Website up!

As soon as I pony up the money, this blog is going to automatically redirect to the blog at my NEW WEBSITE OMG YOU GUYS! So change your RSS feed and head on over to the new site: there’s a FAQ with both serious and bizarre questions, and if you check out the About the Site page you’ll see that there are some cool things coming. Also, don’t forget about The A Team–Joanna posted yesterday and we’ve had a big couple of weeks with book news that we’re almost ready to share, plus I’ll probably put up a post about copy edits when I get them next week, but this week I plan to post about the site and how we went from this blog to that thing of beauty, so stay tuned.

Say sayonara to this and hello to that!

A-Team post

Hey guys, I’ve finally put up my A-Team post for this week. It’s a Friday Five, not publishing or writing oriented, unless you count my ramble about The Decemberists’ new album as having something to do with the idea of narrative. Calc-u-later! (Shoot me.)

New post up at A-Team and other random things

This post actually went up last night, but I forgot to put a link to it here. Now I did! Go read it and come back, I’ll wait.

Okay, so I’m officially done with AUT revisions. That is a sweet, sweet thing to be able to write. I sent my revised manuscript to my editor via email on Monday (this was the second round), and God bless her she’d had the whole thing read by Wednesday afternoon, when she emailed me with three questions/clarifications. It took me about fifteen minutes to do those and shoot back an email on Thursday morning, and by the afternoon she’d sent an email saying that the ms was going to copyediting early next week.

Now it’s time to start working on something new…

LOL “working on something new”! Since my editor expressed interest in seeing MB after AUT went to copyedits, and since I told her that MB was “ready” (check out that diction choice–notice I didn’t say “finished” or “done” because I know there’s probably some rough revision time ahead of me), now I have to make sure that it is ready. I mean, I think it is, since I sent it to J in October and she sent me an editorial letter of things to change back and I made most of those changes, but it could still use a once- or twice-over, since I haven’t really worked on it seriously since November. That’s what this weekend is about. And then something new!

The annoying thing about “something new” is that I have two books on the docket (is that the correct usage of the word “docket”? Probs not) and my brain likes to alternate between them as if it expects to work on them at the same time, which, let me tell you, brain, ISN’T GOING TO HAPPEN. Pick a side! For now I’ve been going with it, but that’s going to need to change soon if I want to be at all productive.

It’s business time

• First of all, this, JIC you didn’t catch the reference. I’m not the world’s biggest Flight of the Conchords fan, but this is pretty funny. Also, “Jenny”.
• Second of all, I have a new post up at The A Team. Go read it!
• Third of all, sorry my posts have been kind of lame (although very informational, right?) this week–like I said over at The A Team, I’m in the midst of revising AUT according to a deeply line-edited manuscript I picked up from my editor last week. As a result, I spend all day staring at a computer screen at my day job, then I go home, eat dinner, and spend two or three more hours staring at a computer screen, typing in changes and threatening to kill Microsoft Word’s track changes feature. So, I’m tired and cranky and headachey. But I’m over halfway done, so hopefully I’ll finish this weekend. Next stop for AUT after that: copy edits.
• Fourth of all, I’m 9,176 days old today according to this handy calculator which I found via fellow Tenner Irene Latham. Fun fact!
• Fifth of all, I gave up Diet Coke for Lent. This will not go well.
• Sixth of all, my friend Eric is taking me to IKEA this weekend so I can get a damn bookshelf, which I badly need because, as I told my mom a couple of days ago, all the books in my room are a hazard to my health. I’m pretty sure someday one of the huge stacks I have will topple over and smother me to death. Also, I need a new dresser, because the bottoms are falling out of the drawers in my current dirt cheap IKEA model. Sigh.
• Seventh of all, I’ve been watching a lot of 30 Rock while I work and before bed and so have had two dreams about Liz Lemon recently. In one of them, she and Pete Hornberger were buying a house in my friend Kim’s parents’ neighborhood.
• Eighth of all, Gossip Girl has been renewed for another season! This is such good news! I call for rejoicing in the streets! All men should wear ascots and purple velvet jackets in honor of this truly momentous occasion!

Over at A Team

You know the drill: I’m over at the A Team blog today with my very first Friday Five.

New post up at the A Team blog

I think the title of this post says it all, but I have a new post up at The A Team Blog, talking about the work I’m doing on GR (my option book) and also finally revealing for the first time on the interwebs the actual title of MB, my second book being published by Delacorte. You know, I never really meant to keep it a secret, but I’ve always been unsure of the title in the sense that I wasn’t certain it was going to stick around (I’m afraid there might be some kind of trademark problem, in which case I have an alternate, albeit less cool, title for the book). And it seemed a bit silly to abbreviate it over at that blog, which is supposed to be a bit more professional than this one. So yeah. How revelatory of me. Checkitowt!

Because I haven’t talked about it enough

I’m over at The A Team today, blogging (whining) about my favorite subject: revisions! Check out J’s latest post as well.

As for me, I’m feeling pretty good about the work I’m doing. As I mention over at The A Team, I haven’t been doing a whole lot recently, except tweaking MB in preparation to turn it in to my editor. But recently (in the last few days) I’ve switched gears, and now instead of living in MB in my head, I live in GR. I’ve started writing the synopsis and made some big choices about POV and the little details that make a story a story have started to creep in. It’s all very exciting and new and gorgeous and I feel really good about it, which means in about three months I will probably think it’s the worst thing I’ve ever written. So get ready for that!

The world just got a little more blog

Now, I know my audience. Most of y’all just come here for the Twilight talk, and I respect that. I also exploit it. HOWEVER! I have to imagine that some of you, if only a little slice of my readership, are writers, possibly aspiring, possibly newly contracted, possibly published, although that might be flattering myself.

Anyway, I talk about my amazing agent Joanna sometimes, so you know who she is. A couple of months ago she emailed me and asked if I wanted to start a blog with her about the trials, tribulations and triumphs of debuting into the vast YA universe. I said yes, of course, because I can’t stop talking and what is a blog but a vessel for endless chatter? So we’re doing it.

Or, rather, we’ve done it! The A Team, which stands for agent and author (because we’re clever like that), launched today with J’s first post, with my first post to follow soon. I don’t know at this time how different the content will be, and I’ll always let you know if there’s a post on The A Team with information not on this blog, but I won’t be cross-posting. My instinct is to say that The A Team will be more publishing focused, but I can’t promise we won’t get on every once and a while with some thoughtsicles about TV or movies or that sort of thing. Plus, I plan to do a lot of in-depth talking about AUT, because, at least for this year, the blog is all about AUT in a sense. So come visit us there!

Meanwhile, I’ve started working on GR because I think MB is almost ready to go. I’m trying out Scrivener, which seems to be good so far, although there don’t seem to be any formatting options? The learning curve is a little steep for me right now, but I’ll probably eventually teach myself to use it, and GR is a good book to do some experimentation on. Wish me luck! And if you’re familiar with Scrivener, give me tips.