BLOG BIRTHDAY!

Do you know what today is?

My Blog is 

TWO YEARS OLD

My blog is talking in full sentences now, walking like a champ and has even started potting training.

Woah.

I am so blessed to have my writer friends and to be a part of this amazing community.

I'm also a few followers shy of 200.

So I'm feeling a contest coming on!


How does a Mystery BOX sound?  How about you get to PICK what goes inside? 

Last time my mystery boxes were filled with books?  What will it be this time? Well probably more books.  Since Borders shut down I'm got bookshelves that are OVERLOADED.

No matter what I'll make it awesome.  Cause that's what I do.  I make things awesome.

Fill out the form below...



Contest ends 10-12

Roids and reseach SUPER Fail

TOO MANY FUNNY THINGS... BRAIN WILL EXPLODED!!!!

Um... yeah... How many things are WRONG with this picture?

Leave comments below.

Constantly improving

I feel like my writing has sort of tapered off.  The quality isn't there like it used to be.  Does anyone else get that feeling?
Is it a case of the writer necrotic brain explosion?

It's hard to tell.

I've been writing a lot of first drafts. 

A lot.

But I haven't revised anything in a while.

Revision is where the book really starts to shine.  It's like finding a rock in the mud and washing away the grim until you find something that's not quite a diamond but not nearly as muddy and gross as it was a few minutes ago.

Revision is a LONG process for me.  I normally put MONTHS between myself and the first draft.  Sometime even years. 

I like to stay as objective as possible.  I like to look at my writing as if a stranger wrote it, that way I can kill my babies. 

But obviously I'm not good at it.  No System At All took 16 drafts.  YIKES.
In an effort to be slightly more effective I'm taking a writing course on revision.  It's a whole new experaince for me. The last writing course I took was novel writing for adults.  It was a community college course, which was fine, but I could have used a higher level course.

This is at a writing center.  It's for serious writers. Writers who one day will be authors.

I'll let you know how it goes.

In other news I'm getting close to my two year blog birthday.  I'd like to push my followers to 200. 

The down side is since I can only access blogs through google reader, I can't comment on anyone else's blog. Which makes me feel like I'm cheating on you.  Sorry. 

But a big contest is coming....

I can feel it.

It's going to be awesome.

Read for Rellef

Holy Shnikes did you hear about this AMAZING Critique you could win at  READ FOR RELIEF?!?!   There's lots of great items to bid on from arcs to more critiques... but this one is the best....  :-)


From YA writers Pam Harris, Marquita Hockaday, Alicia Gregoire, Holly Dodson, Erinn Manack, and Katherine Owens

6 YA writers and critique partners come together to give you a critique package that will make your manuscript submission-ready.  (NOTE: Manuscript must be YA and ready for critique by March 30, 2012.)

The package includes:

• 1 query critique: Pam Harris
• 1 synopsis critique (1-2 page limit): Holly Dodson
• 1 first pages critique (10-15 page limit): Marquita Hockaday
• 1 first 50 pages critique: Alicia Gregoire
• 1 full manuscript (up to 90K words) “in-depth” critique: Katharine Owens
• 1 full manuscript (up to 90K words) “big picture” critique: Erinn Manack

About the critiquers:

• Pam Harris is a school counselor by day and YA writer by night. She is a contributor to Paper Hangover and is represented by the lovely Sarah LaPolla at Curtis Brown, Ltd. You can learn more about her on her blog and on Twitter.
• Holly Dodson is Super Mom, YA writer, and eater of many Sweettarts. She is a contributor to Paper Hangover. You can learn more about her on her blog and on Twitter.
• Marquita Hockaday is 20-something, constantly reading or writing YA, throwing in time to teach history to our youth (saving them essentially) while stalking the finest literary agents and Hollywood actors. You can learn more about her on her blog and on Twitter.
• Alicia Gregoire writes edgy YA fiction while combating the machinations of her two cats.  You can learn more about her on her blog and on Twitter.
• Katharine Owens is a YA and MG writer, mom, professor, environmental nerd, amateur naturalist, and lover of all things bug. You can learn more about her on her blog and on Twitter. 
• Erinn Manack is a YA writer, middle school teacher, and a contributor to The Patch. She’s written five books but has beta read many more. You can learn more about her on her blog and on Twitter. 

This item will close on Friday, September 16th, at 10:00PM EST

Go check out all the auctions for Hurricane relief

Amazon Fail

We buy a lot of thing from Amazon.  There was a time over the summer when I was on a first name bases with the UPS guy, because he was at my house four times in one week.

But every once and a while there's a fail.

I know what you're thinking.  Wow that's a big box.  Something amazing must have been inside.
Was it a blu ray player?  A car seat? A really tiny dinosaur?

Nope.

A hello kitty umbrella.  Look at the size of it.  I'm pretty sure the umbrella wasn't shipped OPEN.  That's just bad luck for anyone who opens the box indoors.

Here's a better picture to get the scale.

Can you say overkill?

So readers what's your weird shipping story?

There I've said it...

I started a new school year, which means two things.
1) I've got a lot of names I need to learn
2) There's lots of changes.

You know what? I don't care.

I'm super excited about this year.

I used Phineas and Ferb to teach 5 different types of questioning.

My students are awesome.  My school is amazing.  Yeppers work is good.

I told my students that I finished my 5th book this weekend.  One kid raised his hand and asked, "if you get  published and make a million dollars will you quit?"

I laughed.

I laughed loud.

Really loud.

My answer was, "no because I like things, like my roof, electricity and food."

At the end of the day, I love my job.  I love my students (but not in a creepy way). 

Happy school year everyone.

Here's a picture of my kid just before her first dance class.  The lady behind her is not me.

Food fail

Over the summer in a rest stop in North Carolina, I saw a man that looked like a real life character Jason Stathem would play.

He was HUGE, but he was walking a dog that looked like this:

But the MOST distrubing thing at the rest stop was this.

Ok it was in a vending machine, BAKING in the direct sunlight.  For those of you who can't read the little picture here's a zoom in.

Big Mama Pickled Sausages... artiicficially COLORED. it's so artitifically colored they needed to write it TWICE.  There are SO MANY things wrong with this.

Can you find at least one?  Leave it in the comments.

WIP it WIP It GOOD

So I just hit save on my latest WIP, Universal Breakdown.

It's a whole 37K and 151 pages.  I've been writing long enough to know that a Sh*tty rough draft is an understatement. 

This book is going to be a beast to revise.

Mostly because I planned it to be the first in a trilogy, but since the first book is SO short I don't know if I should just go ahead and write book two and make it into 1 book.

The other big problem I had, about four weeks ago, I fell out of love with it.  The writing wasn't as strong as I knew it should be and I sort of just wanted to get to the "good" stuff in book two.

And I wanted to start a different WIP.

And I have a TON of revising to do for Penny and Hank

And I have to Beta Alicia's book, because I feel insanely guilty that I haven't gotten to.

And writing has sort of broken my heart.

But that's another blog post.

For now I can just be happy I finished my latest WIP.

And now for  motivational vid:  Enjoy