Mindi Scott's Blog, page 20

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Jacqueline Houtman

Jacqueline Houtman is the author of THE REINVENTION OF EDISON THOMAS, a MG novel released by Front Street, an imprint of Boyds Mills Press on March 15, 2010.   

Eddy Thomas can read a college physics book, but he can’t read the emotions on the faces of his classmates at Drayton Middle School. He can spend hours tinkering with an invention, but he can’t stand more than a few minutes in a noisy crowd, like the crowd at the science fair, which Eddy fails to win. Eddy uses his ingenuity to...

Go ahead - make my day.

Part of my day job requires making weekly deposits .  So every Tuesday, I go to the bank in the main lobby of my building and see the same half a dozen or so tellers. 

Today, one of my deposits contained eight quarters.  Bryan behind the counter picked them up and studied them each individually.  I thought he was checking to see if I was trying to deposit Canadian coins, but then he smiled and said, "Yes!" as he set two of the quarters aside. 

He then explained that there's a lady who comes i...

March Madness Writing Challenge. Update #2.

For the past thirteen days, I've been writing scenes.  Rough, rough scenes.  The goal is to complete twenty-five of these suckers (ha!) before March 31st. 

After a kind of rocky start, it's going really well.  I'm writing rough scenes and moving forward to write new rough scenes without tweaking or rewriting or obsessing (too much) over how much this stuff sucks. 

So, of course, the part that isn't going well is that I'm not putting pen to paper and magically getting perfect first drafts.  Bu...

Surprise!

I wrote a guest blog about surprises for Reverie Book Reviews today.

Surprise!

MY COVER ART IS POSTED THERE.

March Madness Writing Challenge. Update.

As you might recall, I've decided to participate in a writing challenge denisejaden   organized.  My goal in the month of March is to write 25 rough scenes.

This is the seventh day of the challenge and I have written . . . five scenes.  Which means I am pretty much on track to complete my goal.

What I'm finding, though, is that typing the scenes that I'm handwriting is killing my momentum.  When I'm putting it down in the journal, it's usually flowing pretty well, but when I type what I've writt...

AMAZON CRAZINESS!

Once a day, I do this very annoying thing where I go to Amazon.com and search for the following: 

Mindi Scott
Freefall Mindi Scott
Freefall by Mindi Scott

Every day, the search results include Batman Returns, Requiem for a Dream, and Mandy Hubbard's Prada & Prejudice.  (Only the last of these makes sense to me; my name is on Mandy's acknowledgments page.)

Just now, I did my usual "Mindi Scott" search first.  And got my usual results mentioned above. 

Then I immediately tried "Freefall Mindi Scott...

March Madness Writing Challenge.

Denise Jaden aka  denisejaden  is helping to organize a March writing challenge.   Check out http://denisejaden.livejournal.com/ for more information!

This challenge can be used in sort of a NaNoWriMo way if one desires, but my personal goals are not related to word count at all.  Instead, I plan to write 25 or more first-draft scenes for my newest WIP.  I figure that my full-length YA novels have around 50 scenes, so this will be half of what I need to finish a first draft. 

I'm not going to w...

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Mara Purnhagen

[image error]Mara Purnhagen  is the author of Tagged, a contemporary YA  novel to be released by Harlequin Teen on March 1, 2010.   

HOW DO YOU TAKE A STAND WITHOUT STANDING OUT?

Kate Morgan is just as confused as the rest of her classmates when she arrives at Cleary High to find six life-size gorillas spray painted on the side of a building. Could the culprit be one of her friends or classmates? And is the kind-of-amazing creation really vandalism, or a work of art? She's tempted to stay out of...

Friday 5

1.  I heard the sound of my gate opening a minute ago.  I'm at my desk, frozen in fear and agitation.  I hate it when strangers stop by in the middle of the day (or ever).  They always want me to buy something.  (Okay, I peeked out the window and no one is there.  So, that's good news.)

2.  I'm writing something.  A novel!  Without an outline!  I thought this method might temporarily save me from my perfectionism.  We shall see.

3.  My eye has been itchy for the past few days.  Ever since I sta...

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Jen Nadol

            

Jen Nadol is the author of The Mark, a YA novel released by Bloomsbury on January 19, 2010.    

Cassandra Renfield has always seen the mark—a glow around certain people reminiscent of candlelight. But the one time she mentioned it, it was dismissed as a trick of the light. Until the day she watches a man awash in the mark die. After searching her memories, Cassie realizes she can see a person’s imminent death. Not how or where, only when: today.

Armed with a vague understanding...