Category: books

How long do you keep old drafts?

6 Comments

Got a question for y’all. When do you recycle (meaning throw out) old drafts? If you keep them, how do you store them and/or organize them?

I looked into my closet and I’ve got 3 plastic tubs of printed drafts for my 3 (Eeep! I’ve written three!) books and a couple of postal boxes with newer drafts. I’m definitely keeping all of my edit letters and drafts my editor or agent have sent me, but what about the drafts in between? Do you hold onto those until the book is an ARC and then toss them? Or not.

I’m not sure.

I do know I want to keep the first draft of each book. But the other stuff I probably don’t need. Hmm.

If I can remember, I’ll try to post what book I’m reading at the end of every entry.

Today, I’m reading Wish You Were Here (HarperTeen) by Catherine Clark. Great so far! I love the postcard entries in the book.

Books on my Wow! list

4 Comments




The List of Wow! books

I’m back! Wow, the week flew by. I was B-U-S-Y with Chasing Blue and made an attempt to get through my humongous reading pile. But…I was sidetracked. By Eclipse. Yeah. In my reading pile for this week are the books I meant to get through last week:

Lock and Key–Sarah Dessen
Letters from the Heart (Beacon Street Girls)–Annie Bryant
Legally Blonde–Amanda Brown

I’ve realized over the past week that the Twilight series are Wow! books for me. This is all subjective, of course. What makes a Wow! book for me might not make one for you. The list of Wows! are small and I don’t add to it often. I’m not naming authors who are Internet friends, but authors I DON’T know who are on the Wow! list are J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, Kate Brian and Sara Gruen.

I define a Wow! book as a book that:

* makes me laugh, cry, or have heart palpitations
* makes me slip into my “screech monkey voice” (thanks, Jason) that I use when I’m super-excited about something and am telling someone else about it
* forces me to run to my computer and get back to work with hopes of one day writing a Wow! book
* keeps me up at night thinking about the book’s Wow! qualities

Why did I name the four above authors?

J.K. Rowling

Given, right? Maybe not for the reasons you might think. Yes, I absolutely ADORE Harry & Co. I could reread the books a million times (I’m inching toward that!) and never tire of them. The pacing of the plot is why I love J.K. Is there ever a dull moment in HP? Nope. Did she get millions of kids hooked on reading? Yes. She’s the Plot Queen and I bow to her mad skills. 😉

But I also feel linked to her even more now after watching her speech at Harvard’s graduation. We have an insanely similar background (it’s quite freaky, actually) and I admire her open attitude about things she’s gone through and how that propelled her writing. That’s for another post, but from one writer to another, she has personally inspired me in many ways.


Stephenie Meyer

As I read Eclipse last night, I paid attention to how I reacted to different elements in the story. I realized Eclipse evokes a PHYSICAL reaction from me. Wow! factor material. How many books do that? Not many. Waiting for the final installment is torturous! It’s one of the few series where I’d go stand in the pouring rain until midnight to get a copy.

Kate Brian

Kate’s Private series is the first YA series I read that has all of the elements that intrigue me–boarding school, mystery, mean but smart girls and love. Hot guys, too, but I can’t use THAT as my sole Wow! factor. 😉

Kate’s the Teen Queen of Cliffhangers and I’ve learned so much from reading her books. I’m always the last one to crack the mysteries, by the way.


Sara Gruen

As a horsey writer, I appreciate the detail to the equestrian world, the realistic view of competing and running a stable and the lack of equine related mistakes in the text. From what I’ve read, Sara is a huge animal lover and that comes across on the page. Riding Lessons and Flying Changes infuse horses with love, relationships, family and loss–both animal and human. Those books are up there in my Wow! list along with my other adult horse favorite–The Horse Whisperer. I hope that if I every try adult horse fiction that I’m able to capture some of the spirit that made me love Sara’s books.

So, what’s a Wow! book for you?

Weekend reads–share yours!

4 Comments

So, I’ve got a dilemma. My pile of weekend must reads is very large. My weekend reading time? Slim for the next couple of months. But on writing breaks, I’ve got what sound like fantastic reads.

My choices?

THE SCHOOL FOR COOL (The Social Experiments of Dorie Dilts) by PG Kain
THE HOST–the second weekend in a row…
HOME by Julie Andrews (I could just break into song right now)
PRINCE CASPIAN (I haven’t seen the movie yet)

and

RIDING LESSONS by Sara Gruen (I read this book once and had a rare WOW reaction, so I want to read it again.

That’s my weekend book pile that I’ll be shuffling around and trying to read as much as I can before next week’s pile pops up.

What’s on your weekend reading list?

Happy Sex and the City Day!! (I wanted pink, but alas, there is none.)

Chasing Harry Winston and holiday

1 Comment

The holiday weekend was great! I got a lot of little things done such as updating my Website that I’m building and writing an essay. We were hoping to go to the beach, but our beach was closed when 40 people got caught in rip tides and one guy died. Scary.

Instead, I tore through my TBR pile and finished an outline. I’m STILL working my way through THE HOST. I put it down for a couple of days and hope to resume reading it today. I started rereading Twilight for the first time yesterday. It’s fun now that I know what to expect!

We also finished painting, yay! I would insert pics here except, well, I accidentally deleted them when I was taking video for a new Diary of a Debut Author Segment for next month. Urg.

I’m also verrrry excited because Lauren Weisberger’s new book CHASING HARRY WINSTON comes out today. Eee! Lauren did a video for S&S and you can check it out here: http://www.bookvideos.tv/videoid/1145.

Note to self: try to look as chic on camera as Lauren in my next Diary of a Debut Author vid…and damn, the Tallahassee skyline won’t look near as cool at the NYC shot in this video. 🙂

How was everyone’s holiday weekend?

Waiting for the VIQ response

5 Comments

Veerry busy today. I’m working an outline (and cooking up evil mean girl tricks for a book…) and writing an article for Children’s Writer. Yep, that big batch of queries I sent out at the end of April is starting to come back. Trickling, thankfully, but still coming. I’ve got a few windows open on my protesting laptop and am switching back and forth between the article, my outline and Dreamweaver for the new Website I’m designing for fall launch.

I got the SCBWI LA summer conference brochure yesterday. The line up looks fantastic! Wow. It’s neat to “know” so many people on the speaking list and it sounds like it’ll be a blast. Is anyone going? The date doesn’t look as if it’ll work for me, but I’ll be reading lots of attendees’ blogs to get the scoop.

I started blogging today as a distraction to keep myself from chasing down the mailman. I sent a VIQ (very important query) to a big, glossy teen mag about a month ago and I’m trying not to check the mail the second it is put into the box. The mailman prob thinks I’m a stalker because yesterday I almost took the mail from his hands to see if my VIQ had a response.

*dashes off to mailbox*

Miley Cyrus to pen memoir

12 Comments
OMG, it’s Hannah Montana!

Yahoo! has a headline from yesterday that Miley Cyrus is writing a memoir. Okay, okay, she’s only 15 but she probably has quite a lot to tell. Maybe. I’m guessing.

Disney-Hyperion is publishing the book and it will release in spring 2009.

I’m neutral on the topic, I guess. It’ll be interesting to see if she’s an even bigger star in 2009 or if she has faded like many of the young stars. (Um, Hillary Duff, where are you?)

I haven’t read many memoirs. After the James Frey debacle, I did start to look at them in a different way. But I also don’t want to skip a genre just because one guy screwed up.

Would you ever write a memoir? I’d love to years from now. I’ve published lots of personal experience essays and I’m glad I’ve logged the big moments from my life in print. I’ll always have that and it’s almost like a public diary of sorts. Over the summer and fall, when I’m in between books, I’ll be working on querying more magazines with personal experience pieces and hope I can keep sharing bits and pieces of the different things I’ve been through with others. 🙂

So, would you read the Miley memoir? Or would the wondering if it’s mostly ghost-written bother you? Read the article here.

Books you’ve written meme

4 Comments

Good guesses from yesterday! It was fun to read them and I promise to reveal very soon! 🙂

There’s a meme floating around and I read it on Melissa Marr and Sarah Prineas’s blogs. You’re supposed to list every book you’ve ever written and when. I’ll give it a shot.

Freshman 15 (November 2006) This was a YA novel that I wrote in 30 days during NaNoWriMo. It became High Jumps at Collins Academy which later turned into Take the Reins. With this novel, I snagged Agent A in January 2007, it went on submission in May 2007 and sold in May 2007. This was the first book I’d ever written and boy, it showed! 🙂

Untitled YA (started May 2007 and abandoned it until December 2007) I started this YA while waiting to hear back from editors when Take the Reins was on submission. It’s a fun, sexy YA set in Wyoming. During Christmas break while I was in between edits for Canterwood Crest, I finished this book.

Chasing Blue (December 2007-January 2008). This is the second MG book in the Canterwood Crest series. I was worried about how I’d know how much back story to put into the second book, but I think I got it. 🙂

Untitled YA (started February 2008). This YA is completely different than my other books. Not a horse in sight. Anywhere. I’m working on this when I’m not working on Canterwood and it’s fun to switch back and forth from YA to MG.

So, those are the books I’ve finished or am currently working on. If you want to do this meme, consider yourself tagged!

Books and TV Randomness

3 Comments

Book Bit

Last weekend, I started reading The Other Boleyn Girl since I thought the movie trailers looked so good. The film hasn’t done incredibly well at the box office, but I like the actors. I haven’t seen the film yet, but the book… W-O-W.

For the past year, I’ve been reading mostly YA with some MG thrown in. I haven’t read many adult novels and if I did, I read that and a YA at the same time. I hadn’t read an adult novel that gripped me recently. Until TOBG.

I also haven’t read many historicals. But I should. Especially if there are other historicals as sizzling as this.

TV Time

Anyone else watching Dancing with the Stars? If so, you probably correctly predicted, as did I, that Penn and Monica would leave. No big shocker there! Penn’s attitude bugged me. A lot. But Monica really tried hard! I thought Adam Corolla had a shot at leaving last night, but he’s sticking around.

On the guys, I love Steve G. for purely sentimental reasons. I watched him a lot as a kid.

Marissa Jaret Winokur makes me smile for the girls as does Kristy Y. If the winner was solely declared on dance talent, Kristy could win right now.

What are you watching and/or reading?

* Thanks to everyone who commented on my new movie! I appreciate it! 🙂

Whatcha reading now?

9 Comments

Just a reminder–Kat, I need your name and address by tomorrow morning for the SA Harazin giveaway! E-mail it to me. Thanks!

What is everyone reading right now? I just finished FRENEMIES (ARC) by Alexa Young. Such a fun, good book! Before that, I read Sara Zarr’s SWEETHEARTS. If Sara published a book a month, I’d get each one. 🙂

I’m getting ready to read THE FICTION CLASS, an adult novel, and then I have to see what’s next in my pile.

Share your current read!