Phase 2

...and the last couple days have been Illness, Phase 2. Both Child and Hubby came down with my virus at the same time. Fevers and the joys of stomach flu. So I was out of work again taking care of them...

*sigh*

STILL, both are nearly all better today, thank goodness. Just in time for Child and I to head out to the mother/daughter weekend Girl Scout camp we've been planning since April! It was touch-and-go there for a while, but I'm so happy we can go.

I'll be totally away from the internet for the duration, but hope y'all have a lovely weekend!!! See you next week, which I hope will be significantly more uneventful and more full of writing...

Daily Walk

Ha. I DID manage to go for a walk today! Victory.

It was cloudy and muggy, but I got a few interesting pictures all the same. Strangely today's seemed to be more about the past and decay...but I love stuff like that too.

We had a busy weekend at Evel Knievel Days. Nope, I'm not kidding. I even rode in a monster truck. :) FINALLY feeling almost all well...thanks for the get-well wishes, guys!

Today's pictures:

I admit, I don't know what this is. I just liked the look of it sitting there.

Flowers!

Brief moment of sun. Doesn't this look Greek or something?

This one does not look Greek. I'm still trying to puzzle out what used to be written on the door.

Not quite so daily.

Well, my "daily" plan got blown out of the water straightaway...Tuesday night I came down with a 24-hour bug, which left me not really wanting to walk more than a few steps Wednesday or yesterday. Today I'm back at work, but still a bit "wobbly on my pins" as an old British woman might say.

Sometimes I channel an old British woman. Don't mind me.

Anyway, I will try to get back on my action plan as soon as energy levels warrant. In the meantime, have a wonderful weekend!! And thanks for your loverly comments!!

Daily Walk Illustrated

I KNOW. I haven't posted in forever. It's not like I forgot about you--it's been an item on my to-do list nearly every day--and it's not like there hasn't been anything going on. July is festival month 'round here, so we've had 4th of July extravaganzas and the last year of the National Folk Festival, and piles of goings-on in between. I just haven't quite gotten to it.

Today, though, I started a little possible side project, and thought it would be fun to share with you.

Hubby and I had been going for walks pretty regularly in the afternoon, 1-2 miles a day...until we didn't anymore. He got busy, it was too hot, whatever. We stopped, and my clothes are starting not to fit again. Today I decided just to GO by myself, and along the way to indulge another craving I've been having: photography. Lately I see everything in still images, and I've been itching to take the good camera out for a run.

So my plan: go for a walk as often as I can, by myself or otherwise. Daily if possible. Bring the camera, and document interesting stuff. And post a few on the blog! Why not? It's exercise, creative, AND fun.

So here are a few pics from today's adventure, for your enjoyment! All copyright me, because I took them. :P

Love Day Thursday

I haven't done one of these for a while, so here we go!

Love day is celebrating what you love RIGHT THIS MINUTE. I love:

• The sunshine and 70-degree weather going on outside my window. I'm hoping to have lunch on a deck somewhere today.
• My writer friends, and all the new people I've met over the past couple of days!
• Agents and editors who are awesome (most, in my experience) and respond to emails and posts right away even though I know they're busy people.
• The Lindt Dark Chocolate with A Touch of Sea Salt bar I've been snacking off of all week.
• My husband, who just called me with two grammar questions in a row.
• Paychecks.
• The first day of the month, when I get to turn the new page on the calendar.
• The prospect of taking Child to the library this weekend to discover new books.

How about you? What do you love?

Envy follow-up

Wow. I have been overwhelmed by the positive response to yesterday's Envy post, both publicly and privately.

You guys are AMAZING. Thank you!

Also, apparently you all have the same issues I have. :)

I had to clarify that I'm not in a bad place right now--I'm happily working away on research for a big revision on SALVAGED, and it'll be a little bit before I'm on submission again. It's probably because I am feeling secure that I could write about it, actually. But obviously it's enough of a universal issue that it's important to recognize and discuss.

Thank you all for reading and discussing!

Envy

This post is going to be brutally honest. I hope you don't think less of me at the end of it. But I think this is an important thing to write about, because I swear all us writers experience it whether we admit it or not, whether we want to or not.

Sour, stomach-twisting, soul-sucking ENVY.

I've been doing this writing thing off and on for 10 years. I've been doing the trying-to-get-published thing hardcore, with agented submissions and revisions and resubmissions, for more than 2. I've gotten close. I have high hopes for the novel I'm working on now. But I haven't yet quite made it past that hurdle, and it's been an emotionally drenched up-and-down run.

The writing community--especially the YA writing community--is close, a tangled knot of interconnected writers, where everybody knows and supports each other. I spend my days surrounded online by YA writers I love. I cheer with them, joke with them, read their work and blogs and emails. I feel that most of them are friends tangentially at least, and many are good friends. I adore these people. I truly want them to succeed.

And yet--and yet.

Still it kicks me in the gut when I read about another 3-book deal with an editor we submitted to. Still I have to take a breath before I smile when I hear someone's book went to auction in the first week of submission. Still I flinch when I see writers half my age sell their fourth book, see people who went on submission long after I did showing their covers or their release dates. Sometimes it's hard to be surrounded virtually by success at something you want so badly, but haven't managed. (yet)

But here's the good news, in my opinion. That horrible envy, those moments of selfishness? They're OKAY. It is perfectly normal and natural to feel a moment of bad for yourself in the midst of feeling glad for others. It's human.

The tricks I've found to feeling that way and still going on, without falling into the suck:

• Allow yourself to feel bad, but NOT FOR LONG. Put a time limit on it. You can feel sorry for yourself for--oh, an hour. Max. And then you get the heck over yourself and you realize that person, that friend, has felt this way too, has had their own struggles, but they've finally made it. And now is their time to celebrate, and your time to HELP THEM CELEBRATE. They need you to. It's okay to feel the envy pangs--it is not okay to wallow.
• Never allow your personal issues to show (erm, outside of this blog post). Envy is personal and private, and okay in that context. It's *maybe* okay to share with a close, trusted friend. It is never allowed, in my opinion, to let any sense of envy dictate your behavior: to say rude things or bring anyone down.
• Realize that everyone feels this way at some point. Even if they seemingly sailed to this achievement, be absolutely certain they've had issues you have no idea about, that there's more behind the scenes. 
• Don't let up. Continue to focus on your work, on improving, on things you can control. That is how you will make it to the celebration stage yourself. 

In short: feel it, but don't let it bring you down. Use that envy to up your efforts. If you have work you're excited about, it's so much easier to truly be happy for others.

And all my dear friends who have succeeded, are succeeding: don't be afraid to share your good news with me! I promise that even if it makes me hurt for a second, that is quickly overwhelmed by my happiness that you really have done it.

And hope that if you can, if I keep pounding someday I will too.

10 Weird Things about Montana

Because I've been a transplant for 7 years now, and I think it's time I confessed:

Top 10 Weird Things about Montana
(From a California perspective, with great affection. In no particular order other than how I thought of them)

1. People say "crick" for "creek". Really. It has two ee's in the middle. How do you get an "i" out of that? I may let my child say "pop" for soda (even though it makes me shudder a little), but I will not ever let her get away with "crick".
2. On the public radio station they interrupt to announce lost dogs.
3. Speaking of dogs, they wander around on their own or in packs, all over the place. It is very, very common to have traffic stopped on the main street to let a dog pass. Though now that I think about it, that might just be in this town.
4. The air sometimes smells like mountain scent air freshener, naturally.
5. They just don't use toilet seat covers. Anywhere. In CA they were *everywhere*.
6. They not only accept checks for everything, they EXPECT them. Even in the drive-through for fast food. Though god help you if you're not a local, because only local checks.
7. Everybody seems to like their coffee sickeningly sweet. From drive-through coffee stands. With straws in the hole of the to-go cup. Why would I want to sip hot coffee out of a straw and scald my mouth?
8. It is *always* okay to be dressed in jeans. It is perfectly acceptable for a woman to wear jeans to a wedding.
9. Maybe this isn't weird, but there is a huge loyalty (and discrimination) based on being FROM here, actually born in this town or at least in Montana. If an article is written about you in the paper, it will always say whether you are or are not a "native". This is one of the first questions asked in every social setting.
10. I live in a town of about 35,000 people. And it's a big town for Montana. I love that.

I do love it here. In spite of the winter and all the differences, it's gorgeous, and I can be in the mountains in 5 minutes--and it's a great place to raise a child.

Cycling

I like cycles. As I get older, I see that much of life is cyclic, and somehow that makes me feel better. When I'm in a low I know I'll come out of it again, and when I'm in a high I ride it for as long as possible.

One of my more mundane but obvious cycles--and probably yours too--is groceries.

It starts out like this:

Hmm, I think. I need to go grocery shopping.

*Note: this image is a LIE. Even when my refrigerator is empty of useful food, it is still crammed full of sauces and jars of jam you'd have to scrape to get anything from and forgotten jars of purple cabbage stuffed in the back.

I love grocery shopping. It makes me feel all hunter-gathery.

Or Tartar-Warrior-ish. Like that.

Have I mentioned that I want to take archery lessons?

Anyway. I like to make lists based on weekly menus and go attack the store. I load up, always optimistically thinking OH and we can eat that!, sometimes buying too much for the week.

Generally I buy so much fresh stuff--fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, bread, juice, milk--that I have to cram it all in.

Aaaahh.

I feel happy and satisfied. I can make ANYTHING I WANT! LOOK! LOOK AT THE CHOICES!

This lasts for a day.

Then I start worrying about the food. How are we going to eat all this before it goes bad? It doesn't help that my husband, every time he opens the fridge, says "How are we going to eat all this before it goes bad?" :)

So we start in with the meals, eating our way through all that good fresh stuff. And about 5 days later, I am relieved. We've done it. The meals have been good, we've eaten it all. Success! But there's a little problem...

*sigh*

Writing's like that too: new idea! Play play play! Hate. Love. Edit edit edit! Send to people. Accept crushing feedback, rejoice in fabulous feedback. Regroup. Edit edit edit! Send to more people. Repeat of above. Edit edit edit! Let go. New idea!

Everything's a cycle. Right now in food I'm at the last image. In writing, I'm at the brain-break-before-editing phase.

It's all good. You've got to relish each part of the cycle--or get through it, if it's a bad bit. Or make do with the food you have on hand.

I think that's enough mangled metaphors for today, don't you?

Poetry Friday

It's been a difficult, tumultuous week.

Interestingly, after difficult times I find myself thoughtful, introspective, and appreciative of what I have. I seek inspiration and hope everywhere, whether fishing (I caught 7 trout Wednesday night, hurrah!) or reading, hugs or emails.

For Poetry Friday I choose this one, celebrating something that I love.


Books
by Billy Collins
(borrowed from The Writer's Almanac)

From the heart of this dark, evacuated campus
I can hear the library humming in the night,
a choir of authors murmuring inside their books
along the unlit, alphabetical shelves,
Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son,
each one stitched into his own private coat,
together forming a low, gigantic chord of language.

I picture a figure in the act of reading,
shoes on a desk, head tilted into the wind of a book,
a man in two worlds, holding the rope of his tie
as the suicide of lovers saturates a page,
or lighting a cigarette in the middle of a theorem.
He moves from paragraph to paragraph
as if touring a house of endless, paneled rooms.

I hear the voice of my mother reading to me
from a chair facing the bed, books about horses and dogs,
and inside her voice lie other distant sounds,
the horrors of a stable ablaze in the night,
a bark that is moving toward the brink of speech.

I watch myself building bookshelves in college,
walls within walls, as rain soaks New England,
or standing in a bookstore in a trench coat.

I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves,
straining in circles of light to find more light
until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs
that we follow across a page of fresh snow;

when evening is shadowing the forest
and small birds flutter down to consume the crumbs,
we have to listen hard to hear the voices
of the boy and his sister receding into the woods.

These are a few of my embarrassing things...

Tawna Fenske started it.

Actually, maybe Linda Grimes did.

And then @BostonBookGirl reminded me of a good tale of my own.

Ah, those shining moments of embarrassment, when you truly wish the floor would swallow you up, because whatever monster is wriggling under the floor is CLEARLY better than where you are. Visible. Hideously exposed. Not only not-perfect-and-cool, but a mockery of humanity.


Or just klutzy.

When people ask me my most embarrassing moment, up till now my mind has always flown back to those agonizing two minutes freshman year of high school, when I slipped and slid--facedown--across the slick floor of the hall...and then the bell rang and everybody in the known universe poured out to find me there. But that's just high school. There are MORE.

Sixth grade. My teacher sent me somewhere--don't remember where, but I was pretty much teacher's pet at that point, so it's not surprising he'd send reliable me on a mission. Except I got easily distracted (then, as now) and didn't look where I was going. I slammed my forehead full-force into the metal pole standing outside the classroom. In view of everyone. Oh, yes. Knocked myself out for a couple seconds, and had to be helped by one of my less-distracted, eye-rolling classmates to the nurse's office to check for a concussion.

*sigh*

Seventh grade, English class. We were doing a word-search contest for some reason, which I usually won (still teacher's pet and always a word nerd). Problem: I had a really bad habit of sucking on the back of my pens while working. Bigger problem: this pen...it exploded. In my mouth.

So I had to decide: try to hide this incident, and possibly die from ink poisoning? Confess, spit, get help?

I trotted to the front of the class, my mouth bursting with ink, blue-black dripping from the corners like I was a vampire dining on octopus. Nurse's office. Spitting. Reputation oh-so-cool.

Geez. It's a wonder I survived at all. I'm sure there's more, too--that's just what I can think of right now.

How about you? Wanna keep me company with some fun tragic episodes of embarrassment?

The best liar of the day is...

Laurie Lamb! Laurie, send your address to susan (dot) adrian (at) yahoo.com so I can bundle off your copy!

Thank you all for playing along! I had such fun reading these, and I had a tough time deciding. Honorable Mentions go to:

--Bill Cameron, Patrick Lee, and CKHB for their lies about Sean Ferrell and each other. Because everyone loves to lie about Sean Ferrell.

--Linda Grimes (bff) for starting it off and shamelessly pimping the contest all over twitter.

Jenna, Amy Jo, Karla, Morgan, Carina, Sterling, Charles, Kristin, Nikole, Scarlet, I loved reading yours!!

Why did Laurie's win?

Because I wished it was true. And the whole thing made me laugh. Here's her lie:

Susan Adrian has compiled a nude calendar featuring notable people from her writing/twitter world. Highlights include: Miss January—Janet Reid swigging gin while ringing in the new year, Mr. March—Jeffrey Somers with his pussy cats, Miss May—Suzie Townsend and her puppies frolicking through a spring meadow, Mr. June—a sweaty Bill Cameron showing off Skin, and Mr. December—a snow-covered Sean Ferrell looking NUMB. Get yours! On sale now!

The Bill Cameron and Sean Ferrell lines are brilliant. Congrats Laurie!

BEA Sympathetic Swag Contest: Day 3

The winner of FALLEN is... Natalie!! Congrats, Natalie! Email me at susan (dot) adrian (at) yahoo.com with your address, and I'll send it out!

Today, we're gonna have a little more fun. Today, I'm giving away a copy of Justine Larbalestier's fabulous and brain-twisting book, LIAR.

From Justine's website: Liar is a psychological thriller set in New York City told from the point of view of a compulsive liar.

You guys, I had such fun reading this book, never knowing what was truth and what wasn't. I've always loved unreliable narrators--they mess with you so! (It makes me want to write one. Okay, not quite yet. But someday.)

So believe me (ha) when I tell you that you want to win this one. But I'm going to make it a little more challenging.

To win this book, you've got to lie to me.

Post in the comments with your best, most outrageous lie. Bonus points for making the lie about somebody in our crazy cast of characters writing/twitter world (*cough* Janet Reid, Suzie Townsend, Joanna Stampfel-Volpe, Sean Ferrell, Bill Cameron, Victoria Schwab, Linda Grimes, etc..., but really anybody you want or anything you want. Make it a good lie.

Tomorrow I'm actually going to judge my favorite lie (extra judges brought in if necessary) and award LIAR to the winner! Contest closes at 8 am tomorrow.

So GO! Lie to me!

UPDATE: THE CONTEST IS CLOSED. Thanks for playing! 

BEA Sympathetic Swag Contest: Day 2

Thanks for playing yesterday, everybody! The winner of a copy of RAMPANT is...

Derek Molata! Congratulations, Derek! (You're on a good news roll...) :)

Today's swag is slightly newer, still YA (of course): FALLEN, by Lauren Kate. It's gothic and romantic and intriguing.

Fallen

Some Angels are Destined to Fall
There’s something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori.
Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price’s attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at the Sword & Cross boarding school in sultry Savannah, Georgia. He’s the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are all screw-ups, and security cameras watch every move.
Even though Daniel wants nothing to do with Luce–and goes out of his way to make that very clear–she can’t let it go. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, she has to find out what Daniel is so desperate to keep secret . . . even if it kills her.
Dangerously exciting and darkly romantic, Fallen is a page turning thriller and the ultimate love story.

Want to read it for yourself?

For today's contest, I want you to go to today's BEA schedule of author signings. Pretend you're there, and find 5 authors you'd want to go get a signed book from. Even Rick Springfield and Neil Sedaka are there today!

Then post your 5 chosen authors in the comments field. Contest closes at 8 am tomorrow, when the final one will open!

BEA Contest: Sympathetic Swag #1

Confession: I've been to BEA twice, but it was long, long ago. Before Child...before husband! Before writing.

Back then I was a shiny young bookseller/bookstore manager, and getting to go to BEA was a huge perk. Celebrity authors! I still squee a little over the memory of meeting James Earl Jones. Parties! I'm sure I didn't get to go to the super cool private ones, but I did manage to squeeze into a dark, pulsating party where Stephen King, Amy Tan, and Dave Barry et al. (The Rock Bottom Remainders) were rocking the house.

But most of all...SWAG. Oh my cupcakes, the amazing piles of books (Free Books) for booksellers to take! Galleys, hot titles, new titles...I dragged bags of them all over the convention center. I came home with a suitcase full. It was insane.

These days if I attended BEA I imagine I'd do a little more networking, visiting, chatting, and I'd certainly be a lot more aware of what was really going on around me. But I'd still scoop up the swag like nobody's business.

So in celebration of BEA and all the booksellers/authors/agents/editors/friends who are there this week, and in sadness that the rest of us are NOT there, I'm going to give away a little swag.

For each of the next 3 days, you can win one book. All you have to do is answer a question in the comments below. Today's book (hardcover!) I highly recommend:

Forget everything you ever knew about unicorns…

The sparkly, innocent creatures of lore are a myth. Real unicorns are venomous, man-eating monsters with huge fangs and razor-sharp horns. And they can only be killed by virgin descendants of Alexander the Great.
Fortunately, unicorns have been extinct for a hundred and fifty years.
Or not.

RAMPANT, by Diana Peterfreund

Want it?

Go to PW's list of Kids' Galleys to Grab at BEA, then come back here and tell me in the comments which book or books you'd grab. If you don't read YA or kids' books yourself, which one would you snag for someone you love?

Contest closes at 8 AM tomorrow, when the next one will be gearing up. GO!

Between Books

SALVAGED is sitting for a few days, ready to be gnawed on by the shark. It's one of those rare times when I don't have writing or revising or editing or re-reading (of my own work) to do. Writers will understand when I say it's an odd, uneasy feeling to be between books, even for a week or two.

So what do I do with myself? Well, work and shuttling Child and going for walks with hubby (when it's not snowing *looks out window, growls*), like always. But what about creatively? I can't just SIT. It's against my nature. There are two things I'm doing, that I always do:

1) Fill the well.
For me, this isn't just relaxing and going mindless with the ANTM. (There's a touch of that, but not mostly.) I'm reading*, watching movies, listening to news stories, paying attention. Collecting dribs and drabs that will be used somewhere else. Many of them go straight into:

2) Simmering the next book.
I don't often jump RIGHT into the next book. I have ideas of what I want to do, but the plot isn't quite there, I don't have a handle on the characters, I'm not sure of the setting. All that stuff has to work itself out in my brain before I start typing. So I *actively* simmer ideas. For a day or two I think of a possibility, twist it around, stretch it, and see how it would go. Usually at this stage it falls flat somewhere, so I add in something else or mix it up. I see which parts intrigue me most, which parts are unique (or at least not-done-a-zillion-times), which parts make me go "OOH that would be fun to play with." I make notes, look at locations, pick out character names. It's all prep work, and directly tied to #1 above. This weekend I was watching a movie and half-analyzing the character relationships, and halfway through I went AHA and went to jot some notes. My plot idea wasn't anything that was in the movie--it just followed on from what I saw. But I wouldn't have thought of it if I hadn't filled the well.

So far I have a main character, a setting, and some intriguing complications. Next week I might be ready to start exploring on the page. (If I'm not doing revisions of SALVAGED by then!)

I don't think a writer ever stops writing, even if it's only in her head.

*on reading: I'm not flush with money at the moment, so this weekend I poked around at the library for some new stuff to read. They didn't have ONE of the 10 books on my list (mostly recent YA), but I did find 5 books to check out. Interestingly, 4 of the 5 were written by men, with male POVs. Huh. This is unusual for me. Wonder if my subconscious is trying to tell me something...

Fabulous books: for middle-graders

Hi everybody!

The craziness continues this week. So far we've had two dress rehearsals and a play cast meeting. Tonight and tomorrow are dance recitals, then Friday we're heading out with Child for a 3-day school campout. No internet! No *computers* even!

Good thing I finished the most recent rewrite of SALVAGED yesterday. I can spend downtime at the campout reading down that big 'ol pile of books I've got.

Speaking of books...I've been having so much fun re-discovering old books and finding new ones with Child. She's 8, and an enthusiastic reader. We read together every night, and she checks out stacks from the library herself. I always feel bad when I have to pull her away from reading, because she gets SO intense on a book she has no idea what's going on around her at all. It's a joy to see.

Since I've got a great list of books for 8+ that we love, I thought I'd share...and see what MG books you guys love!

Our Current Favorites:

Classics:

• Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace
• Pippi Longstocking books by Astrid Lindgren
• Judy Blume, especially the Fudge/Superfudge books
• Ballet Shoes, Theater Shoes, etc. by Noel Streatfeild
• Little House in the Big Woods (she just started it) by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• James & the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
• Nancy Drew series
• The Littles series by John Peterson
• Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
• Any Beverly Cleary, but especially Ramona 
• Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

Recent books/series we LOVE:

• Sisters Eight by Lauren Baratz-Logsted, Greg Logsted, & Jackie Logsted
• Sisters Grimm by Michael Buckley
• Ivy & Bean by Annie Barrows
• Ottoline and the Yellow Cat by Chris Riddell (she's reading this by herself, and she laughs out loud all the time while reading)
• Just Grace by Charise Mericle Harper
• Spiderwick Chronicles by by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi
•  Mary Margaret, Center Stage by Christine Kole MacLean

Other series books she gulps in an hour:

• Magic Treehouse by Mary Pope Osborne
• Cam Jansen by David A. Adler
• A-Z mysteries by Ron Roy
• The Rainbow Magic books by Daisy Meadows
• Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park
• Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown
• (many more I've forgotten)

Next I want to try Clarice Bean and Judy Moody. We also have the Anne of Green Gables set waiting for when she's interested. Given this list--and the fact that she really likes the more "challenging" books right now--what else should we try? What middle grade books do you love right now?

Do the Write Thing for Nashville: Bid on a critique from me!!

Hi guys!!

If you haven't checked out the auction for Nashville flood victims, hop over there. It's amazing. If you're a writer or a reader, you'll find SOMETHING you want.

And...my item is up today!! You can bid on a 25-page critique from me. Go go!

http://dothewritethingfornashville.blogspot.com/

On Winning Books & Bidding on Books

Wow, this morning is cool so far!

It didn't start out so well--I didn't sleep great, and I was feeling like a cranky sourpuss. Didn't want to get up, didn't want to take the car to the shop (well, I got that wish, but that just means we'll have to do it later), didn't want to deal with the cold and snow we've got going on today.

But then I checked http://thediviningwand.com, because I'd entered a contest a couple days ago and I knew the results would be up today. And I had a good feeling about it.

And I won!! The whole series so far of Lauren Baratz-Logsted's THE SISTERS EIGHT, an MG series Child and I started together that she loves. I'd made a mistake and bought the wrong one to read next, so she has 3 sitting there staring at her but she hasn't read 2, and it was driving her crazy. She was thrilled this morning, chattering up a storm speculating on the books and the characters, and what the last 3 books will be called.

THANK YOU for brightening my day, divining wand!

When I got to work I discovered the second cool thing, that the auction to help Tennessee flood victims had started! You guys, this is going to be AMAZING. Check out all the awesome stuff up so far here:

http://dothewritethingfornashville.blogspot.com/

I've donated a 25-page critique of your mss (or essay, or short story, or whatever) too--I think it'll be up for bid over the weekend.

Tomorrow, I think I'm going to give away a book or two of my own. Gotta share the love.

Now go bid!!

Spread the Awesome: Courtney Summers

This post o' love is part of a whole mess of blog posts, called Spread the Awesome--authors celebrating published books we adore. This project was started by the fabulous Elana Johnson. She has a list of all the participating authors and books they're celebrating here:

 http://elanajohnson.blogspot.com/p/recommended-reads.html

After you read about Courtney, please check out Heather Petty's blog for a discussion of Terri Farley's SEVEN TEARS INTO THE SEA.

But first, the purpose for my post.

It's funny, because within 30 seconds of Elana's email, I knew who I had to write about. It wasn't even up for debate. Yes, I love many, many authors and their books: a tiny list includes Melissa Marr, John Green, Vicki Pettersson, Justine Larbalestier, Suzanne Collins...TINY list. But when I think *amazing* books that are life-changing, that I can't stop talking about or recommending...well. Courtney Summers is right at the top of the list.

I may have talked about Courtney's books here before. *cough* It might be getting a little embarrassing. And YES, I am friends with her fabulous werewolf-hating, Gaga-loving self. I admit it. But that is not why I am so driven to pimp, my friends. Oh, no.

CRACKED UP TO BE not only grabbed me by the throat, it wrung it, knocked me down and kicked me in the ribs, and I still went crazy for the thing. It's So. Freaking. Real. It's so meaningful, and truth-telling about what high school and pressure and relationships and guilt really can be. I can just see my teenage self gulping it, feeling better because of it. Here, watch the book trailer.

And then I got to read SOME GIRLS ARE, and I thought there was no way it could be as good as CUTB. And I was totally right.

It was better. And worse, simultaneously. It was vivid and heartbreaking and honest to all sides of the story, and I almost couldn't breathe during some parts. Book trailer #1 for SGA here.

What Courtney does so very well is honesty, and clear-as-glass voice. Heroines you root for and kinda hate at the same time, but you can't stop watching them. Stories you cringe from, but recognize.

If you're a teenager or you were, read them. Seriously.

TEN STARS.

Check them out: CRACKED UP TO BE and SOME GIRLS ARE