Eilis O'Neal's Blog, page 3

NPR's Best Ever YA List: Thoughts and My Votes

Last summer, NPR gathered together reader votes to create a “Top 100” list for science fiction and fantasy books. This summer, they’re getting even closer to my heart with a “Top 100” YA list. And you can vote for 10 of the 200-odd finalists! (Though I'm not seeing when the voting ends for some reason, so get your votes in now.)

As I said about the sci-fi and fantasy list, whenever you try to assemble a list of the top anything, it’s bound to lead to heated conversations about who’s on the list, who got left off, and—in especially in the case of YA—whether certain titles even qualify for the list in the first place. Since I voted today, I thought I’d share my votes and some thoughts I had about the finalist list. Thoughts first:

I’m really glad NPR is doing a YA list! Public opinion about the merits of YA literature has improved dramatically over the last few years, with more and more people willing to admit that great books are being written for young readers—books that are as good as what’s being written for adult readers. But among adults who do read YA, there’s still something of a stigma attached to reading books “for kids,” as if they couldn’t possibly be as worthwhile as books for the older set. I think having a list like this, which showcases hundreds of great novels is important, and a great step for YA.What counts as YA? NPR says that they chose to view as YA books that teens “voluntarily read.” Unfortunately, I’m not really sure that definition is entirely helpful 1) because teens are diverse and may be “willing to read” more than NPR is giving them credit for and 2) because a lot of teens read books that are, in fact, written for adults, and including them as YA just because teens read them doesn’t make them YA. A few titles that jumped out at me as being questionable in this regard were Dune, The Lord of the Rings, The Princess Bride, and The Last Unicorn. While all are great books surely read by teens, these just aren’t YA in my opinion: they were written for adults. Also, I’m a bit confused about some books which seem to have been considered middle grade and don’t appear on the list, while other books that read for the same age group were. For instance, we have Lois Lowry’s The Giver, which to me is solidly middle-grade, but don’t have Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time or any books by Lloyd Alexander. (And, if we’re going to get technical, Harry Potter is sold in the middle grade section of book store and at least starts out as solidly middle grade.) Perhaps A Wrinkle in Time and Lloyd Alexander’s books just didn’t get enough votes to make the list, but I’m more apt to think that their non-presence says more what the panel thought was YA, and thus about the fluidity of “YA” as a category. In short, it’s a hard thing to determine!This list skews heavily toward recent titles. Tons of titles written in the last 5-7 years, and fewer of what I would consider classics from my youth. This seems to indicate a real excitement about recent books—fervent fan bases for various series and authors—and this makes me really happy, because it means that people are pumped about reading YA. But the lack of more older books also makes me wonder what it means for the more modern books in twenty years. Will they still be seen as the “best ever” or, like some of the books from my childhood that didn’t make the list, will the excitement and buzz that surrounds them have faded? I don’t know, so it will be something interesting to watch.So, what did I vote for?Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogySusan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising SeriesS. E. Hinton’s The OutsidersMadeleine L’Engle’s A Ring of Endless LightRobin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown and The Blue SwordTamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness quartetPhilip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogyJ. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter seriesSherwood Smith’s Crown Duel

I'm pretty happy with this as a "top ten" list for me but, but there are some books that I’m sad didn’t get a mention:

Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series (seriously, people, SERIOUSLY? This is probably my biggest complaint, because those books are absolutely wonderful, and I’ve loved them both as a teen and as an adult)Michael Ende's The Never-Ending Story (a classic in any era, and which I would consider as YA as several other books on the list)Patricia C. Wrede's Mairelon the Magician duology (though I love her Enchanted Forest Chronicles, I like these better, and think they're more authentically YA)Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy (again, as YA to me as several others on the list; I'll admit that the Prydain books skew younger and probably wouldn't have been appropriate)Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. (Without this book, we wouldn't have YA like we do today, folks.)So what did you vote for? What do you think should have made the list and didn't?

Book Rec: Saints Astray

After her escape from military custody, Loup and her girlfriend Pilar have a chance to reinvent their lives thousands of miles away from the forgotten and disenfranchised Texas border town of Outpost 12—known as Santa Olivia to those trapped there for decades. Thanks to Loup’s preternatural gifts of strength, speed, and an innate fearlessness, as well as Pilar’s unexpected skill with a pistol, they find new careers as high-priced bodyguards for a world famous British rock band. Back in the States, an investigation into the existence of Outpost 12 begins in Washington, D.C. When the key witness with evidence to expose the military cover-up, their old comrade Miguel, vanishes, the case seems lost. The abandoned citizens of Santa Olivia need a champion, a voice raised on their behalf, which pushes Loup and Pilar into a hard choice. If Loup returns to U.S. soil, she’ll be an outlaw. If she’s caught, she’ll be taken into custody again; and this time, there may be no escape. But if she and Pilar don’t fight for freedom of those they left behind, no one will.

When Jacqueline Carey’s Santa Olivia came out over two years ago, I thought it was a wonderfully divergent take on the superhero novel and werewolf novel—in that it has claims on both of those genres without really being either. No, Santa Olivia was something unique and full of heart, as unique and full of heart as its heroine, Loup Garron, the daughter of a genetically-engineered solider who, like her father, is stronger and faster than the average human but—most importantly—feels no fear. (And man, does Carey nail the “feels no fear” thing. She does a masterful job of creating a sense of how someone without this basic human trait might behave.) Santa Olivia ended with the fate of Loup, her girlfriend, Pilar, and Outpost 12 still undecided, and I’d been eager to find out what happens to them.

And, as usual, Carey doesn’t disappoint. Saints Astray is a magnificent follow-up to the first book. It’s a bit lighter in tone, especially in the first half, though that doesn’t mean it’s light-weight. Watching Loup and Pilar experience the world for the first time was total fun, firstly because they’re loving every minute of it and secondly because you can tell Carey is loving every minute of writing it. She seems to relish giving the two of them sights and smells and tastes to experience, and that makes reading those scenes even more of a treat. Another treat is getting to watch them really be together as a couple—their relationship is fun and supportive and cute and real.

On the non-lighter side, the other thing I really enjoyed about this book mirrors what I enjoyed about the first book, and that’s the subversion of a more traditional kind of story. You know that, toward the end of the book, some action must be taken to try and rescue Outpost 12. But, from one perspective, Loup doesn’t take part in that revolution, at least not as many authors would have had her do. There’s no grand storming of Outpost 12, no tearing down of the gates, no battle scene. Instead, it’s all done more quietly. But what it lacks in in-your-face drama it makes up for in realism—and in a sense of satisfaction that this is something different.

In short, I loved Saints Astray, and you should check it and Santa Olivia out. It’s not YA, but I think would be suitable for older teens.

You can read Chapter One on Carey's website.

Finished!

I've chronicled the painfully slow progress I've been making on my 2nd-ever knitting project here and here. These posts are dated in March of 2011 and February of 2012, so when I say slow, I really, really mean it. In fact, I've been calling the ruana I've been working on the Never-Ending Project. But, as of this week, it is never-ending no more. It is finished!!! And so . . . pictures!


Here it is all spread out. I still like my cables so much.


A front view. Nemo wants to know why we've moved Zuul's food bowl out of the shot.


A side view.


And a close up front view.

It's really soft and really warm, which is why it's now going into the closet until fall. The only thing I would have done differently is that I might have made it a little shorter. (I think the pattern was intended for people a bit taller than I am, but I didn't realize that until the front was already done.) But I'm very pleased with it. And I'm really pleased to have gotten through it, even when it felt like I'd been working on it forever (which, in a way, I kind of was).

So now it's time to pick a new project. I think I'm going to go with something a little smaller this time, so that I get a sense of accomplishment quicker. And I picked up a new knitting book at a garage sale called Vampire Knits. The book's layout is totally cheesy, but I like the look of the projects themselves. There are some fingerless gloves that call for a more intricate cable that I might try. In any case, will post progress as I start up again.

Bargaining

You know how you make bargains with yourself? Like, I can only have that slice of cake if I exercise first or I can’t watch the new episode of Game of Thrones unless I actually go through those emails I’ve been putting off. Well, for the past few years, I keep making bargains with myself about my books.

It started when I looked around the house one day and realized that I had a bunch of books on my shelves that I had never actually read. Some of them were books I’d picked up second hand, or been given by friends or relatives, but some of them were books that I had no memory of ever acquiring. They had, apparently, been on my shelves, unread, for that long. Looking at the books, I had two thoughts. One was as sense of guilt over these poor books that had been languishing, unloved, for so many years. (I have had, from my youngest days, problems with feeling guilty over inanimate objects. Don’t even ask me about having to put my Christmas stuffed animals away into a box in the attic every January.) The second was an entire practical realization that these books were taking up valuable bookshelf real estate (always a premium in my house) and I didn’t even know if I liked them.  So I gathered them up, piled them in the office, and told myself that I wasn’t allowed to get more than one book from the library each week until I had read (or at least attempted to read) these books.

That took a while (especially because I kept cheating whenever a really interesting new book would come out). But I was really glad to have done it, because I discovered some gems that I had, for some reason, been ignoring for years. I also managed to get rid of quite a few of those books, thus freeing up more Important Bookshelf Space. Though I still sighed with relief when I looked around and decided I could read freely again . . .

 . . . Except that then I went to ALA and picked up about thirty ARCS. And so the process began again, though this time I gave myself an “every other book rule.” Every other book I read had to be one that was already in my house—and only the alternating book could be from the library or newly purchased.

But now, once again, I’m at the point where I can purchase and order books with impunity. (Okay, in all honestly, there are still a few books on the TBR shelf that I need to either go through or decide that I really don’t care about giving a chance to. Jack Zipes’ Spells of Enchantment, I’m looking at you. You look really interesting, but you’re also about 800 pages long, and that just seems like such a commitment . . .Really, though, it’s not you, it’s me.) In any case, first on my list are a bunch of sequels that I had been holding out like a carrot in front of myself for when I had finished. They are:

Cassandra Clare’s Clockwork Prince . Actually already finished this one, the 2nd book in The Infernal Devices trilogy. Am now thinking maybe I should have held out longer, because good God it’s going to be a bad wait for book three.

Lauren Oliver’s Pandemonium. In the middle of the sequel to Delirium, and my thoughts from above are echoing in my brain. Waiting for book three’s going to be tough, if it continues on the path its going down so far.

Magic Under Stone by Jaclyn Dolamore. The first book Magic Under Glass, especially had such great Regency England flavor, but with grand twists, and memorable characters. (And automatons!) I’ve honestly been surprised that it hasn’t received more attention than it has, but I’m looking forward to reading the sequel.

Midsummer Night by Freda Warrington. The sequel to Elfland isn’t technically YA, though I actually think that the beginning of Elfland at least has a YA sort of flavor. Elfland is dense with interesting, if sometimes mind-bending worldbuilding, and the love story was smoldering. I think this may be set in the world of the first, rather than actually with the main characters—either way, I want more of the Aetherials.

Saints Astray by Jacquleine Carey. Also not YA, but what’s sure to be an awesome follow-up to Carey’s superhero-with-a-twist novel Santa Olivia. I’ve never been someone who’s crazy for superhero books, but Carey’s take is so unique and her heroine so tough that the first book won me over easily.

Beautiful Darkness and Beautiful Chaos by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. One of the things I liked best about Beautiful Creatures is that it was paranormal from a guy’s point of view, something I don’t see so much of. And now that I keep hearing such good things about the movie (how do you get that many great actors together anyway?) I need to catch up on the new books.

A Million Suns by Beth Revis. I’m continually glad that science fiction settings are slowly making their way into YA, and I’m intrigued to see where events take Elder and Amy on the spaceship Godspeed.

Book Rec: A Long, Long Sleep

Rosalinda Fitzroy has been asleep for sixty-two years when she is woken by a kiss.

Locked away in the chemically induced slumber of a stasis tube in a forgotten sub-basement, sixteen-year-old Rose slept straight through the Dark Times that killed millions and utterly changed the world she knew. Now her parents and her first love are long dead, and Rose -- hailed upon her awakening as the long-lost heir to an interplanetary empire -- is thrust alone into a future in which she is viewed as either a freak or a threat.

Desperate to put the past behind her and adapt to her new world, Rose finds herself drawn to the boy who kissed her awake, hoping that he can help her to start fresh. But when a deadly danger jeopardizes her fragile new existence, Rose must face the ghosts of her past with open eyes -- or be left without any future at all.

I waited a long, long time to get my hands on a copy of Anna Sheehan's A Long, Long Sleep. Really, I put a hold on a copy through the library shortly after the book came out in August of last year and then waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, in April, I called the library to ask what was up and found out something had gone wrong in the ordering process, and no one there had noticed. Happily, once alerted, it only took a bit longer for them to actually get the book in stock. And I'm pleased to say that my long, long wait was worth it.

As you may know, I'm a sucker for retold fairy tales, or stories that draw heavily on fairy tales for their inspiration. A Long, Long Sleep isn't precisely a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, but a story that explores the question of what life might have been like for Sleeping Beauty after she was kissed and awoken by the prince. I love this, because so often fairy tales end on the kiss, and ignore the real life problems that would inevitably come after. (There's another fairy tale aspect that Sheehan doesn't shy away from: darkness. I can't get into the source of this darkness without giving too much away, but I was pleased that she didn't pull her punches with the true bad guy of the piece, and that that part also fits in with the fairy tale theme.)

And Sheehan's answer to what life is like after the traditional end of the story? Difficult and confusing. Rose is a girl out of time, one trying to come to grips with losing her parents, her world, and her best friend/boyfriend, Xavier. She flounders in the world she awakens to, though her problems with fitting in don't all come from the fact that she's out of time. That was one of the other things that I liked about the book: Rose's growth. She starts the book as a girl with some serious self-esteem problems. As in, really serious, though Sheehan eases the reader into the depths of Rose's self-worth problems well. She grows stronger as the book progresses--and in a believable way.

Finally, I was really pleased with the sci-fi setting. There's still not much science fiction in the YA market, though the field is growing. A Long, Long Sleep makes good use of the sf setting, without being overly technical (something I appreciate). And this is the first time I've seen fairy tales paired with sf in a YA book (though it there are others, let me know), and I loved how they complimented each other. My only gripe about the sf would be that I would have liked to have known the actual date of the book, and where exactly events were taking place. (The 2080s are mentioned, but it's not mentioned how long ago that was.)

So, if you're looking for something different in YA fairy tales or sci-fi (or feel cautious about dipping your toe into science fiction), take a look at this one. There's room left for a sequel, and though I can't find a mention of one yet, I certainly hope there will be.

Garden Madness

Before my mom was a Pre-K teacher, she was a landscaper. Which meant that I spent a lot of my early childhood being carted around to businesses and private houses, finding ways to entertain myself while my mom worked. So there was a lot of reading, lots of pretend play, and even some practice for being a writer, which I talk about here. I don't ever recall being that interested in her actual gardening, but as I've become an adult I've realized that I seemed to have picked up a love of gardens anyway. (This is probably aided by the fact that my mom's personal garden has always been quite lovely and I spent massive amounts of time reading in it when I lived at home, and the fact that most castles and manor houses have wondrous gardens, and I wish, rather desperately, that I could live in one.)

In any case, though I'm not nearly so green-thumbed as my mom, I've kept my garden since I bought my own house about eight years ago. I've spent the last few weeks cleaning it up from the winter and getting all my new plants in, and I think it looks pretty good for early in the spring (though my garden doesn't reach its peak until summer, because many of my plants are of the native, drought-resistance variety, which in essence means that they want to be beaten with the blazing heat of an Oklahoma summer before they'll get going). So I thought I'd share some pics.



This is Clyde II. (Clyde, First of His Name, is smaller and lives in the house because he's a little more battered than Clyde II and too fragile to go outdoors.) Clyde II Is a llama, NOT, as some people claim, a goat. (And no, I don't care that he has horns and may have started life as a goat. He's a llama now.) Bonus points for anyone who knows why he's named Clyde II. (Hint: it's related to a short story that appeared in Realms of Fantasy.)



A bigger shot of Clyde II so that you can see the huge plant that's attacking him. I love this plant because it is so weird looking, though I'm having trouble remembering what it is (I planted it several years ago).



Close shot of the Plant Who Shall Not Be Named. Love the little fairy-cup leaves.



And one more just for fun.



The Yarrow That Will Take Over the World. This is only 1/3 to 1/2 of the whole plant. Also, this is Matt's favorite plant, because he says it reminds him of the platforms in a Mario game. Yes, I'm married to a geek.



Zinnias make me happy, even when they're still small. I also have yellow and orange flowers, and they're awesome in the heat of summer.



This strawflower is new this year. I can't get over how plasticy the leaves feel--it's like they're not even real.



I planted these Crazy Daises last year, but didn't get to enjoy them because I was in Ireland when they bloomed. Very glad to be here to see them this year, because they make me smile whenever I go past them.



If one daisy is crazy, what's a whole bush of them?



Matt might like the yellow yarrow best, but I really like my paprika yarrow. What's funny about this picture is that I didn't realize a ladybug had photobombed me until I was resizing this for the post. You can see it on the right edge of the plant.



These cosmos are new this year. I love their darker pink centers. I also have dark purple ones and you can see some of the white and purple ones in Clyde II.



These always look like they should start singing to me, like the flowers in Alice in Wonderland. Their mouths are already open, after all.


So, there's a peek at what I've been busy with for the last few weekends. I'll do another post later this summer when the coneflowers, Mexican hat plant, Mexican butterfly weed, and the butterfly bush get going.

Which Tastes Better?

I haven't been around on the blog as much over the last few months. In part, that's been because my husband spent the last 4 months in a land I like to call Dissertation Hell. It's a dismal land, one that prohibits most-to-all of your social contact, forces you to leave household chores undone, and leaves you with only enough energy to fall in front of the TV when you emerge from it at the end of the night. My husband was, obviously, living there much more than I was, but Dissertation Hell requires that your spouse get a visa and come with you for a lot of the journey. So, we've both been a little more tired than usual.

But it all paid off. Yesterday, he got his Ph.D. in chemistry. What do you do to celebrate such an event? Why, I'm so glad you asked . . .



You make the Periodic Table of Cupcakes! Different flavors for the different groupings of elements, along with a guide to help people choose which element is right for them. (Because a Metalloid tastes different than a Halogen, you know, and no one wants to be surprised when they bite into a Noble Gas.)

It was geeky and silly and fun. And, most of all, yummy.

A Name by Any Other Name?

I've talked elsewhere about the importance I place on character names. And, as I've been having some Naming Issues in the book that I'm working on right now, I've been thinking recently about my process of naming.

With major characters, I generally can't introduce them into the story until I have their name. And not a place holder name—their real, for all time name. I've tried to give major characters place-holder names, and it just doesn't work. They dig in their heels and refuse to come alive for me, or else every time I put down the name I start worrying about how it isn't right and why won't they tell me their real name by God?!? So as stories progress, I tend to have long stretches of sitting at the computer, starring off into space while I run names in my head and try to decide if they feel right. I usually know what kind of feeling I want to evoke with the name, the kind of sound quality or length that I'm looking for. This name should be hard and short, I think. Or, This person has a really posh sounding name. I'll know the neighborhood I need to be in, but sometimes getting to the right street can take lots of time and lots of wrong turns. So I make lists of possible names, even the ones I know aren't quite right, because sometimes a wrong name can still lead me to the right one. All this also goes for major place names as well.

With minor characters, generally people who appear only briefly or are mentioned by name but never make an actual appearance in the story, and with minor places, I'm less picky. I've been known to pop in a place holder name, knowing that I'll probably come back and change it later. Or, if I'm feeling really lazy, even to leave the name out entirely and put a dashed line where the name should go. Sadly, this usually leads to not-so-fun day after I'm done with the first draft, a day when I have to force myself to go back and make up names for people and places in need of authentic-sounding names but who aren't all that important.

Right now, in the book I'm currently working on, I've run into a niggling problem in that I don't like my main character's last name. Probably because it's not her original last name. Sadly, I realized that her original last name, which I really did love in combination with her first name and which sounded so cool, didn't work in the rest of the story. It really wants and needs to be in some other story. Sadly (again), I only realized this after writing about 120 pages of the book, which meant that I had to change her name in mid-stream. And I've realized as I've gone on with the book that I'm not all that happy with the second last name. I don't know what I want to change it to, and I've left it the way it is so far because it's just a last name, even though I frown a little every day I write it.

I'm going to have to figure this out. And soon. But with her already having had two last names, I know finding a third one that really works will be hard, if only because she's been called too many things in my head already. Part of me wonders if I should stop and try to figure it out before going on, but then I worry about losing momentum on the actual story. I think I'm going to wait, hoping that that's the best thing to do. I think.

Ah well. This is what being a writer is, folks. Figuring it out as you go along.

Beginnings

One of the questions that I get asked a lot is “Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?” The short answer that I give is “yes.” By the age of eleven or twelve, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would, without hesitation, say “a writer.” Before that age, I might have answered “writer,” but I also might have answered any number of other things, include marine biologist (this was before I realized that you probably need to like biology to be a marine biologist, and not just want to swim with dolphins). The turning point for me was reading, in quick succession, a run of books that made me look at the world, and at myself, differently. These included Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness books, Monica Furlong’s Juniper and Wise Child, Diane Duane’s Young Wizards books, Alexander Lloyd’s Westmark and Prydain books, and Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series.  Aside from being just uber-awesome, these books helped me through a really rough patch of my childhood, and after reading them all within the space of a year or two, I knew that I wanted to write books like that. Soon after, I tried to write my first novel, and I’ve actually been in the process of writing some novel or other ever since (though several of them were never finished and many of them will never see the light of day).

But even before that, I was taking part in two activities that were, in essence, prepping me to make that turn at the age of twelve. The first is one that I’ve talked about elsewhere: from the age of about three I told my mother stories. I don’t actually have memories of doing this until somewhere around age five, but we have the stories, typed on our typewriter on brightly colored paper and then sometimes illustrated (badly) by me, to prove that I was doing this before then. Here’s the first story I ever wrote:

    Once there was a green frog that lived on a lily pad. She loved to swim. She was the queen. She had a friend called the king.

    One day she was very sad and cried big frozen tears. The king asked, “Why are you crying big frozen tears?” She said sadly, “Because the river is frozen. I can't swim.”

Kind of minimalist, but I was three. (Reading it now, I'm amused that the kind and queen are apparently “just friends.”) According to the family legend, my mom promptly called my father after she had finished writing the story down and told him that I was “going to be a writer.”

In any case, that story started a trend, so that I now have a large binder stuffed full of typed-out stories from my childhood. (They got a bit longer, and acquired titles like “A Black Cat Meets a Jack-o-lantern and They Both Meet a Witch and They All Meet  Ghost.”) It’s not child prodigy stuff, but it was fun—and a lot of kinds of fun thrown together. I got to tell a story, spend time with my mom, usually play around on the typewriter when she was finished typing the story up. (I liked to type before I could actually read or write, making pictures with things like the @ sign, which I decided was a snail. The @ sign was my favorite.)

The other thing that I feel had a real influence on me writer-wise before I officially decided that I wanted to become a writer came about mainly due to the fact that my mother was a landscaper for most of my young childhood. She worked for both private homes and larger companies, so I spent many, many spring, summer and fall days stuck in people’s yards or places like the gardens of Boston Avenue Methodist Church in Tulsa while my mom gardened. It wasn’t so bad, actually; I was pretty good at entertaining myself as a kid. When I wasn't entertaining myself, though, one of the things that we did to keep me busy was to “play Robin Hood.”

What this involved was me taking on the persona of a character, generally from an animated movie. My favorite one, the one that we spent the most time playing was Robin Hood, from the Disney version. So I would be Robin Hood, and my mom would be everyone else. Maid Marion, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Little John, King John, the various little kid rabbits and turtles. And then I would start some sort of story. We had to rob the king’s castle, escape from the castle, infiltrate the Sheriff’s guard, rescue Maid Marion—everything that a kid could think of Robin Hood doing. Basically, we were roleplaying, though I didn’t know the word at the time. I would dash around and act things out, while my mom would supply the dialogue for her characters. Or, generally, parrot back the lines that I told her. (It was only as an adult that my mom told me that it was annoying to only rarely get to make up her own lines. As a kid, I never realized that prefacing everything I told her with “say that,” might get old after a while.)

We played this a lot. I mean, a whole lot. Not always Robin Hood, although I’d say that was the game 85% of the time. We also played The Secret of Nimh (I was Jeremy the crow, for some reason, rather than Mrs. Frisby), 101 Dalmatians (Me: Rolly the puppy. My mom: the other 100 puppies plus humans), and others. I did this to a lesser extent with my dad, usually to the tune of Thundercats (though with my dad it involved more wrestling and mock-fighting).

And I loved it. Really and truly loved it. At the time, I didn’t think of it as prepping me to be able to tell stories. I just liked playing the game. But, looking back, it was teaching me, on a child’s scale, about writing action and suspense scenes, making up dialogue for numerous characters, and even a little about pacing.

So that's the long story to answer the question “Did you always want to be a writer?” Apparently, even before I really realized it, the answer was yes.

A Giveaway!

Two things have recently come to my attention.

1) I have too many books. As in, I really, really don't have space for them all in my house. Which leads me to the conclusion that I need a new, larger house, with its own built-in library with shelves up to the ceiling and a rolling ladder like Beauty and the Beast . . . but that's another story. In any case, I need to Make Room On My Shelves, even if it is a painful and terrible process.

2) I promised to host a contest for followers on my new Tumblr and then I let it slide.

Both of these realizations are great for you because they mean it's time for . . . .

A Giveaway!

It's easy. If you're already a follower on Tumblr, go to the contest post there that mimics this one and "like" it. If you're not a follower, become one and "like" the post. (If you don't have a Tumblr account, you can make one for free; having just started myself, I have to say it's fun and I'm kind of getting addicted to it.) And while you're there, feel free to ask a question about basically anything--I'd love to answer it.

The Prizes:

2 winners will be chosen at random and will be given their choice of three ARCs each from the following list of fabulous books:

Eve by Anna Carey
Variant by Robison Wells
Frost by Marianna Baer
Liesl and Po by Lauren Oliver
Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan
The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler
Dark Eden by Patrick Carman
Darker Still by Leanna Renee Hieber
Deadly Cool by Gemma Halliday
Wildwood by Colin Meloy

The giveaway will be open until noon CST on Saturday, April 7th, and then I pick the winners. Hope you'll enter