Sarah Ockler's Blog, page 12
October 16, 2009
Revising Too Long? Top 10 Signs
After spending spending the last few weeks trapped in the cave of revisions, I completed final revisions on Fixing Delilah Hannaford. And so, with brain mostly I scrambled, I present…
Top 10 Signs You've Been Revising Too Long
10. Your husband asks you out to dinner, but with preconditions: shower first.
9. You can't remember if you actually showered last week or just wrote about it in your book.
8. When you finally meet those shower preconditions and get to the restaurant and the waiter comes...
October 12, 2009
Today's Post Brought To You By: Love!
I'm crawling out of the cave of revisions again to share a little love with the world because hey, it's fall in upstate New York, the heat is on, I've got a hot cup of tea, I'm wearing my fuzzy slippers, and life is good! Especially for some of our friends that got married this month — two couples in as many weeks. One wedding, we photographed professionally. The other, we just ran around taking pictures for fun while appearing to be professional, which is tough to do. And though I have to...
October 9, 2009
fLiP iT fRiDaY: Kayla @ Midnight Twilight's Book Blog
It's finally time for another (severely delinquent) fLiP iT fRiDaY! Today we're taking a break from revisions to chat with Kayla from Midnight Twilight's Book Blog.
Pretty much I go to school, and read every chance I get. Then I go to work at Barnes and Noble and find twenty more books I want to read!
Working in a bookstore is one of those secret dreams I harbor but will never pursue because it would be like when I was 16 and I worked in this huge grocery...
October 1, 2009
Kate Messner's Character Debut Party
Aaaaand… three cheers for another 2009 Debutante pick on the Autumn 2009 Kids' Indie Next List, THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z! The cover takes me right back to my favorite season, those rich colors, hot apple cider, the smell of firewood burning into the night, and I've been curling up this one under my fleece blanket on the couch lately, just in time to dig out the fuzzy socks and crank up the heat. Perfect!
About THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z
Gianna Zales has a lot on her plate this fall...
2009 Cybils Awards: Nominate Your Fave Books!
Nominations for the 2009 Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards (The Cybils!) are now open!
The Cybils awards are given by children's and YA book bloggers for books with literary merit and kid appeal. The Cybils team includes more than 90 bloggers who are passionate about literature for kids and teens. Award nominations are open to the public (yes, this means you! 
), so everyone can contribute to the list from which the team will select the final award winners.
Readers...
September 29, 2009
Megan Crewe's Character Debut Party
I'm thrilled to welcome another ghostly tale to the 2009 debut lineup — Megan Crewe's GIVE UP THE GHOST. Don't get me wrong… scary movies scare the hell out of me. Nightmares every time. But scary books? I love 'em. Bring on the undead, the spirits, the poltergeists and the hauntings. And seriously, how cool would it be to have your own posse of ghost pals, like Megan's main character, Cass McKenna? I can't speak for everyone here, but for me, ghost-buddies would have made my high school...
September 24, 2009
Pam Bachorz' Character Debut Party
Another great debut on the Autumn 2009 Kids' Indie Next List, CANDOR is high on my TBR pile. I was lucky enough to snag an early copy from Pam's publisher at the ALA conference this summer and I can't wait to get into this story. First, bring on the dystopian YA. Second, when I first read the premise, it totally reminded me of this "model community" near Disney called Celebration, Florida. I had dinner there for a work thing a few years back, and all I can say is… Stepford, anyone? Then I...
September 22, 2009
Jennifer Brown's Character Debut Party
Selected for the Autumn 2009 Kids' Indie Next List, HATE LIST is a heartbreaking, powerful, and intense debut told from the perspective of a school shooter's surviving girlfriend.
Bearing the new mark of truly important work, HATE LIST was recently "eliminated" from an Ohio classroom discussion following parental pressure to disallow books that drop the f-bomb from school lessons.
As the author Jennifer Brown points out in her recent post on the subject:
How believable would it be if Nick...
September 11, 2009
Remember
Posted in memories, new york city
September 10, 2009
Novels: Imagined Worlds or Reflections of Our Own?
In an interview with Anne Tyler, Writer's Digest asked the author to share what she hopes readers hear most clearly when they look back on her body of work. Her response:
It's not so much what they hear as what they remember experiencing that I have hopes for. I would love it if readers said, "Oh, yes, I was once an accidental tourist," or, "I once owned the Homesick Restaurant," and then recalled that in fact, that hadn't really happened; they had just intensely imagined its happening.
The...
