HELP!

So I mentioned on Monday that I'm going to the fabulously awesome SCBWI Winter Conference in NY.  Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it.

But I have to admit something...

I have no idea what to expect.  Sadly, I couldn't afford the Intensive, so no super awesome critique of my first chapter by equally super awesome agents.  :(  But what about the rest of it?

Have any of you, dear readers, ever been to a writer's conference?  How does it work exactly?  What should I do to prepare?  What should I bring?

Please help me!  :)

SCBWI Conference in New York

I'm taking the plunge!  And I'm a bit terrified about it, too.

Talking to authors and agents online through the protective filter of my computer is a LOT easier than facing them in person.  No, I'm not talking terrifying in a giggly fan-girl way.  Believe it or not, dear readers, I'm actually a VERY shy person.  Talking to anyone in person gives me the fluttery butterflies in my tummy.

HOWEVER!

I'm also very excited.  One of my favorite authors ever, R.L. Stine, will be there, as well as this pretty spectacular list of agents and editors:

Ginger Clark

Dan Lazar

Jim McCarthy

Alessandra Balzer

Jennifer Besser

Alexandra Cooper

Jeannette Larson

Lisa Ann Sandell

How exciting!

So is anyone else taking the plunge with me?

XVI, by Julia Karr

Description:

Nina Oberon's life is pretty normal: she hangs out with her best friend, Sandy, and their crew, goes to school, plays with her little sister, Dee. But Nina is 15. And like all girls she'll receive a Governing Council-ordered tattoo on her 16th birthday. XVI. Those three letters will be branded on her wrist, announcing to all the world - even the most predatory of men - that she is ready for sex. Considered easy prey by some, portrayed by the Media as sluts who ask for attacks, becoming a "sex-teen" is Nina's worst fear. That is, until right before her birthday, when Nina's mom is brutally attacked. With her dying breaths, she reveals to Nina a shocking truth about her past - one that destroys everything Nina thought she knew. Now, alone but for her sister, Nina must try to discover who she really is, all the while staying one step ahead of her mother's killer.


Sounds pretty awesome, right?  


Well, it seems like Nina is pretty much alone when it comes to her sex-teens (cute little nickname society has given to the momentous occasion).  She doesn't want them to happen.  She doesn't want sex and she certainly  doesn't want to get a tattoo telling everyone she's open for business.  Her friend, Sandy, on the other hand is bordering on obsession over it.  Wait.  Who am I kidding?  She's not bordering anything.  Sandy's walking around in the skimpiest clothes she can find and tossing her hair at any guy who passes by.


It's a very disturbing story, when you get down to it, but for a dystopian, it actually reads light-hearted.  Though the topic itself is disturbing (and even a few things that happen are quite chilling), the tone of the writing doesn't match the darkness I've read in most dystopian novels.  Maybe this is a good thing.  It's actually quite nice to not be depressed throughout an entire novel.  And the ending?  Despite being the first book in a series, XVI actually stands alone!  All the little details wrap themselves up quite nicely.  And let me tell you, dear readers, I appreciated that little courtesy from Julia Karr.  


While most of the story and characters gripped me in their authenticity and scope (all the extra details she put into how society worked and the technology was astounding), there were some parts that bordered dangerously close to cheesy romance.  I may have yelled once or twice, "No! No teenage boy would EVER say that!"  But you know what?  I'm a 27 year old woman.  The target audience of teenage girls will eat that stuff up.  So good job, Ms. Karr!  


Out of a rating system that goes like this:

1 star: Don't even bother
2 stars: It may be your cup of tea, but it ain't mine
3 stars: Pick it up at the library some time
4 stars: Go ahead and buy it!  You might like it!
5 stars: What are you doing still looking at this post?  Go out and buy it NOW!

I'm going to give this book...

4 stars!

Go ahead and stop by Amazon today. :)

Goober Writers Anonymous--Victoria Caswell

And Merry Christmas!  Today is officially the last day of Christmas here in the western Christian church world.  Though most people think the twelve days of Christmas come BEFORE Christmas, they actually come AFTER, and run all the way up to Epiphany (which is today!).  So, Merry Christmas!  :)


Today's goober writer is Victoria Caswell from Hairnets and Hopes!  Vic is one of the most amazing bloggers I've ever met.  She is so sweet and all her posts are fun to read!  Even on my busiest days, I make sure I take a looksie at what she's posted.  So go over there and join today!  You will NOT be disappointed.

The Goober mistake I'm going to write about today has to do with the craft of writing. :)

This mistake is one of the (many) reasons I've been stuck in rewrites for so long. It is:

IDEA HOARDING!!!

dum dum duuuummmmm....

When I started on my first real WIP, I knew that there were other stories I wanted to write. So when I was pecking away at my first draft, ideas would occur to me- ideas that could enrich the world, add layers to the backstory, add depth to the characters...

BUT

I was scared to write those ideas.

I thought that if I poured all those beneficial ideas into that first WIP, I would have no ideas left for the other stories I knew I wanted to write.

And therein lies the mistake.

Because the imagination is like a muscle. It grows the more you use it.

Each time we sit down and outline, plot, and write: we're exercising. And it makes our imagination muscles grow. It isn't like there is only a finite amount of ideas you will come up with. As you mature, learn, research, and are inspired- ideas upon ideas pile upon you.

Now, I'm going back and enriching my fictional world with all those details that I once denied it.(and new ones that have occured to me since then!) And I have to say, I enjoy it much more this way- less stark, more tactile. And guess what!!?!? I haven't run out of ideas yet!

In fact, I'm overrun by ideas! :)

Ooh!  Such a good point!  I did this ALL the time when I first started writing.  In fact, I still have to remind myself that my current WIPs CAN have all those details.  I don't have to wait for another story at all!  


Thanks for sharing, Vic!


How about you, dear readers.  Can you relate?

Goober Writers Anonymous

Repost from a few months ago because I am DESPERATELY looking for more submissions and MORE members!

Goober:

According to the Urban Dictionary--a kindhearted, oblivious goofball.

We've all made mistakes hundreds of times during our lives.  Some of them were huge, life changing mistakes.  Others were just kind of annoying or quirky.  Today, I am organizing a group where we can all come together and admit our writerly mistakes to each other.  After all, the most therapeutic way to get over our mistakes is to share them with friends.

How to Join:

Simply leave a comment below with your email address and I will contact you about sharing your mistakes in a blog post on this blog.  You can guest blog once if you only have one story to share, or you can guest blog numerous times if you have many stories.

Benefits of Joining GWA:

All members will have links to their blogs posted on the sidebar to the right.  Plus, the more guest blogs you do here, the more potential followers you can find.  And isn't it just nice to be a part of a group?

You also get to carry the GWA badge on your blog! 

Join today! :D

Let's Hear it for the Girls of 2010!

Obviously I didn't even touch upon all the boy awesomeness of 2010 yesterday.  The post was getting a tad long and I wanted to wrap it up, so today I'm going to showcase a few more boys for your pleasure!  Along with the girls, of course.

Boys first, though. :)

Peeta Mellark (THE HUNGER GAMES)
I'll go ahead and admit I was totally and completely team Peeta when reading THE HUNGER GAMES series.  His story is utterly heartbreaking.  **SPOILER ALERT**  If you don't want to see what happens in the end, stop reading... Yes, I felt bad for Katniss having to go through losing Peeta's love right when she was starting to grasp just how much she cared for him, but think about what happened to him.  He lost the love of his life.  She was stolen from him, and not in death--which is often considered the worst way to lose someone, but isn't really--but in the most horrific way possible.  They turned her into a monster in his eyes.  I don't think he ever got that pure love back for her even after they were married.  He had to constantly battle the false memories in his mind. Some may think Prim was the ultimate victim in the story, but I disagree.  She knew what she was getting into by going into a war zone, but Peeta suffered something worse than death.  His entire being was changed for the whims of the politicians and everything he'd been was stripped from him.

Tamani (WINGS)
Yup, I'm team Tamani, too.  David is all right and all, but I kind of feel like he's a usurper.  Laurel made promises to Tamani to try to remember him and be with him and the poor guy has had to just sit back and hope everything turns out all right.  Plus, he's a faerie.  Faeries ALWAYS win in my book.

Lend (PARANORMALCY)
Okay, a guy who can look like anyone??  That's pretty awesome.  Plus, he's super badass by breaking into possibly the most secured government facility in the world.  Sure he got caught eventually because Evie can see through glamours, but still.  He's very cool and sweet and I loved all the innocent flirting going on between him and Evie.

Xander (MATCHED)
Poor, poor Xander.  He had everything he wanted after the Match Ceremony, but the powers-that-be decided to make a little experiment out of his and Cassia's lives.  I felt like he didn't even get a chance to be the one Cassia chose.  She was ecstatic for the first few pages that they'd been matched, but as soon as the people in charge put another guy into her head, poor Xander was forgotten.  I liked the book and thought it was beautifully written, but I was team Xander from the beginning and couldn't get over the fact that he just kind of sat on the sidelines while other people ripped his life to shreds.

And finally...

Martin (THE MOCKINGBIRDS)
He's just the kind of guy you hope to have around after something horrible like a date-rape happens (well, God willing, that never actually happens or has happened to any of us).  He's understanding, patient, protective, and has soft brown hair that makes a girl start thinking about getting close to a guy again. :)  Plus, he's a science geek, and science geeks are cool.

Time for the girls!  I know, you probably want to hear more about the boys (and there are plenty more), but this post is getting long again.

Alice Cullen (TWILIGHT)
Sure, Bella is the MC, but Alice was my favorite.  She was bubbly, sweet, and totally kickass.  She's exactly what I like to read in a strong female character.  She knew she was strong, but she didn't wave it in everyone's face.  She embraced her femininity and it made her stronger still.

Evie (PARANORMALCY)
ANOTHER girl who is completely kickass but has retained her femininity.  I fell instantly in love with her pov and wished I had a sparkly pink taser named Tasey.  The way she fights through her world crumbling to pieces around her with dignity (and not a false sense of pride) is encouraging.  She doesn't spout off for pages about how she's too strong to worry about the stuff around her or feel doubt.  She's real and heartbreakingly wonderful.

Nora Grey (HUSH, HUSH)
Kind of naive and very innocent, she keeps letting people into her life she probably shouldn't.  But it's great because it's real.  What teenage girl CAN'T relate to that?

Katniss Everdeen (THE HUNGER GAMES)
Oh, poor Katniss.  A tool for the whims of others.  Even at the end, she's manipulated into doing exactly what someone else wants (of course, it probably needed to be done, anyway).  You feel sorry for her the whole way through even though she doesn't look for your pity.  If ever there was a tragic heroine, she would be it.

Alex Patrick (THE MOCKINBIRDS)
She's a victim of date-rape and pretty much broken throughout the whole book.  She's like this terrified little mouse, hiding from her rapist as much as she can, but she struggles through her fear to see justice done.  In the end, she moves on in the best way possible.  She doesn't revel in her vengeance towards him.  She sees he's punished justly and then forgets about him.  She's heroic and mature.  Her story is something everyone should read.

The end!  Yes, there are certainly many more amazing female characters out there, but I want you guys to tell me your favorites and why.  I can't wait to hear what you have to say! :)

The Golden Boys of 2010

Happy New Year!

Did everyone enjoy the last couple of weeks?  Perhaps gained a few pounds? (I did--eek!) 

Well, with all the celebrating and vacation-taking, I had a chance to look back on the past year and think about all the things that changed in my writerly life.  A lot changed, my dear readers.  A lot.

For one, I read my first YA book in over 18 years.  I know.  Pretty pathetic.  But I fell in love.  TWILIGHT quite literally changed my career.  I'd been plugging away for years on rough drafts thinking I HAD to write for adults.  There simply was no other option.  I was an adult and no one read anything but adult books anyway.

I actually had a reason for this train of thought.  I was ten when I stopped reading YA or MG.  My only YA experience was SWEET VALLEY HIGH.  And as cute as I thought that series was at the time, I knew I didn't want to write anything like it.  I grew up on the classics, and I wanted to write a classic.

But one day my friends, my husband, and I decided to go see a movie.  Any movie.  We picked Twilight.  I thought it was great.  Like knocked-my-socks-off great.  But everyone in the online writing community I belonged to scoffed daily at the book.  Garbage, they said.  Well, I needed to find out for myself.  

READ. IT. AND. LOVED. IT.

I finished the series in two weeks.  And read it again.  And again.  And again.  I lost track of how many times I read it.

But somewhere while reading the series I had some serious writerly soul-searching going on.  I knew, KNEW, that not only did I HAVE to write YA, but I'd been doing it all along.  It wasn't perfect, no.  You can't NOT know you're writing something and have it turn out a work of genius.  There were major flaws in my then current WIP I needed to address.  For one, it was YA trying to be adult.  I rewrote the whole thing in first person and found my voice--that elusive creature I'd hated up until that point.

I found some AMAZING betas along the way and started querying.  

Now, you might be wondering what all of this has to do with the title of the post.  Well, I didn't stop at TWILIGHT.  When I started paying attention to all the recommendations from bloggers I'd been following for a while, I realized there were other YA books out there!  I read everything I could find and ended the year with about 50 YA novels under my belt.  (Yes, I read very quickly)

So, today I'm going to highlight some of my favorite male characters from all the books I've read this year. (I'll do the girls tomorrow) 

Edward Cullen

Say what you will of his creepy stalking nature, I thought he epitomized sexy and the white knight persona.  And besides, what girl hasn't dreamed of her ultimate crush showing up outside her bedroom window to spend the night?  This boy fulfilled the kind of fantasy few girls are willing to say out loud.

Patch Cipriano

Bad boy extraordinaire.  He's everything every girl who ever wanted to find someone to fix could hope for.  He's sexy, he pretends his car is broken down so he can take a girl to a sleazy motel, he MIGHT be trying to kill said girl, but he also MIGHT be trying to save her.  Who doesn't love such a twisted, complex guy?

Thomas

Oh sweet, kind-hearted, MAZE RUNNER Thomas.  The poor guy just wants to help his friends live through probably the most grueling science experiment in history, but he's forced to not only watch them die right in front of him, he loses the ones who actually stay alive, too.  You can't help but feel sorry for the poor lad, all while positive everything MUST work out in the end (though it hasn't yet).

Mackie Doyle

Who wouldn't grow up with a complex when you know you're a "mythological" being who replaced your parents' real child and you have a pretty severe allergy to iron?  In a world where people hang knives and scissors above cribs to protect their children from the kind of thing Mackie happens to be, he actually handles it fairly well.  Up until he's forced to enter his natural world and try to save another child from the most gruesome death you can imagine.  He's dark, twisted, and a refreshing MC to read if you're feeling a slight estrogen-overload.

These are, by far, not all of them, but they top my list.  Any favorites you want to share?