WonderCon Appearance This Sunday!

mood: old school
pandora/ipod: "rump shaker" by wreckx-in-effect

WonderCon is this weekend in Anaheim, WOO HOO!!!! And I'm lucky enough to be on the YA panel on Sunday, March 18th at 3pm with some freaking amazing authors. Here's the program blurb:

3:00-4:00 Shivers, Shakes, and Swoon: the Young Adult Books We Can't Put Down — Come along for a Q&A session and chat about the hottest new titles in YA fiction. Moderated by Andrea Cremer (The Nightshade Series) and featuring Ann Aguirre (Enclave), Kami Garcia (co-author of the Beautiful Creatures novels), Gretchen McNeil (Possess), Lissa Price (Starters), Ransom Riggs (Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children), and Veronica Rossi (Under the Never Sky). Room 207

I KNOW, RIGHT? In addition, I'll be signing at the Mysterious Galaxy Booth alongside Andrea Cremer on Sunday, March 18th at 11am.

And do you know what's even more awesome?

There will be 15 ARCs of TEN on hand.  First come, first serve.

Hope to see you there!!!

I've Got Junk in my Trunk

mood: bump and grindy
pandora/ipod: "vogue" by madonna

I used to think that published authors didn't have abandoned, trunked novels. Apparently, we do.

Oh yes, we do.

And mine is a DOOZY! A PLOTLESS BIZARRO DOOZY!!!!

TEN Bookmarks!

mood: coughy
pandora/ipod: "steady as she goes" by the raconteurs

My dear friend (and kick ass writer) Demetra Brodsky designed these for me and a massive box arrived in the mail yesterday! WOO HOO!

So I thought I'd do a little giveaway...

Of signed bookmarks.

That NO ONE ELSE HAS YET.

DO YOU REALLY WANT IT?

First 20 (yes, that's right, twenty) commenters below will get a couple of signed TEN bookmarks.  Just leave your email addy.

Ready? Set? COMMENT!

TEN, Annotated

mood: focused
pandora/ipod: "jupiter" from the planets, by gustav holst

Just a sample of what I'm working on for the big giveaway over at Me, My Shelf, and I!  Annotated pages from TEN!

How awesome is that?  I'm having SO much fun annotating the pages, too.

Want to win it?  Check out the post below...  :D

TEN Scavenger Hunt Round Up

mood: gatekeeper-y
pandora/ipod: "rhinestone cowboy" by glen campbell

THE TEN COVER REVEAL IS LIVE!!!!!!!!!

And so is the contest! To recap - ten clues scattered over the internet for the last ten days. Collect them all, and you can enter to win a signed and annotated copy of the unbound galley of TEN at Me, My Shelf and I. Yes, annotated - like I'm going to write all over it with anecdotes and pithy commentary about my writing process, etc.

How awesome is that???

So if you haven't been paying attention, here's where you can find all ten clues...

CLUE 1: My YARebels Vlog

CLUE 2: Myra McEntire

CLUE 3: Carolina Valdez Miller

CLUE 4: Shelli Johannes-Wells

CLUE 5: Jen Hayley

CLUE 6: 365 Days of Reading

CLUE 7: Elana Johnson

CLUE 8: Christine Fonseca

CLUE 9: Kimberly Sabatini

CLUE 10: Kimberly Derting

A huge thanks to all the authors and bloggers who participated in the scavenger hunt. It was so sweet of you all to give your time and energy to this! I owe you all a favor. :)

Meanwhile, the contest will be open for an ENTIRE WEEK, so get on it, people!

And I hope you like the cover.

Countdown to the Cover Reveal for TEN

mood: jazz hands
pandora/ipod: "punk rock girl" by the dead milkmen

It's a ten day countdown to TEN - an online scavenger hunt to collect ten clues for a chance to win a signed and annotated copy of the unbound galley of TEN.

How awesome is that?

And it's international.  I LOVE THE WORLD!

Hastag: #10for10

First clue and next link on the hunt are in the vlog. GOOD LUCK!

Rejection CAN Be Helpful!

mood: thankful
pandora/ipod: "tik tok" by ke$ha

In today's YARebels vlog, I'm discussing how rejection can actually be the most helpful thing for a writer, especially when the agents passing on your manuscript take the time to give you some advice. Hey, it happened to me!

Oh yes. Also teasing the launch of my TEN cover reveal contest next week!

Interview with Author Christine Fonseca

mood: sleepy
pandora/ipod: "dies irae" from the mozart requiem

My dear friend Christina Fonseca is blog touring to promote her new release DIES IRAE, a novella from her upcoming REQUIEM series that begins with LACRIMOSA (Compass Press, March 2012).  Here's the skinny:

Some sacrifices should never be made—even for love.

Mikayel lives by one rule—obey the orders of the angelic Council at all costs. But when he and his friends, Azza and Demi, are sent to Earth as teenagers, following the rules is more difficult than they expected.

Being human isn’t the only problem facing the three angels. Unbeknownst to the Council, demonic activity is on the rise, threatening to break a tenuous peace that has existed for a millennia.

Caught in a struggle for power with unseen demonic forces, and fighting against his rising emotional, Mikayel must now decide how many rules he is willing to break to save his friends, a decision that could reignite an ancient war and will threaten the only thing that matters to the angels, the survival of humanity.

And a little bit about Christine:

School psychologist by day, critically acclaimed YA and nonfiction author by night, Christine Fonseca believes that writing is a great way to explore humanity. Her debut YA Gothic series, The Requiem Series, including DIES IRAE and LACRIMOSA, examines the role of redemption, sacrifice and love.

When she’s not writing or spending time with her family, she can be sipping too many skinny vanilla lattes at her favorite coffee house or playing around on Facebook and Twitter. Catch her daily thoughts about writing and life on her blog.

Awesome, right?

So without further ado, here's my awesome interview with Christine!!!

~~~~~~~~~~

ME: What are your favorite and least favorite parts of the writing "process"?

CF: That’s easy! I hate drafting. With a passion, actually. But I LOVE editing. And coming up with a new story. Now, if I could just figure out how to get it out of my head more quickly.

ME: What was the main inspiration for this book?

CF: DIES IRAE is based off of a story told by one of the characters in the novel, LACRIMOSA. The series itself was inspired by a lot of the traditional angel/demon lore, in particular the story of the Watchers and the fall of Lucifer.

ME: Who would you cast if your book was made into a movie?

CF: OOhh…Love this question. Hmm. I think Alex Pettyfer is a perfect Mikayel. Azza could be played by Adam Gregory, and Dianna Agron makes a great Demi. (**Note** Yes, my teen group helped me come up with the list! And yes, it is Teen approved)

ME: If you could ask one person, living or dead, a single question that they'd HAVE to answer, who and what would be it?

CF: This may sound lame, but I would love to ask Mozart about his artistic processes. I know, bizarre. But there you have it.

FAST FIVE:
Pie or Cake? Neither; I like cookies. Oh wait, and cheesecake!
Coffee or Tea? Definitely coffee. With steamed milk. Yum!
Mac or PC? Both, depending on what I am doing. But for writing - PC
Guilty Pleasure? Dark chocolate; the darker the better!
Can't live without? My husband and my girls. Cliché, I know. But true.

90 Days of Pain

mood: day job blues
pandora/ipod: "f*** you" by cee-lo green

It's that time again.

When I need to write to deadline.

And you know what that means: a crazy deadline gimmick that keeps me on track!!!!

I wish I was one of those people who can just write all the time.  They finish one project, and BOOM! immediately into the next one.  They're like an endless fountain of creativity and productivity, always cranking out enormous word counts, three manuscripts a year, ideas popping into their heads like they're going out of style.

I hate you people.

Clearly, I am NOT one of those writers.  I'm a slogger.  I keep a spreadsheet with my daily progress reflected against my goal.  If I get ahead, I can slack.  If I get behind, I need to buckle down.  But it's the only way I can hit deadlines.

So here's the plan, which I'm calling 90 Days of Pain.  In the next 90 days, I'm going to write approximately 80K words.  That should be pretty easy - a mere 900 words a day on average.  When I wrote TEN in ten weeks, I was doing almost double that (and it almost killed me...)

But the problem is, I've been averaging like 900 words a week, not a day.  Which is why I need the structure.

And 900 words a day sounds perfectly doable.  But it really hasn't been.  Not lately.  For example, last night I was at Twilight Zone: Unscripted, tonight I'm attending a premiere screening of Jennifer Bosworth's new short film, and Thursday night I'm seeing an early screening of The Woman In Black.  Yeah.  So when, exactly, do those 900 words a day come in?

Don't ask.

Oh, and not to mention all the promo for TEN I've got to start planning.  In just under two weeks, I'll be announcing a HUGE contest for the TEN cover reveal, then I'm putting together a storyboard for the trailer (two words: The Ring) the concept for which is so scary it actually gave me goosebumps, AND I'm putting together TEN swag (three words: collect them all) which I want to have ready by the time the ARCs come out in a few weeks.

So yeah, it's not like I'm busy.

90 Days of Pain.  Starting....NOW!