FML Madness - Amy Boggs

Happy Tuesday!  Here to share her story about a small moment that changed everything is my amazing agent, Amy Boggs.

And don't forget to leave a comment to enter for a chance to win a 25 page manuscript and query critique from the best agent in the biz :)

As someone who works in publishing, it's appropriate that the small choice that changed

my life centered on a book.

It was early fall of my ninth grade year. I came home from school, walked into the kitchen through the garage door, and found Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone sitting alone on the countertop. Turned out my younger brother had bought it earlier that day at the Scholastic Book Fair.

As a voracious reader, I had always devoted every possible spare moment of my day to reading. At the risk of TMI, this included time spent in the bathroom, because simply sitting there and letting my mind wander was a waste of valuable reading time. Since there was some urgency at that moment, the book on the countertop seemed the perfect immediate choice for having something to read in the bathroom.

But I had recently decided as a fourteen-year-old high school student that I should only be reading capital-L Literature, because that was what I thought smart adults read. The book on the countertop was clearly a kids' book, so no way I could read it.

That's when I faced my choice.

Yes, whether or not to read Harry Potter in the bathroom was my life-changing decision.

Deciding that anything was better than nothing, and that I could read it to mock it, I picked up the book. I ended up reading until my legs were numb, totally hooked. It became the pebble that started ripples.

Thanks to Harry Potter, I decided to read whatever I pleased and not worry what people thought. Thanks to Harry Potter, I started writing outside of school, and researched the business of publishing. Thanks to Harry Potter, I discovered an online message board of people from all over the world who loved analyzing the books but also shared their insights on life, which broadened my own worldview. Thanks to Harry Potter, I expanded my introverted shell, and I invited a new classmate and fellow fan to the movie. She ended up becoming my best friend. Thanks to all these things, I went to college in New York, and thanks to that I moved to NYC, and thanks to that I got the job I have now and am writing this.

It was the smallest choice for the silliest reason, but it led to who I am today. Perhaps I would have still found my way here without Harry Potter, but I can't think of how. For me, that's a comfort. I like to think that any little choice I make without thinking might end up being the one that leads me on my next great adventure.

Harry Potter has changed so many lives, and I'm certainly glad it changed yours. I'm sure all your clients are glad. It didn't just change your life, it changed all of ours too. Make sure to comment for a chance to win that critique! And come on back tomorrow when I'll be hosting Michelle McLean, author of To Trust a Thief.

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Amy Boggs is a sci-fi/fantasy geek always looking for more things to geek out about. Fortunately, she often gets to do this professionally as a literary agent. She grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, and came to New York City by way of Vassar College. She loves her adopted city, despite its lack of mountains. When not reading, she wanders the streets, museums, and theaters of NYC.

FML Madness - Ask Me Anything

My original plan for Monday had been to do each week's giveaways on the following Monday, but since I decided to announce them all on one day, I was suddenly left with nothing to post today.

So I just want to remind you that each post is a separate giveaway, and all you have to do to win that book is go to the post and leave a comment.  Seriously, these are all amazing books, so don't forget to enter.  I'll post links to all of them below to make it easier.

Also, today at noon (eastern time), I'll be participating in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit.  I'll be answering questions from noon until the questions stop (or I pass out, whichever comes first), so you should check it out.  It's being hosted by the YAWriters subreddit, which Beth Revis and Julie Cross and the other moderators have been working hard to turn into a cool place for YA authors (published or aspiring) can chat and post information.  They do a monthly query critique which had some top notch work in it.   So, it's totally worth checking out :)

And then definitely be here tomorrow to read the great FML post that my amazing agent Amy Boggs was kind enough to write.

Until then!

Post List

• The beginning - Giveaway: A full manuscript critique by Me :)
• Jennifer R. Hubbard - Copies of The Secret Year and Try Not to Breathe
• Christine Johnson - Copies of The Gathering Dark and Defy the Dark
• Margie Gelbwasser - A copy of Pieces of Us
• Josh Berk - A copy of Guy Langman: Crime Scene Procrastinator
• Me - A copy of FML
• Emilia Rhodes - An ARC of How to Love by Katie Cotugno
• Trish Doller - A copy of Something Like Normal
• Matthew MacNish - A copy of Winger by Andrew Smith (and Andrew has offered to sign a bookplate to the winner because he is freaking awesome).
• E.M. Kokie - A copy of Personal Effects, which she has offered to autograph for the winner because she is super amazing cool like that :)

FML Madness - E.M. Kokie

To cap off a great week of FML stories, I'm thrilled to host E.M. Kokie, author of Personal Effects, which was absolutely one of my favorite books last year.

I played the violin for 2 years. And by play, I mean I played at playing it. I had weekly
lessons in school, but I rarely practiced. I wasn't at all good. I was never going to be good. I really just liked rosining the bow and posing in front of my bedroom mirror with the violin under my chin, pretending I was a grand violinist.

My friends played “real instruments” and were in the band, which had cool band concerts and practices and uniforms. I had lonely lessons and sad all town orchestra concerts. I was awful, maybe the worst one there. I wasn’t fooling anyone. Especially not my parents who suggested that if we were going to spend money on lessons and rentals, etc., then I should probably practice.

I quit instead.

But I still wanted to be part of the band. It was late to start a new instrument. And I probably wasn’t going to practice that one, either. I needed something I could do.

So, I joined the drum section, which I figured needed a girl, and looked easy. It wasn’t easy. At all. Playing the drums was difficult. And the members of the percussion section who had made it look so easy practiced hard. And a lot.

The others in my section, one other girl and the rest guys, worked hard for the privilege of playing snare and timp and bass. They challenged each other for rank. I was just happy to be there (and to wear the cool drum section beret instead of the really dorky hats the rest of the band wore).

My fellow percussionists played some kickass drums.

I barely played the drums. I mean, I did play a drum now and then over my 6 years in the percussion section. But I more often played other things.

I played a mean wood block.

A scintillating triangle.

Cow bell. Tambourine. Chimes. Several strange and exotic noisemakers.

The cymbals. Much of my marching band experience was with cymbals.

Once, I “played” a police siren. Probably because I was the only member of the percussion section the director trusted with the jerry-rigged electrical wiring (I was terrified I might get electrocuted every time I flipped the switch).

And for one glorious fall, I played a garbage can, hitting its various surfaces for a cool-as-hell part of the half-time show at the football games. It was awesome.

My mother never bugged me about practicing the garbage can. And there were no rental fees.

I played the clarinet for a short time in middle school...I would have rather played the trash can! Thank you for sharing your story! So today I'm giving away a copy of Personal Effects. Leave a comment telling us what instrument you played as a kid (or what instrument you wished you'd played). I just have to say, you all have been so awesome. I'm ridiculously lucky.

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My debut YA novel Personal Effects was published by Candlewick Press September 11, 2012. As a lawyer, I love a good story and a good debate. I like to have the last word. www.emkokie.com

FML Madness - Matthew MacNish

Today I have the pleasure of hosting Matthew MacNish, a great write I expect big things from someday soon, and the host of the The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment, a blog about his road to publication, where he provides some amazing help to people with their queries. If you're serious about querying, you need to check out his site. Now onto his story!

My life has had a lot of FML moments (both in the sense of: seriously, F my life! And in
the sense of being a major crossroads). Moments, like the head of a pin, in which you know, sometimes at that moment, sometimes not until much later, things will never be the same again. Most of them I had no control over. My dad leaving. My mom dying. My aunts and uncles becoming my guardians and deciding to split my sisters and I up. Some of them, though, and one in particular, I did control.

Unlike Simon Cross, I never got to see what the other choice would have brought. What the alternate reality might have brought, for good or ill. That’s the real beauty of Shaun’s new novel, I think: that you never know what one big decision might end up affecting, and sometimes, things can lead to all kinds of unexpected results. A decision that seems wise and well thought out at the time can end in disastrous results just as easily as a change made on a whim can bring the greatest achievements. Or … you know, something in between.

Anyway, as usual, I over-explain. Let’s get to the story, shall we?

It was early 1995. I was 17 years old. I was living at this kind of weird cultist emotional growth boarding school for “at-risk-teens” in bumblefunk north Idaho (look up CEDU, or Synanon, if you’re curious to know more), and I’d had it up to here with the place.

I’d actually run away from it once already, made it all the way to the airport, in Seattle, where I slept and begged for food for a few days, trying to convince my legal guardians to let me come back home.

The whole situation was nuts. My guardians, who were not my parents, had decided I needed to attend this school because I was out of control. Granted, I had been expelled from a more traditional, college preparatory boarding school as a sophomore, because they’d found alcohol in my dorm room, but that’s another story entirely.

This one is about escape. And crossroads.

So, this school, this cult, was a really wacked out place. There were no accredited psychologists, psychiatrists, drug rehabilitation counselors, or pretty much any other kind of professional actually qualified to assist troubled kids. Mostly, it was a bunch of lumberjacks, and people who had graduated from the program, after being brain-washed, and decided they wanted to “teach there.”

Naturally, I wanted out of there like I wanted oxygen. It was the middle of winter, though, and north Idaho is not exactly friendly to foot travel in the colder months, so just hiking off campus, like the time I’d run away before, wasn’t going to be an option.

A friend of mine, Jeremy (he turned out to be a nutcase, but again--that’s another story)

had a plan. Actually, he had a plan, and I had a decision to make. Did I want to get out of there badly enough? It would mean a lot of changes in my life--more on that in a minute.

Jeremy and I lived in the same dorm. He woke me up the night of the plan, and said he was leaving. I was still undecided, so he left without me, but said he’d come back, if he could find a ride in town. The closest town was not very close at all, and it was as cold as the ninth circle of hell out there, so I figured he had little chance of making it. I hoped he wouldn’t freeze to death or anything, and told him as much, but I was tired, so mostly I just rolled back over and went to sleep again.

Sometime later, I was awoken by a hand shaking my shoulder. My awareness rose slowly out of the clutching depths of REM, and probably the sticky tendrils of adolescent arousal dreams, to eventually discover Jeremy standing over me, a wild look in his eye, and a lit cigarette dangling from his lip.

Needless to say, I was shocked, and a little embarrassed.

“Come on dude, got us a ride,” he whispered.

“Put that out!” I hissed. “You’ll wake (I can’t remember the name of our dorm leader).”

Smoking was strictly prohibited. Jeremy didn’t care though, he had tasted freedom, and that he came back to get me at all was saying something.

I got up, dressed, quickly packed a bag with some warm clothes and followed him outside. It hadn’t snowed, thank god, but there was snow on the ground, and our boots crunched through the hardened upper layer so loudly I was certain we would wake the dead. Or worse: the living.

But we made it to the edge of campus, and there it was … our ride.

FML.

I stood on the edge of a precipice. The aforementioned lot of changes swirling visibly before my eyes. On the one side, the side in which I ducked my head against the chill wind and went back inside to stay at school like a good boy: another year in this hell hole. Another year of no music. Another year of “rap” sessions, in which kids were “encouraged” to scream at each other and beat pillows on the floor. Another year of isolation--from my friends, my sisters, my girlfriend.

But also, maybe a chance to go to college. Certainly a high-school diploma, whatever a joke it might be earned from this place. And almost certainly some level of reconciliation with my family. A chance to go home. A chance, just maybe, to be loved.

On the other side. Well … on the other side was freedom.

Which one do you think I took?

#

In the long run, of course I can’t be certain how much difference in my life that decision made. And like I said, unlike Simon, I don’t have the luxury of a literary examination to figure it out, but I think I made the right choice.

I’ve got a pretty good life, all told, so I can’t complain.

I think you made the right choice too, Matt. Thank you so much for sharing this. Since Matthew and I share a love of all things written by Andrew Smith, how about I give away a copy of Andrew's newest book Winger today? When I tell you this book made me cry like a baby, I am not exaggerating. Leave me a comment telling me whether you would or would not want the opportunity to see how your life could have turned out if you'd made other choices.

Matthew MacNish is a writer of fiction about young people that may or may not be for young people. He is the father of two beautiful young ladies, three lazy cats, and one adorable German Shepherd. Together they live in the mountains of north Georgia amid his endless collection of vinyl records. He blogs about queries and his own personal path to publication at The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment, about Young Adult literature at YA Confidential, and about Middle Grade literature at Project Middle Grade Mayhem.

FML Madness - Trish Doller

Today I'm happy to have a story from Trish Doller, author of Something Like Normal and Where the Stars Still Shine.

It was the 80's and Skate World was one of the most popular weekend hangouts in my small Ohio town. We'd go there in packs, driven by someone's parent since we weren't old enough to drive, and spend the evening session rolling around in circles, playing video games, and checking out boys. Usually once or twice a session they'd have a Ladies' Choices skate, where the girls would ask the boys for a turn around the rink during a "couples only" song.

One weekend I spent the evening checking out a cute blond-haired boy who was hanging out in a clump with a group of his friends. He kept looking at me, too, so when the Ladies' Choice skate came around, I felt reasonably confident that if I asked him he'd say yes. So I worked up the nerve and took the chance.

Holding the hand of an unfamiliar boy as we went 'round and 'round the rink was pretty romantic. Magical. We talked as we skated, so it wasn't awkward. He was really nice. And while I don't remember his name anymore, I remember that I was alternately thrilled and disappointed that he was from a town about two hours from mine. I mean, back then long distance phone calls were expensive and there was no such thing as the internet, so there wasn't much of a chance I'd ever see him again.

Anyway, as we rounded a curve, our skates bumped and we tumbled to the ground. That was embarrassing enough, but he was really sweet about it. He helped me up and assured me, "It's okay. We can keep skating." Except we couldn't...because the back seam of my corduroy jeans had split wide open. And telling him was about a thousand times more embarrassing than the fall.

Instead of hanging out with me as I sat on the sidelines, the cute boy went back to his friends and I spent the rest of the night worrying about how I was going to leave without the whole skating rink seeing my underwear.

FML.

Oh, the humanity! I really hope someone brought you change of pants or something.  Why can't things like that ever happen when no one is watching?  Thank you for sharing, Trish!

Today I'm giving away a copy of Something Like Normal.  Leave a comment with your favorite song to skate to.  If you don't have one, just leave your favorite song.

Tomorrow, Matthew MacNish will be dropping by to share his story.  You won't want to miss it.

Trish Doller's debut novel, Something Like Normal, was one of the most anticipated titles of 2012, named an IndieBound New Voices Pick and a finalist for NPR's Best Teen Books of All Time. She has been a newspaper reporter, radio personality and bookseller, and lives with her family in Fort Myers, Florida. Follow her on twitter @trishdoller. trishdoller.com

FML Madness - Emilia Rhodes

I'm really thrilled to host Emilia's post this week. Not only is she just about one of the most awesome editors around, but FML wouldn't exist without her. Though she's not at Simon Pulse any longer, she's doing some truly innovative work with the Collaborative program at Alloy Entertainment, and we're going to have a giveaway after her story.

Picture this: A rivalry football game, four girls, one shirtless, body-painted boy, and a clichéd attempt at creating senior year memories. This was exactly what I had in mind when I put purple and gold school-spirit ribbons in my hair (borrowed), tied up a Lakewood High t-shirt so that it would look cute (also borrowed), and took my seat on the bleachers for the last Lakewood/St. Ed’s showdown of my high school career. I sucked up three years of rolling my eyes at such events and pretended I cared or had a clue what was happening on the field in front of me.

See, I had started to get a little nostalgic about moving away from my hometown in Ohio, and by extension started to regret not joining in as much. But I had one year to fix that, and during the season of change, that’s exactly what I decided to do. I was going to go to football games and parties. Maybe join a sports team, if I was feeling so daring.

So I found myself at the big game along with a few friends. While some of my friends were less foreign to the concept of a Friday night football game than I was (I had been to a few, but can’t remember actually watching the game at any of them), overall this wasn’t something we typically did. But we did what we were supposed to do. We cheered for our friends, probably gossiped about our enemies. We flirted with the boys around us, particularly one of my friends and the shirtless, body-painted boy mentioned above, an alumni who was not nearly as sober as us pre-graduates.

I’d like to say that this was as transformative of a night as I intended it to be. That I loved the energy of the game so much I went the whole rest of the season. That I got invited to parties and made new friends with some of the 300+ students in my class I had never spoken to before. That I discovered one of them was my true love. That we went on double-dates with my friend and body-paint boy, and toasted each other at our weddings. But none of that happened.

Maybe it could have if I wasn’t sitting at that game thinking how much I didn’t fit in, even as I was plastering a smile on my face. If I’d let myself, I probably would have had a nice time. The friends I went to the game with that night had all been on the swim team together since middle school (yep, still never joined) and after the game they headed off to a swimmer party. They invited me, but I politely, and lamely, declined. I didn’t need part two of an evening of not fitting in.

What I ended up doing was going home and changing out of all the purple and gold I was wearing and into something gray (my favorite color at the time). It was then that I got a call from one of my closest friends. We usually had movie nights on Fridays, but he too had traded in our routine to go to the big game with his marching band friends. He hadn’t declined an invite to a party, but hated it once he went, and called me instead. I picked him up from the party and we went out to grab greasy food at a late-night diner to console our failed attempts at being normal.

It wasn’t actually a big moment in my life, but it’s one I still think about. I never tried to break out of my shell again senior year. What if I hadn’t given up? What if I didn’t settle for the status quo? But at the same time, years later, the only place I want to be is eating mozzarella sticks with my best friend, talking about the memories we were too self-aware we were making to enjoy. Maybe just like my friend flirting with her body-painted boy, I ended up just where I was supposed to that night.

No, seriously. My friend dated him from that day forward, and now they’re happily married. Although, he doesn’t wear body paint anymore. As far as I know.

Thank you so much, Emilia! It's really no surprise that Emilia was the right editor for FML. Throughout the story runs my own personal philosophy that we all end up at the places we're supposed to be. Some of us just take longer, bumpier roads there.

Today we're giving away an ARC of How to Love by Katie Cotugno.  It is the first book released from Alloy Entertainment's Collaborative program which accepts submissions from authors.  It's a pretty innovative and exciting program that you can read more about right here.

Tomorrow we'll be hearing from Trish Doller, author of one of my personal favorites, Something Like Normal, and the forthcoming Where the Stars Still Shine.

Emilia Rhodes is an editor at Alloy Entertainment, the home of Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, where she develops and edits young adult and middle grade fiction. She was previously at Simon Pulse, the teen fiction imprint at Simon & Schuster.

Her list includes New York Times bestselling series The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith, Thirst by Christopher Pike, and Kissed by an Angel by Elizabeth Chandler, as well as National Book Award finalist Out of Reach by Carrie Arcos. You can find her on Twitter @emiliarhodes.

FML Madness - Never Fear!

Oh, Mondays, how I loathe thee!

So, slight change in plans.  I've decided to extend the contests on all the entries until the 25th to give people a chance to enter.  I want everyone who wants the opportunity to enter to have a chance.  So I'll announce the winners of all the contests on June 25th.

Now, on to the humiliation!

Since my friends were kind enough to let me share their humiliating and hilarious stories, I figure it's only fair for me to share one of my own.

I'm pretty sure I've shared my "Never fear! Robin's here!" story, and my sad story about the girl who wouldn't give me the time of day because I didn't have a car, so I'm going to have to take you a little further back to find an appropriately devastating story.  

It begins at the 8th grade Halloween dance.  Now, before I start, the thing you have to understand is that when it came to dating and sex and all of those things, my understanding of them was limited. I knew of them on a rational level, but the abstracts of it all hadn't really sunk in.  What I knew in 8th grade was that boys were supposed to "like" girls and a boy's very masculinity was tied to whether or not girls "liked" him back.  Since I was neither athletic or outgoing, I knew I needed to have a girlfriend to keep from becoming the object of ridicule.  

Back then, I had a lot of girl friends as well as guy friends.  I had always managed to maintain friendships across the different cliques despite not really belonging to any of them.  My best girl friend was a girl named Lexi.  She was as close to a boy as a girl could be.  She was hilarious and crude and fun to talk to.  I'd harbored a "crush" on her all year, and at the eighth grade dance, I had decided I was going to tell her I "liked" her and suggest that she should be my girlfriend.  Now, I knew she usually dated older guys.  Guys in high school!  And I knew I couldn't compete with them, but we were such good friends that I figured she would see the logic in us going out.

I was wrong.

Back to the dance.  I'm pretty sure I was a vampire.  Or maybe a pirate.  I honestly can't remember.  What is seared into my brain is the moment I asked her to go out with me.  Not the words I said or the music that was playing or even what she was wearing.  It was the look on her face.  The smirk that became a smile that became a laugh that became a look of pure terror as she realized that I wasn't pranking her.  As she realized I was dead serious.
Then came the pity.  The, "I like you as a friend."  Standing on the periphery of the dance floor where all my friends could see, I was laughed at and friendzoned.  But that wasn't the worst part.

See, for someone like me, someone who was intellectually advanced but emotionally retarded, that very first real rejection was worse than a rusty nail through the scrotum.  It was worse than being swarmed by fire ants in the hot, Florida sun.  It was the most mortifying moment of my short, tragic life.

So I did what any other 13 year-old boy who'd just been rejected in full view of everyone he knew would do.  I started bawling, ran into the bathroom, and locked myself in the handicapped stall.  

It took three of my friends and a priest to coax me out.  Lexi and I didn't talk much after that.  FML.

How about I give a copy of FML today?  I've got a ton and I love giving them out.  All you have to do is tell me your favorite halloween costume in the comments.

And come back tomorrow when Emilia Rhodes, the amazing editor without whom FML would never have exited, shares an FML story of her own.