1. Since being home, I have finished a lesson plan, one of my numerous instructional technology assignments, and read 100 pages of Pendragon. (I'm on the 8th one, for those keeping track at home.) I feel very productive.

2. I've pretty much given up NaNo as a lost cause. I do want to finish this story, though, but it's going to be a side project that I might work on from time to time when I need a break from Shards. If nothing else, I made it further than last year. Today I sat down and made a list of books I want to read for my research for Shards. Western's library has a nice selection of books about Victorian society and I'm very excited to explore them.

3. So. Much. Food. I haven't really stopped eating since yesterday. We have the snacks my parents bought, the snacks my grandma brought up with her yesterday morning when she drove up from Portland, leftovers...green beans and sweet potatoes are my favorite.

4. The other thing there is no shortage of in this house? Football. If there's a game on, we're watching it. After being football deprived pretty much all quarter, it's glorious.

5. I celebrated Black Friday by sleeping in and then eating a lovely and wonderful home-cooked breakfast. I win.

Hola, lovely fellow authors and blog followers! We wanted to quickly let you know about the 2009 Stupid Prada Summer Van Tour! We know you're asking yourself, "What the heck is a Stupid Prada Summer Van Tour?" Well, three of the 2009 debut authors--Saundra Mitchell (author of Shadowed Summer), Mandy Hubbard (author of Prada and Prejudice), and Rhonda Stapleton (author of Stupid Cupid), decided to ban together for a super-awesome 9-day United States van tour to hit some rather high-falutin important sites, as well as lesser-known locales.

See the map below to find out where we're gonna be each day starting Monday, November 30, and drop by all of our blogs daily to get the scoop on how the tour progresses! We'll be offering prizes throughout the tour, so make sure you follow us each day for your chance to win copies of our books, gift certificates, and other fun gifts!

Thanks, and we look forward to seeing you there!

Saundra Mitchell ~ http://www.saundramitchell.com
Mandy Hubbard ~ http://www.mandyhubbard.com
Rhonda Stapleton ~ http://www.rhondastapleton.com

I am thankful for...

-My trip home last night being completely uneventful.
-My dad making it out here from the East Coast.
-Having somewhere to come home to for Thanksgiving.
-My friends putting up with me, even when I'm completely unpleasant to be around.
-My lovely and warm sweater =)
-My relatives who are here spending Thanksgiving with us.

I survived the surprise lesson plan, essay, extra hours at work, Yule Ball, essay critique, and two presentations I had to do over the past week.

I've got all my things packed, and now I'm cleaning like a madwoman. I leave campus in two hours in a carefully orchestrated transportation feat - bus, train, ferry, car - basically, virtually any form of transportation you can think of aside from airplane, motorcycle, or bicycle you can think of, will transpire in the five hours between the time I leave and the time I arrive at my house.*

Bring on Thanksgiving. A long weekend sounds wonderful right now.




*Assuming Amtrak doesn't kill anyone, break down on the tracks in Ferndale, or come obscenely late, as it has been known to do.

Tweaks and enhancements

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4. You'll now receive the Writer's Block Question of the Day in the body of email notifications. To sign up for Writer's Block notifications, visit writersblock and choose the Watch Community option. Next, update your Writer's Block notification settings by checking the box to the right of "Someone posts a new entry to writersblock."
5. Paid and permanent users can now view, add, and edit Notes of commenters. Notes will appear beside the username of comment posters (instead of stars) on S1-themed comment pages.

Send some lovin' thanks to your friends with our holiday vgifts!

Photos of the week

We're so delighted with the immense talent of our growing, global lj_photophile community that we've decided to introduce a poll. Each week, we'll choose a half-dozen photos (based on user comments and staff feedback) and ask you to select a photo of the week. The winning photo will be announced in the next newsletter. If possible, please limit photo size to 350x350 to ensure that images display properly on friends pages. We want to thank you again (and again!) for sharing your passion.

Check out this week's photo poll and more fantastic user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks for joining us. To our American friends, have a fantastic Thanksgiving. To all of our international neighbors, we'll eat a little extra for you!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which, as regular readers know, is pretty much my favorite holiday. Mostly because it is an eating holiday, and who doesn't like that? Because I ate my way around Philadelphia, however---huge breakfasts! best brunch ever at the Continental! Dinner at Davio's and Parc!---I'm also making this a moving holiday. As in, the treadmill is my friend. As are lunges, sun salutations, and push ups. I am sure somewhere there is a formula for how many miles, lunges and push ups you need to do to balance out a turkey dinner, or two. But I'm too lazy to look it up. Hey, I'm on vacation!

In other news, the day has come: my daughter has grown out of her crib. She's been jumping in it like crazy, and now that it's broken twice we've decided to stop fixing it and just take it as a sign that's she's ready to move on. Even if we aren't. And I don't think we are. I mean, I plan to put a mattress on the floor, baby proof the entire bedroom, and put a big gate on the door. But what if she still gets up and runs around in the night? How do we get her to stay IN the bed? I have these visions of her just collapsing by the door in a heap after running laps once we've turned out the light and said goodnight. Oh, dear. Some might say, do you really want to try to do this over the holiday? (And by some, I mean my husband.) But the truth is, we have a lot of family in town this week, all of whom are dying to spend time with Sasha. So if we have some sleepless nights (me or her) at least there is backup. Anyway, wish us luck. And if you have anything that really worked for you, big kid bed-wise, please share if you feel like it, I need all the help I can get.

Finally, I'd like to give a little thanks. I think I spend too much of this blog whining about stuff, especially lately. I am overdue for a little gratitude, which is why I am so glad Thanksgiving is tomorrow. It's a chance to slow down, sit down, and be with the people I love. To remember how lucky we are, in so many ways, for health and togetherness and each other. I'm grateful for my daughter, who is making me a better person, and my husband, who has been doing the same for a long time. I'm grateful for you, my readers, for all the support over the last year, and for friends, who get me through, and my dogs, even though they kind of drive me nuts. I'm grateful for Friday Night Lights, and Modern Family (the best new show on TV, I swear!) and for the fact that Jennifer is still on Top Chef. I'm grateful for Pop Secret Homestyle popcorn (even though I MUST find a way to stop eating it) and for coffee and chocolate. And chocolate and peanut butter together. I could go on, and on, and I plan to, in the days and weeks and months following. For now, though, I'm going to step back from this laptop and go hang with my family. I hope you all have a GREAT holiday.

More books than ever were reviewed this month; I shall be distributing a large stack of free books out to my friends and family in the coming weeks.
Feel free to follow the links and review my reviews... comments keep me in good with the boos, whether good or ill. Happy reading!
The Dancing Plague
Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women
Hands off My Belly! (a pregnant woman's survival guide)
The American Revolution 100
Do-It-Yourself Organizing for Dummies
Ciao Italia
Bread Matters (bread enthusiasts must have this book)
Photography Unplugged
Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy
The Fallen Sky (poetic research on meteorites)
Marcus Aurelius, a Life
The Alchemy of Color Knitting

The Story About the Story, by J. C. Hallman

Cheers,
Meredith Greene

Because the first chapter of All That is Gold is up over at plagiarismhaven and I have character playlists with download links that are already dying (srsly wtf?) I decided I may as well go ahead and put this up. The embeded playlist doesn't have all of the songs, so you can pretty much ignore it lol.


Download the .zip here.

So, if you follow my twitter, you might have seen me mention that I am reading slush. Yes, my dear readers, I am interning for a literary agency. It's been a very interesting learning experience for me-- one I hope to build upon and eventually become a literary agent. (If anyone knows of an agency looking to add a new YA-centric agent, CALL ME!).

Anywho, here are a few things that I've seen in queries that y'all should just go ahead and leave out. None of these are auto-rejections, but they do get noticed, and not for the reasons you want to be noticed.


1) Your age. I don't care if your a teen or you're 89. The writing is what matters, and putting in your age could skew a person's opinion one way or another.

2) How long it took you to write this book. Too short, and I am biased toward thinking it's utter drivel. Too long, and I wonder if you'll take another 10 years to write the next one.

3) That you "just" finished your novel. This sounds like you typed THE END yesterday and are querying today, when we all know EVERY NOVEL Requires some revisions.

4) Comparisons to Twilight, for any reason. Don't tell me it will do for Fairies/Werewolves/Witches what Twilight did for Vampires. Also, don't tell me your book is going to have a crossover audience just like Twilight. Don't tell me yours is better written, will be more popular, etc. Let's agree to leave Twilight alone, shall we?

5) Cliched phrases. Try to be original and not use things like, "Everything she'd ever known was a lie."

6) Guarenteeing it will be a bestseller. You're biased. You wrote the thing. You cannot guarentee that you'll get a movie option, it'll hit the bestselling list, etc.

7) Saying your book is like NOTHING else out there. Risks are scary. If your book is that bizarre and out of the box, its not neccessarily a good thing.

8)Trying to be too clever. I mentioned "gimmicky" queries once and people asked for more info. The queries that grate on my nerves a little are the ones that try to be cute and clever and in doing so, make assumptions. I've seen ones that are like, "Good news! This isn't a vampire query! I know you're happy to hear that." Um.... right.

Now, I still read the full query and sample pages regardless of if you put these things in, but why stack the odds?

My first Teaser Tuesday! I was writing this entry and then I realized I don't know the rules.. Am I allowed to post something from a book that's already done? Or do I have to post something from what I'm working on now? Hmmm...

This is from my YA novel ACES UP, which will be out in August...

------------------------

“This is you, right?” he asks. He pulls a crumpled-up piece of paper out of his pocket. He’s still a few feet away, but I can tell what it is. An internet printout of an article from our local newspaper, The Whitinsville Eagle. ‘HIGH SCHOOL JUNIOR WINS BIG AT MATH DECATHLON,’ it says. It’s accompanied by a picture of me, smiling into the camera and looking a little cross-eyed. Also, I’m wearing a white shirt, which has the unfortunate effect of making it look like my head is floating in midair.

Uh-oh. Is this some kind of trick? Is Cole actually casino security, trying to fool me into admitting I’m only seventeen? I square my shoulders and pretend I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“No,” I say, squinting at the picture and hoping I look super-confused. “I’ve never seen that girl in my life.”

“It says your name underneath it,” Cole points out. Damn.

“What do you want?” I ask again, letting the door go. It closes behind me. “If you’re trying to blackmail me, good luck. I have seventeen dollars to my name, so if you want to go through all this trouble for that, then be my guest!” I pull open my purse and shake my money onto the ground in a pathetic storm of fives and ones. I was trying to sound haughty, but it didn’t come out that well. “And where did you get that printout, anyway?”

“Googled you,” he says.

“Why were you googling me?” I ask suspiciously.

“We do a standard background on all the new employees.”

“We?”

“Aces Up.”

“What’s ay says up?” I ask again. Definitely sounds shady.

“It’s a poker society,” he says. “And we want you to join.”

I frown. “A poker society? I don’t know anything about poker.”

“We want to teach you.” He looks at me intently, his dark eyes serious. “We think with your math skills, you might be able to win a lot of money.”

“How much?” I ask in spite of myself. I mean, I would never gamble for money. A) I can’t risk losing everything B) Gambling is shady and C) I’m totally underage. Lying to get a job is one thing. Lying to gamble is another thing completely. But still. Now that Cole doesn’t seem as dangerous, and my path to the door is clear, I’m slightly intrigued.

“Lots.” In this light, he looks a little bit like Casey Affleck. But I will not be swayed by mopsy hair and dimples. Especially when I’m smart enough to know that nothing comes for free, especially money.

“Yeah, well assaulting me outside the elevator? Not the way to get me to join your stupid society,” I say.

“I told you, it’s secret,” he says, waving his hand like it’s nothing. “We have to be careful who sees us together.”

“I don’t want to be a poker player,” I say. I open the door again, and my feet sink into the soft carpet of the hallway. “I don’t want to be a gambler of any kind. And so I’m leaving.” I take one step outside, waiting for him to call after me. “Aren’t you going to try to stop me?” I ask, turning back around.

“Nope,” he says. And then looks me up and down, like he’s sizing me up. But not the way guys usually do, like they’re trying to figure out if they want to hook up with you. It’s more like he’s giving me a tryout of some sort. In fact it’s kind of ….sexy. Way sexier than the other kind of sizing up. But then I remember there’s nothing sexy about accosting me in an elevator and trapping me in a hotel room.

And then I figure it out. He’s pretending he doesn’t need me, so that I’ll be all, “I want to be a famous poker player, oh, please please please!” Ha! He obviously doesn’t know who he’s messing with. “I’m leaving,” I say again, forcefully this time.

“Okay.” He shrugs again. Annoying.

“Well,” I say. “Bye.” I step all the way into the hallway then.

“Bye, Shannon,” he calls as the door shuts behind me. But something about the way he says it implies he thinks I’m going to be back.....

65redroses
Eva is a vibrant young woman with Cystic Fibrosis who survived a double lung transplant. Read about her difficult recovery and personal triumphs over pain, isolation, and fear. Back in school, Eva now works part-time in a children's center and enjoys running and cross-country skiing. A documentary on her story, entitled 65 Red Roses, won three awards at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

meet_other_moms
A warm and welcoming "Add me" community for moms of all ages and backgrounds from around the world. If you're a mom, just post a little about yourself and start connecting with other mothers based on similar hobbies, musical interests, book/TV/movie preferences, or taste in humor! A great way for busy moms to socialize online.

kitchenfaq
Want to share a fabulous home recipe for coconut bread? Suddenly run out of confectioner's sugar with company on the way and need to find out a quick in-house substitute? Searching for tips on what to charge for a custom-designed wedding cake? Whether you're a professional chef, an aspiring culinary wizard, or a happy home-baker, you'll get delicious guidance from fellow and sister foodies.

Good morning from Philadelphia, where, honestly, I'm a little peaked. (That's pronounced peek-ed, in case you were wondering.) NCTE has been SO much fun, though. I've gotten to catch up with old friends, meet a ton of great librarians and teachers, and eat a lot of great food. In fact, I am thinking I am going to have to go totally low-carb or no carb once I am back. For now, though, I am indulging in huge breakfasts, lots of cheese and bread, and, um, chocolate. At least for the next couple of hours.

Last night, I attended a cocktail party for ALAN, which is always a blast. All the big author names were there: Deb Caletti, David Levithan, Lauren Myracle, E. Lockhart, Sara Zarr, plus a ton of others, too many to list here. I spent a lot of the party searching for Lara Zeises, who I was so excited to finally meet in person, but I could never find her. Today, I'm doing a panel, and then I get to pack up and head home to my daughter, who apparently is crazy congested and refusing to blow her nose. My husband is MORE than ready for me to take over chasing her around with a tissue. And then it's Thanksgiving! Which means, um, more carbs and dessert. I see a lot of time on the treadmill in my future. But man, it has been so worth it. The food is GREAT here. And I haven't even had a cheesesteak! Maybe at the airport. THEN I am going totally carb free. Really!

Have a great day, everyone!

Today when I was at work I looked up from restocking biscuits to see two bros run at each other and leap into each others arms in a very enthusiastic hug, as one guy lifted the other into the air. I made eye contact with a customer, we both shrugged, and he said, completely nonchalantly, "Bromance."

Easily the highlight of my day.

Okay--it's official. I cannot pack for trips until the very last moment.

Seriously. Right now, I should be doing laundry, deciding outfits for the week ahead, and travel-sizing all of my cosmetics, but no. I'm sitting in my office, writing and editing and tweeting and facebooking and GivesMeHope.com-ing.

I'm flying to NYC tomorrow to spend a week with my family for Thanksgiving. That's a week of clothes--a week of many different events that require many different outfits that CANNOT be cross-combined. And shoes. Lots and lots of shoes. Did I mention that I detest packing?

Anyway, I'm fairly certain I'll be pretty busy this coming week, but I just want you guys to know that Let The Words Flow is going to be active, and we have some amazing articles planned. Tomorrow, Savannah J. Foley (savannahjfoley <--you should all friend her because she is AWESOME) is posting about Sudden Novel Death Syndrome. On Wednesday, the brilliant Alexandra Shostak (lazy_iris ) is posting about Murdering Your Darlings...With a Chainsaw. Friday, make sure to check back to see what LTWF contributors have to say about overcoming the miseries of Writer's Block!

So, that's about it. I hope everyone has a happy and a healthy Thanksgiving!!

And, ughhhh---time to return to avoiding packing....I should at least start doing the laundry, shouldn't I? Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.

naturesbeauty
Always on the lookout for compelling images, we were delighted to discover this flourishing community of artists who share a love of nature. Honoring the subject with photographs, paintings, sketches, prose, poetry, and
other creative works, you'll be simultaneously riveted to your monitor and inspired to run helter skelter towards the nearest wooded dale.