Appearances!

I wanted to make sure you guys know about what I suspect will be my last two signings of 2010. (On a side note, I can hardly believe 2010 is almost over. I swear it was 2009, like, yesterday!!)

Okay, on Friday, Sept. 24th at 7:00 PM I will be signing at Changing Hands Bookstore with the lovely, and recently titled NYT Bestseller, Kiersten White, author of PARANORMALCY, and Sophie Jordan, Romance and YA author of FIRELIGHT, both really awesome supernatural books! (Dragons and faeries and vampires, oh my!) Please come see us, it should really be a blast!

Then, on Monday October 18th, at 7:00 PM, also at Changing Hands Bookstore, I will be signing with Linda Gerber (if you haven't read her DEATH BY . . . series, you should! It rocks! But on this trip she will be celebrating the release of her newest book, TRANCE) and, oh, a little author some of you may have heard of, super amazing bestseller, Lisa McMann of the WAKE series including WAKE, FADE, and GONE! This should also be a really awesome night. (I know I'm looking forward to it! *wink*)

I love group events not only because it is much less pressure than going solo, but because I get to meet new authors and readers get to be introduced to books they might not have picked up off the shelf! Plus we always do some Q&A and it is fun to hear about multiple authors' experiences. So I would love to see you at one . . . or, hey, both! . . . of those events if you are in the greater Phoenix area.

And if you don't live around here, don't worry! I don't know exactly where I am going, but I have been informed that I will be doing more traveling for the release of ILLUSIONS next year! Hopefully I'll be coming to a city near you!

Ciao!

It's A Good Day!

This post has nothing to do with writing whatsoever; you have been warned.:D

About six years ago my husband and I got into Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. I'm not normally a gamer, but I enjoyed this one, and my hubby was super-patient with my incompetence because he really liked getting to play a game with me! Over the course of the two months or so that it took us to beat it--playing in our free time at night after our daughter and charge had gone to bed--I got pretty good at it, if I do say so myself! Near the end of the game we encountered a boss called the Zombie Dragon. Basically, you had to wait for the dragon to stick it's neck out of its nest, and use a joint spell that you both cast concurrently to turn it to stone, and then beat on it. Oh, and you had to fight multiple (really hard!) little bad guys *while* doing this. It was SO hard! We spent about two hours one night trying to beat him and died about a gazillion times. And then, finally, with tiny specks of life left in both of us, we managed to kill the stupid boss! The animation of his death throes started and my husband and I collapsed against each other and laughed.

It was the only reaction you could have. Such a huge relief that all you can do is laugh in glee that it is finally over!

Keep that story in mind--I'll come back to it.

I have a son named Gid. He is so cute and snuggly and great! . . . And when I count the trials in my life, I count him first.:D He is by far, my most difficult child. My mother calls him hurricane Gid and often marvels at how much trouble he manages to make (and she has five kids, so she knows!) I have a stay-at-home husband and even with two of us at home every day, we can hardly keep up with him. High. Maintenence. Child.

He likes movies . . . for fifteen minutes or so. He likes his toys! For about ten minutes. He just will not stay focused on one thing long enough to actually give me a chance to sneak away and get anything done. Getting the dishwasher unloaded and reloaded in the same sitting is a miracle in our house. Which is why it usually gets done after the Gid goes to bed. It's why pretty much anything productive gets done after he goes to bed. (Also, why I work behind a locked door while I am drafting and he still will sit and yell at the door often enough.)

But there is one thing he LOVES. YouTube. He will watch YouTube (usually clips of Pixar movies or LOLcats) for an hour. Only problem, he doesn't know how to use a mouse. So you have to either come back every two minutes and start a new video for him, or sit there with him the whole time. Either way, not productive for me.

We have tried to teach him to use the mouse multiple times. (Who am I kidding, I've been trying to get him to use a mouse for a year!) I mean, Aud learned how to use a mouse at two and Bren even a bit before he turned two. Shouldn't three yo Gid know how to use a mouse by now?!!??:D But no luck.

Yesterday Gid declared himself finished with dinner and trounced upstairs to watch YouTube, because his sister had been doing the honors of switching videos for him before dinner. (Thank you Aud!!!)

I kind of shrugged and said, "Well, I'm not turning on shows for you--we're all still eating."

A minute or so passes and I hear sounds coming from the loft upstairs where the computer is. I turn to Kenny and say, "I think he just started a video."

Kenny listens for a second and was like, "Well, it was probably just paused. He knows how to use the space bar."

Back to eating.

A few minutes later I hear a distinctly different sound. "Kenny," I say, hardly daring to hope, "I think he started a new video."

We both peek out of the kitchen up at the landing and sure enough, he has started a new video for himself.

We stand there while the video finishes and I swear, we were both holding our breath. And our little troublemaker carefully edges the mouse over a new video and clicks.

Kenny and I stepped back into the kitchen, collapsed in our chairs, and started to laugh. He watched his very own videos for fifteen minutes. That has never happened before. My son is grasping the concept of how to use a mouse!

And Kenny and I just kept laughing. At one point he looks up at me and says, "You know, I feel like we just beat the Zombie Dragon again." Which just made us laugh harder.

So today I put him on YouTube again and he watched Pixar videos for about half an hour while I folded bedding, towels, and blankets, and put away all three of my kids' baskets of laundry. All at one time. I think I can safely say that since I have had three kids, that has never happened.

It is a good day!

One of the things that we are really excited about is that in another week or so when he has really gotten the feel for the mouse, we can put him on Starfall.com which taught my other two kids to read. (and is the "secret" behind my son teaching himself to read at age two. Not that hokey Teach Your Baby to Read memorization system, real phonetic reading. Yanno, the kind they do in school.) If you are a parent and haven't seen this site, please go check it out! It is deceptively simple and kids love it!

Gid already loves Starfall (and can tell you what sound all the letters say), but I have to sit and do everything for him and the fact is he will learn better if he can do it himself. Also, yanno, an hour of uninterrupted chore time. Or writing time. Or whatever.

My son knows how to use a mouse. Seriously, the possibilities that opens up for both myself and him are rather staggering. The computer is the most important learning tool in our home and my son just unlocked that door for himself.

Take that, Zombie Dragon!

Ciao!

What's In A Name?

First, an announcement.

The third book in the Wings series will be titled...

Illusions!!

I know it was a long time coming, and I apologize for that. But now that it's public knowledge, you might be interested in why the book remained untitled for so long. You also might not, in which case you will want to skip the rest of this entry. :)

When I first sold Laurel's story, I had titled all four books. The original titles were:

Autumn Wings
Winter Spells
Spring Enticements
Summer Illusions

The plan was for each book to take place during the season in the title, but fairly early on I realized that this wasn't going to work. Furthermore, the sales team at HarperTeen pointed out that with the books tentatively releasing annually during the early summer months, "Autumn" and "Winter" might not draw much of an audience.

So we scrapped the titles and tried to think of new ones.

One serious contender for the first book was Forget-Me-Not. We thought perhaps each book could have a flower name, but while Forget-Me-Not seemed like a decent replacement for Autumn Wings, naming the rest of the books proved more difficult.

We tried on a lot of titles--some serious, some not. Flower Girl and Petalwings didn't make the cut. I was only kidding when I suggested Roots and I'm pretty sure my husband was only kidding when he came up with Venus Boy Trap, but some days it was just easier to think of silly titles than serious ones. :) (My mom suggested Petal Pushers and I told her she was dating herself.:D)

After much deliberation, my fabulous editorial team settled on simply dropping the season from the title and calling the book Wings. Sadly, the struggle for evocative titles had scarcely begun.

I did enjoy some respite, as there was no rush to title the rest of the books. For a while, books 2 through 4 were just called Spells, Enticements, and Illusions. It was suggested early on that Enticements didn't stand on its own, though, and for about a month we called it Enchantments. Somehow that title made it to Amazon Canada, and from there to the rest of the Internet... but it was actually vetoed pretty early on. Like, six months before Wings even came out. (Yanno, ancient history!;))

Spells, however, stuck to Book 2, and eventually HarperTeen gave me permission to announce the title. Which I promptly did! And one month later, I was told that we needed a different title. I was worried, because I'd already announced the title, and I didn't want readers to be confused!

But there wasn't much to be done but brainstorm, and the process began anew. Should we continue with one-word titles? Should we keep the word plural? Wings was both a metaphor and referred to a particular passage in the book--was there something similar we could use from Book 2? It was either my editor or her assistant who came up with Essence, and I prepared to announce the new title on my blog.

And then it was Spells again. I don't know where in the process Essence got trapped--sometimes booksellers express concerns, sometimes it's sales or marketing, you'd be amazed how many people have to "sign off," literally or figuratively, on decisions like this sometimes! But everyone went back to calling Book 2 Spells, and that's how it was released.

So hopefully that explains why I was reluctant to announce Illusions until the title was finally finally final! I would hate for someone to miss a release because they were looking for something with a different name. And sometimes I was very jealous of other authors who managed to get their titles finalized early on in the process! But then again... it's hard to complain about a publishing team who works hard to get things just right.

Now, before you go asking for the title of Book 4: it doesn't have one yet. :) My hope is to post the final cover art for Illusions before Christmas this year, and while I still don't have a firm release date, you should still be able to expect Illusions to arrive at your bookstore around May of 2011.

Ciao!

A Better Way?

I hate censorship.

All censorship, but especially in children's literature because I think children and teens are SO important to the social structure of our future. The idea that one adult--quite frankly, usually a conservative parent--should have the power to say what other children can and cannot choose to read is a problem. I think parents have every right to censor their own children (whether or not they *should* is a whole different argument) but do not think you have any right to censor MY children.

So I've been following the events of the Humble ISD Libraries' Teen Lit Festival and I suspect many of you have as well.

The events in short--Ellen Hopkins, a critically acclaimed, bestselling, oh and also oft-banned and censored author who writes very gritty novels in verse was invited to attend the festival. Upon reading (or, more likely, skimming) her books, a few parents enlisted the help of one librarian in protesting Ellen's participation in the Festival because her books are "inappropriate." She was then uninvited by Superintendent Guy Sconzo.

Clear censorship. Let's have no mistake about that.

As Ellen herself said, "I'm offended by the idea that I or a handful of people can be allowed to speak for an entire community." I completely, 100% agree.

Over the next week or so, most of the other authors withdrew in protest, including Matt de la Peña, Tera Lynn Childs, and Melissa de la Cruz. A boycott, essentially. The links in the previous sentence go to their blogs where you can read about their motivation for pulling out. I appreciated reading Melissa's in particular with her discussion about how she grew up under a dictator who supported censorship. If you don't think censorship is a big deal, please, take the time to read these entries.

Earlier this week it was announced that the Festival had been canceled due to, well, a lack of speakers.

The YA authors stood up against censorship and won.

So why am I not happy?

Because I think the wrong people suffered.

Now, instead of a handful of parents and one librarian denying the teens of Texas a chance to meet the awesomeness that is Ellen Hopkins, they have now been able to deny those same teens a chance to meet any authors at all.

And we helped them.

And don't think those censoring parents feel bad. I have no doubt they are sitting back right now and congratulating themselves on their victory. Because, well, that's how personalities who promote censorship generally roll.

Don't get me wrong. When there is a problem like censorship it is ALWAYS better to do something than nothing. I salute the sacrifice and bravery of all of these authors who withdrew from the Festival. I'm not saying that what they did was wrong.

But I can't help but think that maybe there was a better way.

I generally avoid saying anything political on my blog. It's my rule. Which is why I haven't said anything about this before. And maybe I should have. I acknowledge that I probably should have. And if I thought this was an isolated incident, I would probably continue to not say anything. But I know it won't be. It WILL happen again. In fact, it will probably happen to Ellen again. And so I am breaking my own rule to say something political. Probably controversial. And well, it will probably make people mad. But someone has to say it, so here goes.

The people who suffered the most in this whole conflict are the teens of Texas.

Guy Sconzo definitely took some flack. Perhaps the librarian who stood with the censors as well (though I doubt either of them got fired.) But ultimately, the people who bore the brunt of the punishment were the teens who would have attended the festival, and the authors themselves.

And I started thinking, isn't there a way to make the *right* people suffer? And I think there is. I have to say, if I had been one of the authors invited to Humble, I would not have withdrawn.

I would have brought Ellen to the Festival anyway.

Not in person. But make no mistake, the presence of an author does not have to be physical. Word of mouth is a powerful thing. We as authors are acutely aware of that because we know that word of mouth sells books better than anything else.:D Authors could use that force to fight censorship.

What if every author agreed, not to withdraw, but to make Ellen's presence known at every single event at the festival? Every panel they were on, every speech they made, they could mention Ellen. Mention her books. They could say straight out something like, "This reminds me of an author I admire, Ellen Hopkins, who couldn't be here today because the organizers of this festival decided to censor her, and I think you all have a right to know that."

Think that's not enough? All of these authors had to give up a very nice honorarium when they pulled out of the festival. What if they took that money--the same money the administration paid them--and bought cases and cases of Ellen's books to bring with them, and at their signings, gave one away to every person who brought a book to have signed. "Thanks for reading my books! Have a free Ellen Hopkins book! She wishes she could be here, but the festival organizers decided to censor her and I as an author am standing up against that. You should check her out." I would donate my own money to support that project.

Can you imagine if every author in attendance did that? Ellen's presence would be at that festival more strongly that she ever could have been alone, as a single speaker. Every person in attendance would hear about her; children and adults. And, every teen in attendance would be informed about the problem of censorship. The best response to censorship is MORE information, not less. You want to silence us? We will show you our roar!

And there would be complaints. Those censoring parents would be outraged!! And you know who they would complain to? Guy Sconzo. He would be assailed from BOTH sides with complaints. And who deserves it more?

But more importantly, every teen at that festival would know that someone tried to censor them. Because really, do you think they have any idea what happened? A majority, probably a very heavy majority, of these kids are not reading our blogs. They are not reading School Library Journal or Publishers Weekly. There's a good chance they'll never hear about what really happened. And if they do, it will likely be from the same organizers and administration who supported the censorship to begin with.

Again, please don't think that I think any of these authors did the wrong thing. They did not. But this will happen again, and maybe instead of just doing the right thing, we could find a way to do a better thing. I don't think I have all the answers, but I'm trying to think outside of the box. Creativity is the engine of a good revolution and believe me, I want this to be a good revolution.

Ciao!

Wings Three

Copy-edits are done and in NYC! Yay! First draft of Wings 4 is done and really crappy, yay!!! And I am blogging again, yay!!!!! (Why am I the only one cheering . . . . ?:D)

Okay, so I have been rather deluged in Twitter, in fanmail, and in comments, about Wings Three. I guess I assume that if you are on my blog, Twitter, or have found my fanmail address, you know about Wings Three. But, well, I have to remember that there are NEW people finding my blog all the time! (Hi new people!!!!) So for anyone who already knows this, you can go read something funny. But if you don't, and have been confused by hashtags like #crypticwings4quotes and think you somehow missed Wings Three altogether, here's the scoop!

Wings Three is done. It has been done since the end of May when I finished line edits on a plane between here and Toronto.:D It is coming out early next summer, probably May again.

No, I can't "make" my publisher put it out earlier. For a good explanation of why, check out Ally Carter's Facts and Fiction post, here. (And why urging us to write faster isn't actually helpful.:D) I know it's really frustrating to see an author completely done with a book you can't read yet, but trust me, there is still a ton of work being done in the process of making it a physical book that you just can't speed up if you want a quality book!

It does have a title! And the title is not Wings Three! It's also not Enchantments despite what Goodreads said, then took back, and now says again.:D The title of the fourth book is also inaccurate. But Wings Three DOES have a title, and it is a great title that I am immensely happy about! And I will tell you this Fall when I do my cover reveal. My apologies for that, Harper likes to keep these things under their hat.

Yes, I did just finish the first draft of Wings 4. (Whoo-hoo!!! Yee-haw!! Boo-yeah!! No, no, I am not excited about this at all . . . .:D) This doesn't actually mean much to anyone except me. All this is is me getting the book done on time for it to come out in the summer of 2012. Yes, I know that is a long time away. But seriously, here is how the next eight months are going to go for me. I will finish Wings 4 in time to get it in by November (and in the interim will do another round or two of Wings 3 copy-edits). After Wings 4 is turned into my editor, she will send me edits for my ghost book (not related to Wings at all) and I will spend 1-2 months doing those. As soon as those are sent in she will send me edits for Wings 4 which means another 1-2 months. Then second edits for ghost book (1 month) followed by second edits of Wings 4 (1 months) which has me finishing both of those books in the spring of 2011, just in time to prepare to release Wings 3 in early summer of 2011. See, I really do have a very crowded schedule.

However, what finishing my draft does mean is that I have actually put the end of the series down on paper . . . er . . . computer screen. Which means that all of the emails I get saying, "Pleeeeeeeaaaaaassssseeeee have David/Tamani win!" are not going to change my mind. Or Laurel's.:D

Also, no, I will not tell you what happens.:D Endings are as much about the journey to get there as the destination. Trust me, you want to take this whole train ride. The scenery is fantastic! *wink*

What I will tell you is that Wings Three begins in September of Laurel's senior year, and that I will tell you the answer to the cliff-hanger (I really didn't think it was that much of a cliff-hanger!!! I'm sorry!!!!!!) in the very first chapter. No keeping you in suspense! I promise!

So yeah, that's Wings 3.:D

Ciao!