Teaser Tuesday: #WIPfire: COULD BE WORSE

Yesterday's Links: The In Case You Missed it Edition

Tuesday seems like as good a day as any to do some #WIPfire-ing. A little self-indulgent, perhaps, but I feel like sharing today. It's a wedding and a funeral. More specifically, a wedding with a funeral flashback courtesy our protagonist, Graylyn Stephens.

Mock-up cover, for fun and inspiration

For reference, here's the twitter pitch for my unpublished manuscript, COULD BE WORSE:

An unlucky quality assurance rep, tired of landing in pot holes & hospital beds, turns to x-sports to prove her bad luck is gone for good.

Amyson is nothing if not a hopelessly corny romantic. The snow-draped conifers wear white just for her. She makes her entrance up the milky walkway as guests sit in fabric-covered metal chairs on either side, open to the biting breezes. Natural pine fragrance tickles my nose, and fresh air fills my thirsty lungs. I almost forget the cold.

A sweet bridal smile graces Amyson’s face. Completing the moment, two men on either side of her release ivory-winged doves, which I am fairly certain are taking the opportunity to escape their handlers and fly south for the winter. They rise up, up, up, vanishing into the last snowfall of the season.

Standing fourth down in a line of bridesmaids, I shiver through the organ music. (Really, how did they get that pipe organ out here?) But when the vows begin, I listen faithfully and force my bare arms to stay still at my sides. Amyson holds the lily bouquet to her heart, frail arms covered in white gloves up to her bicep, white faux fur trimming the sleeves so that no space remains exposed. The same trim curves round her neck, topped with pearls that glow in the winter sun. She is the princess of the forest. A dark, snow-covered veil of trees spreads out at her back forever. I won’t say I feel like one of her subjects. I mean, at least I am not sitting on the metal chairs. At the very least I am a member of her inner circle.

Jeff does sit, squirming on a metal chair in the fifth row back. I find his eyes and lift my eyebrows to him. My unspoken question is answered with a wrinkle of his nose and a wink. He’s taking his discomfort with good humor.

As Henderson and my sister exchange magical, binding words on this March morning, I wish I could say my heart flutters or that I suddenly become open again to adventure and romance. In spite of the adventures I’ve already had in the past two days, my heart feels tighter than ever. I can feel myself cocooning.

Jeff came to the wedding on a whim, almost on a dare. I see it in his eyes sometimes, this playfulness that promises only reckless endangerment. What have I gotten myself into? When we go back to Chicago, him to his busy law firm and me to the Classifieds, will I be forgotten? Am I his vacation from a life he means to continue without me?

This is why my mom said never to attend a wedding with a casual date. It brings up thoughts and feelings of commitment prematurely. And that can ruin a good thing before it has a chance to get off the ground.

Get off the ground. Perhaps that’s a bad metaphor for a couple who jumped out of an airplane on their first date.

I have to remind myself I barely know Jeff, all our talk of years-in-a-day notwithstanding.

The expression of peace and wholeness on Amyson’s face tugs at my tightly closed heart. Shivers run up my arms. Her breezy happiness touches parts of my soul that haven’t been aired out in a decade.


The luncheon passes in a blur of old friends and distant relatives whom I haven’t seen since my parents’ funeral. Just seeing their faces brings back the darkness of that week:

Amyson has locked herself in her room again, refusing to see anybody but me. It’s more than awkward facing my great aunt and uncle, strangers to me, and answering their questions, bearing their unsolicited advice as they judge every action I take on my parents’ behalf. I know I’m doing something wrong, forgetting some crucial bit of etiquette in funeral planning. To own the truth, I don’t care a bit.

“You need to have the flowers sent to the reception hall after the graveside service, so people can take them home,” Aunt Lisa says.

“Okay,” I say, wiping cracker crumbs from the kitchen counter. I’ve already seen the out-of-date will and my parents’ accounts, and I know this will be our last week living in our house. Funeral flowers are the last thing on my mind.

“Leave the poor girl alone, Lisa,” Uncle Fate tells her. “We’re here to help in any way you need it, Gray.”

“It’s Lyn,” I snap. “And we’re fine. I can take care of everything.” I know he’s trying to be kind, but I can’t bear sympathy from strangers who seem to think they have a say in what happens to my parents’ bodies. Bodies. Ashes.

“You don’t have to do everything, child,” Uncle Fate protests. “That’s why we’re here. You’re young. You’ve barely begun school. We can take Amy in until she’s an adult.”

“No!” My forehead feels hot. I wipe it with the back of my hand and shake the crumbs from the rag into a spotless sink. I’ve been cleaning nonstop since…

“Maybe this isn’t the best time to talk about this,” Aunt Lisa says. “We can come back in a week.”

“We won’t be here in a week,” I say. “I’m taking Amyson to my apartment in the city. We can’t afford to keep the house, and I already have the apartment anyway. Amyson needs me right now, not…” I trail off. It’s a miracle my frazzled mind retains any semblance of courtesy, but I stop myself before I say outright what I’m thinking. WE DON’T NEED YOU. GO AWAY.

Despite my restraint, my great aunt and uncle get the point. They’re gone the day after the funeral, flowers in hand. I hate them for leaving my parents’ funeral with a souvenir, a memento, like we were a stop on their tour of the Great Lakes. I hate them for offering to help when nothing anybody could do would ever make it right. I hate them for abandoning me to go it alone. Totally alone.

I knock on Amyson’s door. “Sweetie, please open up. Everybody’s gone. I need to see your face. Please.”

Her sniffles pause, and for a moment I think she might just open the door and let me in. Then a whimper takes over where the sniffles left off, and she’s muffling her sobs into the pillow once more. I turn around and sink to the floor, the door at my back.

Whipping out my cell phone, I dial the only number I know will bring my baby sister back to me. I call Charlie.

Checking In 2-5-13

Here's my progress with the three major writing projects I've got going. To some of you, this looks like a walk in the park. Maybe others think it looks like too much to be doing at once. The nice thing about the middle one is that I'm sharing the fun with my sister/co-writer, Aubrey. She doesn't have a writing blog yet, but if/when she gets one, you can bet I'll be sending you in her direction regularly. She's awesome.

So I probably end up writing on the joint project (time travel YA) about once a week, if that. Even so, our progress has been steady and I'm proud of where we are now. Halfway point! Woot!

The MG Superhero rewrite has been a challenge. I'm enjoying it, but I'm also worrying over it a fair bit. See, I've already written this novel once -- it turned out all lighthearted and cute (until the end). This time I'm writing post-WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL, and I think I know what it needs to make it truly awesome:

Worldbuilding. I'm focusing on that part much more this time around, giving my characters' towns history, larger conflict, and fun details. The trick with worldbuilding for me is consistency. It's so easy for me to forget about some little detail I once mentioned and meander my way into a plot hole. Right now I'm working on the fuzzy middle bit. Well, to be clear, it's the beginning of the fuzzy middle bit, so I've quite a ways to go. Once I solve the problem I'm facing right now (like building a bridge from one side to another), I'll be able to get back on track in my outline.

The NA Contemp piece is kind of my writer candy right now. I've never written anything strictly contemporary - no paranormal elements at all. Well, unless you count bad luck. But I don't. So this is new for me, and I'm being a bit self-indulgent with it, actually including some of my own life experiences (fictionalized beyond recognition, of course). I haven't hit an 'oh, crud' moment in this one yet, so it's all Cloud 9 beautiful.

What are you working on today? 

Just for fun, here's a clip of my newest project:

I wake up in a tangle of smelly sheets with tiny pink flowers on a sea of white. I lift my head a quarter of an inch, but the shooting scream running up the back of my neck drops it back to the stiff pillow. I know exactly where I am. It's the Joyce Mercy Medical Center on 9th street. It's the closest one to Spencer's building, and the one I came to when I slipped on ice at the soup shop down the block and got a concussion. That was when we first got together -- maybe the third date. And that was when it all started downhill. Perhaps it was my bad luck that turned him off. Or maybe it was the sex thing even then. Most guys seem to think third dates are some kind of magic number. Sometime somebody told them a fairy tale about a guy who propositioned a girl three times and on the third time she turned into a sex goddess and gave him everything he wanted. And we females just go along with the fairy tale instead of telling our boyfriends that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Sex Fairy Goddess don't really exist. The fact that I can't even lift my head to find a clock aggravates me. And I want Spencer to come running through the door, apologize for being a dickhead (almost literally), and say he didn't mean it. Just so I can have the pleasure of dumping him. That's how much my neck hurts. 

Movies that One-up Me: Inception

I wrote a book in 2008 during Nanowrimo, right after I finished reading the Twilight Saga. It wasn't the first book I'd written (actually, the third), but it was my first attempt at a stand-alone science fiction novel. And it was my first attempt at 1st person storytelling, which is really a whole other animal.

I loved my premise! It was a fresh take on something that had been done: dream walking.

I loved my protagonist. He was an anti-social, comic book-obsessed, novel-writing savant with crippling anxieties and a brilliant imagination: the key to his unique position for saving the world.

But my plot was weak. At 27, I still consider myself a new novelist, one learning the craft. I think I've written some interesting books, but I'm not one of those writers who thinks everything she writes is perfect genius. I know it is not. So a book I wrote two years ago is bound to have plenty of story flaws, and this one definitely does.

I recently printed it out so I could read it straight through and figure out just what it needs. It's been sitting on my computer desk, a huge mound of literary fail, for a couple of weeks now as I work on other things: my latest YA paranormal romance, social networking, blogging, raising kids. I've been meaning to get to it, but there are too many good uses of my time competing against it.

A few nights ago, my husband called over to me from the couch: "When you have a minute, you should watch this trailer for Inception. It reminds me of your Neurosurfer book."

From that statement alone, I knew.

"Oh great," I said. "There goes another great idea." (great, great, great) The book I've been sitting on for years has just been one-up-ed by the movie world. After watching the trailer, I knew it even more:

My plot-weak, high-concept book has just been trumped. And that means that if I ever try to get it published, I'll have to compete--not just with other books about mental travel, but with a universally-loved, mind-titillating thriller.

Fan-freaking-tastic! :-)

I'm not bitter. Seriously, I'm not. It's just one of those facts of life I've come to accept. If I sit on a high-concept idea too long, it will be done...and better than I can presently do it. There are only so many ideas floating around in the universe. As a child, I thought it was insane that an animator could have thought up the exact same idea as me about the mud-crack world of ants and other bugs.

Now it makes perfect sense.

High concepts are meant to be twisted, redone, and shared with the world. Sitting on them is not an option. The universe's collective creativity is far greater than any one man or woman! Which is wonderful, really! But now I have a daunting decision to make. Do I ditch the 80,000 words I've slaved and anguished over for so long? Or do I read through it one more time to see if I can make it something wholly fresh? After all, my writing has grown by leaps and bounds since its first writing. It is possible to save this novel. But with Inception creating a new bar for mental thrillers, can my more literary science fiction offering really compete?

I give the conundrum to you, my faithful readers. I'm too close to it to decide. Please send your advice in the comments.

Heartbreak: a glimpse at my WIP

Gabe

Sweet Sixteen

The park gazebo sparkled with strings of icicle lights, white light against white paint. In fading daylight, the effect was charming. I wiped the sweat off my nose, scrambling off the ladder to reach my phone in time. Suits and summer don’t mix well. Sara’s “Never Without You” ringtone was almost through, and I ached to hear her voice again.

“Hey birthday girl, where are you?” I smiled into my phone.

“Hi babe, we’re at Prue’s house. She just finished my hair for tonight.”

A five-foot string of lights slipped off its nail and sagged, breaking my concentration. “Great, sweetie. I’m just about done with your surprise. Can I pick you up in fifteen minutes?”

“Umm, sure.” Even distracted by faulty decorations, I heard the waver in her voice.

“Is everything alright, Starlight?”

“Yeah,” she said, too fast, her voice higher than usual.

I chalked it up to nerves. It’d been two years since we first saw each other at the Fall Fair—a cheesy first meeting in line at the Ferris wheel. To be honest, I was only standing there because of a stupid dare. Brody bet I wouldn’t toss my drink from the top. Juvenile, I know, but we were fifteen back then. Sara was a year younger, but always more sophisticated.

Brody got his ten bucks, and I got Sara.

Two years later we still hadn’t kissed…I mean, not really kissed. Her parents were super strict. She wasn’t even allowed to date, technically, but we found ways around that. Tonight the sneaking ended. She was sixteen now, old enough to hold hands in public, go on full-fledged dates, and call me boyfriend—even in front of her regimented parents.

“Don’t worry,” I almost whispered. “Everything will be perfect. First, your surprise. Then, the party will really start. Can’t wait to see you.”

“Me, too,” she said. The line went dead.

That was sudden. Maybe I’m making her nervous with all the build-up to her surprise. I shrugged it off and got back to work. The errant lights back in place, I stood back to survey my art.

Several of the swooping lights looped lower than the rest.

I’m a musician, not an artist.

It still looked awesome against the coming darkness. Sara will be blown away.

After a quick call to Brody to check on the status of the rock band we hired, I stopped by my house to pick up my clarinet. Dorky, I know, but Sara thought it was cool. Granted, her reasoning was a little off (“It sounds just like a saxophone.”), but at least she didn’t think I was a dork for playing in the woodwinds section.

Prue’s house was the only purple house on the block.

“It’s lavender, Gabe,” she insisted when I pointed this out years ago.

“Okay, Prue. Whatever floats your boat.”

Prue never liked me much, but Brody wasn’t bonkers about Sara, either. We weren’t dating each other’s friends, so it wasn’t usually an issue.

Before I could knock, the door swung open. Prue, Tara, and Sara stood waiting in Three-Musketeers formation, smiling except for Sara.

“Hello, ladies. Might I borrow fair Sara for an hour?” I winked at her friends, who rolled their eyes at my sentence structure.

Cheerleaders. Sara was one of them, but I didn’t hold it against her. She, at least, knew charm when she heard it.

She took my arm and looked back at her friends with a strange mixture of regret and excitement. “See you guys at the party.”

“Good luck,” Tara called after her. Prue elbowed her in the shoulder. “What?” Tara whined, rubbing her arm.

I didn’t comment to Sara about her bizarre choice in friends. Tonight was all about making her feel like a goddess.

“So what’s my surprise?” she asked once we were on the road.

I shook my head. “Like I’m going to blow it when we’re two blocks away.”

“That close?” Her blue eyes widened just a little, and I could almost see her stomach flutter. I couldn’t imagine what made her so nervous, but I guessed the sixteenth birthday was kind of like the wedding day—anticipated from childhood, played out with Barbies, all that weird girl stuff.

I reached over the gear stick and squeezed her manicured hands. “You look beautiful tonight, Starlight. You always look beautiful. Tonight I’m gonna make you feel like a princess.”

She smiled. “Gabe, I have to talk to you about something.”

“Shoot, kid. I’m all ears.”

Her hand weaseled out of mine, and she stared at the dim road ahead.

“What’s wrong, Sara?” She used to love it when I called her kid, but maybe turning sixteen changed that.

For a long minute, she said nothing, but her face bent in earnest concentration over something. “Uh, nothing,” she finally muttered. “Just nervous about the party.”

“Well, hey, it’s just gonna be close friends. Your parents are even coming. I guess they don’t hate me as much as I thought.” I grinned, trying to quell her anxieties with a look. If only it were that easy.

“My parents?” she sputtered. “What possessed you to invite them?”

I pulled into the parking lot, trying to think of some way to answer this sudden hostility. Sara had never yelled at me before.

“Obviously, I made a mistake,” I apologized immediately. My eyes darted up again at the sound of her gasp.

“Oh my gosh, Gabe. You didn’t have to…”

My smile returned as I watched her take in the sight of the lit gazebo. “Starlight for my Starlight,” I whispered, then got out to open her door.    

My extended hand went unnoticed for what felt like forever. “Sara?”

When she looked up at me, her face streaked with tears. Black makeup ran from her eyes across her perfect skin, threatening the white dress.

I retrieved some Kleenex from the glove box and gently dabbed the stains from her cheeks.

“I hope those are tears of joy.”

But then there was a sob from her lips that didn’t go away. It kept building. I reached for her, guiding her to the benches, my clarinet clasped firmly in my other hand. There was absolutely nothing I could do about her tears. They were coming too fast.

Stick to the plan. It was all I could do. The low, slow melody of “Never Without You” waltzed from my instrument as she sat beside me, quieting.

My eyes closed as the sweetest part of the song played through my mind. I knew she was thinking of those words, too, feeling what I felt.

Never far,

We dance on

Holding tight

To this song

Stars twinkle

Celebrate

We become

One heartbeat.

Never far,

We become

One heartbeat.

At the end of the last long note, I opened my eyes, setting the instrument down beside me on the bench. But my smile evaporated as my gaze came to rest on Sara’s face.  

She glared at me.

“Why do you have to make this so difficult?” she asked, every word tense through her teeth. There was nothing lovely about the way her reddened, black-smeared eyes flashed now.

The stupid faulty light strand slipped off its nail again, an echo of my heart’s downward motion, and I gulped at thin air, struggling to reconcile her reaction with my actions. “I’m sorry. I-I-I thought this was what you wanted. What did I do wrong?”

Eyes closed and head bowed, her frame trembled with emotion, and even I could tell it wasn’t the good kind. There were a million ways I imagined her responding to my song: smiles, kisses. Nostalgic tears, maybe. Anger and disgust were nowhere on my list.

Her eyes continued to avoid mine. “It’s over, Gabe.”

The light in the gazebo dimmed. The air held stock-still. The easy breeze that played with Sara’s hair two seconds ago vanished.

I sat still, too stunned to speak.

Her voice filled the empty air instead. “Look, don’t…I can’t stay chained to one person anymore. My parents expect me to date other people. I mean, we’ve been together so long, I don’t even know who I am anymore. With Tara and Prue, I’m one person. With you, I’m just Starlight, this perfect picture of a girlfriend you made up sometime between the Ferris Wheel and this godforsaken gazebo. I’m sorry, but we’re not soul mates. And I can’t waste anymore of my teen years acting the part somebody else made up for me.”

I’m sure my jaw dropped, but I don’t recall exactly what my face did after that. All I knew was Sara dumped me. Her scripted break-up speech crashed into the lingering glow of my love song, and by the time the band showed up—and our friends started arriving at the park—I was long gone.

My tie and suit jacket lay balled up in the corner behind my bedroom door, atop my sealed clarinet case.

“Gabriel? Home so soon?”

I slammed the door before my mom’s feet hit the stairs. No way was she going see me like this. Nobody would. Not now, and not ever. 

Fancy Friday- Wherein I try to be Shakespeare

*Note: This feature may be retitled "Freaky Friday" in the event that I can't come up with something brilliant. You decide.

So I thought I'd try my hand at a verse novel, but I've never written one before (also, I need book recommendations so I can read the modern-day take of this old concept [hint, hint, commenters]).

The truth is, I've always preferred metered, rhymed poetry to the other sort, so when I started trying to write SHUFFLE (based on a pretty heart-wrenching story), it came out like this:

Part I:

I never thought I’d want to see her once

The void of death had filled her empty case,

But when I heard the news of her demise,

Nothing ached like my heart for her face.

Not family, they said at the white doors

As if there lived a tighter bond than ours

What age had granted them in wisdom, truth,

It stole from them in love and desperate youth.

So here I wait in this abysmal seat

Forbidden past the point of no return

Where she was lost forever from my sight

And lost without a knowing heart to yearn.

Sterile, cold, infested with decay—

The last place she would want to fade

At seventeen our choices aren’t our own

We’re lost, they say, as if we stand alone.

I knew when I first saw her, she was mine

And I am hers, the summer to her snow,

Or so she said last August as the sun

Slipped into nightly shadows I well know.

The truth is that there burned no brighter light

Than Lilac with her sweet terrestrial scent

And golden hair, that swept about her face.

She was my reason, faith, my argument.

To be continued next Friday...
Also check out:
PART II

Feedback-man Saves My Novel: Prepare to be Repaired!

Okay, that last part of the title is an inside joke for those of you who have read my manuscript. :-) But the rest of you can easily understand the first part, right?

I am just floored by how helpful the feedback has been on my recently finished middle grade novel. And I haven't had access to a bunch of professional readers, either. It's mostly been family and friends, with a few near-strangers I met through www.absolutewrite.com/forums. 

But their suggestions and comments have been invaluable to me! After all the tweaking, revising, and proof-reading you do of your own work, there comes a moment in time when you can't see the trees for the forest anymore. Seriously, your WIP becomes this massive muddy forest that feels completely uncrossable. There's no path, no distinct tree-line. It's just words. Words that sound good to you...or not. But you've been looking at them that way for so long, you have no idea how to change them to sound better. 

At least this is the way it is for me. 

So when somebody says, "Hey, this part confused me. Is it meant to be a miniature rocket, a bomb, or a rocket-ship?" that's when I finally realize that they didn't get my "clever" ending AT ALL! 

Time to rewrite.

When Tall Bright & Handsome points out a logistical discrepancy in a fight-scene, my palm meets my forehead. Duh! Why didn't I notice that? 

But there are also those golden moments, like when my sister says there were passages she couldn't believe I wrote. Or when a complete stranger says they would give it to their twelve-year-old friend/cousin/nephew because they loved it and think he will, too. 

Those are the moments that make my head feel like it's filled with glitter. 

It's the criticism, however, that really saves a novel. Tonight, I'll go back into my word document, which has had about a week to rest now, and I'll implement the suggestions I've received so far. This won't be the end. (I feel like Boneclaw, spewing out catch-phrases: "You haven't seen the last of me, Repairman!)

There will be more work ahead, but I know that each step will only make the novel better. And that's exciting.   

I can almost hear Robert--see him winking: "Prepare to be Repaired!" You, Typos and Plot Holes, are no match for the Repairman. 

On Age Genre Crossovers MG-YA-NA

Is your latest project middle grade? Is it young adult? Is it new adult (new title for 20-somethings who like to read YA)?

This topic is of particular importance to me, as somebody who once wrote a YA novel with a 23-year-old protagonist. (And now has a MG book with a 17-year-old protagonist.) I know, I know. You're thinking: Why can't you just make your character the right age?

And the answer isn't that I'm a rebel without a cause, or that I am doing it on principle to stick it to the man (though I do sometimes like to stick it to the man). I'm doing it because that's the age the character is. Cop-out much? Yeah. Yeah, I do. But here's my justification:

23-year-old Eric is a boy-man who witnessed his father's death at age 5, bought his first house at age 13 and never completely grew up.

17-year-old Robert is a naive, innocent teenage boy who doesn't fit in at his school for villains, and has to deal with his evil twin, Rupert, slashing his tires every day after school.

If I made Eric younger, he wouldn't be the savant sci-fi novelist who never grew up. He'd just be another kid. His "advanced" age doesn't change the fact that this book is about coming of age, which is a YA theme.

If Robert were younger, he would still be trying his darndest (and failing miserably) to be a villain, without ruffling too many evil feathers. He wouldn't be growing at all as a character, which kills the MG theme of finding one's place in the world.

Writing this, I realize something. I have a new WIP that's also about a late bloomer. *Update: Point of clarification, she's the right age for the genre this time.

I write books about late bloomers. Hah. Well, that explains it.

Now if I could only convince agents and publishers that kids don't only pick up novels about somebody their own age. :-}

Seriously, people. Crossover appeal is not as rare as some people seem to think. Here's some more fascinating reading material on this subject.

Links:

On New Adult Fiction -an interesting beginning to a discussion about 20-somethings and their reading preferences.

Dude Looks Like a YA -wherein Nathan Bransford says, in 2007, that these categories are more about voice and pacing than they are about age or theme.


The Difference Between MG and YA -wherein themes are discussed as the divergence between the genres.

In my defense, my word counts are spot-on.

WOOHOO! I'm done! Drats! Foiled Again! is complete!

Ah, the joy of completing the first draft. It is sublime... transcendent.... peaceful.

Even though I want to shout from the roof, "I'M DONE!"

The stronger feeling is one of resolution and serenity. "Ah....I'm done."

Of course, there will be redrafts, revisions, torturous rewrites. But I don't have to think about those right now. I get to bask in the glow of seeing a project through to completion. I get to revel in the joy of birthing an idea that grew to full fruition.

I get to relax and feel free to play with other ideas without feeling like I'm cheating on my WIP.

I can play with the idea of a sequel: Foil Me Twice, Shame On Me

or a companion from the evil twin's POV: Bombs Away!

or go in a completely different direction and play with some of the fairy/spy/ghost-hunter/ordinary romance ideas floating around in my head.

This afternoon, there were ideas for the conclusion of my book spinning around and around in my mind, making me dizzy--incapable of remembering anything my husband or kids tried to tell me.

Now, my head is clear.

At last.

This, my friends, is why it is worth it to finish that novel.

I did it. You can, too!

Mandy Hubbard knows I exist!

If you don't know who that is, go to your bookstore right now (any Barnes and Noble will do) and pick up a copy of Prada and Prejudice.

Instead of ruby slippers, Callie's red Prada pumps are the transportation device to another world: the year 1815 in London.

Great hook, huh? It's definitely a book we'll have to discuss on the blog in the near future. (Reminder: we're reading IF I STAY by Gayle Forman right now, to discuss and review next week.)

So how do I know Mandy Hubbard knows I exist?

BECAUSE....

My query was randomly chosen for her week-long query workshop at her blog: AUTHOR/AGENT MANDY HUBBARD: QUERY WORKSHOP DAY 3

Here's what she said about it:

So... overall? A very strong query. It's nicely personalized for me, introduces a character with a strong internal conflict, and showcases a plot in which there's plenty at stake. The word count and age range is right on target.

It might be a teeny bit brief-- perhaps we could get a little more of a sense of the character beyond his desire to be a do-gooder, but at the end of the day, this will probably still garner requests.

It's slightly more boy-oriented than I typically gravitate toward, but I would probably still request it to see if the voice would win me over to the dark side. :-)

I'm giddy right now.

Okay (moment over), back to writing.