Congrats to Across The Universe!

MATCHED is still on the NYT list (#8), and now I just noticed that ACROSS THE UNIVERSE has made it too (#7)! Hugely excited to see dystopian books on the bestseller lists, and many congrats to Penguin family Beth Revis and Ally Condie. Both are just fantastic novels. Pick them up if you haven't had a chance to!

The Great Pizza Debacle

This actually happened over a year ago, but it's quite literally the world's greatest accidental pizza ordering prank. I do not recommend repeating this, unless you want your local pizza delivery spot to hate you forever. Still, I wanted to record this somewhere, and thought it might make a nice 2011 entry!

(Scene. Boyfriend, me, 3 of boyfriend's cousins, numbered as Cousin #1, 2, and 3. Living room of our apartment. Cousins have been to our apartment several times before. UFC is on in a few minutes.)

Boyfriend and me: What does everyone want to order?
Cousins: Pizza.
Boyfriend and me: Well, you guys can go ahead and order. We're going to pick up a sandwich instead--but we'll be back soon. You guys want Pizza Hut or Round Table Pizza?
Cousin #1: Probably Pizza Hut. I'll look up where they are.
Me: Okay. (shuffling around in bedroom, changing, getting ready, going in and out of room)
Cousin #1: Hey, what's the address?
Me: Lemme look it up. (looks up Pizza Hut address in bedroom) 777 South Arroyo Parkway.
Cousin #1: K thanks. (several minutes later) Phone number?
Me: (looks up Pizza Hut number) (area code)-792-2800.
Cousin #1: K thanks.

(Boyfriend and I leave to get our sandwiches, secure in the knowledge that Cousins are happily ordering their favorite pizzas. Boyfriend and I return with our sandwiches. UFC starts.)

Boyfriend and I: (munch munch munch. Cousins watch UFC, occasionally looking over at our sandwiches with envy.)

(An hour and a half passes since they ordered)

Boyfriend: Hey, is your pizza coming anytime soon?
Me: Yeah, it's been like an hour and a half.
Cousin #2: I'll call them and check.

(While Cousin #2 is on the phone)

Me: Did you give them our address?
Cousin #1: Yeah. 777 South Arroyo Parkway.
Me: Heh? That's not our address. That's Pizza Hut's address.
Cousin #1: What?
Me: That's Pizza Hut's address. I thought you were asking me so you could go pick it up if you wanted.

(at this point, Cousin #3 falls over laughing. He has caught on before any of us)

Cousin #1: Cousin #2, get off the phone! (Cousin #2 hangs up on pizza guy) Wait. Why would you give me Pizza Hut's address? I was asking for yours!
Me: You said 'What's the address?' right after you said you were going to order from Pizza Hut, and I thought you'd been here enough times that maybe you didn't need ours!
Boyfriend: Wait, so the Pizza Hut delivery guy couldn't tell that you gave them the address to their own store? What, did the delivery boy just go out and then realize he looped right back around to deliver pizzas to their own store?
Cousin #1: What are you talking about? We didn't order from Pizza Hut. We changed our minds while you were gone and ordered from Round Table..... OH snap. (realization hits us all, except Cousin #3, who already got it)
Me: So Round Table delivered their pizza to Pizza Hut?

(silence)

All: OMG.
Me: Wait, but shouldn't they have given you, Cousin #1, a call when the pizza got delivered to Pizza Hut?? I mean, didn't you have to give them your phone number?
Cousin #1: No, I gave them the number you gave me, so that they could call you guys at home when it was ready. Cousin #2, what's the number?
Cousin #2: Uh, it was (area code)-792-2800.
Me: THAT WAS THE PIZZA HUT NUMBER!!!
Cousin #1: What! WHY WOULD YOU GIVE ME THAT!
Me: I thought you were ordering Pizza Hut pizza, so I gave you their number!!
Boyfriend: So now Round Table can't even trace who made the call? Because they call that number and get Pizza Hut?
Cousin #3: Omg. We made Round Table deliver their pizzas to Pizza Hut. This is the greatest accidental pizza delivery prank ever.

(We die laughing at the mental image of the poor Round Table delivery boy delivering pizzas to Pizza Hut, getting there confused, calling the number he got from us, but only to receive Pizza Hut on the line. And picturing the following conversation:

Pizza Hut: Pizza Hut, can I take your order?
Round Table delivery boy: Uh....no, but I have your order....

)

Cousin #1 did give Round Table my boyfriend's name when he was ordering, so now we are permanently afraid to ever call Round Table to deliver pizzas again. But it made for a good laugh. :)

On the nightstand

(Except I don't really have a nightstand....I have a computer desk that is ridiculously high next to my floor-level bed)

Across the Universe by Beth Revis: Shauna, I sing your praises. I am clutching my ARC gleefully and have dived right into the first chapter. Consensus so far? Very delicious. I can tell I'm going to enjoy this one.

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White: The instant the main character pulled out a rhinestone-studded pink taser to take down a vampire, I knew this one was a must-have. So far, not disappointed!

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver: Recommended to me by a good friend. I actually just finished this and have to say it's one of the most thought-provoking YAs I've encountered in a long time. It's made me go back to my manuscript and (in between fits of "Why can't I write a story like that!") figure out ways to put in more subtle emotions and interactions in both of my main characters. Whether or not I'm successful, we'll have to see....

Matched by Ally Condie: Also recently finished this one. As The Giver is one of my favorite YAs, this one was an excellent return to a similar world. I have to admit I'm on Team Xavier, though. Cassia, how can you resist his charms!

Whenever I feel stuck in a rut with my own writing, I always find it helpful to pick up an anticipated book and devour it from beginning to end. By the time I'm done, I'm almost always itching to dive right back into whatever chapter I was stuck on. Today was no different. I couldn't seem to start off a chapter about 3/4 of the way through Legend 2. So I stopped torturing myself, stepped away from the laptop for a while, and started reading Across the Universe. After a chapter and a half, I was ready to go back to my manuscript. And got 2,000+ words in 2 hours. The stimulating power of others' creativity at work! A good tip for any writer, I think.

Fond farewell to 2010, Hopes for 2011

Here we are on the last day of 2010 . . . sigh, how I'm going to miss it. 2010 will be remembered as the year I pitched a brand of my own to real media professionals for the first time, the year I finally returned to being a vegetarian after missing three years (oops :) ), the year Boyfriend and I accidentally locked our chihuahua out of the house for an hour and then rushing out to find him only to realize he'd been sitting obediently on our porch steps the whole time, the year I lost seven pounds (and then gained three back after the holidays), the year Boyfriend and I finally got off our lazy butts and changed the tires on our little Yaris, and the year we nearly drowned in Los Angeles' December rains. But most of all, I'll remember 2010 as the year I finally got a book deal (something that's been on my resolutions list for a very lot of years). And that makes 2010 a fond memory to mark down in my (invisible) book.

Now I've got my sights set on 2011 and all the things I want to accomplish. I'd like to lose those three holiday pounds, for a starter, and maybe even five more. I want to get a change of scenery, maybe travel with Boyfriend a little more than I usually do. I want to start sketching again at least once a week, something I've been procrastinating on as more and more other things fill my time. I want to cook more often and exercise at least three times a week (this one's going to be tricky to stick to). I want to finish Legend 3 before the end of the year. I want to read more outside of the genres I've grown comfortable with. And lastly (but probably mostly), I want to make Legend 2 a better book than Legend 1. I'll have to see how that one goes, though. :)

Any New Year's Resolutions from you guys?

Have a fun, safe, and festive New Year's Eve, and Happy 2011!

Happy holidays, themes, and rain

Yes, it's been nonstop rain in California for the past few days and it'll keep on going until Wednesday. My condolences to anyone who is visiting Los Angeles as a tourist for the first time this week. I promise it's usually sunnier than this. :)

As I continue trekking through Legend 2, I realize (and am usually surprised) that a lot of my values and opinions about the state of the world tend to creep into the text, even though I'm not consciously trying to put them in. And when I take a step back to look at the Legend series as a whole, I realize that the entire story's premise is chock full of the themes and morals that matter to me in real life. I shouldn't find this weird, I know--I mean, it's only natural for writers' work to reflect their opinions. But it's still interesting to see it happen right before my eyes when I'm not aware of it at all.

Anyway, I'm heading home to Houston for the next two weeks. I've finally managed to convince my boyfriend to get on a plane (he's terrified of flying), and this is our first "real" trip in four years. A success! Next year, we'll graduate to a longer flight. Maybe even beyond the borders of the U.S., mwahaha. Happy holidays, everyone! Hope you all get to eat delicious foods and visit your favorite people. See you in 2011!

Got my copyedits for Legend!

What a lovely, colorful mashup of thousands of letters and arrows and strikes! I am awed, impressed, and intimidated. I luff it. :D

I think the copyeditors know more about my book than I do.

Still chugging

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. :) Mine was great, full of food and other delectable things, although my word count didn't grow as fast as I wanted.

But so far I've been good in December. I'm at 41,118 words on Legend 2. I can tell this book is going to be longer than Legend 1, but that's ok--that seems to be the general trend among sequels. (I mean, look at the size difference between Hunger Games and Catching Fire) The middle part of L2 is probably the most complicated part of the whole thing in terms of plot, so it's taking me extra time to get the details accurate and the plot points right. Once I get over this hurdle, the second half of the book should come pretty fast. Yargh. I can't wait to write the two ending chapters, which I already know are going to be my favorite part of this whole book. I want to torture my characters!! But that'll have to wait until I sort this dang middle out. I guess I'll use those ending chapters as candy bait. :)

Anyway, that's all that's going on for me here. There are some other exciting things happening but I can't talk about them yet. But hopefully I will soon!

Happy Black Friday/Thanksgiving :)

Hope you all had a great one! Mine involved a great influx of socializing, vegetarian food, shopping (and more shopping throughout today), sleeping in, lazily browsing the interwebz, and even a little bit of writing. Woot. :)

What race is your character, and do they "act like it"?

This insults me, and probably not for the reason most people think. I side with the plastic surgeon, who explains that many of his Asian patients who opt for double eyelid surgery (i.e. Chinese/Koreans/etc who make their eyes look larger by getting a crease artificially made in their eyelid) are not trying to look Cauasian, but just better. And it insults me near the end when the white news reporter makes it sound like we get this surgery because we somehow shun our race or are trying to lose our "cultural identity". Why do Cauasians get tans? Because they want to look black or Hispanic? I don't think so--they just want to look like other Cauasians who have naturally darker skin. And while I'm sure some Asians get eyelid surgery to look more white, just as many get eyelid surgery because they want to look like Asians who have naturally large eyes.

That's right. Asians with naturally large eyes. Contrary to popular media in the States, we do not all have narrow slanted eyes and flat noses. What about Thai, Vietnamese, or Philippinos? Why can't we get eyelid surgery because, I dunno, maybe we want to look more like Zhou Xun:



Or Zhao Wei:



or Bea Alonzo (Philippino)?:



Why can't Asian girls get eyelid surgery without people claiming that she wants to look like this?:



Did you know being Asian also could mean being Mongolian, which means you might be born with Chinese features but Russian-esque blue eyes and blonde hair? (Btw, this is Day's race in Legend, a Mongolian/Russian mix):



Or that African children can also be born with blue eyes?



And what about hapas?





I'll speak a little for Asians. Asians can live in London and speak with a British accent. We can also draw (even if it's not anime!), recite 80's hits, suck at math, not be in the Triads or Yakuza mafia, rock at electric guitar, hate Chinese food, flunk out of school, have no interest in martial arts, be Muslim, or be born with naturally wavy hair. (I don't hate Chinese food, btw--my mom can attest to that. :) But I do have naturally wavy brown hair, just like my Manchurian/Mongolian grandmother.) We don't all want to look white just because of European influences throughout history. And we don't even all have last names with one syllable. My official last name might be Lu, but through my mother's side, my last name would be Aisin-Gioro. Manchurian. Thai people have some of the longest last names I've heard, and Philippinos have Spanish last names.)

Just because you're Hispanic doesn't mean you can't speak English well. Just because you're African doesn't mean you have black or brown eyes. Just because you're Native American doesn't mean you wear feathers, speak like a philosopher of nature, and have "savage beauty". These things may occur in a race, but they do not define a race. When including minorities in fiction, I think writers should try to expend more effort in researching the race in question. Add something unique that's not typified in today's media. Do some digging. It'll pay off with richer characterization and less blatant stereotyping, even if that stereotyping was done innocuously, with good intentions.

When your characters take your story hostage

(Reposted from my deviantArt blog)

Blog lapse recently is due to the fact that I'm camped out in Houston for the week (I live in Los Angeles), visiting my stepdad and mum (and her awesomesauce cooking). :) Houston is where I grew up and went to grade/middle/high school, and I still think of it as my hometown. All mosquitoes aside, it's not half bad.

In book news, I've finished my revisions on Legend, and am back at work on Legend 2--although it always takes me a few days to get back into the groove. Currently L2 wordcount is at 32,085. I think my writing goals might be sporadic at best throughout Thanksgiving week, but we'll see how it goes.

In writing L2, I've started learning a few things about my writing habits. Writers usually fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of writing obsessively to a detailed outline, or writing freestyle where you just let every chapter take you wherever the story might go with no cohesive novel plan. I am no different. With L2, I started out with a general chapter-by-chapter outline but quickly realized about 7 chapters in that it was starting to veer off my planned path. Which is no surprise, seeing as Legend did the same thing. It's because as I write, my characters develop in ways that I don't expect, and their surprising motivations and actions start to change the mold of where the story's supposed to go. If I originally planned for everyone to meet in some bordertown, for instance, one of the characters will mutiny halfway there and strike out on their own. Or some other character might deceive another out of jealousy and/or spite. This stuff all happens out of nowhere, and when they come up, I'm always blindsided by it. And then I can do nothing but listen to the characters, even though they usually leave my neatly plotted outline in an apocalyptic wreck.

This used to freak me out a bit, as it does not help me plan out an accurate schedule for when I can finish the book in question. But lately I've learned that this is simply my brain's process, that in the end all of the pieces will connect (sometimes with duct tape and string), and that the characters will still arrive at the basic ending I have chosen for them. That's one thing that hasn't changed so far--the beginnings and the ends of my stories. No matter what twists and turns my characters decide to take for me in the middles, the endings always come out the same. It's like they try to avoid their fates, in vain. Mwahaha.

Paranormal activity?

(Reposted from my deviantArt blog)

There have been some strange occurrences in my home lately.

Two days ago, I was feeding the dogs. I keep all their kibble in this big plastic jug, so I unscrewed the jug's plastic cap and put it face up on the counter. Then I turned away to pour the kibble into their bowls, and put it on the ground. When I went back to the counter, there was a chapstick sitting inside the face-up plastic cap. How could that possibly happen naturally? I mean, the cap has sides--it's not like a chapstick could just roll in there. And there was no one around who could've done that. Weird.

Then, yesterday night, I walked into my bathroom and there was a pair of my fake eyelashes sitting on the sink counter, out in plain sight. Now, I haven't used fake lashes in, like, 6 months. They are stored away under the sink cabinet.

Now I'm keeping a wary eye on things in the house....I'm sure there's a logical explanation for all this. Like a ghost. :) (Who, apparently, is into girly things.)

Switching gears

Stopping NanoLite for at least the next week to work on a round of Book 1 revisions. :) It's fun revisiting my first manuscript and seeing it in a new light after suggestions from Editor Jen. Of course, this also means parts of Book 2 are also going to change--so I've gone back to scribbling notes on both and re-planning my strategy for some characters.

In other news, I've started coding a standalone social game site for Legend. Woot! Right now it's chock full of bugs, but eventually when I iron it out, it'll be like Fuzz Academy. Sort of like a cleaner, more accessible version of the Legend Facebook app. :)

Back to revisionizing!

Still hanging on

I'm hanging on to NanoLite (i.e. my lite version of NaNoWriMo = at least 1,000 words a day in November, as opposed to NanoFat, which is the full 1,600-1,700 words a day). Barely. I missed it on one day, but my day of 2,000 words managed to make up for that one. Today I just squeaked by with 1,075 words, although I'm pretty sure that last paragraph I wrote is crap that will need to be deleted first thing in the morning. So my total word count for Legend 2 is 30,271. I finally crossed the 100-page/30k mark! Woot.

I think I'm finally hitting my groove for this book, and am still excited by a revelation I had last night about the plot. Currently I'm knee-deep in a fun chapter narrated by June. I always like writing her chapters because I get to do research on all sorts of random facts. Like how many square feet a railway car's floor is. Or how far a XM-25, the supposed deadliest U.S. military rifle, can shoot. (Answer = 700 m) Stuff that's pretty useless to know for everyday life, but fun for novel-writing. :) Also, if the U.S. government actually does keep track of what its citizens search for on the net, they probably have a surveillance camera on me due to the bizarre searches I do. (Russian fighter jets, spy planes, deadly biological weapons, and whether it's possible to make a bomb out of twigs and chewing gum? Not average civilian searches....)

Questions about writing/publishing industry

(Reposted from my deviantArt blog)

Legend 2 progress: Finally had some decent writing yesterday and today after about a week of false starts and crappy chapters. I'm officially at 27,759 words. Hoping to get in at least 1,000 today, without having to go back and delete all of it like I've been doing. :) Day just got whacked in the face by someone. Poor boy.

-----

A commenter on my last entry suggested I should post some of the questions and my answers about writing/publishing in a new journal entry to make it easier to follow, so here I go!

Q: How did you go about deciding on what you wanted your story to accomplish, and figure out your basic plotline? Do you have any kind of suggestions about how to actually get through a first draft?

A: Plotting is extremely hard, much harder than I thought it would be before I started writing. I still have trouble coming up with good "what happens next?" plot points as I'm working on Legend 2. I think it helps to start with a catalyst event. What happens to set off a chain reaction of events in your story? That's the beginning. For example, in Legend, I came up with the characters first and I knew that I wanted it to be Day-the-boy-criminal vs. June-the-girl-detective. Then I thought about how I would get the two of them to cross paths. And from there, I created an event where Day would commit a crime that would force June into investigating it and hunting him down. What does one character want that another character doesn't want them to have? It helps to look into the relationships (and especially conflicts) between your main characters, and use that conflict between them to think of physical events that have to set off your story in motion.

Q: Do you think marketability is something that aspiring authors should keep in mind for their first novels; whether or not it will be easy to get onto the market?

A: It does help to keep a story's marketability in mind, to a certain extent. You still need to love the story you're writing. For example, I don't read a lot of vampire/paranormal novels (although I occasionally dabble). Even though they're really hot right now, I don't think I could write a good vampire novel because I'm just not as interested in it. And that will show.

The manuscript I wrote before Legend was a quieter historical novel about Mozart and his sister when they were children. I loved the story, but I also knew that it just wasn't a topic/genre that would spark heavy interest in the industry, and that even if it did sell, it probably wouldn't sell for a lot. It was purely a labor of love. With Legend, which was also a labor of love starring characters I'd had for years (any story of mine starring my character Day is a labor of love :) ), I remember thinking to myself, "Ok, this should also be considered commercial. If THIS one doesn't get published, then it's never going to happen for me. This is as good of a story as I can write, and I don't think I can make anything else better."

Q: How would you recommend going through the drafting process? For example, do you pause to proof-read as you go or just keep going to the end then look back?

A: Ah, I do actually have a very set opinion on this! I always pause to proof-read before I continue, even in a novel's first draft. I know a lot of writers who don't do this and can continue on just fine, but it never works for me. I have to proof-read. I tried not proofreading once, and by the time I finished the first draft there were so many problems with the story that I just got discouraged and gave up on it. I think it helps to jump backward and edit so that the next chapters can go smoothly, because details you change early on can have a big effect on later plot points. I think it's best to get that down when the things you want to change are fresh in your mind.

If I'm having a really hard time with one particular chapter, though, sometimes I do just skip ahead to the next chapter. (I just did this last week, actually) I'll make a note to myself of what's supposed to be happening in the chapter that I skip, so that I don't forget. Then I go back later when I'm not so brain dead, and fill it in.

Q: How does the process of getting an agent work? Do you send your manuscript to them and then they decide whether or not they want to represent you? Does this part come before or after contacting publishers or does the agent like, help you with that? And maybe the most importantly, how much does it cost to do all this?

A: FIRST AND FOREMOST. None of this should cost you anything except your time (and occasionally stamps, if you have to snail mail query letters/manuscripts). If an agent wants you to pay them for representing you, RUN. That is a scam agent. Legit agents only take a 15% commission from the actual sale of your book to a publisher, and never before. Also, real publishers pay YOU, not the other way around. Any publisher that says you need to pay to have your book published is a vanity publisher, not a real publisher. (And in this day and age of e-books, you really shouldn't need to go to them....just head over to Amazon if you want to self-publish. :) )

Remember, you are selling your work to a company. Not buying. So they pay you.

-----

Hope this is helpful!

More good news about Legend :)

(Reposted from my deviantArt blog)

I just got permission from my editor to post this good news about Legend (my dystopian novel about my boy criminal Day coming out from Penguin in December 2011). This is for my international deviantArt watchers!

It's now official--Legend will be published in Germany (by the amazing publisher Loewe) and the UK (from Penguin UK)! For my UK/Australia/New Zealand folks, it will be released at the same time it's being released in the U.S. (Dec. 2011). For any German folks, it will be released in Fall 2012. So you'll be able to find it on bookshelves there! Woot! :)

More news about international deals to follow....

In other news, I'm currently working on Legend 2 (er, I have no idea what its title is going to be). For the Legend app, I'm working on a standalone site for you guys similar to the Fuzz Academy site, but one that's hopefully going to be run better from the start so it doesn't fall apart under heavy traffic. There will be more hairstyles, more clothes, and so on to choose from. I'm hoping to open that site to beta starting in January 2011. (I'm also trying to figure out a good way to connect it to the app so that previous app users can transfer all their goodies over to the standalone version) And lastly, I'm planning on writing a series of short stories set in the Legend world to post online for everyone, starring Day before the events in Legend.

I'm almost 30,000 words into Legend 2. Gah. Tough sloggin', especially now that I'm hitting the dreaded middle. Writing a sequel is much, much harder than I thought--and a completely different experience from writing Book 1. But I think (I hope!) it'll turn out well.

And lastly, I noticed in the last post about Legend that a lot of you are also writers! Wootness. Do you have any questions about writing/publishing you'd like me to answer? Feel free to post any if you have them and I'll do my best.

Off to eat some chocolate....

Made it (for now)

2,003 words today. Whew! I'm still (sort of) on track for NanoWrimo. This year I decided that I'd participate loosely in Nano, but that I won't beat myself up if I don't get my 1,700+ daily word count. So far I've been doing well for the last 3 days, but that'll change once Thanksgiving week rolls around. I made a deal with myself that my required daily words are 1,000, but that if I can, I'll shoot for more. Let's see how long I can go like this.

Anyway, tonight's chapter starred my boy criminal protag Day and his young friend Tess. Poor Tess. I make her go through so much crap. :) Also, I realized after working on a bit of exposition that I had left an entire state out of the Republic (in other words, the dystopic western U.S. in LEGEND): Wyoming. Whatever happened to Wyoming? It's like Nevada and South Dakota just swallowed it up in my brain and I completely forgot about it. Sorry, Wyoming-ans out there. You're back in. :)

Reading list

Still chewing my way through Book 2. This will probably be my status for a while. :)

In the meantime, I thought I'd post a list of the books I'm currently reading. I used to read one book at a time, finishing it completely before moving on to another--but lately I find that I tend to have several going at once, and hop between them depending on whatever mood I'm in for the day. So here's my list as of now:

1. The Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare: Well yeah. It's Cassie Clare. I used to read her fanfic way back in high school....and now, to read her stories set in her own original worlds, I'm filled with ridiculous glee. I luff Jem. I alternate between love and hate for Will. And Cassie's worldbuilding puts me to shame. I bet she knows things about 19th century London that 19th century Londoners didn't even know.

2. The Scorch Trials by James Dashner (Sequel to The Maze Runner): I always feel giddy whenever I fall for a series before it hits the bestseller lists--that feeling you get when you really like a small indie band, and then they hit the big times and you get to be smug with your friends like you're the one who first discovered them. :) I kinda felt that way when I fell in love with The Hunger Games before it became popular. In the same vein, I picked up The Maze Runner long before it hit the NYT List just because I thought the title sounded interesting and I liked the cover. I devoured it. And now that Scorch Trials has hit the NYT in its opening week, I like to sit back and think happily, "I was an original fan!"

3. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: Ok, so this is an oldie. But I had a craving for some Dorian Gray and am reading back over it. Even though it's written back in like, caveman days, it still has all the hallmarks of a great story. Tension in the very first chapter. Building up intrigue about our main character (Dorian) before introducing him, something I love seeing in books. And a main character who has a truly epic character development arc--going from naive boy with no idea how beautiful he is, to a monster taking advantage of everyone for his own pleasure, to a bitter and remorseful man. Aaagh love. <3

4. Ash by Malinda Lo: Just got this. I've been wanting to read this one for a while--I'm always up for a fairy tale retelling, especially one with writing that has some of Jacqueline Carey's loveliness in it. :) I read the first paragraph and just about melted into the beauty of it. It's like reading Patricia McKillip. Like jewels wet with rain. Gah. I wish I could write like this.

I'm also in dire need of some books that aren't out yet--namely, Matched (by Ally Condie), and Across the Universe (by Beth Revis). Lots of dystopians. I need my dystopian fix. How do so many people get their hands on ARCs of these amazing books?? I am not special enough to get them early, I guess. Sadness. :(

Adventures of Book 2

I'm about a third of the way into Book 2 (about 30,000 words), and I'm discovering all sorts of interesting things about characters I thought I knew but have darker sides than I realized. This is one of my favorite and most nervewracking parts of the writing process. Even when I make a plot outline to follow, I find myself constantly straying from it because halfway through a chapter, something will happen and one of my characters will go "Hold on, I'm not going to say that. That's not who I am. I'm going to do THIS instead." And he/she will go off and do something that completely shocks me. Today is full of this sort of craziness. One of my characters has mutinied against me, and become something I didn't realize he/she could be. Weird. O_o

It solved a few plot problems I was having, but added new ones in the process. So I stopped writing for now, and for the next few days I'm going to do some plotting again to see if I can find my way back to something that makes sense. :) Hopefully in time for NanoWriMo. I highly doubt I'll be able to finish Nano, but I'd really really like to finish my first draft of Book 2 by the end of this year so I have some leeway to knock it into something presentable by the time my due date (April-ish of next year) rolls around!

In other news, Boyfriend and I were driving around this afternoon when he saw a big "Meg 2010" (i.e. Meg Whitman) campaign poster in a store window:

Boyfriend: Look. Meg 2010.
Me: MiG 2010? Ooooh, is that a new model? Where?
Boyfriend: ... No. MEG WHITMAN 2010.
Me: *utter disappointment* Oh. Not a new Russian fighter jet?
Boyfriend: Sometimes I wonder about you.

I ended up watching videos all afternoon of Russian fighter jets and listening to the Top Gun anthem. Then I ate a lot of pistachios. And that rounds out my writing day. :) (If my boss is reading this, I also did all of my day job work. Diligently. Scout's honor.)

And of course I leave you with one of the best anthems evar:

Just one of those days

Today is such a writer's block day. It's so heavily a writer's block day that it's not even funny. I wrote 600 words, then trashed them in exasperation. Then I skipped ahead a chapter and wrote another couple hundred words, and trashed them too. Finally managed to squeeze out about 400 halfway decent words, but I may very well read them tomorrow morning and find that they also suck, and throw them into the raging inferno as well.

Closed Word in a cranky huff. Then went online and bought two pairs of ankle boots.

It's just one of those days....

Clearing up a misconception

With every announcement, there will inevitably be some misconceptions and rumors that arise. For me, most of the things about my book deal for LEGEND are true, but there is one misconception that I keep seeing, and I thought I should probably set the record straight on it before it keeps going! :)

Honest Misconception: LEGEND was sold because of its accompanying Facebook app, i.e. LEGEND the Facebook App came before LEGEND the Book.

What actually happened: LEGEND was a book before it became anything else. I wrote it between April - October 2009. Then, while my agent worked with me on revisions for it and we prepared it for submission, I used my free time to create a Facebook app for the book. It helped me stay in the world of the novel, while also letting me take a break from writing. It did manage to accumulate a few users (although, to be quite honest, 13,000 registered app users for any Facebook app is a fairly modest number), but when Agent Kristin and I started making the submission rounds and we talked on the phone with interested editors, none of them cared about the Facebook app--which is the way it should be. The book had to interest them first and foremost. If the editors didn't like the book, no Facebook app would make them want to buy it (unless, perhaps, it had 100 gazillion users like FarmVille). Only after the book sale happened did Putnam (my awesome publisher!) have interest in the Facebook app and how it could help promote the book. Which, again, is the way it should be. Anything LEGEND-related is subordinate to the book, and exists only to help promote the book itself.

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Anyway, I just wanted to make sure I posted that up for the interwebz. :)