I'M ON AMAZON!

Yes, oh, yes—it’s true. A BLUE SO DARK is available for pre-order on Amazon!

Now, if that doesn’t make a girl feel like a real-live author, I don’t know what would…

A BLUE SO DARK COVER ART

I can officially start showing it off: the cover of A BLUE SO DARK!


...I'm absolutely ecstatic!

PICTURE THIS...

So I’m putting together our yearly calendar...for 2010, I'm using pictures of me and my brother, John, when we were little. This particular black-and-white is my shot for June…I’m thinkin’ it was taken by our next-door neighbor the summer before my first-grade year.

…Makes my ears fill with a Cyndi Lauper soundtrack just looking at it. Right about this time, I was obsessed with She's So Unusual (the first record I ever bought). Later that year, I even dressed up as Cyndi Lauper for Halloween!

I think I'll reclaim "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" as my personal anthem...

MY FIRST INTERVIEW!

I've been interviewed by Flux intern and fellow writer Weronika Janczuk...Check out the full interview, which contains a more in-depth synopsis of my latest sale, PLAYING HURT, on Weronika's blog!

I SOLD ANOTHER BOOK!

I’m ecstatic to announce that I sold my second YA novel, tentatively titled PLAYING HURT, to Flux Books!

PLAYING HURT follows the flowering of an intense summer romance between two former athletes who have both endured career-ending game-related tragedies. But by playing hurt—entering a love match with already-broken hearts—are they just setting themselves up for the kind of injury from which they could never recover?

…Stay tuned for juicy details…

HALLOWEEN CHECKLIST

Let’s see…black lipstick? Check. Blue undead serial-killing supermodel wig? Check. Outdoor “cemetery” decorations from every party, card, and hobby shop in town? Check. Window jack-o’-lanterns, plastic fangs, wads of spider webs? Check, check, check.

An oddly pumpkin-colored and—come on, admit it—demonic-looking sky, just in time for Halloween? Yeah, that’s a bonus.


Have a pus-filled, gory, ghastly Halloween, everyone! (Here, your ears fill with a wicked witch’s cackle…)

SEYMORE BONES

What? That’s his name. And the love of his life, Ima Dead, currently resides just one grave over. Their love affair was the stuff that long, sprawling songs are made of: “Frankie and Johnny,” or even Cash’s “Delia’s Gone”…the kind of thing that ends in cheating and gunshots…

At least, that’s what I tell people when they see the cemetery I’ve got out front, which gets a new headstone just about every single day…and don’t even get me started on the backstory I invented for Frank N. Stein, who’s the newest addition to the graveyard, chains, bashed-in skull and all…

…I mean, you can’t expect a writer to just turn off her story-telling when she gets up from her desk, now, can you?

I'M A BOOK COOK!

Okay, so I’m not exactly going to be in the running for Top Chef anytime soon, but fellow ’10 YA debut novelist Holly Cupala graciously included me in her clever blog series Book Cooks (writers dishing on their forthcoming books and favorite recipes). She posted my super easy recipe for Coffee Jelly yesterday!

Check it out at Holly's blog!

HARVEST MOON HEAVEN

We’ve enjoyed a harvest moon in the area as of late—that full moon closest to the autumnal equinox, whose light once gave farmers the opportunity to work well into the night, hauling in their crops…

All I can say is that farming isn’t the only work a harvest moon can foster. Something about the first chill of autumn makes me want to brew an extra pot of coffee and work on my new manuscript long after sunset hues like these have faded away…

THANK YOU, BANNED BOOKS

…I mean it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Without writers with the guts to push the envelope, our literary landscape would be flat and always green…the kind of surroundings that, while pretty, could completely put you to sleep on a long drive…

I'VE GOT A THING FOR RUST

...And tarnish, and yellowed sheet music. Chipped book jackets. Scuffed piano benches. Antique glass so old, it’s turned purple. Cracked celluloid mirrors. Trunks with broken hinges. Faded plastic beads in clip-on earrings. Once-upon-a-long-long-time-ago buildings like this old mill…

I’ll admit, it’s not just the rust I love, but the history that comes with it. I like to pick up an object knowing that it’s got its own story to tell…and the rust, the dust, the tarnish, the cracks? They’re like the opening sentences in a thick, juicy novel…

FOUND POEM

Poet Omar Khayyám (with his “Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough”) has got nothin’ on this picnic table carver, who is obviously the true master of turning any afternoon picnic into a romantic interlude.




Ah, the poetry of modern-day life…maybe not exactly Khayyám’s “Paradise enow,” but at least it’s good for a laugh…

WHAT THE...?????

When did kid and criminal become synonyms? People around here can tell me all they want that security like this is simply for a student’s own good (this photo was taken in the parking lot of a local middle school), but really, doesn’t this just sting of complete and total distrust?

…Makes my own junior high years look completely unrestricted by comparison.

MILES TRAVELED

So I’m getting rid of the car I’ve had since college…cleaning it out was like an episode of This Is Your Life.

Sedimentary layers in the glove compartment and under the front seats contained ancient parking permits, faded receipts, a long-forgotten villanelle written for a poetry course, and a couple of notes from old friends: “Hey—I’m home from work. Come on over.” (Remember the pre-cell phone days when you stuck notes under windshield wipers??) Not to mention broken guitar picks, squeaky dog toys, hand-knitted winter hats, and paperbacks I read at lakeshores…and even a few scraps of paper I used to plot out my earliest attempts at novels, right out of grad school.


It’s just stuff—but really, it’s also the triumph of graduation, the heartbreak of friends that scatter like dandelion seeds, the thrill of new creative ideas that have to hit paper before the front wheels hit the driveway on my return home…

In a way, it really does feel like one of life’s chapters has come to an end…but it also feels like I’m standing right smack in the middle of the first paragraph of a new chapter...like I’m a little girl reading past her bedtime, hunkered down under the covers with a flashlight, anxious to find out what happens next.