Do Mix: YA and Dance

So You Think You Can Dance choreographers seem to be reaping the young adult novel market for inspiration!!

Inspired by the Addiction in Ellen Hopkin's Crank?



Inspired by the Vampires of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight?



Inspired by the Zombies of Carrie Ryan's The Forest of Hands and Teeth?

Do It Even Though It Is So Tacky And Obnoxious: Name Dropping

I can't help myself. The past two weeks of travelling from San Francisco to Washington, DC and New York have been bursting with amazing places, interesting people, and cool things.

I promise this is only a sample!

PLACES

Yankees Stadium: They have caramel apples. Yankees Stadium 1. Giants Stadium 0.






The Popover Cafe: Air-conditioned pit-stop after strolling through Central Park







Baked by Melissa: bite sized cupcake genius






Serendipity: the picture speaks for itself - frozen hot chocolate goodness!







Mooncake: Closest I got to "Food-O'-My-People" just a few blocks from Penn before returning via train to San Francisco to new York








Writers House: Check out that shelf! How do I get on it? If you look really hard on the left side you will see a teensy peek of my agent, Maya!





PEOPLE

Sophie Littlefield: While her booksigning was the highlight of my time with Sophie, last-minute McD's runs and pajama party rank up there, too


Lynn Coddington: Fellow PensFatales got a quote in the Washington Post! They also awarded her a PhD in English to accompany her actual PhD in, I believe, Socio-Linguistics.



Ellen Oh: Her Blueboard avatar is an adorable little pig but in real life she's an adorable human with great taste in Korean food and no compunction about stalking fellow Blueboarders Marissa Doyle and Melissa Marr at the RWA Literacy signing.





Shana Silver: Her Blueboard avatar makes her seem six feet tall but in real life we're evenly matched at five feet! I only met her for a few hours at New York's A Voce but am convinced she's going to take over the world with her next manuscript.





Lizette Serrano: We've always met up on my turf so it was great to see her on her turf (Scholastic = Heaven) and to meet the wonderful ladies she works with - Scholastic authors are a lucky bunch!


THINGS

The RITA Award!! San Francisco Area's Romance Writers of America congratulates its member, Pam Rosenthal, for her RITA win! And we thank her for letting us touch it!

RWA Conference Check In

Madness. Utter Madness.

My tweets have the play by play but to summarize so far.

Train ride from San Francisco to Washington DC = stopped toilets, broken refrigeration in dining hall, delays requiring a bus ride to cut off our connecting train, and lots and lots of Gilmore Girls

Days 1-3 of Conference: Opportunities abound for meeting authors. Breakfasts, night-time room-hopping, coffee, the bar, speeches, free autographings - there's an author around every corner. Sometimes, in fact, an author you idolize may find her way into your suite. So be sure to wear pants at all times. Just cuz you're in your own suite doing your own thing, don't think that you're safe. Cuz one of your roommates will let the author you idolize into the room. And that's all I'm going to write about that.

I also got to meet fellow Verla Kayer Ellen Oh who took me out for awesome Korean cuisine after we co-stalked our other Verla cohorts Marissa Doyle and Melissa Marr. Yay for Verla's!

Try It: Cross Country Train

Between Saturday July 11th and Tuesday, July 14th, I'll be on rails.

The 72 hours will be filled with:
- reading (Claudia Gray's Evernight, Julia Quinn's What Happens In London, and Gaelen Foley's My Wicked Marquess),
- evaluating manuscripts from my critique group,
- napping,
- eating,
- stretching (lots of stretching! the quarters are cramped)
- watching DVDs (Gilmore Girls, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and BBC's Persuasion)

Catch my Twitter Feed for live train updates as my connection allows!

If this is anything like my last cross country trip:
- someone's gonna moon me
- I'll talk my way into the control room
- the night sky in the Midwest will glitter in the all-window observatory train
- someone else is gonna moon me
- we'll run out of water and it's gonna get medieval

See you on the other side at Romance Writer's of America's 2009 National Conference in Washington, D.C.

Do It: The Math

You know the saying - it's usually employed in math-less situations like "Tommy found Lisa in bed with his brother - you do the math." When it comes to being an author, I don't know if there's any actual math, but there's enough going on that I feel like I'm in the center of a big Ponzi scheme and I want someone to talk me down...or actually up...to the top of the pyramid.

Authors are a supportive group. They trade information on message boards. They mentor complete strangers on query technique. They give away critiques for good causes. They offer cover blurbs to up-and-coming authors.

I've heard it, read it, know it - the higher the quality of books that get published, the better it is for the publishing industry and therefore for all writers, everywhere. That's why we help each other hone craft. That's why we chant the mantra: don't quit, never quit, never give up. Keep reaching for that publishing star.

But in publishing, there are only so many slots to go around. Once an author establishes at a house they're going to take up future slots to make a career. I don't want to sit around waiting for authors to die so a slot can open up, but I'm doing the math and coming up negative.

Once you're in the position to work a little publicity, you start your blog. The number #1 advice to get viewers? Go comment on other blogs. Then maybe someone will comment on you. So you've got someone running around on blogs hoping people comment back and so and and so forth and...the math's not looking too good here, either.

Someone has to lose. Someone has to never publish. Someone has to do more commenting then they're commented on. Someone is probably me. Odds are, right? That's how the math works.

This is not a blatantly or even carefully veiled request for encouraging words. I don't need them. I promise. It's okay.

My friend held an intervention with me the other day. "When are you going to quit?" she asked. She meant writing. "One year?" she asked. "Two?"

May as well have slapped me across the face. But she meant well because I was giving up free time, time with friends, time at my job, time with her, too. I was losing sleep. Sacrificing my health.

But my answer: "When I die. When I give up my job, the house, you, my husband, my other friends - all of you - you all came into my life after my dream of writing writing. You always will."

That's some pretty hefty math. Life, love, happiness all for a sliver of a fraction of a chance at a dream.

I've done the math. Have you?