What's Up Wednesday

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk.  Head over to Jaime's page for links to find out what's up with everyone else. Here's what's up with me.
What I'm Reading

This week I read Solving for Ex  by Leigh Ann Kopans and Wonder by R.J. Palacio. They were both great books in different ways. Solving for Ex is a cute contemporary YA remake of Jane Austin's Mansfield Park that is focused around a mathletes competition. As a former mathlete myself, I found this book super fun.

Wonder on the other hand was a lot heavier, but oh so amazing. It's a middle grade novel about a ten-year-old kid with facial deformities. It has a great anti-bullying message, but bigger than that it also just has a great human message. It's probably the best "diversity" book I've ever read.

I would recommend Solving for Ex to anyone who likes YA romance with a blend of pretentious mean girls and adorable math geeks. I would recommend Wonder to everyone who is human. You should probably also be somewhere between the ages of eight and eighty. Although, my grandmother is 94, and I would probably recommend Wonder to her too.

What I'm Writing

I'm trying to finish my sophomore novel, The Evolution of Emily, by the end of March. I set a goal of finishing all my revisions up through chapter 20 by today. I am happy to report, my manuscript is now polished up through chapter 30. I'm ten chapters ahead of schedule and very happy about it. My new goal is to finish all my revisions of EoE this coming week. It should be ready to pass off to beta readers by the first week of April, or maybe even a little sooner. Which of course means, I need beta readers. If you are interested in reading The Evolution of Emily, let me know.

What Inspires Me Right Now

Creative kids! I lead a creative writing workshop for a bunch of kids last week, and it was so much fun! They came up with the most imaginative stories. All the kids stories were different, because all the kids writing them were different. As someone who writes kidlit, it was inspiring on multiple levels. The world is diverse, and needs lots more stories, including mine. And it needs these kids stories too. I had so much fun, I definitely want to try and line up more creative writing workshops for kids in the future.

What Else I've Been Up To

I'm doing the YA Buccaneers Spring Writing Bootcamp. I would say it's the reason I got so much writing done last week. Except, the bootcamp is just starting, so nothing has really happened on that front yet. I mainly got a ton of writing done, because I didn't have anything else going on to distract me from writing.

If you haven't signed up for the Spring Writing Bootcamp yet, I do have to make one personal plug for it. There are two March prize packs participants can enter to win. And Counting to D  is included in both prizes. So yay for that!

So what's up with you?