Friday...whoa.

It's Friday and I pretty much have no more brain cells to devote to anything other than reading and sleeping.  So here are some of the books I've read and enjoyed over the last few weeks:

THE DARK DAYS OF HAMBURGER HALPIN by Josh Berk - I read this while in the hospital and there were a couple of times I had to stop because I was laughing so hard it literally hurt.  Josh has this playful silliness in his book that's really charming.  I actually know what he's working on next and if I could stand over him and force him to write it faster, I would because I can't wait to read it.

FREEFALL by Mindi Scott was awesome.  I want to see the movie.  The writing is spare and wickedly sharp.  It was emotional without getting too sappy.  And Seth McCoy is a modern day Lloyd Dobbler, but without Dobbler's creepiness.

LIVVIE OWEN LIVED HERE by Sarah Dooley broke my heart and then put it back together again.  Livvie is an autistic girl who moves around every time an eviction notice shows up, but all she wants to do is go back to the house she loved.  So great.

THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS series by Cassandra Clare - Okay, not my normal reads but I was looking for something different here and I found it.  The thing that really stood out to me about the books were the characters.  They were so freaking fun.  Even if you're not a fan of this type of paranormal, read these for the characters, especially Magnus.

And right now I'm reading THE DEATH AND LIFE OF CHARLIE ST. CLOUD.  I saw the preview for the movie and thought the premise looked intriguing even though I can't sit through and entire movie featuring Zac Efron.  So I decided to read the book instead.  I'm about a quarter of the way through and already swept up in it.  It borders so often on becoming sickening sweet, but Ben Sherwood knows just when to reel it back in and keep it from becoming syrupy....that's a real talent.  It's tough to be emotional without getting melodramatic.  The folksy narrative style helps.  It feels like it's being told by someones grandfather.

So what are you all reading right now?  Next up on my list is ROCK, PAPER, TIGER, and I'm taking THE PASSAGE with me on my trip to San Diego in two weeks.  On deck I've also got NOTHING by Jaane Teller, THE CARDTURNER by Louis Sachar, DRUMS, GIRLS, AND DANGEROUS PIE by Jordan Sonnenblick, THE GREEN GLASS SEA by Ellen Klages, THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY by Siobhan Dowd, and UNWIND by Neal Shusterman.  Oh, and MOCKINGJAY comes out in less than a month, so I'll be stopping whatever I'm reading to hop on that train of awesomeness.  So yeah, what're you all reading?

More Kindle than Paper

I realized something yesterday:  This year I've purchased more books on my Kindle than I've purchased in paper.  And for the most part, the books that I've been purchasing in paper form from brick and mortar stores are books that I either want to share with friends, that I want to own forever, or that were written by friends that I want to support.

I'm still very opposed to the Kindle's proprietary lock that keeps me from doing what I want with the items that I've purchased when I want.  Spending money is difficult in this economy, so I like being able to share books with friends.  I've found that most of the time that I share a book with a friend and they like that book, that they'll go out and purchase more of that author's books.  I freely admit that, just like I do with my iTunes song, when I've found a way, I will strip the DRM off of my Kindle books so that I can share them.  If the e-book sellers and publishers would get their acts together and give us an easy way to share e-books within the confines of their DRM, I'd gladly use that, but based on the music industry, that probably won't happen in my lifetime.

So then why, if I have so many issues with DRM, am I buying so many Kindle books?  The truth is that, while I love so many things about paper books (smell, counting my progress in the number of pages, being able to see the books on my shelves) I love the convenience of my Kindle.  For one, it's ace on trips.  It used to be when I went on trips that I'd stuff a couple of books in my carry on, a couple in my checked luggage, and then likely end up buying one from the airport bookstore.  That strategy simply isn't great anymore since I don't check luggage now that airlines want to charge for everything.  Being able to carry a hundred books on a device the size of a small notebook is invaluable.  And if, for some reason, I still find myself without something to read, I can instantly buy something else.

The other major advantage is one that I only recently took advantage of.  When I landed in the ER a couple of weeks ago, I was in the hospital for two days, often with nothing to do.  All I had on me was my iPhone.  I was able to use the Kindle app on my iPhone to continue a book I'd begun on my actual Kindle.  When I opened the book on my phone, it synced to the location I'd left of at on my Kindle.  Then, when I had a friend go to my house and get my actual Kindle, I was able to pick up where I'd left off on my iPhone.  And that same philosophy carries through to all devices.  I could start a book on my Kindle, and then move with it to my phone, computer, work computer, iPad...anything that I could download a Kindle app for and put in my user credentials.  A year ago had I found myself in the same situation, I would have spent 6 hours in the ER with nothing to do but listen to the nurses tell me all the things that were wrong with me.

Those two things have made me a convert.  I'll still buy physical copies of friends' books and books that I want to share, but for those two reasons alone, I'll be buying more Kindle books than paper books for some time to come.

And I'm not loyal to Amazon...in fact, I'd jump on ANY device that allowed me to buy any e-books I wanted.  Much like you can buy MP3's from Amazon and put them on any MP3 player, I'd love a device to come forward that could buy books from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, Powells, etc so that I could have some choice.  Because right now, the Nook needs to get it's act together before I'll shell out the cash for it, and the Borders Kobo needs to hook up with a wireless carrier like both Kindle and Nook have done, because quite frankly, the syncing and ability to purchase books anywhere are killer features.  Not having them severely handicaps the Kobo.

So what about you all?  What are your thoughts?

A Dream Within a Dream Within a Dream

I've wanted to see INCEPTION since I saw the previews months ago.  Yesterday I had the opportunity.  It was a good movie.  The action was stellar, the acting was really awesome.  I still have trouble seeing DiCaprio as an adult, and had a tough time buying him as a husband with two kids (even with the stubble he looks 12), but he and Ellen Paige and Joseph Gordon-Levitt all blew me away.  And at the end of the day, Christopher Nolan came up with an intriguing plot.

Unfortunately, INCEPTION stopped just short of being great.

******THERE BE SPOILERS HERE******

In my opinion, there were two major problems.  The first is that I knew within ten minutes that they were going to try to make the entire movie a dream.  In the end, when Dom returns home and gets to his family, we see the top spinning without stopping, thus letting us know that he's still in a dream.  Either he never made it out of the shared dream of the thieves, or the entire movie was a dream.  Either way, it was a lazy attempt to make us question our own reality.  The whole movie, the concept of inception, is that an idea is a virus.  It spreads without stopping, without prejudice.  Much like the idea that Dom could return home if he did something that no one else could do.  But they didn't take these ideas far enough.  They had dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams, but never explored what that meant to the thieves.  Which is why I was so easily able to figure out the "twist" at the end.  Nolan wanted everyone to see that and go, "Whoa!" but everyone in my theatre groaned when they saw that. An enjoyable movie ruined by lack of imagination at the end.

My other problem was a problem of storytelling.  They created the rules and then forgot to break them or even use them for the most part.  For example, when the character played by Gordon-Levitt was in the hotel, being chased by the projections, he used the idea of a paradox, to run up the stairs and come around behind his assailant.    But that was only one good use amongst a million other wasted opportunities.  Ellen Paige's character was supposed to be this genius, however, she was hardly used in world building.  They gave us all these rules--never build from memories, don't change too many things--but then failed to bring those back around.  The purpose of having rules is to give characters something to break.

When they were discussing the concept of time within the dream.  That time grows longer the deeper you go, I remember being blown away.  They were going to have to spend 10 years in the lowest level, yet that never came to pass.  Paige never brought any of her supposed talent to bear, she never broke the rules.  They went from one dream to another to another, and while there were roadblocks thrown up, they were of the normal kind.  It was like they set up this whole world with rules and consequences, and then ignored them.

For me, the movie was all about wasted potential and missed opportunities.  In my opinion, Nolan wasn't daring enough.

Was this a good movie?  Yes.  The actions scenes in the hotel with the loss of gravity were beautiful.  The tension created when they were all trying to sync the "kick" at the end was amazing.  But in the end, lazy, predictable writing kept INCEPTION from being great.  Nolan wanted to plant the seed of an idea in the viewers mind, and sadly failed.

Points of View

You all know how I feel about the problem of boys and books.  I'm going to be asking for help soon to launch my Give a boy a Book initiative, so look for that in the beginning of August.  But there have been a lot of really great posts about this lately with some really different takes, and I want to direct you to them because they make for some awesome reading.

The first is an AP piece about getting boys to read by giving them what they want...namely farts.  How to get boys to read? Try a book on farts.

The second is was written by Leah Cypess over at The Enchanted Inkpot.  TOTW: Boy Books  The article itself is short but there are some really awesome comments there.

The third was written by Hannah Moskowitz about getting boys to read YA by giving them real boy characters instead of resorting to gimmicks.  Full disclosure:  Hannah totally pimps my book in the article and is a fellow Simon Pulse author.  The Boy Problem.

I think all three articles have a lot of validity to them.  I'm personally all for getting boys to read any way we can.  I think there's a lot of value in YA literature for teenage boys and that we're missing the boat on bringing them into the fold.  But I think it can be done without dumbing down the books or resorting to gimicky tricks.  I also think there are two distinct problems. When boys get older they either move from middle grade book into adult books, bypassing YA, or they stop reading altogether.  And I think we have to address both of those problems.

But these three writers have said it all better than I could, so go read their articles and then come back and tell me what you think.  Is there really a problem?  Should we cater to the tastes of boy or should boys be taught to value what's written even if it doesn't appeal to them?  Or is there a middle ground?  What can be done about the problems?

Top 10 Things to do While Waiting

Publishing is all about waiting.  It's the nature of the beast. You wait for critique partners to get back to you.  You wait for your agent to read and get back to you.  You wait for editors to get back to you.  You wait for ARCs and covers and everything you can think of.  My journey from the first moment I conceived of The Deathday Letter in July 2008 until publication June 2010 was 1 year and 11 months.  A blip by publishing standards, but forever to me.

Since writers will spend an awful amount of time waiting, I thought I'd share the top ten things to do while waiting for whatever publishing thing you're waiting for.

10.  Stalk your agent/editor/crit partners on Facebook/Twitter/their blog.  The trick here is to be subtle about it.  If your agent is reading the first draft of your fab new manuscript, dropping comments on their blog asking if they read anything good lately, is pretty unlikely to win you any points.  Nor is asking your agent what they're up to over the weekend and following it up with, "Oh, you're probably really busy reading, aren't you? Wink, wink."  Stalk from a distance and remember that if you can't be subtle, be a little bit crazy.

9.  Google yourself.  Google alerts are great but they're not nearly as satisfying as a real time search that brings up obscure links to your book being sold in a Malaysian veterinarian's office.  For an extra thrill, perform the same search on Yahoo, Bing, or hit them all simultaneously at Dogpile.com

8.  Write blog posts. They don't have to be lucid or rational, they just have to be made of words.  Much like this blog post.  Oh damn.  Bonus points for writing a post that designed to lure in the trolls.  Post must include the words: always, never, hate, or Twilight.  Example:  Ebooks are never, ever going to be as popular as print books. Twilight sux.

7.  Watch your Amazon rank and cry into your vodka bottle.  The less said about this shameful practice, the better.

6.  Tweet random things about your life.  Great examples include:  My cat likes to eat my toes.  For bonus points, create poems out of your tweets:
I ate corn
Corn is yellow
I'll be seeing that corn
again tomorrow.

5.  Go to the gym. Let's face it.  Waiting's tough.  You probably ate a box of Ring Dings just reading the first five items on this list.  If you need help finding motivation to run, call 1-800-Rent-a-bear.  Then run. Oh dear god, RUN!

4.  Change out of your pajamas and go bird watching.....I'm only kidding.  Put the knife down or I'm calling the bear again.

3.  Reorganize your writing desk.  Make sure when you clean it, you pay special attention to that oily spot in the center where you banged your head at least once per day.

2.  Check your reviews on Goodreads.  Bonus points for creating fake personas and arguing with any and all bad reviews.

1.  The number one thing to do while you're waiting is:  write another book.  Because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results, and everyone knows that writers are the most insane of all.

On the flipside, just remember, when you're agent/editor/crit partner gets your manuscript back to you in record time, they like to be paid in cupcakes.

People We Hate to Hate

Oh, Monday, how I've missed you.  I'm actually grateful to be back at work.  Being home with nothing to watch but bad SYFY shows and reruns of Gray's Anatomy is enough to make me wish the surgeon's knife had slipped.  Okay, just kidding.  Wait, have you seen Gray's Anatomy?  I'm totally not kidding.

So let's all face it:  there are things about ourselves that we're not proud of.  Impulses and thoughts that are uncharitable and mean.  For instance, when I was in middle school, I was a bully.  I mean, I was scrawny and skinny and couldn't fight my way out of a ziplock back with a box cutter.  But I had a wickedly scathing sense of humor that I used to put down others.  It was the way in which I kept from being bullied myself.  When I felt threatened, I turned my powers onto someone else and redirected the bullying.  I didn't do it because I was inherently cruel, I did it because I was scared.  Too scared to stand up for myself and too scared to risk being bullied.

But I can excuse that sort of behavior in myself.  I realized it was wrong in HS and, while I still had a sharp tongue, I took my lumps rather than beat down others...most of the time.  It's the day to day stuff that makes me ill.  Like, I fully admit to passing homeless people on the street and thinking to myself that they should get a shower and get a job.  Without knowing anything about them, I passed judgement.  Again, does it make me a bad person?  No.  But if others were to hear those thoughts coming from me, they might not agree.

Lately I've been grappling with creating characters that are unlikable.  It's a difficult line to walk.  I want to be honest about who a character is...warts and all, but at the same time, I don't want people to be turned off to them.  I read a book this year that a lot of people really loved but I found the main characters to be shallow and vapid and cruel.  Why?  Because the author, who did a phenomenal job portraying multi-faceted characters, toed the line and went too far for me to sympathize with them.

Like I said, it's a tough line to walk.  In the movie THE READER, we're shown a portrait of a Nazi who was complicit in the death of 300 Jews who were locked in a church.  I know that we were supposed to feel a sense of sympathy for the main character, Hanna, because she was illiterate, however I found myself unable to feel anything for her.  When she eventually met her end, not only did I not feel bad for her, but I was glad.

But the problem is that if we never show a character's foibles then we risk creating Mary Sues who are perfect and wonderful in every way.  And who wants to read about that?  The trick then, becomes showing the warts of the character without losing the reader's sympathies.  I have a tendency to always go at least one step too far in the wrong direction when it comes to that.  Maybe one day I'll figure out how to do it properly.  However, I think that any time a writer exposes a character's dark side, he or she risks alienating some readers.  For example, I have zero tolerance for characters who cheat.  It doesn't matter what the circumstances are, if I main character cheats on their bf/gf they lose all my sympathies and I usually stop reading the book.

That's a risk we have to take though.  Maybe it's better to sometimes risk alienating some readers than to bore all of them.  Still, as I've learned, while it's great to show some warts, some are better kept hidden.

Blog Chain - How I Revise

Hey :)  I'm pretty much back on my feet.  I still can't run or do anything too strenuous, but I can at least go get my own groceries, so that's an improvement.  Thanks for all the well wishes.  They really meant a lot.

So I'm back on the blog chain! This chain was brought to us by the ever-awesome Sarah (who deserves a huge round of congratulations for scoring a great agent...I suspect it won't be long before we'll be hearing about her first sale!).  Sarah wants to know:

How do you handle revisions? Do you revise as you're writing, or do you wait until you've gone through beta readers and crit partners to revise? How soon after you finish do you begin your revisions?

I've never been good with crit partners.  Most of my experiences were from bad HS creative writing classes where all the comments either focused on things that didn't matter or were vague enough to be worthless.  So up until about a year ago, I worked almost completely crit partner free.  I had a couple of friends I trusted to tell me if my story was crappy or not, but they weren't into the nitty gritty stuff.  But after I found my agent and got published, I've made some amazing writer friends who I feel comfortable critting with.  One is fellow blog chainee Margie.  She's been invaluable.

Shoot, I ran off topic.  Anyway, my typical mode of revision is to write a chapter.  Then, as I'm writing the next chapter, I revise the previous chapter.  Usually only for small stuff.  I save the big picture stuff for later.  But by the time I finish a first draft, it's usually fairly clean of spelling and grammar errors (my first drafts are atrocious).  Then I go back and read through the whole thing again, making changes as I go.  But I steer clear of the BIG ideas until later.  Before I send it off to my crit partners, I break it down by scenes using this awesome spreadsheet my agency AND blog chain partner Shannon gave me.  It helps me see which characters are over or underused, which scenes are too short, any trends in chapter lengths there are.  Then I send it off for critting.

While my crit partners are reading, I also spend time examining scenes that I think don't work and looking at the big picture.  Pacing and plot and characters.  I make a ton of notes so that when my crit partners send stuff back, I can see if they had the same thoughts I did.  It's sort of like a check list.  If we both hate some aspect of the story, then I can be pretty certain that it should go without second guessing myself.  If we disagree, then I know that I need to take a really close look at why.

Once I get everything back and have a good revision plan, it can be anywhere from a few days to a year before I start the revisions.  It really all depends on my focus.  If the solutions to the problems raised during my readings and crittings are pretty straight forward, then I'll move right ahead with the revisions. Otherwise, I'll wait.  I have a history of rushing forward and know I should impose a length of time on myself, but I'm terrible with things like that.

And that's pretty much it for me.  My revision process is scattered and chaotic, but it works.  So how about you?  Tell me what your revision process is like.  And while you're at it, check out rad Michelle's process (and congratulate her on her upcoming  Homework Helpers: Essays and Term Papers ) and then head over to Abby's fab blog tomorrow and see how she handles revisions!

Holiday

Happy Monday! So I'm taking a bit of a blog holiday. The tiny terror known as my gallbladder was exorcised from my body this weekend and I'm taking time to recover. Which means I'm watching Doctor Who repeats and reading my backlog of books.

I'll be back in a few days! Have a great week :)

How Writing is Like Top Chef

It's no secret that I love Top Chef.  It's the one reality show that's more about competition than wacky personalities, which makes it awesome to me.  In my opinion, if a competitive reality show isn't about who's the best, then it's a failure.

Anyway, the one thing that always kills me is when the people with the worst dish are up in front of the judges, and someone inevitably admits that they didn't try their hardest.  They didn't do their food their way.  And I'm like, "WHHHHHHHY!?!"  If you know that you only have one chance to make an impression, why would you not put in 110%?  

And then I realize that I've been guilty of it too.  I talk to my agent about half-baked ideas.  I send manuscripts to my crit partners that aren't quite ready.  It's stupid and I admit that.

I was watching Friday Night Lights the movie, and the character of the coach always told his players to be perfect.  Toward the end, he explained that being perfect simply meant being able to look each other in the eye and know that they'd done their best.  We should all strive to be perfect.  

I've gone from cooking to football, but the point is that if I'm going to end up having to defend a losing idea to my agent, an editor, or whatever, I want to at least be able to say that I did my best, that I was perfect.  

Damn, now I'm hungry.

On Storytelling and Unibrows

Today is the birthday of Frida Kahlo.  I was always drawn to art, but until I was introduced to the work of Kahlo by a group of friends, I never understood the ability of an artist to tell an entire story.  I always looked at art as a static thing, a moment in time frozen like a bug in amber.  Sure, art was pretty and intriguing and I envied those who could paint a bowl of fruit, I didn't begin to understand it until Kahlo.

Stories are hidden everywhere.  And Kahlo was a masterful storyteller.  Her work inspires me and whenever I feel like my well is dry, I go look at some of her paintings.  Below is my favorite.  And here is a link to more.

Tell me, what artists inspire you?

Show Me Your Deathday Letter Winners!

Hey everyone!  Happy Thursday.  Tomorrow's Friday and you know what that means?  Yeah...no....I don't know what it means either.  Maybe we could start having Funny Hat Fridays.  Or Commando Fridays.  Maybe not.

Okay, so  the results are in and I have the winners of the Show Me Your Deathday Contest!

Random Winner:  Michelle McLean!
Aren't her kids the cutest?

Most Creative Picture:  Bonny Anderson.
This picture is brilliant.  I mean, come on, there's pudding!

So if y'all want to email me your addresses, I'll get the packs of Pulse books out to you!  And thank you to everyone for sending in pictures.  But don't stop!  Keep sending me your pictures of you with your Deathday Letter.  You never know when I may decide to do a random giveaway!  Also, I just love the pictures.