It’s October 2nd, which means . . . it’s LIVE THROUGH THIS day!!!! Mindi’s new book is hitting bookshelves and eReaders as I type! It’s a powerful, beautiful story and I hope you’ll pick up your own copy. You won’t regret it!
But first: GIF CELEBRATION!!!!!!
For the past week or so, my nights have been filled with lies, bazillions of dollars, and ssssssssecrets. Par for the course, you might think, for a bon vivant such as myself. 😉
But not exactly. What I’ve really been doing, in preparation for the premiere on Sunday (!!!), is powering through the first season of Revenge on Netflix. And HOLY MOLY. What took me so long?????? (Actually, this was the plan since I started losing track of the show a few episodes in. I’d just plug my ears to spoilers until I could binge-watch the entire thing, and then tweet my observations to people who were already like, three months OVER IT.)
I’m now up to episode 19 and I am on board, people. I am a passenger on the Revenge Express. And as wrapped up as I’ve been, I’ll admit there are some scenes where I find my mind wandering. It’s really no secret why: I just find some characters more compelling than others. Which, of course, got me thinking about writing. Continue reading
Guess what! In less than seven days, Mindi’s newest book LIVE THROUGH THIS will finally be on sale! Hooray! Mindi shared the book trailer earlier this week on her own blog and, because it’s so lovely and captures the novel so perfectly, I’m sharing it here!
(So good, right???)
And since you’re here and all, Mindi has provided links to lots of other fun stuff happening in honor of the LIVE THROUGH THIS release! Including how to follow the blog tour, some early reviews, and info on the launch party. And if you can’t attend the party and still want a signed — even personalized — book, Mindi’s got you covered. She tells you how to do it here.
Want to pre-order LIVE THROUGH THIS the old-fashioned-ish way? It’s your lucky day! Check out the links below and/or try your pretty local bookstore. 🙂
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound
Happy reading, all!
Today, we have another author here with a new out book to tell you about. Gretchen McNeil’s horror novel, Ten, is a getting some great attention:
“TEN is a real page turner! Gretchen McNeil knows how to plot a thriller:
Her setup is flawless and the suspense kept me on the edge of my seat.” –
Christopher Pike, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the THIRST
series and REMEMBER ME
“In the esteemed tradition of teen horror fiction, Ten hits all the high notes: a
stormy night, illicit liaisons, cut phone lines, suspicious disappearances, double-crosses, secret histories, and plenty of twists.” – Booklist
I have to say, even as someone who is a big baby over anything in the horror genre, I’m intrigued! (But am I brave enough to read it???)
Here are the questions that Gretchen answered for me (thank you, Gretchen!):
At age eight, what did you want to be when you grew up? And at age eighteen? And while you’re at it, what about at age twenty-eight?
Gretchen McNeil: At 8, I wanted to be Ann Miller (the dancer.) At 18, I wanted to be Beverly Sills (the opera singer.) At 28, I just wanted to be ME. 🙂
Which Breakfast-Club-style label would have best fit your teenage self?
GM: Sadly, I was most of them all rolled into one. I was a punk/mod who got straight A’s and made the Varsity Girls’ soccer team freshman year, played for 2 years before I torn my knee apart and had to have it reconstructed. The only thing I wasn’t was a princess.
Without giving away too much from your newest book, which character or scene from it are you the most pleased to have created, and why?
GM: Gunner, aka “the Gun Show”, is my favorite character. I managed to impart a sort of straight shooter who’s not particularly bright without ever telling the reader that he’s not particularly bright. Also, his insights are the clearest.
Which are your favorite movies to watch again and again?
GM: Clue, Ghostbusters, A Room With a View and The Hunt For Red October. How’s that for an eclectic mix?
And, now, the most important question of all: Beatles or Elvis? Please support your answer. 😉
GM: Elvis. A little less conversation, a little more action.
_______________________________________________
About the book:
It was supposed to be the weekend of their lives – three days on Henry Island at an
exclusive house party. Best friends Meg and Minnie each have their own reasons for
wanting to be there, both of which involve Kamiak High’s most eligible bachelor, T.J.
Fletcher. But what starts out as a fun-filled weekend turns dark and twisted after the
discovery of a DVD with a sinister message: Vengeance is mine.
Suddenly, people are dying and the teens are cut off from the outside world. No
electricity, no phones, no internet, and a ferry that isn’t scheduled to return for two days. As the deaths become more violent and the teens turn on each other, can Meg find the killer before more people die? Or is the killer closer to her than she could ever imagine?
About the author:
Gretchen McNeil is an opera singer, writer and clown. Her YA horror POSSESS
debuted with Balzer + Bray for HarperCollins in 2011. Her follow up TEN – YA horror/suspense about ten teens trapped on a remote island with a serial killer – will be released September 18, 2012, and her third novel 3:59, sci fi doppelganger horror is scheduled for Fall 2013. Gretchen’s new YA contemporary series Don’t Get Mad (Revenge meets The Breakfast Club) begins Fall 2014 with GET EVEN, followed by the sequel GET DIRTY in 2015, also with Bazler + Bray.
Gretchen is a former coloratura soprano, the voice of Mary on G4’s Code Monkeys and she sings with the LA-based circus troupe Cirque Berzerk. Gretchen blogs with The Enchanted Inkpot and is a founding member of the vlog group the YARebels where she can be seen as “Monday.”
While wandering around the internet, I came upon an interesting post over on Nova Ren Suma’s blog (which is consistently interesting, fyi!). Following a prompt by author/bloggess Hilary Smith, Nova posted a photo of her (enviable) unedited bookshelf. (Well, it’s technically a photo of what happened when she ran out of shelf-space, but we book people can totally relate, right?) Inspired by Nova and Hilary, I thought I’d post photos of my own shelves. Here we go!
(Quick note: I cheated! Since my bedroom is super narrow, I couldn’t capture my entire bookshelf in one photo, so you’ll have to piece them together in your mind, Lego-style.)
(Another quick note: You can click on each pic to get a closer look!)
Fun facts:
Okay . . . judge me. 😉
***********************************
Oh, and that Matty! How did he manage to come up with such a clever puppy-pillow idea? 😉
When Mindi and I were first putting this blog together, we started by working on our Who? page. (It’s a good one; I recommend it.) And I was astounded when Mindi mentioned that we’d taken our first online writing course six years ago. SIX YEARS AGO!
To put that into perspective, I could’ve gone to medical school 1.5 times in the space between my first YA writing class and this very minute.
And, of course, I couldn’t help but calculate further back. Because the novel idea I worked on in that 2006 course? I’d been working on that idea since the summer of 2002. And I’m still working on it. (Welp!) So, really, I’ve been working on that one particular novel for . . . *click clack calculator* . . . ten years. TEN YEARS!
To put that into perspective: I COULD BE A CARDIOLOGIST RIGHT NOW, GUYS.
Well, anyway. The truth is I’d never given myself an expiration date with writing, or measured my “career” in years. I measured it by other peoples’ successes! HA-HA. Jokes! But seriously. I was someone who worried about getting an agent/being published/all that in a theoretical way. “If it happens, it happens!” “It’ll happen when it happens!” “It can’t happen if you don’t finish this g-d book, Michelle!” Calm, casual stuff like that.
But now, I’d gone and slapped a number on it. Ten! A big number. A big anniversary. (Also the aluminum anniversary! Not that you have to get us anything, but how kind of you to offer.) Ten years of writing and, well, nothing to show for it.
*thunderclap*
The idea seemed like Loki feels.
But! Also like Loki, it wasn’t exactly what it seemed. (Totally nailed that transition.)
See, I could wallow all I want, but it would be false-wallowing. Because the more I thought about it, it was really like:
And that, I think, is what this anniversary is all about. Not so much the second half of that sentence, but the first half. The “Ten Years of Writing” half. Ten years is a long time to be doing anything — to be in the same apartment or job or relationship. Not many are lucky enough to celebrate that. How many are excited about ten more years?
The way I see it, it’s not getting the book deal or signing with the agent that wills a writer to keep writing. It’s inside them always. It’s inside me. And I never wanted to be a cardiologist, anyway. 😉
Oh, let’s face it. We all want to listen to The Climb now.
A few weeks ago, I was preparing egg salad for my husband’s sandwiches when I noticed that the ingredients list called for three tablespoons of one item and a quarter cup of the next.
Well, I thought, I’m not sure how much I trust a recipe that can’t even keep the measurements consistent. Everyone knows that three tablespoons and a quarter cup are the same thing!
Even though I knew for an absolute fact that I was right, I checked the conversion chart that I keep posted on my fridge. And guess what! I was wrong. It’s actually four tablespoons that’s equivalent to a quarter cup.
I think I used to know the correct answer, but somewhere along the way I misremembered. It makes me wonder now how many meals I’ve made that turned out not quite right as a direct result of me adding one too many or one too few tablespoons of something.
That little kitchen experience was humbling. It also reminded me of the Each Other Vs. One Another Fiasco of 2012.
For months, I took special care in my writing (fiction and personal correspondence), to make sure that I always used “one another” when discussing two people and “each other” when discussing three or more. (Examples: Everyone on the team talked to each another. William and I talked to one another.)
When copy edits came back for my second book, the copy editor had made notations about incorrect usage of these terms. My thought was that this copy editor was very, very mixed up.
As I read more of my draft, someone (that same copy editor or another?) made notes that this was clearly a style choice, since the author (me) had done it backward consistently throughout the draft. “Stay true to Coley’s voice,” was written in the margin on one page.
You’d think that those notes would have made me investigate, but no. I sent the draft back, leaving every “each other” and “one another” the way I’d written them. Because I knew what I was doing, even if the copy editors were confused.
It wasn’t until a few days later when I started thinking about it more. I was reading a novel written by someone else and I noticed that the author had every instance of “each other” and “one another” COMPLETELY WRONG. I went looking for confirmation that my way was right.
That’s when I realized that I was the one who had it backward: Everyone on the team should talk to one another and William and I should talk to each other.
In a panic, I emailed my editor and told her what had happened. She was able to fix it* with no problem at all, but it was certainly embarrassing for me. It’s taken months of retraining my brain and I still have to ponder for a bit to make sure that I’ve written it correctly.
Before copy edits on my first novel, I hadn’t been aware that there is a difference between “one another” and “each other.” It’s kind of funny (but not really!) that I was trying so hard to get it right, but managed to do the opposite.
You learn something new every day, right? And sometimes you get to relearn something because your brain went and changed it on you.
*FYI: While writing this particular character, I opted for mostly grammatical correctness in the narrative. But with dialogue, I definitely went for what realistic to the way the characters would speak. This means that “one another” didn’t make it into the dialogue ever–whether it would have been correct or not.
Following Mindi’s (and Charlie’s) example of listing their 5 Best Moments, I’ve come up with my own! I’m calling my list the 5 Best-ish Moments of My Life. Not that these don’t qualify as Best (no -ish) Moments, because they do! And I’m so very lucky to have them and snuggle with them on the hard days. But it’s just tough to commit sometimes, so this is my way of wiggling out of it. 😉
So, here we go!
December 19, 2004: College Graduation
College was not the most well-spent four years of my life. I mean, I met wonderful friends, took fun classes, and ate an entire Entenmann’s Chocolate Chip Loaf while watching Buffy in my dorm room. So, you know, not a total waste. But I also had zero idea what I wanted to do post-college, and this made caring about my classes a non-issue, and panic attacks a common thing. By senior year I knew-ish that I wanted to write (back then it was for TV), but it was way too late to switch things up (I was already feeling the crushing weight of my student loans). So, I chose a major in the subject where I’d wracked up the most credits, and got the go-ahead to graduate! Happy day!
___________________________________________________________________
October 24, 2001: U2, Elevation Tour, Madison Square Garden
In the fall of 2001, my hometown was unlike anything I’d ever imagined. In the midst of all this, my cousin and I had tickets to see U2 in concert. Now I can’t remember if I was nervous about being in such a big crowd, or how extensively we were searched before we were allowed into MSG. But I do remember how it felt being in that arena, so symbolic of New York City, with people who were feeling what I was feeling. People who knew what it meant to be there, together, healing and singing and screaming and chanting “Let’s Go Yankees” at one point. And mostly I remember the moment when the band played “One,” and a list of names began scrolling. (I still get chills whenever I think about it.)
Sometime in Seventh Grade: I Refused to Be a Shrew
I’m kind of bummed that I don’t remember the exact date this happened because it most certainly is one of those Big Moments. But in seventh grade, two of my closest friends turned into total harpies. I was considered a “nice girl” and they took this as permission to torture me daily because I probably wouldn’t argue back. IT WAS SO AWFUL. Being humiliated at the hands of two people who were supposed to be on my side. (See also: my trust issues.) But finally (finally, finally, finally), while we were working on group projects in class, I’d had enough. I stood up for myself. I told them not to bother talking to me again, got up from my desk, and left them, jaws dropped. I still remember the “way to go, Michelle” look on a classmate’s face as I did this, and the relief and pride that coursed through me. Nice girls aren’t pushovers, you see. 😉
______________________________________________________________________
October 1-9, 2010: California (Love) Trip
This is sort of a cheat because California was not one but Very Many Best Moments, but, really, why choose? And while I’m chock full of neuroses like any good New Yorker, I’ve always felt like a teeny part of me belonged to California. Which is stupid! I’d never been to California! But I’ve always felt that certain people are drawn to certain places for inexplicable reasons, and California is one of my places. So, obviously, I jumped when I got the chance to go. And it was AMAZING. I ate fish tacos in Laguna Beach! I took surfing lessons in San Diego! I fell in love with Santa Monica, and the tiny cafe near our motel, and with all the newness of California, it still felt a little bit like coming home. (But NYC is cool with it!)
I’m at Sunnydale High!! Xander fell down those steps!
______________________________________________________________________
Mid-2007: A Good Writing Moment
I did a lot of writing after college graduation, but I wasn’t sure if YA novel writing was something I should pursue as more than a hobby. So, I decided to take an online writing class through MediaBistro and let me tell you, it was TERRIFYING. There were so many talented writers and, along with them, so many great ideas for their books. Better than me and mine, for sure! Still, I was learning so much that each compliment and criticism felt like money in the bank. In that class my instructor and classmates made me believe a writing career could happen. For me! For real! I remember pulling a coat from my closet and reflecting on the class when I thought how this was an incredible overlap of something I loved to do and something I could do. How rarely that happens. And it’s a feeling I pull up on the hardest of writing days, one that’ll stick with me no matter where my career goes (or doesn’t go!).
_______________________________________________________________________
So, these are my moments. *hugs moments* You can tell me your (tentative) list now . . . I won’t hold you to it. 😉
I used to watch LOST, and one of the episodes that has really stuck with me over the years is called “Hit List.” In this episode, Charlie makes a list of the “Five Best Moments of [His] Pathetic Excuse for a Life,” and every item he adds triggers a flashback. (Of course.)
Shortly after it originally aired in 2007, I made up a list of my own. But recently, I was compelled to create a new list. As it turns out, only one of the memories from the original list made the cut.
And here is my new list!
(Note: Some of these have links to the original journal entries that I made right after they happened, including one that has never been public before!)
A
5. May 16, 2003: The day Dwayne (my husband) and I went to Discovery Cove in Florida.
Flashback: We swam with a dolphin (in a very supervised/photo-op way) and with (non-dangerous) sting rays! Such a relaxing and amazing experience.
_______________________________________________________
4. October 31, 2008: The night Dwayne and I watched the volcano.
Flashback: Dwayne and I were on Hawaii’s Big Island and took an impromptu trip to see the active volcano spewing lava into the air and the ocean at nighttime. We didn’t have any warm clothes in our rental car at the time, so I bought knee-high socks that said, “Grandma” all over them and wore them with my shorts.
_______________________________________________________
3. March 17, 2008: The night when Dwayne and I saw Nightmare of You for the first time.
Flashback: Dwayne and I were obsessed with the band Ash. So obsessed that we flew to New York City for a rare show in the U.S. to see them! Ash’s performance turned out to be really great. The whole trip was great, actually! But it was the opening band Nightmare of You, who really caught our attention and amazed us.
_______________________________________________________
2. Early November 2002: The day that I sat on an empty beach in Mexico, reading a book and getting horribly sunburned on my legs.
Flashback: Dwayne and I had been married for a year when we flew to Puerta Vallarta, Mexico for vacation with friends. The three of them went surfing, but I read on the beach all day long. I honestly don’t remember what I was reading. They were mysteries or romance novels that I’d picked up at the resort where we were staying. But for reasons that I still can’t explain, I felt so at peace and happy that day. (Little did I know that my legs would peel for a month after I got home!)
_______________________________________________________
1. January 6, 2009: The day a literary agent, Jim McCarthy, called me to offer representation.
Flashback: When I started writing, my goal was never to get published. That felt too big and too much out of my control. No, my goal was to get an agent to represent me and, hopefully, one day I’d get published as a result of that. After two manuscripts and well over 100 rejections, I finally got an agent. My first book deal came a few months later. There have been lots of great writing/publishing moments, but I’m honestly not sure that anything will ever top the time that a professional literary agent decided to take a chance on me.
A few hours after Jim’s call, in the outfit I’d been wearing all day.
As you can see, my top two moments involve reading and writing. And, as I pointed out to Dwayne, only one of these took place in Washington State, where we live. This must mean something . . .
Now, if this were the olden days of the internet, I might tag people and guilt-trip them into completing this meme. (But probably not.) I’m not going to do that, but I would absolutely love to hear about your Top Five, Top Three, or Top Some Other Number Moments in your life.
And stay tuned later this week for Michelle’s list!
Michelle Andreani and Mindi Scott 