The Friday Five

1. I think I told you earlier, dear reader, that I listen to music most everywhere I go. Because of my serious music addiction, I also listen to iTunes or Pandora while I write. When I was tenth grade, I realized that I could read or write and listen to music with lyrics at the same time, and work has never been the same. There has been a lot of music playing while I’m working on the Sophie novel, most of it revolving around Amie Miriello’s “Cold Front” and most everything by John Mayer. And the Chocolat soundtrack. And countless more. And maybe a Taylor Swift song or two—I make no promises.
2. Why am I not watching The Tudors? I practically majored in Henry VIII in college (technically Early Modern European History, where all the cool people were), and even though I don’t have Showtime or whatever channel it’s on, I think I should be watching it. Apparently they’re already on his fifth wife. I’m so behind!
3. Not too much writing going on this week, despite dragging my notebook everywhere. I forgot there’s so much to do in Texas! Next week may be a catch-up week. My mom and I are leaving today for a little mother-daughter roadtrip weekend, so I’m leaving behind Broken Mirrors and the Sophie WIP until Monday. Hope they don’t miss me too much.
4. I’ve fallen completely in love with driving again. I don’t have a car in Boston, in part because I definitely don’t need one with the subway system and my fascination with taking walks, but mainly because the idea of shoveling snow and picking ice off my car tires me out. But now I get to open the sunroof and blast silly music and speed (just a little bit, promise). It truly is cathartic.
5. I’ve become obsessed with this blog: http://www.thestorysiren.com/ She does these amazing reviews of tons of YA books (how does she have time to read that much? I’m in awe) and has a great critical eye. My pile of to-be-read books just keeps growing.

Hope everyone has a great weekend! Enjoy the sunshine, if you’ve got it.

Oh, the memories

I’ve been reading a ton of young adult books lately. It’s wonderful, because I get to call it work. I write primarily young adult literature and I have to know the market—at least, that’s the official reason I tend to give. The truth is, there are just so many good books for teenagers out there these days. It makes me nostalgic for the books that defined my childhood and adolescence, when a good book could wrap me around its finger and hold on tight.

Being at home this week, I get to go through all of the boxes of old books in my closet, which involves a lot of “Oh my God, I LOVED this book” and “Wow, that was SO long ago.” The pics of some of my favorites are below. I remember reading Ann Rinaldi’s A Stitch in Time in fourth grade (yeah, I started loving YA kinda early) very vividly, because it made me break the rules. I brought it to school and read it under my desk during English class. I’m not really sure how I got away with it, but there was no way I could leave that book at home until school let out. Some things are just more important than school. I also remember reading The Count of Monte Cristo one spring break by the pool (yep, I was that kid). And I wanted to be Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables more than anything else in the world, troublesome red hair and all.
A Stitch in Time by Ann Rinaldi
Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Happy Things

Here are some thoughts that make my Mondays happier:

1. Rainy days where you have nothing else to do but read and nap and cozy up in pajamas.

2. Watching silly/trashy high school drama shows and obsessing over them to an unhealthy degree.

3. Freely admitting obsessions.

4. Remembering those times in middle school when I heard a song that spoke to me so deeply that I had to listen to it in a dark room lying on the floor (okay, I still do this).

5. Dreaming of hiking in the Scottish Highlands (these pics are actually from my trip to Edinburgh last August, but I never got to the Highlands—my next dream trip).

Goals!

Last week, while working on the Sophie WIP, I explored my characters a whole lot more, drafted a potential outline, and wrote a very little bit. I was planning to do more writing, but before I can really start doing that, I have to deal with the 50,000 words I already have, the majority of which are no longer relevant. So, this week my goals are:

-Fully salvage the work I’ve already done. Mainly, this means cutting material. Lots and lots of cutting. I’m so paranoid about losing words, though, that I paste everything I cut out into another word document. It’s my safety net.
-Write some new material. For Broken Mirrors, I pretty much wrote everything in order, from the first sentence to the last sentence with no jumping around. For the Sophie WIP, though, I’ve been writing bits of scenes from all over the book, just because I’m excited about them. I’ll think of one line of dialogue or description I want to put in there, and suddenly I’ll be writing the scene in the middle of the book. I have to make sure everything’s in order this week.

I don’t know how much work I’ll get done this week, since I’m still in Texas and want to see everyone I hardly ever see, but I’ll do my best. I’ll carry a notebook with me everywhere and be that weird person scribbling things down in restaurants and bars. Should be fun!

The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting

Cappuccino and book review time!

Violet has two major problems in her life. The first is that she has fallen for her best friend, Jay, just as the rest of the girls at her high school have. The second is that she has the ability to sense death. Ever since she was little, she has found dead animals and sensed their killers, and when she was eight, she found a murdered girl. When girls go missing from her area in Washington, Violet gets caught up in the search for the killer.

I made the mistake of starting this book at 10pm at night, and I had to stay up until one in the morning to finish it. The tension between Violet and Jay was just ridiculously amazing. Violet herself was realistic: not some overdone kickass feminist, but a girl who could take care of herself. The plot, revolving around the search for the man who is stealing and killing unaccompanied girls, kept me hooked almost as much as the romance. Tons of fun.

The Friday Five

Five random thoughts for today:

1. I bought these very mature pink sunglasses the other day. I’m not the biggest fan of pink (at least not since I passed through my four-year-old ballerina phase), but I had a pair of pink sunglasses when I was twelve that I absolutely loved. I wanted to recreate the magic☺. Also, I wanted to buy something to celebrate the changing seasons, because I’m still so excited about this spring weather! It just makes everyone happier to have all this sunshine around.
2. I’ve gotten immersed in my DVDs of Friday Night Lights, which may just be the best show on television. Texas, football, amazingly cute guys with hearts of gold. It’s just so good. I have an undying crush on the cuteness that is Matt Saracen. And the hotness that is Tim Riggins.
3. In other Texas news, I’ve come home for a few days. Spring here is a whole lot hotter than in Boston, but it’s still refreshing. And I’m so very happy to be home. I just have to remember to say hi to people when I go jogging.
4. I’m currently obsessed with John Mayer’s song “Heart of Life.” I think I’m going to make it the theme song of my life: “No, it won’t all go the way it should/but I know the heart of life is good.”
5. I’ve been getting more and more into the blogging community, and there are so many good book blogs out there! Tons of authors have blogs, but there are also people who’ve dedicated themselves to reviewing books. I’m enjoying the ones specifically focused to young adult literature, and I’m hoping to keep learning more and more about them.

Happy weekend!

Problem! (Not a terrible one, but still...)

Okay, I have a problem. I originally envisioned Sophie (the protagonist of the WIP I’m working on right now) as ending up with one guy. But she’s got this best guy friend, and I’ve completely fallen in love with him. Yes, I’ve fallen in love with one of the characters in my head. It happens. Now I have to make one of the boys flawed in an actual way (not, say, having a crooked tooth or something that doesn’t matter, but something like having a quick temper or a tendency to be selfish). Except I really don’t want to. I want them both to be wonderful. Sigh. Somebody’s character profile has to be completely rewritten.

Happy Things

Five things that make me happy, even on Mondays:


1. Tulips. Always the happiest flower.
2. Wide-planked wood floors.
3. Moments where no one is in earshot and I can sing all the high notes.
4. Reading history books about completely random topics.
5. Sunshine so intense that it makes the top of your head warm to the touch.

I hope your Monday is a little bit happier!

Goals for the Week

I had a fairly productive week last week, especially since I found a plot that might actually work for my Sophie WIP (work-in-progress). Just for the record, I don’t usually start with characters and find a plot for them—it’s usually the other way around. But Sophie was a character I couldn’t get out of my head. So I’m trying to build a story around her.

So, here are the new goals for this week:

-Finish up the character profiles for all characters in the Sophie WIP. These have been going well so far. I’ve picked everyone’s favorite color! And yes, I’ve gotten into their personalities and quirks and personal histories as well. But I still think the fact that Sophie’s favorite color is gray says a lot about her.
-Draft a potential outline of the Sophie WIP. Now that I’ve got a plot, I can start figuring out how to space it. I didn’t do much of an outline for Broken Mirrors, but now that I’ve worked on one for the revisions of that manuscript, I’ve seen how much it can help my writing process. I’m definitely a firm believer in outlines! But I say I’ll only draft a potential outline because I know, once I start writing, things get shifted around. It just happens.
-Start writing. I’ve actually written about 50,000 words of the Sophie WIP, but those 50,000 words were for a plot that I am throwing away, so I’ll be cutting a lot. Not the most fun task in the world, but necessary.

We’ll see how it goes!

The Secret Life of Prince Charming

When I lived in New York, I subscribed to the weekend editions of the New York Times. This was one of those things, like cappuccino with dessert, that I thought would make me an adult. Every Saturday morning, I would go to my favorite bakery (Brooklyn Bread in Park Slope—seriously amazing) with the New York Times Book Review. I ordered a chocolate croissant and, yes, a cappuccino in one of those large, completely wonderful mugs. And I sat for hours reading the book reviews and making a wishlist of books.

So every Saturday, I’m going to write my own book review for this blog. It will be nowhere near as thorough or as artfully phrased as the New York Times reviews. Having spent so many months as an editorial assistant, I tend to do book reviews the way I did reader reports, which were the reports I made for my boss about the submissions I read. First paragraph: summary. Second paragraph: why I liked it. Well, in publishing, it was usually why I didn’t think it was a good fit for my boss or something, but when I read for fun, I don’t have the patience for books I don’t enjoy and usually don’t finish them. So, on this blog, I’ll probably only be reviewing books I liked/loved, and they’ll probably all be young adult fiction. So brew a pot of coffee, or cappuccino, if you’re one of those lucky people with a fancy cappuccino maker, and pull up a chair.

As I mentioned yesterday, I just finished Deb Caletti’s The Secret Life of Prince Charming and loved it. Quinn has learned from her mother, grandmother, and aunt that there are warning signs when a man is about to break your heart. All have been burned by love, and Quinn, who tries her hardest to make good, safe choices, listens to their advice with some skepticism. When her dependable boyfriend dumps her and she discovers that her self-absorbed, Prince Charming father has been stealing objects from every woman he’s ever married or dated, Quinn snaps. She enlists the help of her younger sister, Sprout, and Frances Lee, the half-sister she’s only met once, to go on a karmic quest to return the items to the women and learn more about her father.

There’s just something special about Deb Caletti’s books. She doesn’t go for the obvious teen romance angle but instead gives her characters something more meaningful to pursue. Quinn is so used to being trampled on by her dad that it took me some time to sympathize with her, but her journey from passive to assertive feels very real. I love the supporting characters as well, especially the wonderful women who have fallen under the spell of Quinn’s father and learned how dangerous that could be. All in all, a great book about love, choices, and the definition of family.

The Friday Five

I’ve noticed several of the blogs I follow have a “Friday Five,” and I always like the randomness of it. So here are my five random thoughts for the day:

1. Glee this week was awesome. I mean, seriously awesome. Finn showed off his complete lack of rhythm while singing a Doors song. Rachel started dating the very cute and evil enemy, and though I’m not a Lionel Richie fan by any stretch of the imagination, the duet of “Hello” was just so good. And Idina Menzel, the original Elphaba in Wicked, guest-starred, which made it even better. Can’t wait for next week’s Madonna episode!

2. New author obsession: Deb Caletti. I just finished The Secret Life of Prince Charming, which had some incredible lessons about love and the allure of bad boys, and also made me want to go live in Washington state. Stay tuned for a full book review tomorrow.

3. They had pre-cut pieces of coconut at Whole Foods this week, which made me incredibly happy. When I was younger, I insisted that coconut was my favorite food. I’m not sure how I thought it could hold a candle to chocolate, but it is very good.

4. Through the awesome power of Hulu, I am finally caught up with Lost (yep, TV addict). I have to find out what the island is! Okay, really, I have to see if Kate ends up with Jack or Sawyer, but that’s a perfectly valid reason for watching, I swear.

5. I am absolutely, unconditionally loving springtime here in Boston. It was a beautiful sunny week, the kind of weather that calls for a light jacket, the purchase of massive amounts of fresh fruit, and obsessive pictures of new flowers.

Happy Friday!

Update

An update on my goals for the week: I’ve done a lot of brainstorming (read: scribbling in my journal) about the plot of the Sophie novel, and I think I’ve come up with something that might work. I’m now in the process of working all the kinks out of it. Asking all the questions a reader might ask. Trying to imagine the world and the characters I’m creating. Which may sound impressive. But really, it’s just scribbling.

I still need to work on my character profiles. There are three main characters in this novel who will all need details to make them vibrant, realistic people. I tend to make profiles for even minor characters, too, just so I know them. It sounds very, very silly, but I feel like the more I think about a character, the more I’m not in control. That character starts telling me about him or herself, revealing information I have no way of knowing. So I’ll just be talking to the people in my head for the next few days.

Rewards System

I have a confession to make (I guess it’s pretty clear I have several confessions to make in this blog). I have a very weird writing process. It seems like every time I go to readings or author talks, the authors declare that they get their writing done by sitting at their desk and staring at the computer screen for hours at a time. I’ve tried doing that, and sometimes it works. But sometimes it doesn’t. So I set up a rewards system, like a good little Pavlovian dog. I write 500 words, then read a chapter of a book. Or, if I’m particularly lazy that day, I write 500 words and watch ten minutes of a TV show. My friends are completely baffled, but I swear I get a ton of work done each day! It’s just that if I don’t have a deadline or anything, breaking up the writing makes it even more fun. It also means that I don’t mind working from waking up until falling asleep.

Today, while I’m brainstorming and creating character profiles for the Sophie novel, I’m working for thirty minutes, then cleaning my room for ten minutes. Which is not nearly as fun as reading or watching an episode of Friday Night Lights, but is incredibly necessary. Hopefully I’ll get some good work done today!

Inspiration

People always ask me why I chose to write a novel around Snow White. And the answer is kind of embarrassing. So, here’s the truth. I hate Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The Disney version. I used to love it, so much so that I had a Snow White costume that I wore every day for about a month to pre-school (my mom still tells me how she had to wash it every night, but she was a good mother and let me make a fool of myself). But I watched it a couple of years ago when I was going through a nostalgia phase, and I hated it. The Snow White voice is the most grating thing ever. But what really got me was the relationship between Snow White and the prince. I mean, come on. He finds her singing and she runs away, only to coyly kiss a dove and make it go kiss him. And then, when he kisses her awake, they’re all, “Oh, we’re so in love even though WE DO NOT KNOW EACH OTHER. Let’s ride off into the sunset.” I rolled my eyes so much I was afraid they were going to get stuck. And I found myself wondering, what would happen if it wasn’t like that? What would happen if there was no ride off into the sunset because Snow White had more than half a brain and wasn’t going to fall for some guy just because he kissed her corpse lips? And my idea began taking shape.

In other news, Glee comes back tonight! I’ve missed it so much. Puckelberry forever (if you don’t know what that means, don’t worry—you’re probably just cooler than I am).

Happy Things

I hate Mondays. Even now, when I work every day and never have to officially wake up early or anything. There’s just something so dreary about them.

So to combat the Mondays, I propose this: every Monday, I’ll post five things that make me happy. Five silly, random things. I’m hoping they’ll make you happy, too (and feel free to share your happy things!)

1. Winning Monopoly and bragging about it for weeks afterward.
2. Discovering a new song I cannot live without.
3. The idea of strolling through an art museum, mug of coffee in hand and slippers on feet.
4. Having way too many books to read and piling them up in the order I want to read them.
5. Big claw-foot tubs you just have to spend hours in with a good book that gets a little bit soggy and more bubbles than are necessary.

Happy Monday!

Goals for the Week

This is an actual page from the scribblings I made while mulling over the revisions to Broken Mirrors. Notice my stellar drawing skills at the top of the page of what the setting would look like. Clearly I've missed my calling.

I’ve been working for the past few months with a super awesome agent who’s leading me through revisions and actually making it seem like fun. I haven’t signed with him yet, so I’ve got my fingers crossed on that. But he’s really helping me understand my book and my characters even better than I did. It took me about three months to write the first draft of Broken Mirrors, but I soon learned that the first draft is not even half the battle. Not even remotely close.

I’ve sent a proposed outline of my new revisions to him, so while I’m waiting to hear back, I’m stepping away from this book. Giving it some space. Refreshing my brain with something new. I've written three half-books while I’ve been working on this manuscript, and I’m going to turn to the one I’ll call “the Sophie one” for now, after the protagonist. The plot needs major overhaul (we’re talking slash and burn here), so that’ll help me forget about Snow for a little while.

I thought I’d share my weekly writing goals on this blog, hopefully every Sunday. It’ll give me an added incentive to complete them, and maybe you’ll find it interesting, too. This week:

-I’ll create more thorough character profiles of all of the characters in the Sophie novel
-I’ll brainstorm plot ideas that make sense (as opposed to the nonexistent plot it has now…)
-I’ll do more voice exercises for the characters. I’ve found that writing paragraphs or pages of characters’ inner voices, even if I have no intention of putting their inner voices in the book, help me understand the people I’ve created much more clearly. The agent actually taught me this trick, and now I don’t know how I could write without it. I pick an imaginary event, usually something that won’t happen in the novel, and write everyone’s reactions to it in their own voices.

Alright, wish me luck!

Hi there

I’m not really sure how to introduce myself. So I’ll just start. I’m a full-time writer living in Boston, but I’m still a Texas girl at heart. I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was eight, and I’ve always, ALWAYS been a reader. I’ve always been hooked on stories and words and characters. I’m pretty much living the dream right now, and I hope with my fingers tightly crossed that it works out.

I named this blog “Fairy Tales and Cappuccino” pretty much on a whim, but I fell that it does a pretty good job of describing my personality. I see fairy tales as the kid part of me, the part that loves seeking out the magic of everyday life. Cappuccino is the part of me that loves pretending to be an adult or, you know, my age. When I was little, I thought ordering cappuccino with dessert at a fancy restaurant was the epitome of grownupness, and I decided that I would be that kind of a woman. And I am, but I’m also the little girl who’s secretly still waiting for her acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Ergo, fairy tales and cappuccino: little kid and grownup, fun and froth.

I could give the traditional life story thing, but I always feel that never conveys much about a person. So, instead, I’ll reveal that I’m obsessed with too many TV shows to count, many of them on the CW and ABC Family, and I’m not afraid to admit it. I love traveling and anything with sugar in it. I tend to hole myself up in my apartment during the day, writing on my laptop and wearing worn-out pajamas. I listen to music all the time: walking, writing, running, cooking, everything. I run almost every day because that’s the one excuse I have to get out of the apartment during the week. I have an irrational fear of sudden loud noises, so I hate balloons. When I hang out with friends on the weekends, I tend to favor nights of watching silly movies and baking cookies over wild nights at clubs or concerts. And I read almost everything I can get my hands on.

As for the rest, well, I guess you’ll find out.