Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 114

Cache Valley Tri 2010 race report

I made possibly the stupidest mistake ever on this race, and it happened before I even started. I never registered for it. I thought I had. I registered for a bunch of races all on the same day, and I must have almost registered for it, but I got a bunch of confirmations and didn't look through them carefully. And I got an email about the race that apparently they send to everyone who has done races with the same company, so I thought I was registered. I woke up at 5:00 on a Saturday to ...

writing and Ironman

I suppose it should not be a surprise to me at this point to realize that people think the most interesting thing about me is my Ironman and other triathlon competition. It is certainly something that makes me different from other people. In my neighborhood, people see me out training fairly often, and I'm wearing weird gear (my bike looks space age and I have one of those aero helmets that look like aliens eating my brain). Writing books for teens is just sort of ho-hum in comparison.

This...

signing in Sugarhouse

I will be at the Sugarhouse Barnes and Noble at 5:00 today. Come see me if you're in the area. Who else will be there? Frank Cole, Bree Despain (The Dark Divine) and Kristen Chandler will be there.

skater boy

My mother gave the five girls haircuts when we were kids. Dad buzzed the six boys. I do not know why, but my mother never actually learned how to give good haircuts. Maybe she kept getting bumped by younger children? Anyway, I spent all my years up until sixth grade (when I started cutting my own hair) having terrible hair. Mom kept trying to cut my bangs straight, and they would get shorter and shorter until they disappeared and they were still not straight! But I had longish hair in t...

self-promotion

I read Maureen Johnson's blog yesterday and found a lot that I agreed with. Last year at CONduit, I remember rather ruefully going to the panel on self-promotion and saying, I think this is an exact quote, "I don't do self-promotion and I don't believe in self-promotion." I said that I had always believed that good books sell themselves, and I had built my life on that premise. This was, needless to say, not really what the people who came to the self-promotion panel had expected to hear....

me and galleys

At the last few conferences I have been to, I have ended up telling the story about THE PRINCESS AND THE HOUND where I got the galleys and realized that the story wasn't finished. In a way, it was a good thing, because the publisher had for months been asking me about a sequel, and I had zero ideas for one. But suddenly, I knew where the story needed to go. Unfortunately (for the publisher and the copy editor and other editors involved) it also meant that I discovered that I needed to add ...

living on a farm

I've been reading Barbara Kingsolver's ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE this past week as a change from fiction and there were some moments that strongly reminded me of the years I spent growing up on a small farm in central New Jersey, until I was about 8 years old. We lived in a 200 year-old house with a scary basement and a drafty attic that has now been restored beautifully. There was a pool a few years from the house (my parents told us that someone had poured a foundation for a house but it...

how do I find a good writing group?

This is one of the questions that got asked at CONduit last weekend and I think it actually takes a long time to answer. I was in a writing group from 1997-2004 that had the same base group of members (about 5 of us) and a rotating list of others. I moved an hour away and thought I might still attend but less often. But I didn't. It was partly that I struggled with driving late at night and partly (perhaps mostly) because I felt like I had learned what I needed to learn from a group and w...

there are no little people

If there is one thing I have learned by going to various conferences and conventions, it is that there are no little people. This is surprisingly difficult to learn. Every year, I go and spend time chatting with people I know and like and I see people on the periphery, listening in to the conversation, trying to tell an interesting story they hope will fit in, going to lunch and just sitting and enjoying the feeling of being with "authors."

I meet people I have met several years before and...

May 2010 stats

Hours worked:

MKT—47
CHOP—1
VAMP—14
INC—3.5
MP—20 (My new apocalyptic novel)
THE ASYLUM—33

I find I am doing more signings/appearances this year than last. Though sometimes I see someone I know and find myself chatting the whole time and sort of ignoring the signing thing. Sorry!

Books Read and Recommended:
White Cat by Holly Black
In the Company of Angels by David Farland
Three Days To Dead by Kelly Meding
Swoon At Your Own Risk by Sydney Salter Husseman
This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Wolv...