Jennifer Niven's Blog, page 561

Velva Jean Giveaway – Week One

Win a copy of Velva Jean Learns to Drive, the Emmy Award-winning movie! As I announced in last week's video blog, my newest book, Velva Jean Learns to Fly, hits shelves August 30, and in honor of that, I'm hosting one giveaway per week for the next four weeks. This first one starts Wednesday, August [...]

Velva Jean Giveaways Coming Soon!

Get Flash to see this player. var so = new SWFObject('/lib/player.swf','mpl','320','240','7'); so.addParam("allowfullscreen","false"); so.addVariable("file","/movies/jennifer.flv"); so.addVariable("displayheight","240"); so.addVariable("showstop","true"); so.addVariable("autostart","false"); so.addVariable("allowfullscreen","false"); so.write('player');

What Betty Rubble Means to Me

Before I ever wanted to be Veronica Lodge or, less desperately, Daphne from Scooby Doo, I loved Betty Rubble. I mean, I loved her. She seemed so fun and fun-loving and plucky and, let's face it, she was so much prettier than Wilma. She also had black hair and a joyfully wicked giggle. I loved [...]

The Beauty of Theorems

My grandmamma Eleanor used to worry that my mom worked too hard. She would say, "You poor thing, I wish you could take a break from that writing because look how exhausted it makes you." To which my mom would point out that it wasn't the work itself that was so exhausting—it was the life [...]

Why I write

Author William Styron once said, "There's only one person a writer should pay any attention to. It's not any damn critic. It's the reader." It's easy to forget, sitting at your desk for hours and hours and hours every day, just why you ever wanted to write a book in the first place. There are [...]

Invent a Spy Weapon contest winner

Thanks to all the folks who submitted ideas for a useful, innovative, and inventive—not to mention deadly!—secret weapon for Velva Jean Learns to Spy. Once again, there were so many original and super-cool suggestions (for some reason, most of you felt more comfortable submitting the ideas via email, in true covert spy fashion), which made [...]

Invent a Spy Weapon

12 of My Favorite Dad Memories

1. Riding on his shoulders when I was a little girl, playing the bongos on his balding head. 2. Playing games together, just the two of us—Chutes & Ladders, Candyland, Uncle Wiggly, Old Maid—each of us hellbent on winning. My mom saying to him: "Jack, she's just a little girl. She's five years old. Let [...]

Name the Spy Contest Winner

Thanks to everyone who posted possible code names for the female double agent in Velva Jean Learns to Spy. So many great and interesting suggestions, which made it really (truly) hard to choose. But since I needed only one, the winning entry is: Swan ("because they're beautiful but can kill you"). Thanks to Briana Harley [...]

Name the Spy Contest!

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the lipstick-naming contest!   The winning entries—Fiery Red, Captive Red, and Revolution Red—and the names of the winners (Briana Harley, Rachel Sheeley Muzzillo, and Frances Owens Draughn) will appear in book number three in the Velva Jean series, Velva Jean Learns to Spy, which will be released by Penguin [...]