L.J. Singleton's Blog, page 5

Random Things

Random Things in my Life:

MY GUILTY PLEASURE.....Big Brother. Anyone else obsessed with this show?

AUDIO BOOKS....Just finished listening to MATCHED in my car -- great book.
                                Now listening to THE HELP, and afterwards plan to see the movie.

PETS....My dog Lacey had surgery last month for a cancerous lump on her back.
              It's gone now and she's great. I took her to the groomer today. She's little and always look so cute after a grooming.

BIRTHDAY....My little girl (all grown up!) has a birthday this week. I bought a gift for her at a Pear Festival.

REWRITING.....Since finishing a 90K science fiction/midgrade in July, I've been working on revisions. Over halfway done.


 

Back from SCBWI LA

 Last Thursday I flew to LA for the 45 SCBWI LA Conference. This was my 20th year -- and it was wonderful. I've made so many friends through this organization and there wasn't enough time even in 5 days to talk to everyone. I often stayed in the lobby where I could talk to more people. I roomed with Verla Kay who was a speaker at the event for the first time and she was soooo excited. Her Blue Board (www.verlakay.com message board) is so popular that she met many people who love to go there for writing information. Her talk on social media was great, too, and she was kind enough to use my book trailers for DEAD GIRL WALKING and DON't DIE DRAGONFLY as examples of hiring teens to create promotional book trailers.

I was lucky to talk to my agent a lot, too. She's eager to get my work-in-progress (midgrade science fiction) so I really should be doing revisions than blogging...but blogging is fun and part of my job, too.

For the Saturday pajama party, I wore a Tinkerbelle pj set and danced do a great band with a huge crowd of kid-writers-gone-wild. I was glad when the Princess & Pea costume -- complete with a bed and stuffed legs-- won first place in costume contest.

Judy Blume was a surprise speaker -- replacing John Green who had sudden gall bladder surgery. For the first time ever, instead of the speaker talking from the podium, chairs were brought out Oprah-style and Lin Oliver interviewed Judy as if they were talking in a cozy living room. Judy is gorgeous, by the way, rocking age 70+ like a diva.

So I had a great time and next year I'll do it all over again. Hope to see you there.

PJ's, draft done and a book recommendation

I'm going to SCBWI LA next week and rooming with my good picture-book friend Verla Kay.
The theme this year is pajama party so I bought some cute Disney PJ's -- can you guess
which Disney character I choose? Magical and girly with some attitude.

The biggest news is that I finished the first draft of my BIG project (futuristic YA mystery).
The book came to 385 pages and while I'm rewriting I'm cutting so it's not that long.
While I won't tell the title of my book (too often I've put that out there and someone used it first)
I'll say the theme is identity and survival with a bit of saving the world, too. Romance, of course,
and I love the moment when my characters meet. Lots of twists and secrets and life/death choices.

I just finished reading an adult-paranormal-romance by a favorite mystery author, Jan Burke,
that's titled THE MESSENGER; love how the hero talks to dying people and the heroine sees ghosts.
Excellent book!

What are you reading and/or writing? 

Worst. Picture Books. Ever.

What do children's writers do for fun at a retreat?

Write BADLY ... on purpose.

I've been in Lake Tahoe for 2 days with Bitsy Kemper (author of 4 picture books) and Lori Mortensen (who has a great pb coming out from Harper called CINDY MOO). We've walked, talked, critiqued each other and sat around working at our laptops.

But tonight we decided to play a writing game where one person starts a story then passes it over for the next person and so on, until the story has an ending. We wrote these in 15-30 minutes.

We decided to write the WORST EVER PB's. And we did!

You can read them here: http://www.facebook.com/notes/linda-joy-singleton/writers-writing-bad-on-purpose/10150222982092070

Enjoy!

Troubled by a zombie

A zombie is a body that walks and breaths but lacks the mind and soul of the person who used to inhabit the body.

I looked directly into the face of a zombie yesterday, and it was chilling. Mostly, it was sad.

Because the zombie used to be my sister.

My 48 year old sister is mentally ill and there's no hint of the person she used to be inside her body.
She refuses to stay in one place, obsessed with cigarettes, and has recently become homeless.
There's no reasoning with her because she only hears the voices in her head.
She rants, cries, manipulates and harasses my parents.

The only mental facility in Sacramento won't admit anyone unless they admit themselves
or someone official like a police officer brings them in. A zombie doesn't want to be confined
and learns how to tell police she's "not a threat to anyone." The police are happy to believe this.

Yesterday an ambulance, sheriff and police car were called out because of her zombie wildness.
They didn't stay more than a few minutes. The zombie continued to harass and stalk the streets.
The police will be called again.

This cannot end well.

Don't you love discovering new books?

It's always so fun to read YA books that turn out to be wonderful.

Recent ones under the "wonderful" category are:

#RUBY RED....love this!! Time travel, a mysterious family with time-traveling genes, a terrific heroine, love her friends, too. Some surprises about what really happened back in time. So much fun. Only complaint -- waiting for the next book.

#WHISPER -- Didn't know what to expect and kept turning pages trying to figure it out. Exciting, emotional, romantic, fun.

#VESPER by Jeff Sampson -- fun, mysterious, exciting...check it out!

#THE GHOST AND THE GOTH -- Expected a light romance and got a mysterious, exciting ghost story with romance, too. Since my next book will be about a Goth, I especially enjoyed this one.

And I just started reading a book that already is pulling me in like a strong whip: ENCHANTED IVY by Durst.

I can't read for a few hours, though, since I'm going to hang out with some teens at the Galt Library BookClub today. I'm going to tease and delight them with a huge stack of my favorite books including these titles: POISON STUDY, GRACELING, ESCAPE TO MEMORY,  HUNGER GAMES, INCARCERON, INTO THE WILD, THE EMERALD ATLAS, CLARITY and WHITE CAT by Holly Black.

What's your most exciting book discovery lately?

What I've been doing lately

Greetings from the crazy obsessive butt-in-chair world of writing!

Lately I've written scenes on napkins, the back of bowling flyers and on the envelope of a fan letter while driving (I wasn't texting, okay, and have heard no law against writing while driving). Oops...just remembered, I need to answer that fan letter! It was so sweet, actually hand-written like snail-mail era.

Since last October I've been working on my Big Project. I did Nanowrimo and got 100 pages written in a blur of a writing trance. But by the mid- November, you know what happened? My brain over-loaded. I just couldn't go any more forward without going back and rewriting everything I'd written. This hopeful trilogy has world-building and while the concept of finishing a draft in a furious-flash sounds great, I couldn't go forward because I didn't know enough about the story yet. So I went back and for three months just rewrote, scribbled notes (anyway and everywhere!) until I felt I knew the story enough to continue on.

As of mid-May I have 280 pages, and it's not finished yet...but I can see the end in about six more scenes. And you know that note I scribbled on the back of the fan letter? It's the last few lines of this book. Here's a tiny peak at those words:
 It was never me she wanted. It was him. And now she's lost us both.
Sounds cool, huh? I get chills just thinking about reaching this scene, and the surprise (while except for those of you who read this and remember them a few years forward to after this book a) sells b) is edited c) final publication.

Because I KNOW this book will be published. Even if it falls under the overdone genre of "dystopian." 
That's just what it is, and I got the idea nearly 3 years ago, so I'm not following a trend.
 I'm following my passion.

(PS - I'm not saying the title because it's a really good title and I don't want to put it out in the universe and risk losing it -- that's happened to me several times in the past).

INTRODUCING AUTHOR JO RAMSEY!

INTERVIEW WITH FABULOUS YA AUTHOR, JO RAMSEY

1.  When and why did you start writing?       I’ve been writing since I was five. When I was even younger, I made up stories and told them to my stuffed animals, and even back then I knew I wanted to see my stories in books someday. Of course, it took me over thirty years to actually make that happen!

 

What’s the strangest thing that’s inspired one of your stories?  Several years ago, I had a friend who thought she was possessed by a demon. Another friend agreed that that was probably the case, and he told me what to do to get rid of the demon. That was one of the inspirations for my Reality Shift series.

 

Have you ever based a character on someone you know? If so, did you tell them? Jonah in Reality Shift is based on a man who used to be a friend of mine. He was still my friend when I started writing the Reality Shift books, and he knew I based Jonah on him. He was happy about it.

 

What do the people in your “real life” think of your writing?   My 15-year-old daughter pretends to be embarrassed by me, but brags about me to her friends. My 12-year-old tells everyone that her mom’s a writer. My husband is very supportive and encouraging, but refuses to read my books!

 

Tell us about your latest book.

My newest book is The Black Bridge (releasing in late May from Jupiter Gardens Press). It’s the first book in a series called The Dark Lines, about teenagers with psychic abilities who become involved in the universal war between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. The Black Bridge was inspired by an old railroad bridge in the city where I grew up. A high school friend of mine told me to stay away from it at night because there was “something dark there.” That stuck with me for over fifteen years until I finally managed to write the story.

 

What’s the most interesting place you’ve ever traveled to?   I spent three weeks in France during my senior year of high school as part of a mini-exchange program. I stayed with two host families; one took me to the Alps for vacation. The families lived just outside Paris, so I was able to see a lot of Paris.

 

What books do you have available now (title and publisher)?   Books 1 through 3 in my Reality Shift series are available: Connection, Filtration System, and Cutting Cords, all from Jupiter Gardens Press. And of course The Black Bridge, which I mention above.

 

What books do you have coming soon?   Reality Shift books 4 and 5, Taking Control and…well, book 5 doesn’t have an official title yet…are scheduled for August and November 2011 respectively. The Dark Lines book 2, When Darkness Falls, will be out in September. Those are all also from JupiterGardens. I also have a novel titled Cluing In, about a boy whose ex-girlfriend commits suicide after becoming pregnant by her new boyfriend, which should be out later this year from Featherweight Press.

 

Which author have you always wanted to meet and why? Susan Cooper, because her books got me started on writing young adult fantasy.

FREE BOOK: DEAD GIRL WALKING

My publisher worked out a deal with Barnes/Noble to offer my YA para-romance-mystery DEAD GIRL WALKING for FREE during May only as a download. This book was honored with YALSA Popular Paperback and Quick Pick Selection. It also took 20 years from idea to published book, so I'm especially proud of my book

If you reprint this on your website, blog, Facebook, Twitter, email me at ljscheer@inreach.ocom and I'll enter you in a drawing to win your choice from new YA ARC's like DIVERGENT, AWAKEN, CHIME, LIAR SOCIETY or SCORCH TRIALS.

Order your free Nook download for DEAD GIRL WALKING here: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Dead-Girl-Walking/Linda-Joy-Singleton/e/9780738722085/?itm=1&USRI=dead+girl+walking

SPRING SCBWI CONFERENCE in Rocklin/CA

Here's some of my experiences at the SCBWI conference I attended last weekend. We had around 150 people attending and it was an amazing event. I'll share some highlights:

Saturday morning the volunteers (including me!) arrived in Rocklin at 7:15. I enjoyed doing registration.

Bruce Coville was the main speaker. Funny & brilliant speaker. He advises fantasy writer to study myths so they don't just copy other books but learn the basis for all fantasy. He has written 95 books and 38 stories/plays. He's passionate about books teaching kids empathy, spoke against the media which fuels on fear, and cares deeply about books/readers. He's so entertaining, it's just fun listening to him while he acted out his talk; jumping on chairs, waving his hands and changing voices.

Then an editor, Eve Adler, from G&Dunlap/Penguin spoke. She gave examples of "voice" in books then asked us to do an exercise about riding a school bus; first as a kindergarten them midgrade then from the bus driver's POV. We had a few minutes to write.
 
Here's what I wrote:
Kindergarten: I am small in a large seat that rumbles. My leg kicks the seat. A boy turns around, scowling. "Stupid! Stop that!" I don't like his tone or his hot breath, like onions for breakfast. And who does that? Clearly I am not the stupid one.

Midgrade: I trip over the step as I climb into the bus. Only the beginning of my tripping, unable to find an empty seat and having to shove against a chubby boy with a fat roll showing above his pants. He tries to push me away but I have to sit somewhere, right? So I ignore his words, his smell, the laughter from other kids around us. It's a long trip to school.

From Bus Driver's POV:
Swears, smells, pushing, shoving, belching, hitting, throwing, shouting, bleeding..... "I don't get paid enough for this job."

When she asked for people to read aloud, I did the usual. Nothing. I am too shy to offer my words in public sometimes. I think it's because it takes me back to school when I was too embarrassed to say anything, and when I did I would speak too quickly and not loud enough and often have to repeat myself. Amazing that I'm a good speaker now and actually love giving talks.

The next workshop was first page reads, which is always fun and gives me a sense of what editors are reading now. Most were YA books, quite a few paranormal. Some serious books, too. Of the 24 pages read,  I felt that the agent only would have seriously wanted to see two of them.

Some other advice from speakers:

Bruce advices picture book authors to read 100 pb and pick your favorite 10, then write them out by long hand to learn structure and rhythm.

A comment from the agent speaker Quinlan Lee: "Fantasy is hard -- you don't want to be a tour guide." This comment came after reading a page where the action came too quickly.

SCBWI puts on GREAT conferences. I had an amazing time.