Emmy Laybourne's Blog, page 6

Knowing that the chemical weapons saturating the air out...

Knowing that the chemical weapons saturating the air outside will turn him into a vicious killer, Dean decides to stay in the safety of the store with Astrid and some of the younger kids.

Meanwhile, Alex heads out into the darkness and devastation with Niko and some others in a barely-repaired school bus. If they can get to Denver International Airport, they might be evacuated to safety. But the outside world is much worse than they expected. . . .

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Fourteen kids from Monument, Colorado are trapped in ...

 

Fourteen kids from Monument, Colorado are trapped in a superstore while civilization collapses outside the gates.

Outside the world is being ripped apart by violent storms and chemicals leaking into the atmosphere that, depending on blood type, leave victims paranoid, sterile, filled with bloodlust or dead.

The kids must remain inside, forced to create their own community, unsure if they’ll ever be able to leave. Can they stop the world they’ve created inside from self-destructing too?

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Beta read this?

I’d love to hear what you think about the following letter – does it strike the right note? Is it too revealing, somehow? Too much information? I would love your feedback. The letter will run on Dear Teen Me.

Dear teenage me,

Emmy! Yes, you, with the girl-pompadour! Oh man, how I wish this letter could travel back in time, get printed out and handed to you at High School graduation, along with your diploma!

Nobody likes big sweeping advice, so I’m not going to load you up with it. But here are a few moments that you might try differently.

When you are 18, starting college:

You will make out with a guy named Joe for no reason other than you two are hanging out in his room and there’s a lull in the conversation and you get nervous. Don’t do that. Just get up and say you need to go study or something.

Don’t fool around with guys because you run out of things to say, for Pete’s sake. Getting physical with someone is spiritual and important. The sexual revolution was about rights. You have the right to do with your body what you wish – but be smart about it! Protect yourself from superflous, meaningless physical contact. It drains your self-respect and weakens your boundaries.

When you are 19, in the summer:

You will be riding in the back of the car owned by the father of your host family in Ecuador, a college professor. He will turn to his brother, who’s in the front seat, and tell him that you are as dumb as a rock. You will understand him because in the six weeks you’ve been living in his crappy little house, you will have learned to speak Spanish.

Instead of crying silently while you look out the window, try speaking up. In English. Tell him that you think he’s a pig and that any man who treats women the way he does is no educated man.

Then go stay in a hotel for the rest of your trip. Your parents will be happy to pay the bill (and it will only cost 5 dollars a day, due to the wretched Ecuadorian economy).

When you are 20, working the Olympics:

You will be exhausted, working 18-hour days for 22 days straight. You will be a PA, the lowest person on the totem pole. You’ll be wearing a vintage bowling shirt with “Bill” on the lapel. You’ll walk a stack of tapes into an edit bay and a dickwad (whose name you will forget – dang) will take the tapes from you and say, “Poor Bill” and hug you. He’ll press his groin into you, groping your behind. Emmy, this is called sexual harassment, but in 1992, it’s not yet being talked about publically.

You could sue him, but that’s not really your style. How about this? Lift your foot and stamp hard down the length of his shin, skinning it. Then curse him. Then quit. Wait, you know what…

When you are 20, don’t take that job at the Olympics.

Not only will you face sexual harassment, you’ll only get paid $100 a day, and be charged $100 a day for housing.

When you are 21, in the winter:

A work colleague will give your mother a 20 pound box of chocolate truffles from the super-fancy Lilac chocolatier. You will find yourself unable to stop binging on them. You will swipe handfuls when you think no one is looking. You will wake up in the night to eat them. You will stash some in your room when you see the supply is running low. In reaction to the fear you feel at finding yourself so out of control, you’ll go on your first diet. The Atkins Diet. From here on for the next 20 years you will fight your sugar addiction. You will diet and lose and gain weight countless times, with a growing sense of failure and shame. It’s the journey you’ve taken, and I almost don’t even want to warn you about it, because so much of what you learn and who you are comes from the struggle but… instead of picking up Atkins, maybe, maybe you could just pick up a wonderful and weird little book called Potatoes Not Prosac instead. It’s the only book that will ever help you get relief from your sugar addiction. You’ll probably still be as interesting a person if you skip the some of suffering. Probably.

And here’s the lightening round. Just a few things I’d like you to know:

• When you’re made pitch of the collegiate acapella group, the Night Owls, learn, ahem, to read sheet music. Don’t just try to arrange by ear.

• When a guy named Greg Podunovich stares at you too intently on your first few dates, don’t make him feel like a dork. He’s just really into you.

• When you get married to Greg in 2002, be sure to take a photograph with you and Grandma Dorothy. Somehow, the photographer missed it.

• When you are cleaning out your computer files in 2005, do not erase anything with the suffix .AVI. You are accidentally erasing your daughter Ellie’s baby movies!

• And your son Rex is allergic to milk! It’s why he has colic and why he gets those strange, drifting rashes on his sweet baby body.

• When you first meet authors Leigh Bardugo, Anna Banks, Jessica Brody, Jennifer Bosworth and Marissa Meyer at a painfully awkward dinner, don’t despair. You’re eating with future dear friends.

Emmy, I give you these bits of advice, knowing that you’re going to make mistakes no matter what. You’ll suffer. You’ll learn. You’ll love and be loved.

Your wonderful parents are going to support you so ridiculously much. You’ll find an astounding man to partner up with (the aforementioned Greg) – and he’s going to heal your heart from all those (aforementioned) mistakes. You’ll get to be both an actor and a writer – your two great passions. You’ll have a boy and a girl and they’re going to kick you ass and break you open into your best self.

God will protect you from the worst of your mistakes, which I didn’t even list here, for the sake of privacy. Privacy! That’s something you’ll come to value!

Love to you, Emmy Laybourne! Love and blessings! Just watch it on those truffles.

Sky On Fire released in UK!

On November 7th, SKY ON FIRE will be released in the UK by Hachette. I’m so excited. I love their cover, with the sun burning through the dark day sky.

Hachette has an excellent new website: Books With Bite. It’s really fun to see the UK offerings and covers. Really, really makes me want to plan a book-buying trip to London!

To celebrate the UK release of Sky On Fire, I’m going to give away one of the Hachette paperbacks to an American reader. Check out the contest on Facebook.

NY Comic Con wrap up

Highlights of NY Comic Con 2013, in photographs

1. Had great time on panel of smart, kickass authors including YA authors Alex London and Michelle Gagnon.

2. Met 1/2 of Daft Punk.



3. Found out what the fox says.

(Regarding #3, here’s a hint: Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!)

Back to school Giveaway!

Hello dear friends!

Ah, September – the month of new beginnings!

September (in the year 2024) is the month that all the action starts in the MONUMENT 14 trilogy.

And for me, it’s also the month when I will begin drafting a new novel. For the first time in 4 years, I will not be writing in a world seeped in the aftermath of a Colorado Springs chemical-weapons-spill. It’s exciting, and a bit daunting, and a bit bittersweet for me.

With commencing work on a new novel, I’ve decided to change over my Facebook fan page from one about MONUMENT 14 to a more general Emmy Laybourne fan page.

To celebrate all these new beginnings, I’m doing a giveaway!



Win a free signed audio edition of MONUMENT 14 and a bunch of cool swag here:a Rafflecopter giveaway

Trés heureuse!

Yesterday marked the French launch on MONUMENT 14 – only over there it’s called SEULS AU MONDE! (Alone in the World).

I’m delighted to show off the tres, tres cool cover. I love the drawings of the kids. Can you tell who’s who?

The Traveling Story – Season 1 – Episode 5

Dear friends,

Welcome to the fifth and final installment of The Traveling Story: 5 Authors. 5 Days. 1 Story.

Man, oh, man – did I have a lot of wonderful stuff to work with here! (For details on this project and and the past episodes, please see my blog post from yesterday!) Without further ado, here is:

Episode 5

by Emmy Laybourne

Much to my annoyance, the cute brunette with the glasses, whose life I had just very nicely saved, refused to come with me!

“Game over!” she cried. “Olly olly oxen free. I give up!”

“Come now,” I insisted. “Let’s just move out of the way, shall we?”

“Wait, is that accent even real?” she asked me.

“Of course it’s bloody real! Do you think this is Masterpiece Theatre or something?” I gestured to the scene around us. Out of every corner of the black night, operatives descended. They popped up from behind the statue, vaulted over low stone wall encircling the area, dropped down from trees, came rolling in from every which way. Show offs.

Meanwhile the aliens were oozing plasma out of their giant bug eyes and squealing hideously. The flash-bomb was a total success. The guys in the lab will be so pleased.

The queen alien was especially squeally and it was because I’d snatched away her post-moult snack, my fair, bespeckled Lucy. I have to admit, it was clever of the alien conspirator, Rasul, to bring a snack for his new queen. Or was it some directive from his superior Gretchen. Fingers crossed Rasul is forthcoming in his questioning – the agency has been trying to nab Gretchen for years.

The lovely girl in my arms was babbling something about role playing and out-of-work actors. She was clearly in shock. I noted the way her blue eyes were fully dialated, how her breathing seemed rapid. I could see her pulse pounding in the delicate lines of her neck.

Then I reminded myself to focus. I could not mess this up. I had already screwed up this assignment royally and it was my very first! I admit it, giving the box to the wrong girl was a pretty catastrophic mistake. But really, what kind of girl lies and says her name is Hilda Otterbum? Of all the idiotic names to claim, Hilda Otterbum is the royal first!

I needed this to go well. If I botched the clean-up I might as well move back to Bromley and take that position at my father’s Garden supply shop.

“This way please,” I said to Lucy, gently coaxing her away from the extraterrestrial crime scene.

The operatives started firing tranqs at the blinded aliens, as planned. The aliens began to claw each other in their terror. Between the oozing and the screeching and the clawing – really, it was a bit overwhelming, even for me, and I’m a trained professional.

Lucy suddenly seemed to snap to attention. She seemed to realize she had her purse around he wrist and she dug into it, coming up with a Smith and Wesson Mark 22 “Hush Puppy.” (Oh, be still my heart!) She held up her Smith and Wesson and pointed it shakily in my direction.

“I want some answers,” she told me.

“Now, now. Lower your weapon so that swat team doesn’t think you’re a legitimate threat,” I said. “And by the way, I can tell that it’s unloaded.”

“Really?” she asked. “How?”

“There’s no magazine clip.”

“Oh, rats,” she said.

“Listen, give me the gun and I’ll answer your questions.” She sighed and handed it over.

What a beautiful hand-feel. Just a supremely balanced firearm, even missing the clip. They just don’t make them like that anymore.

I put my hand on her arm and led her about twenty paces away. The team was now securing the writhing aliens in the tencel nets the lab designed for this purpose. The lab guys would be pleased again. They’ll probably get a promotion.

“Where’s Cindy? What happened to her?” Lucy asked me. She squinted into the darkness. “Why are they arresting Rasul? Were those aliens… were those aliens…”

I could almost see her questioning her own sanity.

“Yes,” I told her. “Aliens.”

“You mean the Gorn are real?!”

“Gorn?!” I asked. “You mean like from Star Trek?” I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What do you call them?” she asked. Her blue eyes flashed behind her heavy spectacles. You know the type of glasses – the type that make you want to take them off and tumble the girl who’s wearing them.

Steady, I told myself. You’ve still got a mess to dig yourself out of.

“We call them XYLITRONSK. That’s what they call themselves.”

“And that’s somehow less silly than Gorn?!” she demanded.

“Look, can I please take you somewhere quiet to explain it all to you?” I asked her. I cleared my throat. It wasn’t easy for me to admit the screwup I’d made. “You can trust me.”

“No, I can’t!” she said. She was flushed and flustered and, god, she was pretty. “You, Mr. Secret Agent Guy, are totally, improbably, supernaturally hot. You’re probably the grand emperor of a tribe of galactic hotties–!”

I was horrified to feel a blush coming on. A secret government operative who blushes when he talks to pretty girls – no wonder I was sure I’d be canned tomorrow.

I suppose what I really wanted to do was just kiss her. Just kiss her until her glasses were askew. But that would be the height of unprofessionalism.

I could see the team hoisting the aliens into an unmarked van.

Agent Trent called to me, “Come on McMahon, we’re headed back to the base. Get ‘er done.”

I locked eyes with Lucy. “Look,” I said. “It’s my fault that you got wrapped up in this. We knew Rasul was an agent, working for Gretchen, an alien sympathizer. We didn’t know who the queen’s host was. But obviously it was your friend—”

“Cindy. She was nice,” Lucy sniffed. “Well, not nice, but she loved her sister. She was a good person.”

My heart ached for Lucy. This was just too much. Taking a chance, I hugged her to me. She was so warm and trembly.

“McMahon! Quit pawing the girl. We’re moving out!” Trent shouted again.

“Listen,” I told her. “I should never have given you the box. But you responded to my question. You said you were—“

“Hilda Otterbum,” she answered, breathless.

“Yeah, and I was so… so taken with how you looked and how charming you were… All that stuff about you faking you didn’t know about ‘implementation.’ It was…”

“Embarrassing,” she said. “I acted like a dork.”

“No! I thought I was in the presence of a master illusionist. When you said you were ‘new-ish’… I thought…” I broke away from her inquisitive gaze.

“What?” she asked me, gently.

Trent was walking over to us by this point and he looked furious. “She gonna take it, or do you need an injector?” he asked me.

“I’m newish,” I told her. “I thought you were teasing me. I thought you could see how nervous I was about doing my first big assignment.”

“Jesus, McMahon. Give it to her already!” Trent’s expression clearly expressed what a screw-up I was.

“Given me what?” Lucy asked.

“Listen,” I told her. I had to hurry now – Trent was drawing close. “I’d like to take you on a date. Would you go on a date with me? Can we have another chance?”

She looked utterly confused. I couldn’t blame her. But I had to know!

“If we’d never met before, if you didn’t know anything about me—would you go out with me?” I asked.

“Of course,” Lucy told me. Her eyes found mine and there was a light there, a connection. “In a heartbeat.”

Something warm opened up in my chest. If it weren’t a supremely dorky thing to say, I’d describe it as my heart blossoming. But really, no self-respecting field agent would even think of something like that. Not even me. Even if that’s what it felt like and it was wonderful.

“Right, then, that settles it. Here, eat this mint,” I told her.

“A mint?! What are you talking about?” she asked. “Is it my breath?”

I shushed her, putting my finger up to her lips. And then I popped the small, round mint into her mouth. Instantly I saw her gaze soften. She melted into my arms and I lifted her gently. She was so beautiful and innocent and, yet, somewhat gangly, in an endearing way.

“Jeez, you fell for a civilian? On your first mission?! You’re so fired,” Trent taunted.

“They won’t be able to fire me,” I said. “I’m going to quit.”

Epilogue

There I was, sitting at my favorite table at the blind-date haven Java the Hut, with my number seven favorite book of all time, The Great Gatsby. But today, not even reading about Gatsby and Daisy and Nick out in West Egg could distract me from the dizzying déjà vu I was experiencing.

Yesterday I came here and sat down and was struck with some horrible case of food poisoning that made me puke up my guts. I swear, I vomited so hard I actually blacked out for hours. I woke up in my bed, in my coziest flannel PJS—the ones I reserve for major sick days.

I honestly don’t even remember how I even got home!

So, like I said, I was reading The Great Gatsby and I noticed this guy.

Okay, guy is not quite the word—Adonis? Mega-hunk? Perfect specimen of man?!

I was staring, there’s no question, and like the nerd that I am, I didn’t avert my eyes fast enough, so he noticed me checking him out.

Then he smiled. At me. I looked behind me and everything, to make sure he wasn’t smiling at some leggy blonde behind me. No, the smile was for me.

And the smile was so dazzling it was like being hit with a Klieg light—I went all dizzy.

His eyes, I am not kidding, were sapphire-colored. I mean, whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

He had a bagel with cream cheese and an order of toast, as well as a hot tea. I thought to myself, Who orders dry toast in a café? Then I thought, Actually, dry toast sounds pretty good. I should get some, too. It would be the perfect thing to settle my stomach.

Then he spoke, and ohmysweetgoodness, he had a British accent. He was almost too much, and yet there was something a little clumsy about him too. He didn’t seem as sure of himself as someone with his level of hotness has a right to be.

“Excuse me,” he said, “They had an extra order of toast up at the counter. Would you like it?”

“Toast sounds good,” I managed to murmur.

“And maybe a spot of peppermint tea?”

“Perfect,” I said. Was he some kind of psychic waiter? It seemed like he knew I’d spent the night emptying my guts into the john. He set the tea and the toast down.

“My name’s Jack McMahon,” he told me. “Would you mind if I joined you?”

Our gazes locked onto each other. I somehow felt like I already knew him. And, what’s more important, I felt like I was going to know him for a long, long time.

I actually had a vision – I know it sounds crazy, but I an image came blurring into focus in my mind: I saw us working together in a gardening shop in the English countryside, with a sapphire-eyed toddler clutching onto my skirt!

“My dear,” he said, bringing me back into the moment. “May I join you?”

There was suddenly no other word in the English language. At least not that I could ever remember learning.

There was only “yes.”

THE END

On behalf of all the writers of The Traveling Story, I thank you for taking this journey with us! And a special thanks to Jessica Brody, who put this project together so beautifully.

Be sure to LIKE The Facebook page for The Traveling Story so you can find out about the next season!

And hey! We’ve each given a copy of one of our books for a mega-giveaway! Enter here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Traveling Story – FAQ

I’m terrifically excited to be a cast member of Season One of The Traveling Story: 5 Authors. 5 Days. 1 Story. I will be posting my contribution tomorrow, but in the meantime, here are the most Frequently Asked Questions about the project.

What is the Traveling Story?

Each season of The Traveling Story will feature 5 well-known authors collaborating on one original, kick-ass story, with each author writing one of five episodes. The full story will be revealed over the course of a week, with each episode appearing on the blog of the author who wrote it.

How Does it Work?

There are only three rules for The Traveling Story:

1) No brainstorming, outlining, or discussion of plot ahead of time. The first author writes the first episode of ANY kind of story they want and the next author picks up where that episode leaves off, taking it WHEREVER they want to go! The last author ends the story however they see fit!

2) An author cannot make changes to any previous episode. Each author has total creative control over their OWN episode only, but it has to continue where the last episode leaves off.

3) Authors are required to HAVE FUN! As you’ll see from the awesome story that came out of this, we don’t take ourselves too seriously. The Traveling Story is meant to be fun for the writers and especially for the readers.

Season 1 Authors:

Jessica Brody

Jessica Khoury

Emmy Laybourne

Lish McBride

Gretchen McNeil

*Don’t forget to LIKE The Traveling Story on Facebook where we’ll be posting links to EVERY

episode, so you never miss out on a piece of the story!

Each author has donated a book for a GIVEAWAY to celebrate the first season of The Traveling Story. Enter here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

YA Reading at the NYPL

Hello friends,

I’ll be participating in a very cool event tomorrow night, organized by David Levithan, at the Jefferson Market Branch of the New York Public Library 6-7:30 PM.

Eight, count’ em – 8, YA authors will read from their books for 4 minutes each, with a Q&A to follow. It’s going to be rowdy and exciting and really fun!

Here’s the full line-up:

Alissa Gross, Shallow Pond

Corey Haydu, OCD Love Story

Elizabeth Kiem, Dancer, Daughter

Emmy Laybourne, Sky on Fire (Look – that’s me!)

Alex London, Proxy

Shana Mlawsky, Hammer of Witches

Jennifer E. Smith, This is What Happy Looks Like

Sara Zarr, The Lucy Variations

Hope all the New Yorkers in earshot will come out!