My Happy Place

I have a few, and thought I'd slowly share them one by one. These are all places I've been lucky enough to have actually visited. When I get stressed, I picture myself sitting in one of these spots and suddenly, the world is a lot better place.

Happy Place #1



Quick! Somebody get Vincent Van Gogh!

I didn't have to go far to find this happy place. It's about 20 minutes from my house. A bit out of the way, to find the Sunflower Field, just drive down to the end of one road, turn left, then turn right at the grocery store. Stay on the road until you see the old schoolhouse on your left. About a 1/4 mile after that, there's a dirt and gravel parking lot of sorts. You can't see the sunflowers from the road, but you'll know you've found the place when you're suddenly surrounded by professional photographers.

The sunflowers are at their peak July 15-July 20, but in my mind, they're always in bloom. Plus, when I meditate, it's not nearly as hot and there are a lot less bugs!

So tell me about your Happy Place.

Contest Alert

Yet another great contest from YAtopia, this time it's the chance to pitch your YA or Adult UF/Paranormal mss to Vickie Motter of Andrea Hurst & Associates Literary Management. Here's the thing though: The contest is limited to 50 entries, has only been going on for 1 day, and is already filling up quick, so if you want to enter, do it now! Hurry! Time is of the essence. Pretend the world is ending if you must.

I'll definitely be entering. According to the rules, your manuscript must be completed. Well, mine is completed and quite polished, but is going through yet another round of edits (you lose count of what round you're on after a while). I'm so close to being done though, hopefully this will push me to hunker down and finally finish up. I'll let everyone know how it goes. And until then...if you have a YA or UF mss, enter the contest!

And Now for a Confession

People of the Internets, I have a confession to make.

First off, that swarm of bees in New York City?



My bad. A word of advice to anyone trying to genetically engineer a swarm of super-intelligent attack bees to take over the world: CLOSE THE DOOR BEHIND YOU. When I walked into my underground lair the next day, all I was left with was a note, in teeny tiny print, telling me the hive had decided to check out a show on Broadway and then hit the Magnolia Bakery afterward for some Red Velvet cupcakes. So now I have to start from scratch and get another grant from DARPA.

Second, as you most likely are aware, there have been several articles of late criticizing YA for being too dark, or not serious enough, or for having cooties. Articles like this, and this. Here's my confession, and it's a big one...These articles were written by me. Yes, I freely admit it! I even went so far as to hire several extras from Glee to go out into public and claim they wrote the pieces to throw people off the trail.

Just like the great Coosawhatchie hoax of May '11*, I never thought the deception would go so far, and I'm deeply sorry for upsetting Twitter. I thought it was obvious that these articles were nothing but a scam. I mean, you all should've known something was up when I said I walked into a bookstore and couldn't find any lighthearted YA! And I can't believe that whole thing about only needing to write 2-3 drafts for a YA book didn't tip somebody off. Finally, the aliases I chose to write under were a clever anagram. If you take each of the authors' names and rearrange the letters, you get, "Sparkle Vampires Rulz, Slutty Werewolves Drulz. Edward xoxo." I really hope someone caught that. I thought that was especially clever of me.



You may be asking yourself, Coosawhaaaa? You may also be asking yourself, why would I perpetrate such a hoax? And here, my dear readers, I must admit to being wholly selfish, for I wanted to keep the awesome to myself. You heard me! YA may be awesome, but it's also a limited resource, and just like Strawberry Pocky and bubble wrap, there's only so much of it to go around. Imagine a world (it'd be a dystopian world) where you walk into a bookstore, and they're all out of Maggie Stiefvater's Forever. Or you try to download Veronica Roth's Divergent onto your Kindle and the...um..Internet tubes are all clogged because... er, everybody wanted to download it... at once. Anyways, like Gandalf before the Balrog, I was determined not to let this pass! So I tried to scare people away from YA. Hey, it worked on Scooby Doo.

To sum up, I'm really, really sorry. On a scale from 1-10, with 1 being 'Oops, I'm sorry I accidentally stole your Belgian chocolate' and 10 being, 'I'm so sorry I took you to the re-make of The Wicker Man,' I'd be a 12. In the future, I promise to limit my hoaxes to South Carolina Sasquatch and urban legends involving the Washington DC Metro.

*Because it can't be said enough: To my knowledge, there are no Bigfoots in South Carolina and if there are, the locals do not call them 'Coosawhatchie.'

Contest Alert

Looking for a critique? Looking for an agent? Looking for a critique from an agent? Then do I have the contest for you.

Author Shelley Watters is hosting a Made of Awesome first page contest on her blog, judged by the completely bad-ass Judith Engracia of Liza Dawson Associates. I don't usually use that term, but Judith has a Siberian Husky named Grendel, does martial arts, and graduated summa cum laude from Fordham University with a B.A. in English and History. Oh yeah, and she did it on a full presidential scholarship. I mean, it's not every day you read a literary agent's bio and ask yourself, "If my MC Justine and this literary agent got in a fight, who would win?" Let's see, both Justine and Judith have martial arts training, but Justine does happen to wield Excalibur. Judith probably doesn't have a magic sword. Then again, Justine doesn't have a Siberian Husky named Grendel, who quite possibly has magical powers, and who may or may not transform into a fierce fighting companion the way Battlecat did in He-Man. So let's call it a draw.

Anyways, the point is: Awesome contest, ends today, May 31, so enter now. First-place winner will win a 10-page critique and the way these contests usually work, Judith may ask to look at the runner-ups' work as well. So, you know, enter! Now!

Still Alive!: An Update

Hi all,

Just wanted to give a quick update on what I've been up to. For the past six months (no, I cannot believe I've been at it THAT long), I've been revising my beloved manuscript, Knights of Avalon, whenever I've had a spare minute. The thing is, between work and cat rescue, there haven't been that many spare minutes.

I have two big goals this time around:

1. Build more of an emotional connection between the reader and the characters, especially my main character Justine.
2. Strengthen character relationships.


That's a little edit, right? I can do that easy. No problem!

It's all about the emotion, people. Not having an emotional connection is like having a car without an engine. But, well, hrm, how do I put this gently... I'm no good at the emotional stuff! Apparently I suck at it more than a factory full of Dyson vacuum cleaners.

I am getting better though, bit by painful bit. Every revision has a little more emotion. And now I've been studying it, putting it under the microscope and figuring out the mechanics of building a connection with the reader, because some people do it naturally, and then there's me.

I hope to be done in a few weeks. When I am done, I'll do two things: 1) Post about what I've learned 2) Have another contest, because it's been way too long! BTW-If there's any particular book you'd like to see go up for grabs, let me know. If I don't have it, maybe I can get it. I definitely take requests when at all possible.

Contest Alert

This just in:

For those of you hunting for an agent, the elusive, usually closed-to-submissions, Ammi-Joan Paquette of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency is judging a pitch contest over at YAtopia. Do you have a finished manuscript? Is it YA/Kid Lit? Can you deliver a fantastic pitch in two sentences? If you can, then head on over. But hurry, the contest is limited to the first 150 entries (and you better believe I'm entering).

Breathless Reads: Top Ten

Since my best friend Aine already did a great job covering our trip down to Raleigh for the Breathless Reads book signing, I thought I'd do something a little different and try a top ten list.

We came, we got books signed, we had fun, and here's ten things I learned along the way:

1. You can never find a Cracker Barrel when you need one.

On the way down to Raleigh, we decided to stop at a Cracker Barrel to eat. The sign said there was one up ahead, it promised us a Cracker Barrel. I'm quite sure we didn't imagine it. It took us significantly longer to drive down (7 hrs) than to drive back up (4.5 hrs). You know why? Because we were looking for that frakkin' Cracker Barrel.

It's like they have cloaking devices. Maybe only certain mortals have the ability to see them. A blessing to some, a curse to others, only a chosen few possess the Seventh Sense, otherwise known as the Cracker Barrel Sight.

2. I don't need an iPad, but I do need a better camera.

On the way down, Aine kindly let me play with her iPad. There were two problems with the iPad: I couldn't type fast on it, so I don't think it'd work for writing, and it was addictive as hell. A potentially dangerous combination. As for my camera, I don't really have one right now, so I've been using my cell phone, with mixed results...



I swear, these authors are much less blurry in person.



3. Beth Revis is all about the explosions.

Looking over my notes, I can't tell you how many times the words 'Beth Revis' and 'blow stuff up' appear in close proximity. Also, Beth, who was a school teacher, killed off a bunch of former students in her book. So don't mess with her!

4. Kirsten Miller has the best how-I-got-published story I think I've ever heard.

It goes like this: Kirsten was living in Manhattan at the time. While on her lunch break at work, waiting in line in the cafeteria, a co-worker asked her what her plans were for the weekend. A little embarrassed, she mentioned that she was writing a book. The co-worker said he "knew someone in publishing" and asked to take a look. So she gave him the manuscript, expecting that he'd put it away and never give it a second glance. Except the next day, he got slammed with a terrible case of the flu, so bad that he couldn't get out of bed, and the only reading material within reach was Kirsten's manuscript. Stuck in bed, he read it and liked it enough to pass it on to his friend, who helped Kirsten get published.

The moral of the story: If you're having trouble getting published, maybe you should move to New York City and hang out in random cafeterias.

5. Ally Condie is working on a book for her son's birthday.

According to her young son's very exacting specifications, it has to have animals, but no cats. Cats are forbidden.

6. There were a whole lot of 'jigsaw' writers on the panel.

When I say 'jigsaw', I mean writers who write out of order and piece the scenes together. I think Beth Revis was the only writer who didn't do that. Her style was more linear, one sentence after another, with little to no idea what would come next. I totally understand that, because I've tried the jigsaw method before and it did not work for me.

Brenna Yovanoff, on the other hand, doesn't just write out of order, even her sentences aren't fully formed at first. It's only later that everything is smoothed out and made cohesive. I also thought Brenna had a good piece of advice, in that she talked about the importance of actually finishing stuff. She said that she'd written many fragments of books, but actually finishing one was an entirely different experience.

7. Everybody on the panel has some exciting projects they're working on.

Beth Revis is writing A Million Suns, the sequel to Across the Universe.

Brenna Yovanoff's next book will be called The Space Between.

Kirsten Miller is working on All You Desire, a sequel to The Eternal Ones.

Ally Condie has Crossed, the follow-up to Matched, coming out later this year.

And Andrea Cremer, who has the impressive ability to juggle multiple projects at once, is working on a Steampunk series, a prequel to Nightshade set in the highlands of Scotland in the 1400s, and probably a project or two that I wasn't able to write down. Because that girl's prolific, that she is.

8. The spaceship in Across the Universe is inspired by the Planet Express ship in Futurama.

Also, Beth Revis is a browncoat. I hereby award her 10,000 extra awesome points just for that.

9. Andrea Cremer was obsessed with the name Majesta when she was ten years old.

Andrea says she can't write until the name is right (I'm like that!). While Beth Revis just picks names that she likes. Brenna Yovanoff is a spontaneous namer too.

10. On the subject of names, Kirsten Miller once met a taxi driver named Bedelletrix.

Kirsten immediately decided that she would have a character with that name in one of her books, and that Bedelletrix would be a) a villain b) wear Lee press-on nails c) raise Chinchillas.

Bonus Fun Fact!

Quail Ridge Books, where the book signing was held and which is a surprisingly large indie bookstore in Raleigh that I'd love to visit again, has one of the best bathrooms I've ever seen. If you visit, you really must stop and see the bathroom. You must!