Hello, World!

Hi everyone! I'm back!

Sooo, spring semester kicked my butt, needless to say. It's finally done as of yesterday, and I'm really glad to be [hopefully] back to blogging on a regular schedule. No guarantees, as I'm taking a "Maymester" at my school, where I have classes running through the 21st of May, but...oh, I really hope it lasts, I miss blogging soooo much!

So to kick off this rebirth of my blog, I'd actually like to go through an author event I attended last night! I went to my local library and got to see Lisa McMann, author of Wake, Fade, and Gone. I haven't read the third, but I did read the first two and LOVED them.

So let's see, I got to the library around 45 minutes before the event started. I returned a few books and checked some more out (including one by David Levithan!). I killed some time until the event, and then spent a good deal of time trying to find the location of this classroom where the event was going to be held.

I did find it eventually, it was being held in one of the museum's classrooms (our library is attached to the natural history & art museums). That was kind of cute, since there was an adorable picture of a dinosaur on the whiteboard.

We started the event as soon as Boothy (!!!) got there. We got the lecture about the sponsors of the event (PPG Industries) and they talked about some of the other authors they had hosted, which included Ned Vizzini, Hank & John (!!!!), Maureen Johnson, Avi, and David Levithan. With that being said, the librarian, Karen Brooks-Reese, introduced Lisa McMann!

Yesterday was a chilly day in Pittsburgh, so she opened the event talking about how she is from Arizona, where they are enjoying nice 95 degree weather. I don't think I could have been any more jealous at that moment. She also talked about being in Pittsburgh 20 years ago, and remembering our iconic bridges.

Lots of the questions she took the time to answer have been talked about on website (which kind of bothers me, as I feel it could be time better spent, but whatever, apparently that's just me :P) We had the obligatory "Why are you a writer/how does one get published/I am desperate to become a writer even though I probably haven't even written a book yet tell me how to do it because I'm not original enough to figure it out myself!1!!one!!" questions. (Am I being irrationally snarky? Probably. Sorry. This is one of my biggest pet peeves though, those writing questions. Google. Use it, people.)

I'm sorry if you're familiar with Lisa McMann and some of this information is repetitive, but here's what she took the time to talk about:
-She got the idea for Wake from a dream she had, about being in her husband's dream. This was one of the few times she wrote and later read her notes about her dream and thought it was a really interesting concept that could be expanded upon.
-Her original idea involved spying on people's dreams for revenge, but she felt stuck with that plot thread, so she then went to the idea of what if this was uncontrollable, what if the person traveling through dreams didn't even want to be doing so? And from there we got the trilogy we now know!
-She went through and summarized the books, which I'm not going to do, since you can find those at a countless number of places.
-She read an excerpt of Wake.

-She addressed questions, based on a system of which question received the largest applause. The clear favorite was a question about most embarrassing moments. For those, she began with some audience stories to sort of break the ice. We heard stories about accidentally sitting on a classmates head, walking around school with split pants (a story where a girl was ratted out by her father who was also attending, no less!), and a story about two people literally colliding into each other while they were reading in the halls. McMann then segued into her own story, which was about being in English class, sitting in the back corner, sneezing, and having a bit of a snot problem, resulting in the nickname "Gort Snort", as Gort was her last name at the time. She also told a story about wearing a snap button shirt and having that yanked open accidentally by a person she strongly disliked.

She then took the time to discuss her covers. Apparently, she had no say over the Wake cover, but loved it anyways. For Fade, she was given "consultation rights", where she'd basically be asked her opinion, and whatever it was, it'd essentially be ignored, but she'd still be asked. This resulted in a little bit of pink being removed from the cover before publication. For Gone, she was actually given the option of taking pictures of any chairs she found interesting. What is now the cover of that book is actually a photo she took on her cell phone!

She got a question about how books get turned into movies as well as the general publishing process, which, again, Google if you're interested.

She talked a little bit about her early promotion process, and how she'd reach out to fans of paranormal YA before Wake got published, on MySpace. She'd friend-request people she thought might enjoy her book and told them a little bit about it, which she says went a long way.

She also said that Janie & Cabel's story has been told, and she doesn't at the moment plan on telling more.

She was asked about what she was currently working on, which was a good transition to her reading from her two upcoming novels. She's going to have two books out in 2011, a YA Paranormal entitled Cryer's Cross about a girl's disappearance and its aftermath, out in February. The other novel is a dystopian fantasy, due out in fall 2011. This one is about a society where strength and intelligence are valued in teens, and artistic and imaginative personalities are punishable by death.

The final question asked about her process for coming up with character names. For Janie, she was just looking for an ordinary sounding name. For Cabel, a boy in her son's 3rd grade class inspired that unusual name. She also brought up the sort of "Cain and Abel" feel it has. Sometimes she just hits the baby name books for ideas, the name of 'Kendall' in Cryer's Cross was actually auctioned off, and some names are given with intended meanings in mind.

We then lined up to get our books signed (everyone who attended got a copy of Wake and Fade for free, which was kind of awesome, even though I had brought my own copy of Wake). I talked to a young lady from University of Pittsburgh, who had JUST read Lisa McMann's books and had found out about the event literally half an hour before it occurred! So awesome :D I got my books signed and got to briefly talk to her, and also got a picture taken with her:


Anddd then I basically ran out of there, because I was too much of a coward to actually talk to Boothy. Which is pretty sad, since I've been wanting to meet him since the good old Meg Cabot Book Club days. Ah well. All in all, a pretty wonderful experience :)

Alright lovely readers, that's where I end this one. I can't wait to share my thoughts on some awesome new books with you all :) [Hint: Um. I really truly appreciate the heck out of Tiny Cooper, and I can't wait to fangirl all about it!] Talk to you all tomorrow!

Author Event--Lauren Myracle

SO.
Lauren Myracle visited the Squirrel Hill library in Pittsburgh tonight, and I got to go to my very first author visit! She was a fantastic storyteller :)
She started off talking about how she first started writing. She'd been writing since the 2nd grade, and loved it all through elementary school. In middle and high school, she got fed up with research papers and the like and the writing stopped, because the fun of it all went away. She started up again in college when she found out that Creative Writing was a major offered at UNC-Chapel Hill (where she went to school the same time as Sarah Dessen, and didn't even know it!). She joined a creative writing class, with a total of 14 students and Daphne the teacher. It wasn't until near the end of the class that Daphne let her students know that creative writing was a limited major and only a few people could take it. 12 students from the class could go on. 2 would not. Lauren and a girl affectionately termed Aphid Girl, who wrote stories from the point of view of an aphid, were the two. Aphid Girl did not want to go on in creative writing. Lauren did.
When she found this out, she went to her public library, to the children's section, her "safe place" and sat and read Ramona books, until realizing that she didn't have to major in creative writing in order to write.
After graduating, Lauren was fed up with her prep school life, and wanted a simplistic job. So while her friends went on to be lawyers and things of that nature, she ended up at Colorado Screw Factory, sorting screws into "good screws and bad screws."
She met a coworker at the Colorado Screw Factory who, when Lauren didn't know how to tell the good screws from the bad screws, helped her out. This co-worker never really read, and Lauren therefore took it upon herself to narrate stories to her. When her temp agency called and let her know there was a clerical job offered for her at a lumber factory, she let her coworker know she was leaving. The coworker was devastated; she wanted to know how the book ended! Lauren gave the coworker her copy of the book and told her to read and find out, and she never saw her again.
She worked at a nursing home for a while, where scenes from Bliss directly came from, dealing with things like walker fights and lost dentures. She loved the people there.
But all the while, she was frustrated. She wanted to be successful in writing. Her husband knocked some sense into her, saying that if she wanted to write, she should write. So she did.
Her first book, unpublished, was called Consider Yourself Lucky.
Before her first book was published, Lauren received 148 rejection letters. She's kept all of them in a folder and still has them all.
Then, Kissing Kate got published. It was based on her college roommate Amy, who called her after college and nervously came out. She was told to revise the book, but after 5 rewrites, it was taken and published. It was accepted for publication at age 29. As a child, she had told herself that if she hadn't been published by age 30, she would give up.
She wrote the Internet Girls series because she'd noticed that people in her generation had grown up talking on the phone, and the big thing was three-way calling. It was a challenge, but one obviously well accomplished.
Luv Ya Bunches was written as an answer to the complaints she was receiving from tween's parents, kids who wanted to read the Internet Girls books but were way too young for the content.
Kissing Kate did not get hate mail, surprisingly.
She went on to talk about Bliss a little bit, for which I was happy, as that is my favorite book of hers. Cool bit of trivia, the dot on the i on the cover of Bliss has a reflection at a window. It is the reflection of Chad, the cover's art director.
The title was written in chocolate syrup, and then photoshopped red to look like blood.
She ended the Q&A session talking about Luv Ya Bunches. She pointed out Tally the turtle on the cover, and teased saying, "Oh, you think [Katie-Rose] is mean to Max, wait until book two!"
She read an excerpt from Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks,
and then we all got free copies of her books!
I chose Let it Snow, as I had read it from the library but didn't have my own copy, and got to talk to her and got it signed. I babbled like an incoherent [but giggly] crazy person, and we talked about Maureen Johnson's trapezing and nerdfighting.