PRETTY PRETTY BANNER!

Brought to you courtesy of Suzanne Young--prolific novelist (can't wait to read the Naughty List!), blogger extraordinaire, and all-around good and helpful and generous person. I'm so excited about seeing her star rise--she deserves it!

I mean, seriously, how pretty is this banner?

Since starting in YA, I've met so many truly kind people--people who, despite having absolutely no reason to be nice to me, have been incredibly generous with their time and energy and intellect. Like, the other day Jay Asher emailed me just to say congratulations about the blurb I'd received from Carolyn Mackler. That bears repeating: Jay Asher emailed ME to congratulate me. I was like, "Um, yeah, congratulations on having a monster best-seller and being on a cross-country book tour yourself." Craziness.

My point is, it's really starting to chip away at the hardened and cynical views of human nature I have maintained (some would say as a defense mechanism) my whole life. Can I survive without them?? Stay tuned.

It's My Very First Time...

...In Publisher's Weekly!

The lovely Suzanne Young (whose book is also featured in PW's recent Spring 2010 Sneak-Peak line-up) pointed out to me yesterday that BEFORE I FALL also made the list. I'm so technologically inept I'm not even sure how to post a link in this blog, but I'll go ahead and try.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/ca6670704.html?q=spring+2010

That probably didn't work but hey...I'm a writer, not a programmer. :)

The point IS, being featured along with so many amazing books--including Suzanne's forthcoming THE NAUGHTY LIST, which I'd actually acquired before leaving my job at Penguin, making the whole thing sweeter (or more incestuous, depending on how cynical you are), and Carolyn Mackler's new book, TANGLED (speaking of tangled, ready for more bizarre YA convolution? Carolyn recently gave an incredible blurb to BEFORE I FALL!)--is thrilling, surreal, bizarre...and totally gratifying.

So yes. I am a PW virgin no longer. Hurrah!

The Joy of Editing

I only intend the title of this blog post to be half-sarcastic.

I've been in Portland, Maine for two weeks now, ostensibly doing research for my second book, which is set here (amazingly, I managed to write an entire first draft without even a basic geographical understanding of the city--woops!). Unfortunately I got slammed with a different editing project immediately after my arrival, so not only has my own work been delayed, I've been watching a series of glorious summer days drift by from the window of a dark coffee shop, where I am imprisoned from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. every day.

Sigh.

At least today I have time to do my own writing again. It never ceases to amaze me how anxious and unhappy I get when I don't write; it is the single thing that eclipses the feelings of anxiety and unhappiness I have to confront when I *do* write. What a strange and paradoxical profession.

I am including in this post a weekly roundup of the things I am liking this week, Portland-edition:

1. Coffee and toast at Arabica.

2. Friendly strangers, helpful waitstaff, smiling commuters. WTF?? We ain't in NYC anymore, Toto.

3. Dinner at Fore Street. Unreal.

4. Bunking with best friends.

5. Giggling with best friends over absolutely nothing/everything.

6. Running along the bay in glorious sunshine.

7. Long phone conversations with Philadelphia boys.

8. Kambucha cold tea.

9. Seagulls, and the way they drift overhead, seeming to float on currents of air, like a snow. Also, the sound of them: waking up to seagulls calling to each other might just be my favorite way to wake up.

10. The smell of the ocean, of course.

Things I am not liking, Portland-edition:

1. Waking up at 6:30 a.m. to input copyedits into a 210-page book.

2. Never being able to leave the house without running into several people you've recently been introduced to.

3. Having to return to NYC.

Things I am liking/not liking this week 7/5/09

Things I am liking:

1. Independence Day! Fireworks, burgers, and day-drinking? I'm in.

2. Portland, Maine.

3. Bridge To Terabithia...still makes me sob no matter how many times I read it.

4. Bonfires and S'mores.

5. Waking up to fog and the sound of seagulls.

6. Long runs down to the beach.

7. Rex Stout mysteries.

8. Being exhausted; sleeping.

9. Long giddy phone conversations with crushes.

10. Realizing while editing that your book is not as awful as you'd feared.

Things I am not liking:

1. Apartment hunting, remotely.

2. Procrastinating (but I'm doing it).

3. Persistent sore throats.