Scott Tracey's Blog, page 3

Moonset Monday: Meet Jenna!

So Moonset comes out in a little less than 5 months.  And I thought, what better way to introduce you guys to the book than to do some sort of Moonset Monday theme on the blog.  So to start out, I thought I’d introduce one of the five main characters of the Moonset series.  When I pitched the first book, I called it Party of Five meets the Craft.  And if you don’t know what Party of Five is….what is wrong with you.  Get thee to Youtube!

Name: Jenna Bellamont

What’s her deal:  Jenna’s the troublemaker.  Her father was the leader of the Moonset coven, a trait she shares with her brother, Justin, although they each have different mothers.  But where Justin is even-tempered and solid, Jenna is wild.  She likes being a witch, and hates the fact that the adults keep her from learning all the magic she wants to.

She enjoys stirring the pot, messing with people, and generally alleviating what she sees as ‘boredom.’  She’s the main reason the Moonset kids are currently on their seventh school in three years.  When Jenna gets bored, things have a tendency to get bad very, very quickly.

Excerpt:

“Incoming,” Jenna announced as she strode into the kitchen. “It’s the Witch of Skankbird Pond again.”

Heavy footfalls started down the stairs as Meghan Virago swept down the hall.  She was still wrapped up in the same dark green overcoat, her hair pulled away from her face.  “The Congress still has some questions for the two of you.”

“I thought we finished this already,” Quinn said in an icy tone.

“Is this some kind of good cop, bad dye job thing?” Jenna asked, looking between them.

Senior Superlatives: Crazy Hot, Most Likely to End up in Jail, Biggest Flirt, Most Likely to Marry Rich

Party of Five Sibling She’s Least Like:  Julia, played by Neve Campbell.  Julia started out fairly passive, needy, and struggled to fit in and find her place, and that’s pretty much the exact opposite of Jenna.  Jenna is acerbic, headstrong, and expects the world to try to fit in around her.

Theme song: For a girl that likes attention and games, being in the ring is perfect.

How her siblings would describe her:

Justin:  …complicated.

Malcolm: Bitch.

Cole: Badass.

Bailey: Sweet, but scary.

Inspiration and Costs

For a lot of different reasons, I’ve been thinking about inspiration, and where it mashes up with motivation.  Like…why do some ideas sit in the back of our heads for years before we start working on them, and why do others just flow out the moment they occur?

I’ve been thinking a lot about my uncle recently, and about Moonset.  Moonset comes out in about four months, and I just started working on promo materials and stuff for it, so it’s been on the forefront of my mind.  But whenever I think of Moonset, I end up thinking about my uncle. Let me explain.

There was a time, back in 2009 when I had accepted that Witch Eyes wasn’t going to sell.  Or at least it wouldn’t sell right then – maybe in a few years or something.  I don’t even remember what had spurred on that realization – it was still on submission and hadn’t even been seen by THAT many people.  Maybe it was just a moment of weakness or whatever.  I don’t know.  But the idea stuck.  I came to terms with it.  I was preparing myself to Move On. This is a thing you have to do sometimes, and I was determined that I was going to be a big boy and start on a new project or something, and life would be good.

In the midst of all this, a line of dialogue popped into my head and latched onto something, the way that ideas sometimes do.  It was that way with Witch Eyes when I wrote about Braden being chased through the cemetery by a group of Homecoming Queens, and its still that way with a WIP I haven’t finished, about a girl who steals dreams and hunts Muses.

But anyway, this line of dialogue popped into my head, and it encapsulated everything about a character in a moment for me.  A boy was giving a speech, or engaged in some kind of debate, and the words were a struggle.  Frustrated, he said, “When they were sixteen, my parents were Romeo and Juliet.  In their twenties, they were Bonnie and Clyde.  And then they became Rasputin and Elizabeth Bathory.  And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.”  It was this idea that he was reciting a list of well-known truths, but he didn’t have any way to put them into context as far as what that meant to him.  How it affected him.  Who that made him.

That was my first moment in Justin’s world.  Obviously on some level I was inspired by the Runaways comic – a group of kids come together because their parents are supervillains.  It’s not a new idea, for sure, and it’s not even a new idea for me.  The characters in Witch Eyes all have to deal with parental issues.  But for me, the context was different.  These parents were…more.  Worse.  Darker.  They weren’t small town villains or supervillains.  They were mass murderers.  Terrorists.  And they were clearly dead, and their kids were left to pick up the pieces.

I got all that out of one line of dialogue.

Fast forward six months.  Witch Eyes sold to Flux, but I still couldn’t get Justin and his evil parents out of my head.  So a few weeks before Christmas, I gave myself permission to just sit down and…tell as much of the story as I could.  I didn’t really have a plot, I knew a few points I wanted to hit, but all I really had was the characters.  Right from the start, I knew exactly who the five kids were, how they fit together and how they clashed.

I started a few hours before midnight on December 10th, 2009.  I wrote 5,000 words before bed.  And another 5,000 over the course of the 11th.  All about these five messed up kids, and the situation they’d gotten themselves into. Literally 10,000 words, in just a little less than 24 hours. At the time, their story was only beginning.

And then I got a phone call.  My uncle had died that day.  He’d been going through some stuff, but I hadn’t really just how bad it had gotten.  That’s how it is sometimes, you know someone is struggling, but you never really UNDERSTAND it. Until it’s too late.

For me, it was almost…fake.  I mean, he’d been at Thanksgiving a few weeks before, and he’d helped me pick up and unload a new computer desk to my apartment only a week before.  He’d never been in my apartment, so I got to give him the nickle tour, he asked me a lot of questions about my book deal and how I liked my life, just random stuff like that.  My book deal was only a few months old at the time, so I basically jumped at any chance to talk about it.  And then when he left, he said we’d see each other at Christmas.  The usual sort of thing.

There were still two weeks until Christmas, and so my mom had to be wrong, didn’t she?  Because he said he’d be there at Christmas. So he couldn’t be dead.

Actually, thinking back to that night, my mom never actually used to the word “dead.”  This became a problem a few hours later, but for the time it took me to leave my apartment and head the ten minutes over to my parents’ house, it was the only thing I grabbed onto.  Because it’s what you do in a situation like that: you rationalize when you can, for as long as you can.  Because it’s easier than the alternative.

One of my sisters had gone out of town for something – either visiting college friends or had gone to a concert or something, I can’t remember.  And my mom didn’t want my other sister to be alone while she was gone.   So I went to house sit and keep my youngest sister company while my mom drove out to my aunt’s…and did whatever you do in the aftermath of something like this.  I spent hours trying to rationalize that since no one had said “he’s dead” that it wasn’t true.  That she hadn’t meant to freak me out, and everything was going to be okay.

Only it wasn’t.

I remember being mad at myself.  Like…furious.  It’s an instinctive response, I think, when you lose someone you love.  You blame yourself.  At least, I think most people do that, right?  “I could have done something/said something/tried something.”  But for me, it always felt like it was MORE personal.  MORE damaging.  Because back in my senior year of high school, my best friend committed suicide.  I’d been through this before.  There had been warning signs I should have seen then, and now too.  Especially now.  If anyone should have noticed something, it should have been me, right?

But that’s the thing.  I saw what I wanted to see, and didn’t see what I didn’t want to. And I saw what my uncle wanted me to see, which was nothing at all.

The aftermath was particularly horrific, and I think I just spent two weeks in shock.  My birthday is four days before Christmas, and it’s one of the first times that it’s ever gone completely unmentioned.  There was no Christmas, but there was a family dinner.  Everything just…drew to a stop.  I helped my parents pack up my uncle’s house and basically his life, and one of the only things I can tell you for sure about the weekend after he died is that when you’re knee-deep in papers and pans, and your dead uncle’s cell phone rings for the first time in days – in a completely silent house when you’re all alone….well yeah, tell me you wouldn’t pee your pants, too.  Hands down probably one of the most traumatic things that has ever happened to me.

And then it was January, and the holidays were over and I…had nothing to distract me.  And I turned to Moonset.  What had started for me as this book about a bunch of kids from a messed up family became the only thing I did for six weeks.  I wrote 120k thousand words about Justin’s struggle.  Cut half.  At one point, the “first day of school” section of the book approached 40 or 50 thousand words.  Seriously.  It was insane.

I cut it down to 60k, then turned around and added another 40.  I did all this in 6 weeks.  I even took a week away where I did nothing but play video games just so I could decompress for a few days.  I was obsessed, and probably a little unhinged, and I don’t even know where half of it all came from.

It became this book about a family struggle, about how far a makeshift family will go to keep themselves together.  It became therapy, because if I could write about these kids trying to keep their family together, while mine was busy falling apart, maybe it would be okay.  It was weird, too, because Moonset was actually the first novel I finished after Witch Eyes.  I wrote the second book in that series, Demon Eyes, after Moonset.  Somewhere along the line after Moonset, I felt like I “got it” a little more, and Demon Eyes was a far, far easier thing to draft.  It’s been the easiest book I’ve ever written, and I think that probably had something to do with just how rough Moonset was on me.

So needless to say, Moonset is a book that I have…issues with.  But I don’t think the book would have been even a fraction of what it became if I hadn’t gone through some stuff. Every time I’ve gone to edit it, it has become this herculean project that seems like it will never be finished.  I am the Greek dude pushing a boulder up a hill, knowing I will never make it to the top.

Every time has been like pulling teeth, because for me the book is wrapped up in all this weird headspace.  I had a friend edit like…fifty pages, and I seriously think I was in tears (which…crying?  I don’t typically cry) because of it, because every critique was just so personal.  And this is my super warm, super supportive friend.  But she now gets major warnings ahead of time just in case she decides to rip out my heart and stomp on it in her bright green Wellies.

And yet when my editor came in with some big ideas, it almost became clinical.  Because it was a real book, and this was a real process, and there was no time for emotions.  Even though there was a breakdown or two behind the scenes (and many, MANY panicked emails about deadlines).  Seriously.  I still have deadline nightmares.

Still, I can look at it and even ten or twenty years down the road, I will know exactly what I was thinking and feeling when I wrote that first draft.  Even though the final version has whole sections that are brand, spanking new and were never even a glimmer in my eye until my editor very wisely made some points about the direction.

I’m writing this post out at the desk my uncle helped me carry into my apartment three years ago.  It’s a little dented, there are a lot of scuff marks, but it’s still my desk, and I wouldn’t change that for anything.

I started Moonset three years ago today.  That’s so weird.

 

The PHANTOM EYES cover

Well, I said that once the WITCH EYES Facebook page hit 400 likes, I’d post the PHANTOM EYES cover. And in a little under 3 hours, it did! So for those of you who aren’t over there on Facebook, here is the PHANTOM EYES cover:

 

Demon Eyes Available!

So you might have heard already, but DEMON EYES seems to be shipping out early from Book Depository, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.  So if you want an early copy, there you go.  I imagine the ebook versions will become available closer to the actual release date (which is not for another 24 days!

But in the meantime, you can enter to win a copy over on Goodreads, so you should check that out!

 

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Demon Eyes
by Scott Tracey

Giveaway ends October 08, 2012.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

 

Braden and Trey Cantaloupe

So I filmed a vlog recently.  I know! Me!  Who would have ever thought?  Anyway, I filmed a vlog all about cantaloupe….no really, I swear that that’s what it was about.

 

Kirkus Review and Moonset News!

So this has been the week of All the Things.  In addition to novel writing, the day job, Teen Wolf, and everything else that eats up my daily life, this week has a bunch of tiny deadlines for projects and vlogs and things.  (I’m actually writing this blog post instead of getting ready for a meeting at the day job, I’m such a rebel!)

Originally, I was going to post about a contest, but I think we’ll hold off on that until tomorrow.  In the meantime, I’ve got news!  Two pieces of news, even!

The first is that Kirkus reviewed DEMON EYES and they liked it! They really liked it!  Reviews of all kinds are scary, but this one more than most (at least for me).

Here’s what they said:

“Colorful characters, dangerous magic, secrets and forbidden romance—what’s not to love?”

How cool is that??? It pretty much made my night the day that I found out.

The second bit of news is more for those who’ve been asking for MOONSET news, or more information about the book (which comes out in April….eek!)  Anyway, there will be a short excerpt from Moonset in the back of Demon Eyes when it comes out in October, so you’ll get a sneak peak at what’s going on with Justin and the other Moonset kids 6 months early!  I’m super excited that Flux is putting the sneak peak in there, because I can’t wait for you guys to get to read.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got for you today.  Now I have to go run around my house like a crazy person! (Must be Wednesday!)

 

Demon Eyes & Bloggy Things

Is bloggy even a word?  I mean, could it be?  Like, since I want to discuss things of a blogging nature, should I have just said blogging things?  I don’t even know.  This week has sucked all the brain power out of my head.  Pretend this was the most interesting and fascinating intro to a post you’ve ever read.  Then divide that by about 10.

Yeah, that’s about where I’m hoping to land.

I have a few posts in the works – a few things I’m hoping to talk about and just waiting on word, and I also have a stack of ARCs from BEA still to give away.  I’m trying to decide if I should do one big giveaway, or a separate giveaway for each book.  Anyone have preferences?

Okay, so there are less than 75 days until DEMON EYES comes out.  That kind of freaks me out, I’m not going to lie.  I’ve got a few things planned here or there, but the one thing I neglected this time around was a blog tour!  Or even making any sort of effort to SECURE a blog tour.  Ugh, this summer was rough, that’s my only excuse! Last year, I had the ladies of Teen Book Scene organize my blog tour, and they did fantastic!  Of course last year I didn’t drop the ball and wait until 74 days before my book came out to start to organize anything.  But if you’re an author and you want to do some sort of tour, definitely check them out!  They were fantastic, prompt, and super professional.

Okay, so….BLOGGERS!  This is for you!  If you’re interested in having me do a blog post, character interview, regular interview, or anything like that during the month of October, please give me a shout!  I can’t promise I’ll do everything that comes along (I have Phantom Eyes due in….a short enough span that I just gave myself a panic attack), but I’ll try to do as many if not all that I can.

I’d prefer not to vlog, that’s my only restriction.  Besides, if I can’t do instructional dance videos as well as Karsten Knight, then what’s the point?

If you’re interested, you can email me at: scottshouldbewriting@gmail.com because….I should be writing.  Even my email shames me! Please include something about a blog post in the subject of the email, otherwise I’ll probably lose it.  And link your blog, too!  That way I can keep track of everything!  There’s also the Contact form here on my blog that you can use.  Go up to the top and click Contact, and fill out the stuff there.

I don’t know if I’m doing bookmarks or any other swag this time around, but I do have a bunch of the Demon Eyes eye-charts that I made up for BEA, so I might sent out a bunch of those along with the Witch Eyes bookmarks.  I’ll let you guys know at some point in the next month (when I stop slacking).  I’ll do another big call for swag like I did last year.

Okay, thanks everyone, and hope to hear from you!

Project: Write Faster

So a few authors and I were talking about a week ago, about this article about going from writing 2k words a day to 10k.  We all expressed interest in getting *better* word counts, rather than necessarily wanting 10k word days.  The consensus was that we would all give it a go, see what we could adjust in order to tweak our writing counts.

If you want to see what all the other writers had to say about the experiment, check out Holly Black’s tumblr post, it’s got links to everyone.  (It’s 4 am and I’m feeling lazy, sorry.)

I was in a weird place, because while most of this was being discussed, I was either packing for New York, or already IN New York (it’s hard to remember that far back.)  (Yes, shut up, ten days ago qualifies as ‘that far back.’  I’ve been busy).  So I planned on starting once we got back.

It was also weird for me because I had several things to juggle. I was actually writing a WIP, which isn’t contracted to anything.  I also had a June 15th deadline for something neat.  And finally, I also had to work on the outline for the third Witch Eyes book, because that one is due at the end of the summer, and I really need to get moving on that. In the middle of the project, copyedits showed up, which was another thing to juggle.

Just a general idea of how I usually work – when I’m not at the day job, I’ll write in spurts.  There’s a morning/early afternoon session, a late afternoon session, and usually a short session in the evening.  Since I had three things on my plate, I was only able to really work on the WIP during my mornings.  Also, having the day job severely curbs any and all attempts at writing.  And after the first few days, I realized I needed to devote more time to the Friday deadline, as well as copyedits for Demon Eyes showing up in my email, so I only really got 4 days of work in.

What I did:

I spent 5-10 minutes blocking out the scene I was going to write, before I actually wrote it.  I sketched out short details, maybe a couple of lines of dialogue, and any key points I knew I needed to hit during the scene.  I think this was the biggest aid to getting a solid block of writing done.  Normally my outlines are short – I have a general idea of the direction but I never spend THAT much time really putting it all together in my head before I start writing. I had fewer bottleneck moments while writing this week, where I had to stop and regroup to figure out what I needed to write next.  I can see this helping out a lot in the long run.

I wrote in short, half hour sessions.  I’ve noticed that when I word war with other authors, the time limit actually makes me write MORE, because I stop dithering around with what the best word choice would be (which then leads to thesaurus.com and from there to Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, and suddenly 2 hours have gone by), and just wrote the darn thing. So short sessions really work for me.  I usually average about 500-1000 words in a half hour on a usual day.

I blocked out the internet.  I went for the lame person’s approach, and didn’t ACTUALLY block the internet.  But I DID turn on the full screen feature on Scrivener, AND I set myself a timer on my iPod so I knew when I was supposed to be stopping.  The only rule was that I couldn’t check anything until the timer went out, and for the most part I stuck to it. I am, however, seriously considering Mac Freedom (is it just called Freedom if it’s for PC?  Hrm).

I changed my music.  I tend to listen to songs and themed playlists while drafting, and then instruments and scores while revising.  But lately, when I listen to playlists, I get sucked up into the words, and start focusing more on them than on the writing.  So this week, I played the Snow White and the Huntsman score, and then the Avengers when action was called for.  It was much less distracting.

The actual breakdown:

Saturday 6/9:

First full day back from New York, and settling in took some time.  I had to run errands, then I had pre-established plans to go see Snow White, so that ate up part of my afternoon, but I did a half hour round of writing before switching over to essay-work and then outlining big scenes from Phantom Eyes.

11 am to 11:30 -Total words: 691

7:15 pm to 7:45 pm – Total words: 975

 Sunday 6/10:

Again, another day with a lot going on outside of the writing.  There was a lot of going back and forth through Witch Eyes and Demon Eyes to familiarize myself with things that needed to be elaborated on, and themes I wanted to hit with the third book.

10:30 pm to 11:00 pm – Total words: 1076

Monday 6/11

Finally started to put the outline into some kind of order, and take it from the Scrivener notecards stage to the actual “I can almost see how this book will play out” stage.  Essay was coming together as well, so that was good.

2:45 to 3:15 pm – Total words: 671

3:30-4:00 – Total words: 904

Tuesday 6/12

Return to the day job, and it missed me so much.  I still managed to get some writing done, but I had to fit it in around the rest of my schedule.  Big drop in words today, and most of that came in the last minute panic of trying to get SOMETHING down. Half hour writing sessions may not be advisable on work days.  I might need to schedule an actual hour or so, because a half hour seemed like not enough time.

9:00 to 9:20 am – Total words: 472

11:00 pm – 11:30 Total words: 497

Wednesday 6/13

Copyedits arrived for DEMON EYES, and I officially had to drop the writing part of my week.  Too many things going on, and not enough time to write.

Conclusions:

In the last 3 weeks of May, with no sort of writing structure whatsoever, I only managed to write about 6,000 words.  6,000 words in 3 weeks.  By forcing a little more responsibility onto myself, and giving myself more of a structured writing system, I wrote over 5,000 words in 4 days.  I think that once a few of the additional things that fell into my lap are removed, and I have more time to focus on just one project, I’ll be able to increase that word count dramatically.

All the changes I made seemed to really work for me, and none were so jarring that they took anything away from my writing.

Obligatory BEA week conversation

Last week in New York was crazy.  I made a point this year of trying to do more fun things.  Touristy things.  Basically, I just wanted to cram as much fun into the time that I had. Leah Clifford, Courtney Moulton and I drove out from Ohio, and it was a super easy drive, actually.  Only about 10 hours including breaks to get into the city.

We arrived in New York on Sunday to find that our apartment had been double rented.  The nice South African man who was staying there was really sweet about the whole thing, but it was an aggravating couple of hours when I think all the three of us wanted to do was put our things down and freshen up.  After we got everything settled, we went out to dinner with the always fabulous Laura Whitaker.

Monday was a touristy day for us, and we tried to hit up Central Park but it was raining so we only did that briefly.  However, I did get a lot of ideas for this kind of epic NY book I want to write some day. Then we had lunch with the hysterical Aimee Carter at Bubba Gumps, and she was the official spokesperson for our table every time the waiter wandered our way.  I’m not really sure how that happened, but it ended up with all four of us writing our names and novel titles on the back of our check…so I guess it was a win?

The most random part of the afternoon was Leah turning to me and going “Is that the West boys?”  I mean, two extremely tall redheads walking together…it’s either that or they’re the Weasleys.  But sure enough, we just happened to run into the Jeremy and Jeffrey randomly.

Then I headed out to dinner with my editor, Brian Farrey, and a group of Flux authors, including Crissa-Jean Chappell, Suzanne Lazear, Tom Pollock, and agent Amy Boggs. The cheesecake at Junior’s was insane, for sure, and the conversation skewed from growing up Mormon to American Girl dolls (yeah, I’m not really sure how that happened either).

Then I ran over to another dinner, which I mostly just crashed, with Leah, Courtney, Aimee, and Sarah J. Maas (who might just be the funniest person I met the entire time in New York). I literally walked in as someone was leaving and I stole their chair.  So it all worked out.

Tuesday was the only day I really spent at BEA, and it was kind of nice to do it as a Muggle.  I got to wander around and stand in line for books.  Myra McEntire made me hug her — actually, a lot of people made me hug them this week.  I’m not a hugging kind of person, but I try to be accommodating.  Someday, the rule is going to be “no hugging the Scott.”   Anyway, it was especially cool because I got to stand in the line for Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Boys, which was epic and amazing and everything I wanted it to be and more. I started reading it on the drive home and finished it that weekend.

The thing that’s weird about conferences and events like this, where there are a whole lot of people I ‘kind of’ know is that I’m really quiet when I’m uncomfortable, and I’m uncomfortable until I’m not.  So if I was quiet or serious around you this week, it wasn’t anything personal! It just takes me a little while to warm up.  So wandering around the convention was a little weird because I get nervous about just walking up to groups I don’t know, or if I only know one person.  Maybe it has something to do with being holed up in my room working on projects for the last couple of months.

That night was the Teen Author Carnival, and I spent my time on two panels: the first being about writing paranormal stories and grounding them in the real world, and the second one was about boys.  The coolest part of the TAC, for me, is getting to see authors I never get to see anywhere else, as well as the fantastic bloggers I get to talk to on Twitter but only see once or maybe twice a year.

Twice in two years, I’ve gotten to have a single moment with Michelle Zink, where it’s literally her shouting “Scott!” and then I shout “Michelle!” and then we smile and hug and get pulled away for the next panel or something.  One of these years we will actually get to have a conversation in person.  Maybe.

My goal anytime someone puts a microphone in front of me is twofold: “Try to be funny” and “OMG get this thing away from me!” You know that game you play when you’re a kid?  “The floor is lava?”  I’m like that, except it’s the microphone that’s made out of lava.  Anyway, I’m far from the most eloquent person, so I try to at least be amusing.  Or at least sarcastic. Or at least sarcastically amusing.

The highlight for me was getting to sit between Hannah Moskowitz and Michelle Hodkin.  I mean, you can’t go wrong in between the two of them.  Mostly because Michelle makes everything sound so smart, and Hannah makes everyone laugh.  Sitting in the middle kind of makes the best of both worlds.

 Wednesday I had lunch with my agent and we talked about upcoming projects, and the appropriate number of people you can murder in a novel.  So, I mean, it was the usual.  Then I bummed around with Gretchen and Zoraida Cordova (another of the funniest people I met in New York) before our signing at Books of Wonder.  Which was ALSO epic, and again, I spent most of my time going “Oh god, get this microphone away from me.” Which was especially fantastic when they asked us to explain what our books were about, and I NEVER ACTUALLY ANSWERED THE QUESTION.  #sigh

Then the Blogger/Author rooftop cocktail party.  You guys.  You guys.  It was INSANE.  The view was stunning, and the event was so much fun.  The bloggers who put this together did an amazing job – when I tell people about my trip in New York, it’s one of the first things I talk about.

I got to mingle with a lot of people I’d seen around New York that week, catch up with some other Flux authors like Char Bennardo and Alissa Grosso, and drink wine with my new best friend Lizzie (she just doesn’t know we’re biffles yet).

And then on Thursday I went back to Central Park as it was gorgeous, then hit up MoMA with Gretchen, who’d planned to head that way and just happened to invite me along.  Which was really weird, because I’d turned to Courtney that morning and mentioned wanting to go to MoMA.  Gretchen has weird psychic powers, y’all.

Things that happened to me that were crazy:

When I was heading over to MoMA to meet Gretchen McNeil for an afternoon wandering the exhibits, I stopped for a minute on a street corner to check my phone, check Twitter, etc.  Some woman walked up to me and said, “Scott?”  I had no idea who this woman was, but figured it must have been someone I met at an event this week, so I was like “Yeah?”  And then she realized that I wasn’t the Scott she was looking for, but she WAS meeting at Scott at that exact street corner at that exact time.  He walked up about ten seconds later.  But still, what are the odds?

I got to talk about writing with Holly Black, and she gave me amazing advice about revisions.  Seriously, I adore her so much anyway, but in person she’s like a thousand times more awesome.

Jeri Smith-Ready asked me to sign a copy of Witch Eyes at Books of Wonder, and when I opened the book up, it was one of the copies I’d already signed for their stock, so I was really confused.  And she looked at me, smiled, and was like “Can you make it out to me?”  And for a minute, I was really confused, because why would she want my book and my signature.  So…yeah.  Not my finest moment.  I’m a bit of an idiot sometimes.

I didn’t get lost once, and only took a cab a few times (when I was on my own).  That is a huge improvement over last year.

Tentative plans to hang out with Michelle Hodkin and Gennifer Albin turned into a working date for the three of us where we all got together and worked on our projects that were due soon.  I mean, I go to New York for a week and spend part of it working?  Of course I did.  Side note, I got to learn a lot about Cain and Abel from Michelle, and she reminded me of something from the Bible that would make the creepiest short story ever (and I kind of want to play with now).

All in all, it was a fantastic trip.  Everyone was so nice and it was great to see so many people I haven’t seen since LAST year.

Signings, Arcs, and News!

Lots to talk about today!

I’ll be at the Teen Author Carnival in New York City on Tuesday, June 5th from 6:30-9:30 along with some of my most favorite authors in the world. If you’re going to be in New York for BEA, you should stop on by!

I’ll also be doing a signing at Books of Wonder on Wednesday, June 6th with Gretchen McNeil, Holly Black (!!!), Leah Clifford, Victoria Schwab, Hannah Moskowitz, Zoraida Cordova and my friend-slash-nemesis Karsten Knight. Place your bets on what happens first: I make a fool of myself trying to talk to Holly, or Karsten and I get into a slap fight. Either way, it sounds like it will be an epic event.

There’s still four days left to enter the contest for an ARC of DEMON EYES, and multiple ways to enter.  Already entered and just killing time?  Get your friends to enter, too, and increase your odds of reading the book early.

If you’re a book blogger or reviewer on Netgalley, you can request DEMON EYES now.  Be sure to check out Flux’s request criteria while you’re there, and maybe request some of the other awesome books they have coming out this fall!