You can find out more about him and his books at www.jamesdashner.com.

1. What were your favorite books when you were a teen?

Ender’s Game, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, anything by Stephen King or Dean Koontz.

1. What’s on your iPod or CD player?

Everything from opera to Led Zeppelin, Ozzy to Enya. I like variety!

1. What do you read in the bathroom?

Ummmmmm. Well, my wife would kill me, but I usually take our Entertainment Weekly in there.

1. I gave you twenty questions and asked you to answer seven. Were you tempted to answer all twenty? Why?

No, because I have revisions due! I mean, no, because I like to follow instructions and I want to make you happy.

1. Do you use an outline when writing, or just let it flow and write as fast as you can?

I make a simple one or two page outline – more of a bullet point list of the major events of my story. A lot of it comes as I’m writing, but I at least like to have a basic path, and I really like to know how it ends if at all possible. One thing I always, always do is write the first draft straight through without any editing whatsoever. It’s all about creation that first time through.

1. If you could live anywhere for a year, where would it be? And what kind of a place would you live in?

Oh, so easy! I would definitely live in a castle in Scotland somewhere.

1. Are you a sports fan? Who’s your team?

Major sports fan. And I’m very faithful to all the teams I grew up rooting for in Atlanta: Braves, Falcons, Hawks, Georgia Bulldogs.

1. Go on, give us some writing advice. You know you want to!

Okay, I guess I can do eight, since you asked so nicely. The best writing advice I can give is to read lots of books, attend every writing conference possible, and write at least a little each and every day. Practice makes perfect (or at least not sucky).

Thanks for playing, James. And since you’re giving me a free book, I’ll try not to hold it against you for being a Braves fan. Go Cubs!

The closer I get to my release date, the more contact I am having with book bloggers. I’ve always been an advocate of privacy for the sake of safety on the internet and I am finding myself worrying about some of these bloggers a bit. Many of the ones interested in YA are teens and many of the emails I receive are requests for ARCs. The problem I’m seeing is that these young bloggers are more than willing to give out their address to me. Not just a mailing address, but a physical address.

It’s not so bad when they come to me, but I really find myself hoping that when authors approach them, they are more careful about this. Recently, I worked up a list of safety tips for the Grade 6&7 class that I teach workshops to. So, today, I’m sharing them in case any of you young bloggers are reading this!

1. Get your parents’ permission before starting a blog.
2. Use a pseudonym for your blog like ReadingGirl or BookReviewGuy. If you really want to use your name, use only your first name.
3. Have a designated email address to go with your blog that also does not have your real name in it. readinggirl@yahoo.com or bookreviewguy@gmail.com
4. Use only first names or nicknames when talking about your friends or family on your blog.
5. Use a site like blogspot, wordpress or livejournal to host your blog. They have strong spam filters.
6. Never give out personal information like where you live or your school on your blog. Doing so makes it easy for people who don’t know you to pretend like they do. Especially when you live in a small town or on a small island like I do.
7. If you start doing book reviews and people plan to mail you books, CHECK WITH YOUR PARENTS BEFORE GIVING OUT YOUR ADDRESS and never include your address on your blog. If you’re serious about reviewing books, maybe you or your parents can afford to get a P.O. Box at the post office.
8. Delete any obvious spam, but if something looks wrong or scary, let an adult see it first.

Anyone else have any safety tips they want to add to this? I’d love to hear them!

Happy New Year everyone! Hope your head doesn’t hurt too much from all the celebrating. I was reading Yahoo’s tips on avoiding a hangover, and they forgot the easiest one – don’t drink!

I’m over at The Debs today, looking for book recommendations. Feel free to share your own here too.

I’m very excited to announce that The Bookologist has extended her Putnam Pre-order contest all the way until June! That means you can win stuff every month.

Also, look for a very exciting week over at The Undercover Book Lover next week, when she features Putnam writers (and yours truly). I’ll have more links to that next Friday.

For those of you keeping tabs on me, I did NOT finish my first draft of THE RIGHT & THE REAL by midnight on Dec. 31st, but the good news is, I read what I have so far, and it’s better than I’d hoped! I should be able to wrap up this draft by the end of next week. Knock on wood!

Oh, and just in case you forgot, Restoring Harmony comes out THIS YEAR!

Time for my annual Fave Fifteen book list. This list is created from the books I read this year (not when they were published). I did not do a very thorough job of recording all the books I read, in fact, I only wrote down 108, but I think I read more like 125 all the way through. This year, I was much more selective and probably started 30 books that I did not finish – reading as few as twenty pages and more than a hundred in some of them before quitting. The list is in a random order – well, actually, probably in the order I read them- and the criteria for making the list is simply “books that I enjoyed”. Some of them are light, others heavier, others in between. There’s literature, mysteries, light fiction…it’s all pretty much just whatever struck my fancy. So here goes:

Fave Fifteen YA & MG 2009

Braless in Wonderland – Debbie Reed Fischer

The Loser’s Guide to Life and Love – A.E. Cannon

The Musician’s Daughter – Susanne Dunlap

Flipped – Wendelin Van Draanen

Sticks – Joan Bauer

Fortune’s Magic Farm – Suzanne Selfors

Audrey Wait! – Robin Benway

Dramarama – E. Lockhart

After – Amy Efaw

Cashing In – Susan Colback

Tango – The Tale of an Island Dog – Eileen Beha

Perfect You – Elizabeth Scott

The Nature of Jade – Deb Caletti

When You Reach Me* – Rebecca Stead

The Giant-Slayer – Iain Lawrence

Fave Five – Adult Fiction

After You – Julie Buxbaum

The Guernesy Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

The School of Essential Ingredients – Erica Bauermeister

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon

Real Life & Liars – Kristina Riggle

And last but not least, from the ARCs I’ve been lucky enough to read – Future Five in 2010

The Secret Year – Jennifer R. Hubbard

The Witchy Worries of Abbie Adams – Rhonda Hayter

Secret Saturdays – Torrey Maldonado

The Timekeeper’s Moon (a sequel to The Farwalker’s Quest) – Joni Sensel

Dirty Little Secrets – C. J. Omololu

*When You Reach Me is wonderful, but contains spoilers for A Wrinkle In Time, so if you haven’t read it, read that one first. I’ll refrain from ranting about how annoying I find that because it really is a great book.

I know that publishing can’t be good for the environment. Book production alone takes a lot of trees, transportation, and other tolls. Heck, just the amount of bubble envelopes and manuscript pages I receive each year makes me a little sick to my stomach.*  I am not exactly sure how to balance my career choices with my tree-hugger instincts. However, I have made my choice to go after writing books as a vocation and for now, I’m just going to have to deal with the environmental impact in other ways.

My husband and I are always looking for ways to reduce our personal carbon footprint, no matter how small the actual impact of our actions. For example, we now eat most meals by candlelight. Romantic and easier on the environment! Even though we live on a small island and can walk, ride or (safely) hitch-hike most places we want to go, we find ourselves driving more than we should. So…for the month of January…with you as our witnesses…we are parking the truck. Short of a medical emergency, we will not drive it in the month of January. We figure if we can do this for the coldest month of the year, then we will be able to remember that and choose alternate transportation much more often in the coming months.

Anyone care to join us and park your car for January? Oh, come on! It’ll be fun!

*Penguin is starting to do their part by implementing electronic copy-editing! Yay, Penguin!

I’m over at The Debutante Ball today, talking about one of my most valuable gifts, and I pass it on to you to try on for size too.

The winner of the fabulous novel, Real Life & Liars, by Kristina Riggle, is Alicia! If you didn’t win, you can’t blame it on my husband after all, as I did the drawing this week myself. Congrats, Alicia! I’m sure you’ll love it. I know I did.

In Restoring Harmony news, it’s the kind that excites the author, but doesn’t really mean much to the rest of the world…but FedEx brought the new Penguin Catalogue yesterday (the thumbnail is the cover), and there is my book on page 120 (pg. 122 of the PDF though)! Very heady stuff – for me anyway.

And for those of you who just haven’t had enough Christmas music, here’s one more song. My husband’s original (and only) Christmas song. Yep, that’s him singing and playing uke. Nothing says Christmas like the ukulele.

It’s Christmas Time Again – MP3

If you’ve been dropping by on Wednesdays, you know I’ve ben doing some fantastic author interviews lately. I’m so excited by all these great authors sharing bits and pieces with us each week (and the free books!) and I hope you’re enjoying them too.

While I don’t actually celebrate Christmas, I know a lot of you do, and so I figured that this must be a very busy week for you and so there won’t be an author interview today. Honestly, I have some great ones coming up and I didn’t want to post any of them today in case y’all missed it!

I really try not to read blogs because reading on the internet makes my eyes go wonky, but I started to read this wonderful piece by Merry Montelone over at Moonrat’s blog and I got sucked right into it and read it to the end. So instead of an author interview over here today, I urge you to go check this piece out. You won’t be sorry. On Friday, I’ll announce the winner of Kristina Riggle’s fine book, Real Life & Liars.

Last Friday I was over at The Debs talking about the dedication in my first book, Restoring Harmony (I like saying “first” book as if you might get it confused with my “second” book that my agent just sold – the one that’s not even completely written yet! Haha!).

Anyway, there’s another sort of “hidden” dedication in the book too, and today is the day to tell you about it. My main character, Molly, comes from a farm and while I think the line got cut from the final book, at one time she said, “My grandparents were farmers, my parents are farmers, and my brothers and sister and I will end up being farmers.” and this is something she’s proud of.

I wanted to create a concrete way for the reader to know what the date is in the book, and so I came up with the idea of Molly carrying her father’s farmer’s almanac with her and each time the date changes (not each chapter), I head it with words of wisdom from this almanac. In publishing, there’s a little thing called “Rights” which means that you can’t just use pieces of wisdom from existing almanacs without paying for it. Publishers are not that excited about authors who ask them to do this, so they in turn tell you that you can pay for the rights, or you can make something up. I chose the latter.

I created a totally fictional almanac called Uncle Ralph’s Farmer’s Almanac. Throughout the book, there are little snippets of advice from Uncle Ralph. Those I did not make up. Those are sayings I heard in the South when we lived there, or that I took directly from our friend Ralph, a sixth generation farmer in Tennessee.

Over two years ago, Ralph was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gherig’s disease). Last Friday afternoon, he passed on. He never saw his name in my book, but he has two lovely daughters and I hope that some day, they will see the tribute I paid to their father – a great friend, a wonderful man, and a farmer.

You will be missed, Farmer Ralph.