Eating My Brain

So my third book, Zombie Tag, is officially released in 4 hours and 37 minutes. I have my last exam of the semester in about eighteen hours, and Hanukkah begins about four hours after that, let's say.

I'm thrilled and impatient and excited, but really I'm just sitting here crying a little and wishing I could disappear, and I figured I should blog about that a little, even if it's not the post I'm supposed to write. I should be writing a big BUY MY BOOK thing right now, but you guys know I want you to buy my book. You know how this works.

What I think you might not know is how hard this all gets.

The reason I don't like writing these posts isn't because I'm afraid of being honest with you guys; you guys know I'm pretty much the most open of books, and until someone is like WHOA HANNAH STOP I'm probably going to keep doing that forever and ever. But I don't write these sad damn posts because I'm worried about how they make me see, so, upfront, okay? I know how lucky I am. I really, truly do. I thank the universe every single damn day that I have this job.

And then stupid things swallow me whole.

You guys are so fucking NICE to me. That's what kills me. Do you ever look at people you love and just want to cry because you love them so much, and they love you, and you feel like there's this pocket of the universe that exists JUST to take care of you?

That's how I feel.

And it scares the shit out of me.

Because I don't want to let you guys down.

I don't want to fuck up and not sell and have to stop writing books.

I don't want the criticism to wear me down to the point that I can't write anymore.

I don't want to get eaten alive by my own brain and have to stop and work some office job.

I don't want to flame out before I'm thirty.

I just feel like I'm phoning it in lately, not with writing (because I haven't BEEN writing, and let's not talk about that tonight) but with publicity, talking to you guys, the sheer act of getting my shit together. And it's just this agonizing fear of failure weighing me down, and that's NOT me. I'm a lot of damn things, but, compared to a lot of writers and compared to a lot of the other things that are fucked in my head, I'm not much of a worrier. I don't overanalyze. I don't panic.

And yet here I am, crying on my bed because someone said something nice to me and my damn heart couldn't take it.

I keep writing things and deleting them because I don't know how to say it. I'm just scared. I'm scared no one will read the book and you guys will forget about me.

That's what it is. You guys loving me is scary because I'm afraid that one day you won't.

You don't have to reassure me and flatter me in the comments or something. I mean, I wouldn't HATE that, but that's not what I'm going for. Really I just want you to understand the crazy places a writer's head goes to, because I think release turns a lot of people into robots publicly, when really it tosses our brains like salads, and you know me and my problem with compulsive honesty so here I am.

So, uh, buy my book. I just hope you like it, if you do.

Really, I just hope that even if you don't like it, you don't give up on me.

So Here's The Thing: Invincible Summer's Cover

When I first saw this book, I thought it was a summer kind of read. I've heard it's rather emotional. The cover doesn't make it appear that way at all!

Because of the cover I did think it was going to be a beachy read that I wouldn't be able to get into.

The cover of this book is entirely misleading.

Actually, I'm ashamed to say I think I DID judge this by it's cover. I've seen it around a bunch of times, wasn't really drawn in by the cover so just skipped over it. STUPID ME! This sounds like exactly my kind of read!

Cover and synopsis are pretty misleading. Don't judge this book based on the cover.

First off, this cover is weirdly my #1 favorite of 2011 so far!

The cover is so infuriatingly off. But honestly, I don't have a better idea....maybe a portrait of Albert Camus?

The current cover sucks. They should really let readers take votes on these things before they come out.

The synopsis is a little misleading. Sure there were girls and boys, love and lust, and a beach, but that wasn't what the book was about.

The cover and the reviews I've read of this book turned out to be 2 different things.

They really should change the cover. It doesn't fit the book whatsoever.

From all the reviews I've read, I just can't get over the fact that the cover kind of gives the wrong impression

Now I'm going to tell you that this whole blurb is totally inadequate and only the very last line really describes this book, in my opinion. Also, this is the worst cover ever for this book.

These are all quotes from reviews, positive and negative, and I could go on forever and ever. These are the ones I could find in five minutes.

All right, guys. I hear ya.

I did a post a while back where I responded to a lot of the "wow, your cover makes me want to go to the gym" comments I'd gotten, etc. (A quick summary of that post: you're hot, shut up, and that chick is photoshopped. I saw her when she had half the tits she has now.)

But this is kind of a different issue, yeah? Because this isn't really about what the cover looks like, but about what it says about the book.

It's a beautiful cover. I'll state that outright. It's a cover I'm proud to have on one of my books. It's doing its job and people are picking it up. I think the spine in particular is absolutely lovely. If you've seen IS in person, you'll know that the cover is made out of some kind of fantastic soft I don't even know that makes you want to put your head on it and go to sleep.

It's a beautiful cover.

But no, it's not the cover I would have chosen for this book.

So my 2012 book, Gone, Gone, Gone? It's a love story. It is so completely a love story. The WIP is a love story. I fucking love writing love stories.

Back in 2008, when I wrote IS, I did not know how to write a love story.

And I wasn't trying to.

This is a story about a family.

Some of the people up there ^ are responding to a little line at the end of the goodreads description that says "Not your typical beach read." That's not part of the real blurb. That's not on the back of the book.

That's something I went in and added myself a few weeks ago.

My publisher is amazing. Hands down. And they chose a cover and a blurb that would get people to pick it up. And I think it's working. I honestly could not be happier with how many people seem to be hearing about IS and picking it up. I saw a comment on an interview the other day where a girl said that the only reason IS was popular was because it had a chick in a bikini on it. Um guys. SHE SAID MY BOOK IS POPULAR.

This cover is doing its job. My publisher knows its shit, man. It's a beautiful cover, and I have so much support from the beautiful people in-house, and damn am I proud of my little book and INCREDIBLY thankful for the people who helped me make it and nourish it and get it out into the world. I really can't say that enough, and if you take one thing away from this post, let that be it.

But see, this cover is also pissing you guys off.

And that part sucks.

You all know this, but it's worth repeating: authors don't choose their covers. Authors don't write the blurb on the back of the book. And here's one you maybe don't hear as often: authors do not know what sells.

Yes, the love triangle aspect of IS's plot has been heavily pushed. It has been since the second my then-agent read it. The two brothers sleeping with the same girl? Of course it's weird. It's the hook because it's weird. It's not a hook I'd thought of. It wasn't a major part of the story, as far as I was concerned.

Once the book sold, I amped that up and made it a larger part of the plot. I made Noah have a real relationship with Melinda. I added more fights and conversations. These things absolutely strengthened the book as a whole.

It's not as if my book was ruined by this marketing, is what I'm trying to say.

The only part of that book I can control is what happens inside of it. And the truth is, the parts of that that I think are important would make really shitty book covers. Like the girl up there said, how do you design a book cover for a book about brothers and sign language and sex and Camus?

It's not easy.

But please. That don't judge a book by its cover thing? You have to understand something.

When you don't pick up a book because of its cover, you are not punishing the design team.

When you say, I would have picked up this book, but I hate the cover, so I won't, you are not punishing the design team.

When you refuse to read a review or take a second look at a book because of its cover, you are not punishing the design team.

You are punishing the author.

There are SO MANY reasons not to pick up my book. If that's the road you want to take, pick a good reason! Make it something that I did wrong. Make it about the ugly paragraph on page whatever or the fact that you hate books about big families or that you hate philosophy or that I peed on your front lawn or I said something mean to you on twitter or you don't like my nose. Make it something about ME. About something I did. Okay, maybe not the nose thing, then.

But guys. It's a book about a family. I will tell you a zillion times if I have to. It is a book about a boy and his family. It is a book about a boy and the siblings he is co-dependently creepy close to. There is sex in. There is more sign language than there is sex. This is not a book about a girl.

Not to mention, and here's the zinger:

I have made an executive decision.

If we're going by screen(page?)-time and character importance alone, that's Chase's goddamn sister (the only character in the book ever described as wearing, and I quote, "that green bikini," just sayin') on the cover and NOT the girl Chase and Noah are sleeping with.

And Claudia, the little sister, is the hero of the story. I will say that a million times too. Claudia is the hero of the story.

And in my mind, that's Claudia on the cover. That's my girl.

She deserves a cover.

And believing that makes me like my cover a hell of a lot more. Because it makes it darker and stranger and a fuckload more awkward and dirty sexy and God don't you want to put a towel on her and cover her up now? GOOD. Then read my book because you will like it. Seriously. Read this book if you want to cover up your little sister.

My point is: it's Claudia on the cover. That's my official statement. It's Claudia on the cover. And any time discussion of this cover ever comes up again, that's what I'm going to say.

And if you want to do me a favor, you will a. buy the book because bitch has to eat and b. TELL PEOPLE. You don't have to defend the cover. You don't have to like it. You don't have to offer a big explanation. But if you see a review dissing it, just leave a comment that says, "Hey, actually that's the sister on the cover."

And then walk away.

And that won't change the way a lot of people feel. But maybe, maybe it'll make a few say guhwhatthefuck? And that's why I write, really. It's especially why I write messed up shit like IS.

So. The chick on the cover. It's Claudia. And it is a beautiful cover beacause Claudia is goddamn beautiful.

It's not Melinda. It's not the girl they're sleeping with.

And really, this is all kind of appropriate, because it's Melinda's job to screw up everything.

So that's really all I have to say, so I'm going to leave you with a few things.

The first is Invincible Summer's trailer. Yeah, I just posted this. Have it again. And here's why.

1. I worked closely with Vania in developing this. I chose the images at the beginning. I also told her I wanted making out. Because making out sells, guys. That's the moral of this story. And maybe that sucks a little.

The more important reason is:

2. The voiceover? I wrote that. Just me. No input. Vania said do whatever you want, make it in Chase's voice. And I wrote that. It isn't an excerpt from the story.

And maybe it's a response to that girl, that girl that everyone assumes--and I'm not saying it's dumb to assume this, guys, it's only natural--is the girl on my cover, and therefore the girl everyone thinks is the focus of the story.

Maybe that's what the voice over is about. Maybe I'm talking about the girl who ruined it.

I don't know.



And I'll also give you links to two reviews, one positive and one negative, from two people who I think really captured what the book is about, whether or not they liked it.


Nay

Yay


I would absolutely love comments on this post, and I would also love if you would tweet the shit out of this or get it tattooed on you or otherwise let this be known to the entirety of the world. Make a song out of this post and then sing it. Put it on youtube. Add a bugle. Self-publish a book with only the words IT'S CLAUDIA ON THE COVER repeated over and over and over.

Whatever you do, be it tattoo or nothing, thank you for reading. This is all for you guys, you know?

Sparkly!Fairy!Prostitute!

Time for a teaser!

--

“So,” Josha said, his feet up on the railing of Beckan's balcony, his ass on the porch swing. They were watching the tightropers continue stringing their lines, and watching the fairies on the streets rushing around with their heads covered, like they were expecting rain. A news report blared from inside, where Beckan had left her father in front of the TV.

She knew what Josha was going to say, but she gave him nothing. She almost always knew what Josha was going to say. She loved him very much but had long ago given up hope.

“So,” Josha said. “Scrap?”

“He's teaching me to read.”

“How charitable.”

“Not really. Selfish. He wants someone to read his stupid stories. He's desperate.”

“Cricket won't read them?”

“Who?”

“His cousin,” Josha said. “They live together."

“I didn't know his name.” She had only seen him a few times. He was usually walking from room to room, usually with headphones jammed over his ears.

Josha said, “So you're really not crazy about him.”

“Scrap?”

“Either.”

“I told you.”

“Since you don't know his family or anything. Don't know anything about him.” He gave her a sloppy grin. “After all, you know me. So.”

She watched the trightropers instead of responding. Josha said “Cricket” quietly to himself a few times. “Must be a genius if he avoids the stories,” he mused.

“Cold-hearted genius, maybe.”

“A genius is a genius. I don't need another heart, anyway.”

Then the first bombs went off, and they sprang towards each other as if they had previously been stretched apart. Beckan felt some heat on her cheek, like the city was breathing on her, but she couldn't see where the bomb fell or detect any damage. From the porch of Beckan's house, at the bottom of the hill, it was hard to see much of anything.

NaNo excerpt

It's long. Read as much or as little as you like.

This is the first chapter of my NaNo, which is called PLAGUE BABIES for the time being.

--

We were six years old, and it was the hottest day of the year. My mother had all her hair pulled back, except for her frizzy bangs that bowed over her forehead like a spiderweb. I was at the window, looking down at the bare streets.

Micah said, “You're going to hurt him,” which was what he always said.

I turned around and watched Roo slip his hand into Micah's. Their hands were small and identical. Like a china doll holding itself. But Roo's fingers had tiny scars radiating out from all of his knuckles, and Micah had a band-aid wrapped around his pinky, from where he burned it badly the other day. He didn't know the stove was on.

I was pristine.

“She's not going to hurt me.” Roo said. His real name was Reuben, but we always called him Roo, because he was a little kid. I don't know what we would call him now.

Our mother finished rinsing the cookie sheet and brought it to Roo in the reclining chair. He lifted his leg up and lay it across the sheet, and she used sleeves from two of his dirty shirts to tie his ankle and thigh to either end.

“How many lollipops?” Roo asked.

“Four,” Mom said.

Roo looked at his leg while Mom rifled through the kitchen drawer. “Five,” he called.

“Fine. Fine. Five.”

“I want to sit with Roo,” I said. It was the best chair.“It's my turn.”

“You don't get a turn.” Mom came with the hammer, licking her dry lips. “It's Micah's turn, really.” She looked at him.

Micah had to let go of Roo's hand to shrink back as much as he wanted to. So he did.

Roo said, “You can go, Micah. You want a lollipop?”

He shook his head.

“Green ones,” Roo said.

“What if it hurts?” Micah said. Micah talked more about pain than any little kid in the world. Definitely more than any little kid who had never felt pain, and never would.

I was supposed to protect them. I hated Micah's bandaged fingertip.

“Do me this time,” I said.

Mom said, “Gwen, I've told you,” in her warning voice, so I backed off. I like to think that I didn't really understand what was happening.

My mother knelt by the recliner and tested the bonds on Roo's leg. “Ready?” she asked him.

“Swear five lollipops?”

“I swear,” she said, and she gave Roo's knee two solid cracks with the hammer. His knee bent back limply against the cookie sheet, and his bones tinkled like a wind chime.

I winced. Roo leaned over to look at his leg. “Did you break it?” he said.

“I think so.” Mom pushed her bangs off her sweaty forehead and untied my brother. “Get up and try to walk.”

Roo climbed out of the chair and took half a step before his leg creaked and he fell over. He laughed.

“Let's go,” Mom said. She picked up Roo and nodded for Micah and I to follow. On the way out the door, she splashed Roo with some cold water from the sink, and I splashed Micah. It was the only way to keep them cool. I was already sticky underneath my arms and behind my unbruised knees.

Our apartment building was full of open doors and empty spaces where the looters had already been. Our best friend Carly used to live in the apartment on the ground floor, but she'd died a few weeks ago, at the hospital. Roo had cried so hard he had a stuffy nose all day.

The regular hospital was across town, big and silver with state of the art equipment and doctors with foreign last names. The children's hospital was two blocks from home. Small. Quaint. Little murals on the walls. Even before Mom thought of breaking Roo's bones, we were there all the time, when one of the boys took an awkward fall or started running a fevers, and they'd get MRIs and blood tests and two doctors and three nurses pressing on all their joints and junctions and lymph nodes, feeling for something out of place.

Back then, the hospital was full and loud. Nurses in masks rushed back and forth between children screaming and coughing in beds. They shouted names of medicines and doctors that they wanted. Now I wonder what the hell they thought they were doing, since they never figured out how to fix anyone.

I'm not sure why Micah and I never got sick. Good luck. Not good genes.

At the hospital, Mom got attention, a cast for Roo, and her dose of whatever medicine they thought was working this week. She got a sterile pat on the back from Dr. Jacoby, who told her, again, how impressed he was with my mother, what a good job she was doing, how she shouldn't feel bad. How he couldn't imagine trying to raise one child with CIPA, let alone two. Before we knew anything was wrong with Micah and Roo, everyone used to tell Mom how they couldn't imagine trying to raise triplets. After their bloody lips and dry eyes and high fevers had an explanation, I was suddenly easy.

I've always hated the hospital.

When we got home, Roo toddled around on his cast, his smiling mouth stained green, four more lolipops clutched in his fat fist. He held one out to Micah, who shook his head.

“You should go next time,” Roo said.

Micah shook his head.

“Why are you so scared all the time?” Roo asked.

“What if it hurts?”

“Hurting isn't even that bad,” Roo said. “Gwen does it all the time.”

Two days later, Roo woke me up in the middle of the night and said he was dizzy. I knew he had a fever, but when I went to wake up Mom, she was in the bathroom, throwing up blood.

I wasn't very scared. It wasn't anything very new.

I lay down with Roo in his bed and held him. He was as hot and dry as a gun.

He started crying, but he couldn't make tears. He coughed blood onto my pillow and shook. He'd probably been sick for days, but he couldn't have known. The main symptom of the plague, after all, was pain. They couldn't know. Micah's organs could have been turning to soup in the bunk below of us, and he would have no idea. But they weren't.

Just Roo's.

“It'll be okay tomorrow,” I whispered to him. I kissed him. I liked playing mom, sometimes.

Anyway, he was dead by morning. He went quickly, unlike Mom, who didn't die until a few weeks later. Everything happened very close together. They died, and somewhere in there Micah and I were whisked away and pushed into our uncle's house. I don't remember Micah saying anything the whole time. Even our ultrasound pictures, Micah and Roo didn't hug. It was like the second the egg split, they happily scooted apart, or wedged me between.

I don't know that I've stopped watching Micah since the night Roo died.

Somewhere in there the plague ended. Roo and Mom were some of the last ones, and Micah and I, now our rich uncle's children, were two of the first on the exam table in the now near-empty hospital, rolling up our sleeves for the vaccination hardly anyone else could afford.

Micah cried, writhed, begged, curled up inside his shirt. “It'll hurt,” he sobbed. “It'll hurt. What if it hurts this time?”

“It won't,” I whispered to him, while the doctors crossed their arms and didn't want to wait.

“What if it does? This could be the time.”

“It's just a shot. It doesn't hurt much at all.”

It didn't. It didn't hurt enough. They gave me my shot, and I barely felt it, and Micah still squirmed away from the needles, still pleaded and hid behind my shoulder.

“Give it to me,” I said. “Give me his.”

“It doesn't work that way,” the doctor told me.

“Why not? Give it to me again. It didn't hurt enough.”

Eventually, Micah got his shot. We were marked on a list, checked off as safe, sent back to our uncle's house. On our way out the door, I saw Micah's reflection against a wall, and I jumped.

Not my reflection, just his, and I didn't know why. I knew it was the first time I thought about the implications of having just one identical twin around. That was the first of a million reflections that would always make me wonder, maybe, maybe, maybe...

A lot has changed since then. We're no longer afraid of our uncle's creaky mansion. I've stopped wondering if I maybe saw Roo that day, or if I see him every time I catch Micah in the bathroom mirror or in a shop window. I've stopped listening when someone mentions that they were at the children's hospital the other night and they heard screaming of children they couldn't find. I've stopped believing the whispered word haunted means anything more than two triplets who still have nightmares.

The plague is gone. Micah doesn't cry, and we don't talk. Now both of us act like he's made of glass.

Two things have stuck around: my hunger to feel absolutely everything, and Micah's desperate, pathological need to feel nothing.

What Are We Doing to YA?

This post is more of a question than most of mine are. I fully admit that this is all speculation. But it's something I've been wondering for a while.

Has the internet community changed YA?

Am I right in thinking that YA writers are the most active online? We tweet word counts and deadlines and what our main character would eat for breakfast. We friend each other on Facebook and leave each other rep points on AW. We have blogs just for posting excerpts and shit like this. We know each other's names, agents, and editors like we're all related. We're The Contemps, the Debs, the Tenners, the Elevensies, the Musers.

The word "blogosphere," ugly though it may be, is so appropriate. We're our own little biosphere. We have staked out our little corner of the internet, and we're loud and social and crazy and God knows I'm part of the problem.

And lately I've been worrying that it really is a problem.

To put it plainly, I'm starting to wonder if YA is turning into something written by/for the internet community under the guise of writing for everyday teenagers, and that who likes you on the internet is more important to your career--or, if not to your career, to your psyche and your perception of your success--than if teenagers are picking up your book.

Is the gap between "successful" author and "author teenagers want to read" getting wider and wider as our main audience to impress becomes bloggers and librarians instead of teenagers themselves?

(For the record, I realize and acknowledge that some of us are teenagers ourselves. But if you're reading this, you're not the average book-reading teenager. You know too much. We've relinquished our right to be considered the average YA reading teenager.)

Are we getting too self-referential to be relevant?

I don't know. But recently, YA has started to look very clubby to me, and I'm wondering if that's really fair for the readers. If we're writing to be social, are we doing our readers a disservice?

We give each other biased Goodreads reviews because we don't want to piss anyone off. We tell people we love books we haven't read just because we're friends with the author. We're so loud about the books we love--which should be a great thing!--that we might be fooling ourselves into thinking that our tastes reflect those of a teenager.

We hear so much about publishing trends. Vampires are in, vampires are out, zombies are in, zombies are out, angels are in, angels are out. But a teenager who loves vampires wants to read more about vampires. She doesn't give a shit whether it's out or not. So is our perception of a "saturated" market affecting her? I'm not saying, obviously, that we should all be out writing vampire books, but wouldn't it make more sense if we did stuff steadily instead of in trendy slews? And wouldn't that be possible if we weren't so intent on responding to and competing with the authors we follow on Twitter?

I think the reason I'm posing these questions is that lately I've felt very disillusioned and overwhelmed. I still love YA. But when I'm writing stuff like #magicgayfish, I start questioning my own relevance really, really easily. I love that you guys are all over it, and obviously I hope that teenagers would have the same reaction, if the thing gets published.

But how closely does our taste reflect that of an actual teenager?

Are the boys we swoon over the ones THEY find hot?

Okay, I'm asking a lot of questions. So here's what I think.

What was initially cool about YA, in my opinion, was that it had the least adult influence from the shelf to the hands of the reader. YAs pick out and buy and read their own books. Their parents don't screen them first. And obviously [adult] publishers still have to decide to publish them (and that's a HUGE thing, but we really can't change that) and the bookstore or the library still has to decide to stock them, but it was still more direct than other childrens' books. It's the kid's wallet, the kid's choice.

And now for some reason, it looks to me like we're letting it become books about teenagers and for adults rather than about teenagers for teenagers, and the way we're going, I don't think that's going to change.

WE'RE the ones counting down the days 'til the next big YA comes out.

WE'RE the ones fantasizing about ourself and the Next Hot Boy.

WE'RE the ones trend-chasing and trend-hating and jacking up the Goodreads reviews.

I think in the future, people are going to equate expecting YA to be only for young adults to expecting science fiction to be only for scientists.

I don't know. I've had very many emotional crisises lately where I'm like I DON'T KNOW WHAT TEENAGERS WANT. So maybe I'm just projecting. But I still think the market shift is noteworthy and worrisome.

Your thoughts?

SCBWI!

SO. I will be in LA from Thursday the 29th until Tuesday the 2nd or the 3rd, I can't count. And after that I'm leaving for New York for the rest of the week, then Orlando for the week after that, so...posting will be light for the next couple of weeks.

That being said, I hope and pray that you will be at SCBWI and that you will come say hello to me. If you see me, you absolutely MUST say hi, no avoiding it. Check the videos if you need to know what I look like, and I'll tweet in the mornings what I'mw earing if you'd like to stalk me that much (which you obviously should).

If you have a copy of BREAK, please give it to me so I can sign it! I'll also tons of bookmarks on my person at all times, so you should come talk to me if just for a signed bookmark.

I am absolutely horrible with names and faces, so please, if you run into me, tell me your full name and your email address and what your book is about and your twitter handle and what your twitter picture looks like and your social security number and any other possible way for me to identify you. I promise I love you all, I just am dumb and this is how I exist.

If you are coming to SCBWI, or if you are just in the area, I have to encourage you very very VERY highly to come to the Muser reading at Open bookstore in Long Beach at 7 PM on Monday (details are in the flier in the post below this one.) I'll be reading from both Invincible Summer and Zombie Tag, giving away signed copies of BREAK like candy, and we will be playing a REAL LIVE GAME of Zombie Tag. So please come. Wine and cheese. A good time for all.

The Boy Problem

First, you need to know my position.

--I am a writer, not a publisher or a bookseller.
--I am primarily a YA writer, but I write MG as well.
--I am female, sex and gender alike.
--So far, all of my finished novels, and certainly all of my published ones, have had male protagonists.
--95% of what I read is contemporary. I don't generally like SF/F.
--I generally prefer to read books with male protagonists
--About 70% of my reading is in YA.


Now.

People have been talking about the issue of boys in YA for a long time, but these discussions seem to have reached a head recently--one that I think has been a long time coming.

I want to make it clear that there are going to be exceptions to every single thing I say. One of the big points I'm trying to make in this post, in fact, is that generalizing doesn't fucking work. So please understand that none of what I will say is true 100% of the time, and your knowledge that there are exceptions to what I'm about to lay out might not invalidate what I'm saying. This is literature. Nothing is universal.

So.

The problem we're talking about is fairly simple: boys don't read YA. This isn't an issue of "boys don't read"--we're not talking about these boys. We're talking about avid readers, boys who ate up middle grade but go to adult fiction and non-fiction instead of passing through YA, and nobody really knows why.

I'm not an expert on this. I'm just a chick who writes, at least from my point of view, the kind of YA that is the closest that we have right now to "boy books," which is really just to say that my books have male main characters, because right now that is all we offer boys.

And it isn't enough.

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I've come up with a lot of theories for why boys aren't reading YA. Some of these probably aren't true. Maybe most of them aren't. But whether or not these are the root of the problems, they are issues that I'm seeing swept under the rug, and I believe they're truths we don't want to look at.

It's not all the writer's fault. We've all heard that publishers don't buy boy books--and 1. they do, and 2. why should they if they aren't selling--and it pisses me the fuck off how many boys there are who won't pick up a book with a girl main character or, heaven forbid, a book with a chick's name in the cover.

It's not entirely our fault. But it does start with us.

Here's what we did:

--We've stereotyped boys. Most boys in YA fit into four very particular categories.

1) The gay best friend. The gay best friend is sassy. He's also deeply damaged and vulnerable from the trauma of being gay. The girl--our main character, always--might be his only friend. He desperately needs her. Maybe he has a drug problem due to his inner torment.

2) The best guy friend. Practically like the gay best friend except he's straight, and he doesn't have inner torment. In fact, he's sweet, attentive, and as reliable as death/taxes. He's also in love with the girl MC, who for some reason hasn't noticed him even though he was always there. Don't worry, by the end of the book, she'll realize he's The One.

3) The bad boy. This is the one we're all familiar with. He's pure motorcycle on the outside, but deep down, he's just a marshmallow of love for our main character. He doesn't open up to anyone else, but he loves this one girl. He needs her. Yeah, you're all thinking about that series I haven't read, I know it, you know it, we don't need to name it.

4) The nerdy boy. This is (usually, remember usually, we're talking about usually) the only boy you will ever find as a main character. If you find a male POV, it's usually him. He's geeky but never pimply, nerdy but always in a socially-proficient, sarcastic, endearing way. He talks about masturbation because it's funny, not because of something he really likes. He's a bookworm girl's wet dream.

Which leads me to the second thing writers have done:

--We've sanitized boys. What MG books do boys love? Captain Underpants, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, books that appeal to their light side. In our efforts to empower girls (oh, and trust me, there will be much more on this later) we've forgotten that it's irrelevant right now that it's hard to grow up as a girl in today's world full of fashion magazines and celebrity marriages and mirrors in every dressing room; it's hard to grow up a boy in a world where Dad wants you to play baseball and you want to draw pictures or you want to play baseball but your best friend didn't make the team.

I'm simplifying, obviously, and you can flip and flop the sexes here--boys don't always love the mirrors either, and maybe Dad would rather braid your hair then cheer you on in the stands--but we're not arguing about which sex has it harder, we're just acknowledging a fact that YA isn't right now--boys aren't skipping their way through high school, either.

So why do MG books remember this and not YA? Why are MG books looking at showing boys every aspect of themselves, like Greg's issues with his drippy friends and his little brother, and simultaneously giving them an escape with superheros and gross-out humor, when this seems to be something that YA can't grasp?

Well, I'll tell you why.

--We've stripped boys of substance and we did it to empower girls. Somehow, the message "girls can do it too" became "only a girl can do it," and men became the weaker sex in YA.

Where are the epic fantasy trilogies with male main characters? Harry Potter isn't YA, people, stop pretending. When, since Eragon, have boys gotten to save the world? Where is the Melissa Marr for boys? Where is--yeah--Twilight for boys? Where is the science fiction that boys loved in YA, and we just assumed, for some reason, they were fine with losing when they turned 14?

Oh yeah--they're over there in adult fiction, and that's where the teenage boys are going to be, too.

Boys in YA are rubber walls for our 3D female characters to bounce off of. They're props for girls to throw around to show that they're the stronger sex.

And I get that we need to empower girls, people. I get it. But how many books about girls do we need before we can consider that a job well done?

So here's how to fix it. And this is a call to writers, and it's a call to publishers, and it's a call to readers.

--Write, publish, and promote books with real boys. Stop talking and just fucking do it. Read Shaun Hutchinson's The Deathday Letter. Now read it again.

There will be no question in your mind about whether or not Oliver is written as fantasy fodder for a girl. Oliver is not written for a girl. Period. Oliver is written for Oliver, and he is real.

Now realize that he is just one boy, and that you can write any boy you want. Nothing pisses me off like a writer saying that boys have to strong, quiet about how they're feeling, but secretly weak underneath their hardened exterior.

NO! Your boy does not have to be ANYTHING. STOP MAKING BOYS THAT HAVE TO BE SOMETHING. We are no longer allowed to even hint that a girl has to have a specific quality for fear of someone calling sexism, so I am calling sexism on you.

Stop writing this boy you've imagined in your head and write a real boy. Make him gross or sweet or angry or well-adjusted or affectionate or uncomfortable or confused or ambitious or overwhelmed or smitten or anxious or depressed or desperate or happy. Write a boy the same way everyone has been telling everyone, forever, to write a girl; free of gender stereotypes, three-dimensional, and relatable.

Write books that lead logically from middle grade, that don't assume that boys wash their brains out when they hit puberty.

Put covers on books, no matter the gender of the main character, that boys will not be embarrassed to read on the subway. (My vlog tomorrow will have more on this). Teach boys that they don't need a man's name on the cover to know that they will like it.

Agents and publishers, either stop saying you're looking for boy books or start meaning it. Or figure out what a boy book is, because we need someone to explain it to us.

And I'm okay if it means, right now, "books with a male POV." Because I understand that that's a stepping stone boys need right now. I'm not okay with boys indefinitely refusing to read books with a girl's point of view. I'm completely okay with them only reading books that have real male characters in them. Let's make it easy for them to find them, first.

Write and publish fantasy and science fiction (FOR GOD'S SAKE WHERE IS THE SCIENCE FICTION) with strong male main characters. Boys need their blockbusters, too, and it doesn't matter how you feel about YA fantasy--you know just as well as I do what's selling, so let's expand that past the girl's point of view.

Boys. Shut up and read YA. The books are there. There aren't enough, we're absolutely sorry. But they're there. Stop insisting they're not. And I'm trying. And we're trying.

And we can't do this without you.

And the boy reader in your life isn't going to find this post on his own because he doesn't know me because he doesn't read YA, so you know what to do. This post has a link for a reason.

Humor Me Here

I know, I'm posting a lot lately. I have some things to say.

This is one I've been meaning to say for a while. And I apologize if this comes up as somewhat of a rant. And, actually, for probably the only time in the history of ever, I'm going to apologize if this offends anyone. Because, this time, it's actually not my intention.

Because ME ME ME this is about me. Yesterday I told you not to blog about yourself, today I'm blogging about myself. Welcome to Invincible Summer.

So.

Do you remember when Mary-Kate and Ashley made that big announcement about how they didn't want to be called The Olsen Twins anymore? I guess this is kind of like that.

I've thought a lot about this, and I've decided I don't want to be called a teenage writer anymore.

This is a weird declaration to make, because it implies some sort of deceit or, at the very least, shame, that isn't at all what I'm intending. I'm fine with being referred to as a writer who was first published as a teenager, or a nineteen-year-old writer, or a writer who is a teenager, or, hell, a teenager who is a writer. So it's not the actual meaning of the term "teenage writer" that I'm trying to break away from. It's the three connotations this term has come to have.

The first one is the predictable one, and the one that is less of a problem for me. "She's good for a teenager." Yeah, awesome. That was cool when I was turning in papers in high school. It's not going to cut it now.

I'm obviously not the first person to experience it, and I think even people who haven't had this firsthand can see and understand that this is frustrating. And it is, but it is not my biggest problem with being called a teenage writer. Not at all.

The second is bigger. Let's use a story to illustrate this one.

So let's say you have this woman. When she was 27, she decided she wanted to be a writer. She was horrible at first--who isn't?--and she was fine with that, and had fun dabbling around and playing with different things. She started researching the possibility of publication when she was 30, long before she had anything of publishable quality.

She finished her first piece of long fiction when she was 31. That was the same year she got her "great idea," which took her until just after her 34th birthday to finish. This was her first novel. It sucked, but it was hers. But she knew she had a long way to go, and she continued working and working without trying for publication until she turned 36. And then she sent her first query letter.

She kept writing, and she kept querying. She finished projects and queried them and got requests and rejections and no offers. She kept writing. After completing six previous novels, she finally wrote the one that got her an offer of representation right before her 37th birthday. The book sold that summer and came out when she was 38, the same month she got a contract for two more books. She is now 39 and waiting for the release of her 2nd book shortly after her 40th birthday.

Yeah, did you figure out the punchline? Subtract 20 years from all of those ages, and you have my journey.

There's this idea that, because I'm young, this all must have happened very quickly for me. I must have skipped steps, or gotten really lucky, or come out of the womb a perfect writer. I must have slept with someone, or done the twelve-year-old equivalent of sleeping with someone, to get to where I am.

It's bullshit, and it didn't feel fast to me, and I'm not a prodigy. The only reason I got published a lot younger than other people is I'm a stubborn little shit who decided that she had a career when she was eleven years old. The fact that my journey became public when I was a teenager shouldn't lock me into that age. Fuck, call me a child writer, if anything; it's more accurate, in the end. That's when I started.

And here's the third problem with the term. My third problem.

I have slightly less than eight months until I turn twenty.

I'm not planning to be come irrelevant overnight.

I don't want my twentieth birthday, exactly a week before the INVINCIBLE SUMMER release, to be the day in which I'm stripped of something that makes me 'edgy' or 'interesting' or 'catchy.' 'Cause guess the fuck what, bitches. Eight months from now, I'm still going to be edgy and interesting and catchy, and I don't want there to be any doubt about that.

I'm not a child actress. I'm a career bitch, and I have my feet firmly planted in the ground and no no no I'm not going anywhere. And hannah in 8 months is still hannah. She's not any less relevant than this chick right now, just because she doesn't have that edgy little 1 in front of her age.

So I would like to lose it now, because I would like to prove--to you, to the world, and most of all to me--that I don't need it.

When I was a kid, I said I had to be published before I was eighteen, because if I wasn't, no one would care about me. I wasn't good enough, interesting enough, brave enough to run with the big dogs.

I'm calling bullshit on old hannah tonight. In favor of new hannah.

I'm a teenager. I'm a writer. I'm not ashamed of either one. And yeah, I'm fucking proud of what I've accomplished at my age. And my age is staying in my blogger profile. But it'll be there when I'm twenty and when I'm thirty-two and when I'm forty-six, too. Because I'm not here to fucking play games.

The bottom line is, yeah, I'm young, but I'm planning to be around kicking ass for until I'm really, really wrinkly.

And I want you there with me. And I don't give a fuck how old you are.

Professionalism

This post has nothing to do with writing and absolutely everything to do with being a writer.

The stereotype of a writer--the middle-aged man pounding feverishly at a typewriter, cigarette in his mouth, sending hard-copy manuscripts to his agent and protesting the change of every word--has yet to catch up with the reality of what being a writer entails today.

We are not locked in our attics alone. We are not even the romantic writers of the '20s, drinking coffee and discussing literature. We are a legion of overworked, underwashed normals, pounding away at our laptops and shooing the kids to the next room.

And more importantly, we are not alone.

If you are reading this blog, you have obviously already met at least one other writer (hello there.) Chances are, I'm not the only one. Agent, editor, and writer blogs, facebook, forums like Verla Kay and Absolute Write, and God, above all Twitter, mean that, at the very least, most writers are at least a friend of a friend of yours. The term 'networking' is so appropriate here, because, in actuality, we--writers, publishing professionals, book bloggers--are a net. A web of interconnected people.

We know the same people. The truth is, this world feels very big sometimes, and God knows everyone is talking about writing a novel, but when it comes down to it--the people who are really out there, querying, editing, submitting, representing, accepting, rejecting, publishing, copyediting, waiting...well, the truth is, there aren't that many of us after all.

Which is why the act of being a professional writer has come to mean much more than it used to. Fifty years ago, all most writers had to do was avoid getting arrested and not respond to bad reviews.

You have a much bigger job to undertake. And it's stressful, and it's scary, but it can also be one of the most rewarding parts of this job. Somedays, my writing is absolutely shitty, and the house is a mess, and I'm crying because I can't find my socks, but I have 239 blog followers, Goddamn it, and I said something funny on Twitter today, so at least this day isn't totally for the birds.

You may think that I am the worst possible person ever to talk about how to be a professional. I'm loud and I'm obnoxious and I say fuck like it's a part of my name.

Yeah.

But I'm hoping all that will make me easier to listen to, because when people think 'professional,' they a lot of the time think boring, sanitized, safe. And that's not who you have to be. I'm living fucking proof over here. And I knew from the start that I was taking a big risk, but I hoped that people would find me interesting and remember me.

It's worked pretty well so far. And that, kittens, is the real reason you want to get out there and put on your professional face. So that people will remember you.

Now that I'm done fucking babbling, here are some guidelines. How to be a successful professional writer, by yours truly. And these are not big, life-changing rules. These are just tricks. Tricky little tricks.

--GET ON TWITTER. I don't care what your objections are. I objected too. But it is hands-down the best way to connect with people you would never have the balls to approach any other way. You can follow someone, which causes them no pain or trouble whatsoever, and you can talk to them in a completely neutral, undemanding way.

--READ ABOUT BOOKS. What do Hunger Games, Twilight, Lord of the Rings, The Da Vinci Code, and a hell of a lot of other books have in common? I haven't read them.

I'm not proud. But I know I don't have nearly enough time to read as much as I should, so I make a point of reading *about* books I wish I had time to read. Know enough about popular books to be able to fake your way through a conversation. I can discuss Twilight with the best of them, damn it.

--REMEMBER NAMES. I can't stress enough how important this is. You might have never read a book by this author most people haven't heard of, but you better be able to connect the book to the name in a second flat. You need to be able to talk about other writers like you went to high school with them. Memorize authors, titles, editors, agent. Know who goes with whom.

--DON'T ALIENATE. Or if you have to, choose one book or author to singularly alienate. People ask me a lot what my least favorite book is. Obviously I've read a lot of stuff I don't like, but I have one that I use so I'm not spreading the hate around too badly (and trust me, the author of said book is way too famous to give a shit what a plebe like me thinks).

You never know who you will need.

--DON'T TALK ABOUT YOURSELF ALL THE TIME. I know I've been a bad example of this one lately (though possibly not as bad as example as I am of the alienating thing) but God, I get bored of author blogs that are all me me me look where my book got reviewed look what I'm working on blaaaah.

Do me a favor and don't go and read my archives right now. I was very young. And I had nothing else to talk about.

But seriously. If you don't feel qualified to give advice (through trust me, if I'm qualified, so are you) find articles and other blog posts you find interesting, post your thoughts, and open your comments up for discussion. You'll find a lot more followers and a lot more interesting discussion than you will by posting boring shit about yourself every day.

--DON'T BE BORING. Unsurprisingly, this is my biggest point. Don't be boring. If someone else is saying what you're saying, people are only going to listen to one of you. Do you want a fifty/fifty chance of being drowned out?

Swallow your fear. I'm scared every day. I do this anyway. Because I love it. And because I don't want you to forget me.

Because I only have books coming out every so often. And I'm a professional, and if you forget me between books, I'm not doing a very good job.

And I mean, fuck. No one wants to be forgotten. Which pretty much leads me to the most important thing.

--REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE A HUMAN CONNECTING WITH OTHER HUMANS. You don't need to pretend to be Superman. It's boring. I told you. It's GOOD to show that you care about people, that you care about what you're doing, and that you care about your readers. Stop pretending that the ride is easy. You're not earning any respect that way. Show some of your vulnerability and maybe you'll do more than sell your product. You'll meet some very cool people.

You'll maybe even help them.

Vlog!!

Answering the first half of your questions:

Isn't this freeze-frame attractive? THANKS BLOGGER.

hola

Sorry for abandoning you guys over the holidays. Hope you had a lovely time.

Sorry also for those of you who have emailed me and are still waiting for a response. I will write back, I promise.

I've starting working on a new project--not a book--and I'm having a good time with it. You can follow me on twitter if you want to track my crashing-and-burning process, because essentially I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

Anyone have anything exciting happening in the New Year? I have a book going out on submission in a few weeks (hopefully!) I'm psyched.

Let's Answer These Puppies

You guys asked some truly excellent questions. HERE WE GO.

At the moment, would you prefer to write for adults or YAs?

YAs. I just finished my first adult novel, and I'd LOVE to have a career in both adult and YA books, but YA is my passion and probably always will be.

Are you sick of writing for YA?

Nope. But there are things about YA books as a whole that frustrate me. Namely, the hype of fantasy novels to the detriment of contemporary, Twi-hype--I haven't read Twilight, so I have no judgments to make on the quality of the books, but you guys already know I object to the notion that it's the be-all-end-all of modern YA--people's attitudes towards YA and YA writers as a whole...I don't have any complaints you guys haven't heard elsewhere from tons of other people. But, by and large, I love YA and I can't imagine ever getting sick of writing it. I worry that people are going to get sick of me, because a lot of times--big secret here--I do worry that I'm writing different versions of the same novel over and over again. I just hope people disagree.

And I always say I could write about 15 year old boys forever. God, they're so beautiful and angsty. Love them.

What do your parents think of the "content" (gahhh, what a horrible, prissy word) of "Break", i.e. swearing and stuff?

Oh, they're totally cool with it. I learned everything I know from then, y'know? ;)

Plus, my three best friends--all teenage boys--basically live at our house, so they have firsthand experience that some boys really do talk that way.

Do you worry about sharing your writing? I'm not sure what the hard and fast rules are on sharing your manuscript, but I've got a friend who molts whenever I suggest putting an excerpt out on the internet. She is sure people will snatch it up and whore it out and I will be left penniless AND bereft of manuscript rights or something. So, can you spill on the proper pimping protocol of an unpublished, unagented, completely naked of rights novel?

First off, nothing you write is EVER completely naked of rights. Your words are copyrighted (I typed that as "copywritten" the first time. What.) the second you put the down on paper. And, worst comes to worst, there are ways to prove that--your word processor will tell you when you started a document, or if you emailed it to yourself, that's proof, whatevs.

But honestly, I think the chances of someone stealing your novel are really, really slim. And maybe that's naive of me.

i wouldn't suggest putting a whole manuscript online (unless you're doing a serial on your blog or something, and that's a whole different sack of potatoes) but a snippet? Sure.

Yes, there is a chance that someone might steal your idea. But who's left out there who doesn't know that the idea is the easy part? God, I can think of seven ideas for a book a day, but that doesn't mean I have to discipline--or the time--to sit down and write the books for them. And even if I did, it would be a completely different book from someone's based off the exact same idea, just because things always evolve differently, and there is so much variability out there.

And ideas are recycled and reused all the time. And books are similar to other books all the time. And that's entirely okay.

I'll give you an example. A few months before INVINCIBLE SUMMER sold, when the manuscript was already edited, polished, and going out to agents for round of querying numero dos, I started stalking publishers. Because that's how I roll. On Knopf's website, I saw an ad for their new book just out by Brent Runyon, one of my FAVORITE authors. The book? SURFACE TENSION, a coming-of-age about a boy over four summers.

So I basically shot myself and slit my wrists and overdosed on painkillers and told myself my book was never going to sell. And guess what? It sold. We even submitted to Knopf. And they didn't even mention SURFACE TENSION in the rejection!

I didn't steal the idea from Brent Runyon--I swear!--but the two books do have a sort of eerie similarity. They're not by any means identical; INVINCIBLE SUMMER, like most of my stuff, is very very family focused, while SURFACE TENSION is more romantically-based. But if you read descriptions of the two, they definitely sound alike. And they both sold. And, fingers crossed, we'll both be fine.

(Also, you should buy SURFACE TENSION, because I did as soon as I recovered from my wrist-slitting, and it's really good. And also you should buy INVINCIBLE SUMMER, but not for another year, which is annoying.)

Why do you hate Brown? DETAILS PLZ. :)

Bwahahaha. I'm so hard on Brown. To be honest, it's not Brown's fault. Brown is a perfectly lovely school IF you are willing to work your ass off. Which I am not. I want to lie around and write books.

Also, just personal stuff. I don't like being far away from home, and I don't like living in a building full of teenagers. I need my space sometimes. I'm a SENSITIVE ARTIST or some shit.

What's your favorite color? (boring question, I know)

Indigo, due in no small part to my obsession with Hilary McKay's INDIGO'S STAR, which you should also buy. It's MG. I think MGs are some of the best books out there.

How do you feel about YA books today compared to YA books in the past?

I'm crazy about YAs from the 80s and 90s--Joyce Sweeney, in particular. There's this certain kind of angry sitcom feel to them. Everything is super angsty and dramatic and affectionate and...you're not really the same after you read one of them. Stuff now is more realistic, I think, which is cool, but it some ways less fun. I lurve the drama.

Do you think there needs to be more edgy, true-to teenage life, f-bomb dropping books or do you think writers should continue to sugarcoat things?

Ha, I'm sure anyone could predict how I'm going to answer this one--fuck sugarcoating.

What's you favorite song at the moment?

"When My Boy Walks Down the Street" by The Magnetic Fields.

Have you always been a fast writer?

Nope. BREAK was my first fast-draft, and INVINCIBLE SUMMER and the book I just finished (working title THE ANIMALS WERE GONE--more about that in a minute) are the only ones I've written very quickly. Of those, INVINCIBLE SUMMER took the longest--8 days, and was also the shortest, with a first draft of about 23K words--and THE ANIMALS WERE GONE was the fastest and the longest--5 days and 40K words.

I love the ones I write quickly. They feel the most passionate to me, and they're my favorites, and maybe it's not a coincidence that they keep being the ones to sell. But some of my slower drafts turn into good books, too, I think. The first drafts of those generally take me about two to three months.

If you could have one writer, dead or alive, read and critique your work, who would it be and why?

He's not a YA writer, sorry, but...John freaking Irving. I love him so much. And he knows how to pack a punch like no one's business.

I read THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE when I was staying in a hostel in Florence on a school trip. I was alone in my room, devouring a box of Special K, when I got to the big scary twist. I had to crawl out into the hallway and wait for my best friend to come hold me. I want to do that to someone someday. I want to totally fuck up their lives with words in the middle of a box of Special K.

ooh and how about if they made a movie about your journey/success, who would you want to play you? :)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, if he doesn't mind the gender-bending.

So I know that your novel-that-hasn't-sold-yet, THESE HUMANS ALL SUCK, is kind of quirky speculative fiction. What's the difference, for you, between writing this kind of YA and contemporary? And which do you like better? And why?

Ohhh, THESE HUMANS ALL SUCK. sniff. I hope someday to bring that shit out of the closet. We'll seeeeeeeeee.

I'm trying to figure out if it feels any different. I think it's scarier for me, trying to write spec; it's like I'm dipping my feet into very unfamiliar territory. I never go very deep into the spec elements, because I'm sure I'm going to screw something up, and intense worldbuilding absolutely scares me. (Pop Quiz: Where is BREAK set? Yeaaaaaaah I don't know either.)

So I probably prefer writing straight contemporary just because it's less scary for me. Btu when the ideas come to me with spec in them, sometimes it's hard to excise out. But I try. Sometimes.

I do love magical realism, so as long as I can tell myself that's what I'm writing, it gets a little easier.

Could you give us a kind of outline of your favourite books that-you-haven't-sold-yet, like THESE HUMANS ALL SUCK and a couple of others? Whenever I read about you mentioning them, I'm always curious :P.

Absolutely. Are you ready? HERE WE GO. Big explanation of ALL MY BOOKS OF ALL TIME.

Warning: This shit is long.

Crash, Burn, Etc. (2005)--a story about a kid named Jason whose mom hangs herself in the basement. His sister tries to keep the family together. Lots of angst. So bad it hurts, but, guys, this was my FIRST NOVEL EVER so it was really exciting. I finished it at the end of 8th grade. I queries FSG with it. I'm so silly.

Color us Blissful (2005)--a boy named Jamie discovers a government plot to eradicate unruly teenagers when his best friend becomes a target. Pretty dumb. I loved it.

Craving Private Ryan (2005)--This was about two half-brothers who met for the first time and fell in love. I was obviously a precocious little thing. No plot, lots of angst. My main character was 19, which was weird, since I was 14. I subbed this one to small presses and got a few partial requests. That was pretty sweet for me. I didn't really know about agents at the time, because I was too busy writing about gay incest to do any research, I guess.

The Sublime (2006)--Jack gets stuck on a mysterious island with some mysterious people, mysterious things ensue. This came out on ebook with a small press. It's out of print now. My agent and I might do something with it, but probably not. We'll see. I like it, but it's very quiet.

Birthday Cake (2006)--The first draft of this one took me 6 months. That's my longest ever. It's been through like a zillion different drafts, and it was the first book I used to query agents. Unsuccessful! Probably won't ever see the light of day. It's cute but quite flawed. It switches viewpoints between 4 best friends the week of their eighteenth birthdays, when they've promised to give up their bad habits.

These Humans All Suck (2007)--So this is the first book I wrote that I think has any hope of being really good. Ian follows his adopted brother to D.C. where he meets his brother's pregnant virgin cousin and wonders if Noel might have been conceived in the same way. I...really, really love this book. I queried my ass off with it, and it's actually the book that got me my first agent, though we subbed BREAK instead and, well, you know what happened after that. We subbed this one after and it didn't sell. I'm not really sad about it anymore. It happens. (Published authors out there--hate to say it, but one book deal, or two book deals, or twelve book deals does not guarantee another.)

Singleton (2007)--This book is randomly pretty awful, which is kind of a shame. It's about identical twins, but it's also about, like, every single thing you could possibly imagine. It tried to do way too much and it didn't work. I stole lots of bits from this and used it in later books, though, so there's that. I queried this one, too (basically I was querying four different books at once) and I got all of two full requests for it.

Break(2007)--yaaaaaay. Originally called If It Ain't Broke. Jonah wants to break all his bones. My first novel, Simon Pulse, 2009, you all know the story. Tons of requests through querying, no offers for months, then suddenly three offers in a week. Wrote the first draft in six days. It was less than 30K--basically a detailed outline. The 2nd draft was much different, added major characters and subplots and things.

Pumpkin Patch Kids (2007-2008) Co-wrote with a really good friend of mine, Andrew Carmichael. I'm really, really hoping things will happen with this one. It's about two teenagers at a boarding school who have a fake romance and a very real pregnancy. I wrote a girl's POV for this one!

A La Mode (2008)--a sequel to Birthday Cake, mainly written just for fun.

Invincible Summer (2008)--Written in eight days of not-sleeping. Like I said, it's a coming of age about a boy and his big family that takes place over four summers. I love it. Break sold a few weeks after I finished this one. It comes out in Spring 2011. It's my second novel--do you see now how ridiculous the terms "first novel" and "second novel" are?

The Beekeeper (2008)--my first NaNo! I like this book okay, but my betas basically trashed it. As did everyone in the publishing world who read it. Haha, okay, I get it, it's not going anywhere. It's a cute romance between two boys at boarding school. Super innocent. 3rd present, switches viewpoints. I stole all the good parts for it and harvested them into The Animals Were Gone.

The Support Group (2009) -- really weird and teeny and...weird. And pretty bad, to be honest.

All Together With Feeling (2009)--drama centered around a high school chorus, told from the points of view of a soprano, an alto, a tenor, and a bass. I have hope for this one. I like it a lot.

A.P.D. (2009)--my first adult book. It's about a leper colony of sorts for people with a blood-borne illness that makes them turn into machines. It's pretty sick. And it has PICTURES. Stay tuned (hopefully).

The Animals Were Gone (2009)--finished this last week. It's about two teenage boys falling in love and staying in love over the course of the D.C. Beltway sniper shootings in 2002. I'm...sort of crazy in love with this one.

So there you have it.

It takes a lot of books to get a book deal.

It takes a lot of really shitty books to get a book deal.

It takes a lot of good books to get a book deal.

And most of all, it just takes tiiiiiime.

When you are hammering out a story at the speed of lightening, I'd like to know what's going through your mind. Are you just putting down whatever comes to mind and riding the wave or are you writing carefully from a well-thought outline in your head (or on paper)?

I don't outline. Generally, I won't start writing until I know the beginning, the end, and a few things that happen along the way. I keep the next big plot point in mind while I'm writing, but I give myself a lot of leeway when I'm trying to get there, and I basically just fool around.

What is your energy is like? Urgent or mellow?

Ha, definitely urgent.

How much do you edit your rough draft and when do you abandon? Do you feel that you edit your work to it's satisfying optimum or do you get scrambled at some point and feel like you aren't sure anymore if it is better or worse for the pen lashes? Do you struggle with tuning in on some of your characters? If a character is giving you a hard time, how do you get them clearer?

I actually only like to edit my first draft once or twice before I had it over to my agent, because I like to get feedback early on in the process. I don't want to burn out before I've done the work that it needs. And...this isn't going to win me any fans, but here we go. I'm not an editor. I'll edit to the best of my ability, but I'll be completely honest and say I do NOT have the ability to see or fix what's wrong with my story as well as, like, an editor. So while I'll clean up the manuscript the best it can, I don't edit the thing to within an inch of its life before I actually get editorial feedback.

Are there any themes or subjects in particular you feel you cannot tackle or feel very uncomfortable in doing so?

I have a hard time with race-related issues; I tried to incorporate some into All Together With Feeling and I'm not sure I was entirely successful.

As your next question says, I do a lot with gay teens, and I feel, to be honest, a little weird about that too. I absolutely love writing gay teens and I don't think I'm going to stop anytime soon, and honestly I'd be fine with that being my brand, of sorts. But there are so many GREAT gay men out there writing GREAT YA fiction about gay boys--David Levithan (I LOVE YOU) and Alex Sanchez come immediately to mind--and I don't want to be, well, the fag hag of YA lit. I'm not going to stop what I'm doing, but it does make me wonder if I'm doing the genre a disservice by stepping all over it with my straight girly feet. I just hope I do a good enough job that nobody minds that, no matter what, I will always be an outsider to the issue.

I do a lot with Jewish or partly-Jewish teenagers feeling ever-so-slightly at odds with their surroundings, and that's really the only minority-related issue I feel like I do well.

You've written about gay males more than once. Any plans for a lesbian or bisexual female protagonist/major character?

No concrete plans, but I do definitely want to have one at some point. The only reason I haven't is that I have so much trouble writing girls. A girl who falls in love with a girl means I have to write TWO GIRLS.

statement of purpose, I guess

Sometimes this blog annoys me, y'know?

I love you guys, you guys out there reading this right now, and that's entirely the problem. I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY TO YOU. I don't want to just write a whole bunch of shit about myself, because wow that's boring, and if you honestly care about the mundane details of my life, I gotta say I might me judging you a bit right now. juuuuuudge

No but seriously. Obviously part of the point of this blog is publicity--selling books is good for the self-esteem and the bank account and all that, and if this inspires a few people to pick up a few copies of BREAK, yaaaay. But that's not the only reason I'm doing this.

Here's a secret about me that is probably not a secret at all: I really, really like unpublished writers. Almost 100% of the time, I like unpublished writers best of most people in the world.

Because I still feel like one of you all the time. I still feel like I need help and I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. And that makes blogging even more awkward, because what the fuck, I don't have words of wisdom, I just happen to have a book deal, y'know? It's just luck and numbers.

But if I can help you, I want to.

So the purpose of this book is basically to ask--how can this blog be the most useful to you? In an ideal world, what kind of things would I blog about? What would I tell you?

If you want to know more about my personal stuff--publication or otherwise--that's totally cool, I can blog about that (but I think you're weird and/or are confusing me with a celebrity). I could talk about (to an extent) what I'm working on now, and what my general writing process is. If you want more query contests and stuff, I can do that to. If you want more ranty advice posts, or more publishing-news type stuff...if you want me to have more attitude, that's easy, or less attitude, which is a little less easy, but still possible...hit me up, guys, how can this blog be the best it can be for you?

Fitting in/Standing Out

A NOTE: This post talks about writing as a craft and a business. It talks about the business of selling writing. If you're looking for praise of art for art's sake, look elsewhere. I'm a commercial writer, let's just put it out there--I have my literary moments, but I write for you and you and you, damn it, not for The Sake Of The Written Word--so advice from me (fuck what I'm giving advice??) is going to come from a commercial standpoint.

A lot of the problems new authors face, whether they're on their first manuscript or their tenth, base around the problem of fitting in vs. standing out.

Benefits to fitting in:
--Your audience is built right in. That's huge. You know where your book will go and who will pick it up.
--Easier to find an agent. Look at what they've sold until you find one that's sold a book like yours. Query them. Then query some more people. If you're good, you'll get lucky. And if your book fits into the current market easily, an agent shouldn't have much trouble placing you.
--You are instantly your own brand. Readers will know what to expect for your next book, and if your first was the type they liked, they'll be loyal.

Problems with fitting in:
--Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
--You're asleep
--Your readers are asleep


On the other hand...

Benefits to standing out:
--Bam pow zap! There's nothing like a shock to get people's interest.
--Books that stand out are the ones that become big deals. No one ever got famous overnight from a ho-hum book.
--This is how things get started, y'know?

But problems with standing out:
--Good luck selling. You're a risk, and that's going to make it a hard road.
--Unless you do something quirky really well, you risk looking like you're trying too hard.
--The WTF factor. Expect people to question your sanity.


So you want to do something innovative and original without doing something that can't blend into the current market.

My solution to this dichotomy is this--write to fill the holes.

Don't try to start a new genre your first time around. You do have time to be a revolutionary.

But don't write the same book everyone else is writing because you think it will sell. (No Wuthering Heights and Witches, in my friend's words)

Don't write what's already out there, but don't write something that doesn't have a place. Look at what books are in your genre (which you should be familiar with) and look what could easily fit in that isn't yet there.

BREAK (surprise!) is a pretty decent example of this. YA books about self-injury are not new. I knew there was an established market for them. What is new? Books about a self-injury from a male perspective. So I did it. And it made sense, but it still had a touch of that Bam Pow Zap, this is different.

In a larger sense, I write largely YA, and I use a lot of the genre conventions because I LOVE YA and I love the conventions and I love selling books, so I'm not going to write a book about, you know, a tadpole and try to say that's YA. (Someone is trying that now. Stop.) But while a lot of YA is friend/romantic relationship focused, I put a heavy emphasis on family life and the relationships my characters have with their parents and siblings.

Find your genre. Love your genre. Meet the expectations of your genre. And add something new.

Fill some holes.

:)

Sorry for being all crazy MIA and abandoning you guys. If you thought reality TV was a timesuck, try college.

If you've missed the melodious sounds of my voice, you should DEFINITELY check on Blogfest--it's a very cool S&S project where 40 authors sound off on some different topics---and guess who's one of the 40? Stay tuned for a few more posts there from me in the next few days, but my first one's already up!

http://www.simonlittlegreen.com/blogfest/

Definitely check it out.

Oh Dear God Education

So I'm leaving for college on Thursday. This means I'm paaacking and paaaacking and marathoning America's Next Top Model (because I mean obviously this is really important).

So. Expect sporadic (or no) blogging until this weekend. I hope you all are having a lovely lovely week.

WE BEAT BEAR FEELS SICK

That is all.

(unfortunately we're still #6. The elephant with a peanut allergy snuck in and stole #5. I don't feel I can complain, since BREAK has a peanut allergy as well, and it's really the reason we're on that list. THOUGH WE'RE MORE THAN JUST PEANUTS BITCHES)

Progress report

Words remaining: 12,000

Days remaining: 15

Another Fake Post!

Otherwise known as another All Together With Feeling Excerpt!
--

Oliver calls around nine. “We’re going out, bitch.”

“Tonight?” I’ve been reading all night, and all the websites say Oliver needs time to grieve and process what happened, or whatever. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised he’s breaking the rules. The advice all sounds the same as what he got when his mom died. He didn’t follow that, either.

“You want to drive?” I say.

“I would rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”

“I was planning on drinking…”

“I will be drinking tonight.”

“All right, all right. I’ll drive.”

I ignore the drama downstairs—honestly, could it be less important?—and push through the crowd and out the door. I don’t tell them where I’m going, but only because they don’t ask. And only because I don’t know.

The drive to Oliver’s is through a lot of the windy roads with very few streetlamps, the ones that give you time to think. A lot of times this annoys me, and I blast the radio and sing at the top of my lungs to keep my mind from spinning around with stupid shit like boys and homework and my parents. Tonight I don’t mind the silence. I have a lot to think about and, as worried as I am about Oliver, I don’t feel like avoiding any of it, particularly, at the moment.

I park to ring his doorbell, like a good date or whatever, but he comes prancing through the front door before I get a chance to open it. He really pulled out all the stops tonight, and he looks fantastic—some polka dot party dress, with a sash around an empire waist. I think he cut more of his hair off. It looks shorter and spikier than usual. He didn’t wear the falsies, so his whole body is smooth and flat underneath the dress. When he’s in girl’s clothes, I can really tell how thin he is, and it worries me.

“Ready?” he climbs into the passenger seat. His eyes are really done up tonight—smokey silver. I can’t seen any of the bruises on his face, and I wonder how many layers of cover-up he had to put on.

“Where are we going?”

“There is a gay pride festival at the park. I thought we might attend.”

I groan a bit. “I love how you’re always so sensitive to my needs when you plan our excursions.”

“Oh Etta. I’m sure you won’t be the only fag hag present.”

“Yeah, sure, except I’m looking for a boy. What do you call them?”

“Fag hogs?”

“Hogs are girls, Oliver.”

“I suppose those are the fat fag hags, then,”

I give him a look.

“Stop it,” he says. “You are not fat.”

“But some girls are, and I don’t appreciate your making digs at them when they’re not here. I don’t make fun of ugly gay people—”

“Bleh.”

“—homosexuals in front of you.”

“Yes, because that would be insensitive to the ugly homosexual present.”

I frown at him. “Never say that.”

He laughs and looks out the window. “All right, all right.”

He has a bottle of his premium vodka with him, and he sips while he goes through my CDs. “Little Shop of Horrors?” He makes a face.

“It’s a Broadway musical, Oliver.”

“Yes, so was Legally Blonde.” He rolls his eyes. “Little Shop of Horrors is…”

“Is what? I like it.”

“It’s no Heathers.”

“You’re no Heathers.”

“Fair enough, fair enough, though honestly I am not sure how accurate that statement is.” He examines his fingernails—repolished, I notice. “Little Shop is not dark. Little Shop is barely dusky. And it is a metaphor so broad that I find it has very little meaning. It is the most useless warning I have encountered in my large history of musical theater. And yes, upon thinking about it, I would like confirm that I do, indeed, believe that I could be Heathers.”

“It’s not a musical.”

“Yes, you have me there.”

“So put in something you like,” I say. “Whatever.” I don’t want to pick a fight with him tonight, and I’ve gotten too close already. Even though I know we’re just bantering, it’s making me nervous. I don’t want him to make him cry.

Until he puts in Wicked, and then I just want to put his head through my windshield.

I say, “God, Oliver, really?”

“What’s wrong with Wicked?”

“Nothing, except—all right, you want to talk metaphors?”

“Wicked is a metaphorical masterpiece, Etta.”

“Yeah, and Jesus Christ, it knows it. It’s so busy caressing its metaphors that it loses all hope of actual, you know, plot. Or—God forbid—character development.”

He rolls his eyes. “We are allowed to like different things, Etta.”

This burns like a slap in the face.

Scared

I've been putting off writing the next scene in All Together With Feeling because it's...well...intense. I have to be honest--it's going to be the most frightening and graphic scene I've ever written. And if you know my writing, you know that's saying something.

I'm worried it only seems so intense because I haven't written it yet. There are so many times, especially in 1st drafts, when I do something halfway because I'm afraid of going through with this. In this scene in particular, there are a million places I could back out and make the scene less than what it needs to be. I just hope I don't take any of those opportunities.

I'm going to try it tonight, I think.

I just don't know how to say it.

Ever had a similar problem? How did you push through and write a scene that scared you?