And congratulations to Governor General’s Award winner, Iain Lawrence, for his young adult book GEMINI SUMMER. It’s in my pile to read.

Didn’t just read ‘em, I devoured them – 3 in 3 days. And the good news is there’s a new one coming out this month! For those of you who care, #s 3& 4 have a little bit more gruesomeness than I usually like, but are very exciting nonetheless…Best for fourteen and up, maybe? Just a thought…since some of you asked me to note stuff like that…

Just about the time I moved to the South to live with my husband (boyfriend at the time), he got new next door neighbors. We rarely saw the woman who lived there, but the man was out in his yard from daybreak to sunset. His lawn was meticulous (although later he would tell us it was full of moss and eventually he killed it and replanted it), every leaf was mulched within minutes of hitting the ground, and the flower beds were weed-free. Ours was not. In fact, weeds didn’t just grow, they flourished in our yard. Only you couldn’t see them for the fallen leaves. Under there somewhere was a lawn, but we only saw it after a big storm had blown our leaves into the neighbor’s yard (which he’d quickly run out and mulch to smithereens). This neighbor was the strong silent type and I’d said hello or smiled when I went out to get the mail, but he’d mostly just nod back and we never had any small talk at all. Because I make friend easily, we figured he hated us (turns out he’s shy). But even dislike from a neighbor we didn’t know really wasn’t motivation enough to get us out of the house and raking the leaves.

Fast forward almost a year later. We were getting married and the ceremony and reception was in our back yard. Believe it or not, this WAS motivation to clean it up and make it look nice. The neighbor probably saw us out there working and thought we were putting the house up for sale or something. We knew all our other neighbors and had invited them all to the wedding, but these two on our right were strangers. Still…as the day approached, it seemed mean to have everyone from our street at our wedding and exclude the ones who could look out their back window and see the festivities, so mere days before the wedding, I stuck an invitation into their mailbox, mentioning that I hadn’t invited them earlier because I wasn’t sure if they’d want to go to a stranger’s wedding. They showed up with bells on. Okay…not bells, but bearing food for the potluck and a smile for everyone.

Herb and Lucille, our neighbors who we thought couldn’t stand us because of our yard, have become two of our closest friends. We miss them dearly, but call them often now that we’ve moved. And because we still own our other house and have closed it for the winter, Herb’s dream has finally come true…he’s mulching our leaves every day.

Save your mistaken first impressions for your writing. Life is too short to live them.

I think a running theme in books is often mistaken first impressions. Especially in romance or chick lit or…well, anything. I mean, what was PRIDE AND PREJUDICE about if not mistaken impressions?

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The only bad thing about this book is I’m done reading it and I wish I had three hundred more pages to read. This is an amazing book, full of hilarious but very authentic characters, vivid detail and amazing writing. I finished it earlier today and while I was putting the groceries away I kept finding myself thinking, “I have to get this done so I can go read my book.” and then I would realize that I already finished it. Get it. Read it. Love it. It is Canadian YA, but is available in the US, so get going!

It’s funny how when you decide to write something, people, incidents, news stories, and things you hear all seem to have to do with whatever you are planning to write. Maybe you just notice them or something…I don’t know. As you know, I just finished my latest YA (for the most part) and I’ve been contemplating my next move. I’ve been toying with Middle Grade fiction. I think one reason I’ve never thought seriously about MG is because I’ve successfully blocked most of middle school from my memory. I loved high school, but middle school? Please don’t go there.

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Except, someone is going there! Just last week I got an email from someone I was friends with from fifth to ninth grade, primarily in seventh and eighth grade. Her emails have been full of “Remember the time…?” and now suddenly the floodgates have broken open and I am inundated with middle school memories!

In her last email, she wrote, “Remember the time you got your hair cut at Supercuts and they they totally trashed it? And then we were waiting for the bus and it was raining and someone drove their car right through a mud puddle and soaked us on purpose?” Ahhh…no, I don’t remember that! At least I didn’t.

So then that got me thinking about bad haircuts. I’ve had many more than my fair share in my lifetime. When I was an adult, I was lucky enough to find someone who could give me a fantastic haircut every time, but ever since I left Portland, I’ve been out of luck again. My hair is baby-fine and straight except where it sticks straight out when it’s cut badly. So yesterday, I went to the barber with my husband so he could get his $7 haircut. We are traveling which means this was just some random barber, but as he says, “It’s hair. It’ll grow back.” Guys have it so easy. I was sitting in the lobby waiting for him and one of the stylists finished with her customer and looked at me and yelled, “Next!” Before I even knew what I was doing, I had my coat off and was in her chair. The whole time, I was thinking about, “Remember when you had your hair cut at Supercuts…” but it turned out okay. I’ve had a lot worse haircuts than this one that cost a lot more and when my husband told me it looked good, he didn’t have that shifty, I hate to lie but I don’t want to sleep on the couch look in his eyes. Maybe I am ready to face middle school again after all.

  I believe this is Lawrence’s first book, but he has had many published since it came out, including two sequels. He was recently nominated for The Governor General’s Award in Canada for his latest offering, Gemini Summer. Because Lawrence and I live in the same neck of the woods, and my new librarian pal told me she’d introduce us, I thought I better get reading! This one was available off the shelf, so I started with it. It’s a very exciting book and while I guess you could call it a boy book, anyone with a sense of adventure will like it. So get reading! What are you waiting for?

Before we met, my husband bought an enormous blue velvet chair. His idea was to put it in a room with a lamp and some books and then he would spend many nights luxuriously reading in it by the fire. Unlike other people who buy furniture…okay women because they think of things in pairs…it never occurred to him to buy two of these chairs. He was single at the time and that’s as far as his reading-in-comfort plans went. Well, wasn’t he in for a surprise when he fell in love, I moved in, and he hasn’t had a chance to sit in the chair since. Between me and the cats, he needs a reservation. This is where I spent my weekend.

Where do you read?

The one time Victor got to sit in the blue chair…in the back of the moving van with a couple of thugs standing by to protect him. Okay, they’re not really thugs…they’re actors pretending to be thugs. Once the chair got to our new house though it was mine, mine, mine bwaaahaaaahaaaa!

I really enjoyed this book, but I did want to comment on the fact that I bought it as a remainder. One time, in the early days, I bought a book at a library book sale and the writer was on one of my list serves. I mentioned it on the list and was admonished by her that “writers don’t like to hear that their books are being sold used”. I always thought that was a bit strange. I mean, I sell/give away loads and loads of books I LOVE. Just because it’s used doesn’t mean anything negative. In fact, more people are reading your book that way and you may get more readers in the future. Besides, with children’s books, most of them probably get passed on because the child outgrew them.I think that’s true of remainders too. I mean, sure, no one wants to be remaindered, but it means you have been published, which is a good start. And it also means that someone like me who doesn’t have a big book budget might pick up your book, love it, and then splurge on something else of yours. I will definitely look for this author’s work again. So is it such a terrible thing that I got her book for $1.99? I don’t think so because not only did I enjoy it, but I’ll pass it on to a friend, and I wrote about it here.

Oh, and just for the record, the author never once mentioned that Hannah is a palindrome.

It is a very sweet book, published in 1965, and a Newbery Honor Book. I had it in my pile of books to read before I moved, but it ended up being the “on the road book”. Every night in the hotel, my husband would gently remove it from my hands after I’d fallen asleep. Usually I’d read about two pages. It had nothing to do with the quality of the book though. I really liked it. One thing I enjoyed was how it changed point of view all the time, but was written in third person. Quite unusual for a book nowadays. Just try it and see how far your critique group will let you go with it…probably not far. It was, I guess, the style then and is not so much in style now.Anyway, back to Love, cajun style (caps are the author’s not mine…or lack of caps, I should say). This was a really great book. I have to admit, at the beginning, it seemed a bit…ummm…well, the back story seemed a bit forced, like the author was just trying to get it out. There was at least one scene where a character said, “Remember when…” and then they relived a memory that they just wouldn’t really do and you knew it was for the reader’s sake. And then on page four, the best friend was introduced…yep…red hair! However, I kept going and the forced feeling subsided pretty quickly.

The book has a slow, hot, sultry rhythm to it that just emotes the setting (small town, Louisiana). It did occur to me more than once that the author might’ve thrown in a y’all or something, but she chose to spell it all out as written. Characters said things like “you all” and in my imagination, I pronounce them y’all. I am currently writing books set in the south and so I understand the pitfalls of trying to write in a dialect. I have chosen to go for the occasional y’all or other bit of slang to get it across. She did some of that with the language, but nothing with the spelling. Still, it didn’t lack in any way. It was just a lovely, lovely book and if you know any southerners, or have lived in the south, you will appreciate its pacing to no end. It’s southern through and through. I highly recommend it

Anyway, this is a seriously funny book with a bit of a twist to it. The main character has no magical powers of her own, but both her younger sister and her mother are witches. She’s very engaging and likable and except for one annoying thing, I really liked this book. The character…hmmm…I’m not sure how to say this…I guess an example is best (made up, not from the book).

“Like I’m really going to do that!” I mean, come on. No one dances to Madonna anymore. Retro eighties is so last year. If you’re looking for retro music, try Britney.

Now the character only said the first line. But I found myself having to go back a lot to see if she actually said stuff or just thought it. It was a bit confusing at times because just when you got used to her not saying everything she was thinking, she would ramble on. Other than that, I liked the book fine. I would read the first one, and the third one should be out this year too, so I’d get that too, but just from the library. It falls into chick lit fun, which is great at times and tiring at others for me. I’m into it right now because I have so much going on in my brain, what with the move.

I’m in contemporary YA fiction overload and will probably read something like Nevil Shute or John Rowe Townsend just to give myself a break from high school. However, I did just read ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE, WAR AND HIGH SCHOOL by Janette Rallison. It was very funny (as usual) and a nice twist on Taming of the Shrew (no violence!).

And then, last night, I read the new Meg Cabot book, PANTS ON FIRE. Very typical Cabot chick lit, not too many surprises, but funny. I read it in one sitting and I’m still thinking about bits of it. All in all, a lighthearted way to spend Saturday night. Ahhh…just like high school…dateless and reading on Saturday night. Of course, my husband probably wouldn’t have appreciated it if I’d had a date anyway.

It is now the YA that I finished the other day, and there’s not any element of scrapbook in it. It’s just a straight-forward narrative. I don’t think I was really going for a gimmick or trying to be original. I had always wanted to write something just like G&S and when I first saw it I was horribly disappointed that someone had beat me to the punch. However, and here’s the crux, when I saw it wasn’t working, when I saw the idea getting in the way, I abandoned it. And now I have a rich telling of my story that I never could’ve achieved with the original idea.Yesterday I picked up a YA that I would consider is a gimmick. Interestingly enough, I read 29 pages, hoping to get mentally past the gimmick because the story seemed somewhat interesting. However, when I have to re-read paragraphs five or six times just to figure out what exactly is going on because the gimmick is getting in the way, I’m sorry to say, I’m not going to stick with you. I won’t name the book here, but the idea is that it is a story about a guy and it’s told from the pov of someone else who is in their head. I never saw Being John Malkovich, but I’m guessing it’s something along those lines. I’m actually quite disappointed that the author didn’t write it as a straight-forward narrative because I think I might’ve been interested. As it is, I’m just not going to work that hard to get to the story. There are a lot of other books out there I want to read.

Now, lest you think I am inflexible or asking people not to be creative, I will point out two books that I really like that are told in a less than traditional way. LEAP DAY by Wendy Mass and THE FIRST PART LAST by Angela Johnson are both excellent examples of books told in an unusual way without it getting in the way of the story.

Four years ago, I began to write a YA that I intended to be something like Griffin & Sabine. In other words, tangible, colorful, unique, with letters you could physically remove from envelopes. I had an idea of putting together a scrapbook of a girl’s senior year of high school that would tell her story. When I was done with the writing of it, both my husband and I agreed that it was basically an outline for a cool book.

continued…

I know I’m slow, but I’ve just discovered Meg Cabot’s Where-R-You series. The thing is, for some reason, I thought it was going to be kind of gross or yucky, you know…missing children? So I’d always just skipped over it. Turns out it’s more like The Mediator series which is my favorite of hers! I just race through the first one, WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES. How fun! Must see about getting the rest, but I’ll have to alternate them with other books or I start dreaming about this stuff. Do series do that to you? It’s like I get so wrapped up in them, it’s all I can think about.

I will say right off that I’m a huge Rachel Vail fan because her books are so good. I can’t tell you why I like this one so much because I don’t want to spoil anything, but it is definitely one for your reading list. If you’ve read it and want to talk about it, drop me an email.

Click here for my review/comments.

  Don’t you love those two little words when you’re a writer. Especially when you finish your revision four days ahead of schedule? Yep. I did.

For the first time in nearly four years, I don’t have a definite project waiting in the wings for me. Oh, sure…I have ideas I’ve tossed around, but there’s nothing that says, “ME NEXT!” waiting. That’s a strange, strange feeling!

To console myself, I’m reading Rachel Vail’s YOU, MAYBE and I’m about three chapters into it and I can already say that I’m going to be really sorry when I get to The End.

  My revision has been going really well, but today I wrote in circles. After many hours of this I realized I should start my “day off” (Mondays) a bit early. Some days it’s like that! But I’m almost done and will meet my self imposed deadline of next Sunday for finishing this new book.

I’ll be updating my Need To Read live journal momentarily and it’s a book you don’t want to miss.

If you’re a writer, you have to read this.

If you’re in love with a writer, you have to read this, because chances are, you help make this bravery possible.

Janet Reid’s The Two Parts of Brave

So, if I go back to my original schedule, then Wednesdays are for “My Writing”. However, all I really have to say about that is it’s going really, really well and I’m about half way through my revision and hope to finish by the 18th. So…that’s kind of boring, so I decided to talk about writing and junk food.

I’m a big fan of advice columns. I have been reading Dear Abby and Ann Landers since I was a kid (now I don’t read Dear Abby because I am not a fan of the daughter who took it over, but I do read Annie’s Mailbox, which is Ann Lander’s old column). Anyway, for some reason a bit in one of those columns, Dear Abby, I think, has always stuck with me. It had something to do with eating cake at the typewriter in the evenings and gaining a lot of weight. Because of that, when I became a writer, I was determined not to eat cake while I wrote. However, no one mentioned potato chips.

I have been a naturally thin person all my life and never had to think about what I ate, which meant that those nasty little potato chips were able to sneak up on me and grab me around the middle before I knew what was happening. Last year I got into the habit of a mid-morning writing snack that included a large handful of Kettle chips, a dollop of spicy ranch dressing for dipping, and four or five slices of Havarti cheese. The cheese provided calcium and the chips were loaded with potassium (creative label reading). After a few months of this snack, I started to notice that my pants were a little snug around the waist. Then snug was a nice way of putting it. So did I give up my snack? No way. I just bought bigger pants!

So, summer came and the remodel of this house happened, and the move took over my writing time and potato chips fell by the wayside and so did the pounds and now I’m back to my normal weight (although I’m swimming in all my new clothes).

The problem is…I’m back to writing now and all I can think about are potato chips! I just had an apple. Nice. Sweet. Crunchy. Yeah, whatever! One time, last winter when I was contemplating the possibility that potato chips were doing this to me (as opposed to me doing it to myself!), I had some carrot sticks with dip instead. I emailed my friend, Eileen, who had been listening to me lament my tight pants and said, “Guess what? I just had carrot sticks with dip instead of potato chips and it was just as tasty!” She emailed me right back and said, “If carrot sticks are just as tasty as your potato chips then you’re buying the wrong chips.”

What is your snack downfall?

Miss Sophie is relaxing for me. As Victor says, “She pegs the cute-ometer.”

All my life I have wanted to live in the woods. When I look out my window of my new office I see…WOODS! Yes! Finally. If my posture is too good, I can barely see the top of the pick-up truck, so now I have a good reason to slouch a little, which, (unfortunately for my long-term posture) is my general tendency anyway.

What is quite odd though is that the WIP that I’m currently revising is set in the house that we just moved away from. My old office is my character’s bedroom. I haven’t thought much about that house, even though I love it, because I’m so excited about this new house, but today I’ve been revisiting it.

Things I loved about my old office:

It was bright and cheery (yellow).

There was a big hickory tree outside the window and a constant stream of birds and squirrels.

I could look outside and see the cats rolling in the dirt (weird, I know) and sleeping in the sunshine.

I knew when the mail came (very important during all those agent searches, although in the end the offer came by phone, of course!) and could run out and get it before my husband (we both like to get the mail).

Things I love about my new office:

I have a proper desk and lots of storage.

It has its own baseboard heater which I can crank up while leaving the rest of the house cool (good for the environment and the pocketbook).

I have a giant BOOKCASE instead of a giant dresser that I didn’t want but we had no other place to put.

The mailbox is down the street, so I can’t be distracted by it being delivered.

And of course, the view of the trees!