Guest Post: Elisa Freilich

Silent Echo comes out September 10th from Diversion Books. It isn't your usual fantasy novel. It has sirens, music, prophecies, and of course, romance!
Elisa has come to the blog for a bit of a Q&A.
There is also a prize giveaway below for a chance to win a pack of awesome things including a book purse inspired by the book, an iPhone case and other trinkets featuring the beautiful illustrations of the upcoming trailer and a YA book of your choice. 

1. Describe your book in 5 words: Modernizing mythology through music & romance.  ( does the ampersand count as a word?  Ooops)

2. What surprised you the most as you were writing SILENT ECHO? How many of my metaphors seem to veer towards the food-related (i.e. "his voice was a block of milk chocolate wrapped in sandpaper")  I guess I'm also a die-hard foodie.

3. Are you a plotter or a panster? Do you plot your book or fly by the seat of your pants? I fly on a magic carpet woven loosely of plot driven threads.  I've got a vague idea where I'm headed but once in flight, it really solidifies.

4. Do you have any kind of writing rituals? I need silence or else white noise, a constant din.  I can't have music or a tv on - way too distracting. 

5. Who would you cast in a movie version of your book for Portia, Felix and Max? Young unknowns who resemble Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher and Rob Pattinson (in order as asked)

6. As a lover of mythology, what's your fave myth? I love the story of the Six Headed Scylla.  There are several explanations for how she came to have six heads and for Silent Echo's sequel, I have expounded and expanded on my favorite one.  (Scylla is an integral part of the next installment of my trilogy.)

7. Lightnight round:

Fave food - Truffle fries (ok, or any fries)

Fave book - Special Topics in Calamity Physics (most recently, that is)

Fave song - Closer to Fine by Indigo Girls

Fave vacation - Laguna Beach, CA w/my hubby (or pretty much anywhere w/my hubby)

Fave color - brown (chocolate, mocha - there's that food thing again...)

Beach or mountains - Pool with a view of the beach

Soda or Pop - soda

Coke or Pepsi - Coke (diet, of course)

Can't live without - Air conditioning

Can live without - bees ( even if it meant sacrificing honey - they terrify me)

Fave person -  Mark Darcy (can a fictitious character count?)

Person you want to meet most dead or alive - Marcus Mumford (His genius blows my mind)

Person you admire most - My husband - he wears his own skin with unyielding confidence and comfort

If you could be anyone, who? George RR Martin - can you imagine what must go on in that guy's head?!

Follow Elisa Freilich on: TWITTER  FACEBOOK  TUMBLR 
There is also a sneak peak on her Tumblr, that you should check out. 


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Guest Post with Susan Carlton about Music

I have the pleasure of hosting Susan Carlton today. She was born in San Francisco, but wasn't of age until the hippie era had ended. Lobsterland was her first book and Love and Haight is her second book, which is about hippies, San Francisco, music, and much more. She has also written for magazines, including Self, Elle, and Mademoiselle,  She now lives in Massachusetts with her husband. She is talking about the influence that music had with Love & Haight. I hope you enjoy!

I loved cuing up the turntable while writing Love & Haight, which is set in 1971. Yep, still have my turntable. My playlist was heavy on the San Francisco sound—bands that came of age along with drugs and peace and love. It was an epic time in San Francisco…Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Moby Grape and, of course, the Dead.

One of my favorite scenes in the novel takes place in the giant old Tower Records, which used to be on Bay and Columbus in San Francisco. Chloe, my main character, and Teddy, her ex, go into a listening booth, like a payphone except with less glass and less air. 

These are songs to write to, dance to, make out to.

• Power to the People—John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
• Lookin' Out My Back Door—Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Sunshine of Your Love—Cream
• The Joker—Steve Miller Band
• Somebody to Love—Jefferson Airplane
• The Weight—The Band
• For What It's Worth—Buffalo Springfield
• Evil Ways—Santana
• Piece of My Heart—Big Brother and the Holding Company
• Loan Me a Dime—Boz Scaggs
• Friend of the Devil—Grateful Dead
• Get Together—The Youngbloods

Guest Post with Mary E. Pearson

Today I have a guest post with Mary E. Pearson.

“Once there were three. Three friends who loved each other . . . "

It seemed appropriate to me to wrap up the blog tour for The Fox Inheritance with a post about friendship. Friendship is at the heart of the story and I would like to share a couple of brief passages that speak to this:
“It was always Kara, Jenna, and me. Or at least it seemed that way. We were friends for only a year and a half before the accident, but for me it was a lifetime. We were instantly bonded. Maybe it was because it came at a turning point in our lives–just the right window where our worlds were all aligned, all needing something, maybe the same thing, maybe one other. We lifted one another up. Strengthened one another. We held hands. We crossed a line. We made one another braver.”
I think the friends who walk into adulthood with us have some of the most far-reaching effects on who we will become. Maybe that’s why high school reunions are so popular. These are the friends who made decisions with us that helped shape the course of our lives, the friends who were there with us when we suffered the consequences of some of our decisions, the friends who often went their separate ways, but still left a mark on us nonetheless.
In The Fox Inheritance, which takes place 260 years after the first book, Jenna has now gone on and made many new friends over the years, decades, and centuries, but reflects back on her friendship with Kara and Locke when she was just a teen:
“There are all kinds of friends you make in life . . . But there’s something different about someone who spreads their wings with you. That’s what we did, didn’t we?”
Yes, there is something different about these friends, no matter how brief a time we had with them. They were there at a pivotal time in our life and in their own lives, a time when all of our world views were separating from that of our parents. We laid the foundations of our adulthood together.
Some of my friends from my teen years I have stayed in contact with, even if only occasionally. Facebook helps a lot with that. But other friends I have lost track of. We went our separate ways, moved, lost contact, but I still think of them often. These friends helped me adjust to “womanhood,” read my bad poetry, made great life plans with me that never happened but still warm me with the memory (like planning to go to Cape St. Francis to surf the perfect wave.) These friends commiserated with me over parental injustices, filled in my “educational” gaps (things you would never ask your parents), cried with me over heartbreaks, and laughed hysterically with me over close calls of one kind or another. These friends left their mark. They changed me as I was stepping into adulthood. Mostly for the better.
“We lifted one another up. Strengthened one another. We held hands. We crossed a line. We made one another braver.”
Yes. All those things. These might be Locke’s words, but their mine too.
That’s why I dedicated The Fox Inheritance to them, and to the many, many friends who have come into my life since then and changed me in small and large ways. To all of you, I say thank you.

I hope that you enjoyed this post as much as I did. Have any of your friends ever helped you out? Tell me about it in the comments for a chance to win a a personalized copy of The Fox Inheritance.

This or That with Janet Ruth Young

Today, I have Janet Ruth Young, the author of The Babysitter Murders with This and That. I hope you enjoy.

1. Books or Music?
Books. My raison d’etre!
2. TV or Movies?
Movies. I don’t watch TV. Not even Mad Men.
3. Black or White?
White.
4. Paris or London?
London. As a person of Scottish descent I’m expected to dislike the English, but there’s way too much smoking in Paris.
5. Zombies or Unicorns?

Unicorns. As something of a scaredy-cat, I should probably avoid any run-in with a zombie.
6. Outside or Inside?
Outside. In the yard, on the tennis court, walking on Stacy Boulevard, or at the beach. I think I’ll even sleep outside a few times this summer.
7. Past or Future?
Future.
8. Writing or Reading?

Right now, writing. But I hope to spend a good part of the summer in my hammock with book in hand.
9. Cake or Pie?
Definitely cake. Unless it’s my sister Diane’s pumpkin pie with sugared pecans, I rarely choose pie, because I find crust to be a big waste of calories.
10. Coffee or Tea?
Coffee – first thing in the morning. Then switching to tea in the afternoon.
11. Nonfiction or Fiction?
Nonfiction. I need to improve my knowledge of history. I have a great handle on psychology and human nature but I don’t really know what’s gone on in the world. I think biographies are the way to start addressing that.
12. Classic or New?
New.
13. Chocolate or Vanilla?
Vanilla.
14. Coke or Pepsi?
Usually Coke.
15. Comedy or Drama?
Drama, although I think they’re inseparable. Even the most horrific story has some funny elements – that’s the human condition.

Guest Post with Sheenah Freitas

I have Sheenah Freitas here to talk about the magic that is in Disney films. I hope you enjoy.
I’ve always thought that the inspiring storytellers were the people who could craft magic. Whether you do that literally as J.K. Rowling has done with Harry Potter or you do it like Suzanne Collins did with The Hunger Games, an inspiring storyteller should be able to wow you, to make you excited for more. There are people out there who aren’t your stereotypical novelist but are equally important storytellers such as Stan Lee and Frank Miller, but the most important storyteller out there, to me, is none other than Walt Disney.
Walt Disney had an eye for telling stories that every animator wants to achieve. Hayao Miyazaki, Howard Ashman, and John Lasseter are but a few of the people who have striven to bring out the very best and who I feel emulate (or in Howard Ashman’s case emulated) everything that Walt Disney was.
There wasn’t one project that Disney had worked on that didn’t get his mark of approval. If something wasn’t working, they would put it back and work on it at a later date such as with The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. He made sure to cut out scenes that slowed down the story, no matter how much he loved it. Disney was able to create a sense of awe with his movies that kept audiences enraptured and part of that was because his characters were real. He saw the importance of music in films and used it — probably most masterfully in Bambi — to establish mood.
I propose that every fiction writer sit down and analyze a Disney film. What about that film do you love? Take note of the characters. How can you make your characters more Disney-like? And I don’t mean squeaky clean either. After all, the Wicked Stepmother wanted Snow White’s heart brought to her in a box, Pinocchio smoked a cigar, and Tinkerbell was an envious, slightly homicidal pixie before turning a 180 in the new Tinkerbell movies.
Trying to make your story more Disney-like can be a fun exercise that can help breathe new life into your work and who knows? Perhaps one day you’ll be an inspiring storyteller like Walt himself.

Jill S. Alexander's playlist for Paradise and giveaway

Here is a playlist for Paradise. I hope you enjoy it.

Sometimes, stories come to me initially as a character, a title, maybe a first line. PARADISE came through music. I knew I wanted to write a story about small town teens in a country rock band, and I stayed open to all the character possibilities – waiting on that special spark that tends to ignite my writing. One night at a restaurant/blues bar, I saw a guy totally shred a Springsteen song – not with a guitar or some other sexy musical instrument, but with a red, three-row button accordion. He was hot. The song was hot. The place went crazazay. And that was the spark that led to PARADISE.

So many songs – old and new – spoke to me while writing PARADISE. Here are a few from my official PARADISE playlist:

Runnin’ Down A Dream by Tom Pett PARADISE is just that: A story about chasing dreams, feeling unstoppable.

Use Somebody by Kings of LeonThe play on words. The idea of needing someone. The guitars. The drums. This song reminded me so much of Paisley and Paradise.

Jack & Diane by John Mellencamp “Two Amercian kids growing up in the heartland.” I had written Paisley’s parents as Jack and Diane – never thinking of the song. One day, I was driving and the Mellencamp song came on the radio. I was blown away. It was perfect for them. “Two American kids doing the best they can.”

Rosalita by Bruce Springsteen“I know your momma she don’t like me ‘cause I play in a Rock n Roll Band” says it all.

Carry On by Pat Green Written by Texas music legend Radney Foster, “Carry On” captures the feeling of needing to get away, “grab the wheel with your own two hands.” It’s also a barn party anthem for most Texas teens, so it works with the characters and setting. Check out the barn party scene in the novel!

Fifteen by Taylor Swift When I first heard this song, it reminded me of a scene when Paisley’s sister Lacey is cautioning her about taking things too far and too fast with Paradise. This particular scene is one of my favorites from the novel – personal and honest, as only two sisters can be.

I have a signed copy of The Sweetheart of Prosper County. Have a US address and comment with your favorite song by July 15th to enter to win.

Guest Post with Jennifer Brown

Today, I have the amazing Jennifer Brown here with her favorite books. I hope you enjoy it.
I’m such a book fan, my library is everywhere! Housed in dozens of boxes in the basement, stacks upon stacks under the bed, stacks next to the bed, stacks on my dresser, stacks on one of the kitchen chair. It’s really ridiculous!
So to ask me for my favorites is an impossible task. I have so many! I can tell you some of the YA books I’ve enjoyed over the past year:
Crash Into Me by Albert Borris
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
Sorta Like a Rockstar by Matthew Quick
Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler
It should be no shock that I like a good “issues” story, and I’m a huge fan of literary fiction. Give me an Anna Quindlen novel and I’m a happy gal (Oh, how Every Last One tore my heart out!). I also love a good classic, and can really get into a Hemingway novel or a Steinbeck novel like nobody’s business.
It was Stephen King who made me a reader. I began reading his novels when I was a young teen, and had to carry around a pocket dictionary so I could understand some of the words. And it was Marian Keyes who made me start to really think about being a writer. I actually began by writing women’s fiction novels, and was particularly inspired by her novel, The Other Side of the Story.
In my library, you will find a great many Oprah’s Book Club choices. You will also find a 19-volume set of leather-bound Hemingway novels. Lots of biographies about John Lennon and Walt Disney. And tons of travel books.
Basically, if you write it, I will read it! I’m easy that way!

Guest Post: Top Ten Fantasy Realms

Today, I have Brent Hartinger. He is the author of Geography Club, The Last Chance, Texaco, The Order of the Poison Oak, Grand & Humble, Split Screen: Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies/Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies, Dreamquest, Project Sweet Life, and his newest book Shadow Walker has just been released. He is also a fellow Washingtonian, so I hope you enjoy his post and check out his books.
10. Fantastica. It’s the world of the imagination where much of The Neverending Story takes place. (I loved the idea of the “Nothing”!)
9. The World of Indiana Jones. The real 1930s and the real Nazis? Not so much. But I’ll take the Lucas/Spielberg fantasy recreation of a world where magic is real and everything is really, really fast-paced and exciting.
8. Westeros (and Essos): Have you read George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice? If not, you’re missing one of the most interesting, and most realistic, fantasy realms ever created.
7. Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Okay, maybe this isn’t a fantasy “realm” per se, but I’m still so there! What I’m interested in are all the candy rooms they didn’t visit, and all the Great Glass Elevator buttons they didn’t push.
6. The Realms in The Gemma Doyle Trilogy. I don’t particularly want to visit the effectively creepy fairy world in this gothic homage series, but it sure was well done.
5. Earthsea. One of the most perfectly realized fictional worlds of all time. I totally believe it exists!
4. Sunnydale. I really only want to visit to get to know Tara and Willow, who would totally be my BFFs.
3. Ancient Greece (in the world of Xena: Warrior Princess): I like my fantasy realms with a dash a camp and strong sense of humor, which Xena definitely had. Plus, it looks a lot like New Zealand.
2. Middle Earth. Most people want to go to heaven when they die. Me, I want to go to the House of Elrond.
1. Narnia. Yes, it was between this and Middle Earth, but asked himself: which would I rather visit? And the answer is obvious. Less grit in Narnia, with fewer orcs and more Father Christmas and giant owls.

The Playlist for Girl Wonder by Alexa Martin

Alexa Martin was kind enough to share her playlist from Girl Wonder. These songs are all amazing and I hope you will enjoy her list.
1. All You Zombies--The Hooters (a "welcome to your new high school from hell" song)
2. Lips Like Sugar--Echo & The Bunnymen (a good song to play during an "it" girl's first appearance in a book)
3. Don't Think Twice It's Alright--Bob Dylan
4. London is Calling--The Kinks (makes me think of Charlotte's brother, James Henry, a kid way too cool for his own good)
5. The Killing Moon--Echo and the Bunnymen
6. Porch--Pearl Jam (a good song for the-acid-trip-from-hell scene)
7. Sometime Around Midnight--The Airborne Toxic Event (this song really gets at the agony of unrequited love)
8. Hey you--Pink Floyd
9. Suffering--Satchel
10. Let My Love Open the Door--The Who (ah, new love. such a giddy song!)
11. Fix You--Cold Play (this song would play during the movie preview of my book)

Guest Post from Jennifer Archer

Jennifer Archer is the Author of Through Her Eyes. Today I have a post from her about the Top 10 Ways Jennifer Archer was like Tansy Piper (main character in Through Her Eyes) as a teen.
1. I lived a lot of different places while growing up. By the time I was 11 years old, I had moved more than 20 times!
2. I started my junior year of high school at a new school in a new city, and for the first couple of weeks, I spent lunch periods sitting in a cubicle in the library.
3. I scorned jocks!
4. I also scorned cheerleaders. That was probably unfair of me. I might’ve been a little jealous of all the attention they received at school.
5. Although I scorned jocks, I would’ve secretly thought Tate Hudson was hot. J
6. I was intrigued by moody, artistic guys like Henry, but was also somewhat wary of them.
7. A high school English teacher once asked me to read something I’d written to the class, and I was terrified.
8. I had (and have!) a great mom, but I was often frustrated with her.
9. Tansy has a wonderful grandfather in Papa Dan, and I also had wonderful grandparents.
10. I liked poetry.

Guest Post with Tom Kepler

Today, I have a guest post with Tom Kepler. I hope you enjoy.

This is my chance to unload all those items that I have dragged around for years, chained to me karmically--like Marley's ghost in Dickens' A Christmas Carol. One person's junk is another's treasure. Prepare to look for unexpected treasures! Got your pickup or station wagon parked nearby?

1.) My First Novel: I'll pay you to never read it. At a little over 200 pages, I don't even remember the name of this one (if it was ever titled). I knew I'd have to revise, but then I realized the premise was embarrassing--something about an apocalyptic disaster and a guy and his horse. I have to pull out one character, though--Maggie. She is much like Gwen in Love Ya Like a Sister, only older.
2.) "Island": a poem I wrote when I was 20 years old. Price: $12.95. This is the list price of my first book, a book of poems entitled Bare Ruined Choirs. I wrote this poem for a young woman named Cindee--one spring a long time ago. Cindee wasn't one of the "sister" neighbors I grew up with--and when the fling was flung, I went back to my sister friends for a friendly bowl of popcorn. That "sister friend" relationship is a large part of Love Ya Like a Sister.
Island
This is what I see…
a wide stretch of river,
cottonwoods
peering lazily into water
oars slip-slipping
eddies of baywood and crayfish,
rowboat sliding upstream
and one green feather of island
slurring water,
succulent seed of sun-moist loam.
3.) Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding vinyl album: $10. For sale online for that price, but out of stock! If I dig my turntable out of the closet, I might even play it. You know what I like about Dylan? That he's prolific.
4.) A 60's-something Austin Healy, $500. E-bay has one priced for $29,995. Now why did I sell mine so many years ago for $500? Oh, yeah, because it was a worn out pile of junk and I couldn't afford to get it fixed. But it was so way cool!!!! Randy in Love Ya Like a Sister would be jealous of this sports car, just like I was jealous of his Triumph motorcycle as I wrote the novel.
5.) Royal Manual Typewriter, $46. This was my first typewriter, and $46 is its current selling price online. I wrote my first novel with my Royal--kept the typewriter and threw away the novel. I still remember the sound of the keys hitting the paper. You really had to smack the keys; typing was a muscular thing, nothing electronic or digital about it.
6.) Dixon Ticonderoga #2 pencils, about half a box, about $3.85. These pencils are my favorite writing implement. The physical sensation of the graphite marking the paper is transcendental. And the colors are so beautiful! I wrote "Island" with a #2 Ticonderoga; in fact, I write all my poetry with a "Ti."
7.) Two feet of snow, for free. It snowed two feet on my birthday this year on February 2. This photo is from that blizzard. Free badge available on my blog website.
8.) Veggies, prices vary. If I decide to do a garden yardsale this fall, stop by for some organic, home-grown vegetables. In my fantasy novel I'm working on now, The Stone Dragon, gardening and a garden gnome are important to the events of the story. Photos of the Stone Dragon here: http://www.tomkeplerswritingblog.com/2010/03/photos-of-stone-dragon.html.
9.) Lava lamp, $5 OBO. Left behind when my my son moved to Washington. Please buy this; otherwise, I might use it and come to love it.
10.) Muse, will give away to the right person. Used and slightly tarnished, but definitely fixable. One of those products that never wears out. Luckily, no matter how many I give away, I've always got two--one for personal use, and one for the world.
Ah! I feel lighter, more free. Thank you for visiting my garage sale and listening to my stories. Everything I sell is definitely "collectible." And what you don't collect, a guy comes around once a week who will take it if I leave it by the curbside. Now, to arrange all those "garage sale" memories in my brain in a usable order--then I can start writing.

Guest Post with J.R. Turner

Award-winning author J.R. Turner lives in Central Wisconsin with her husband and three children. She began writing in high school, and after a decade working as a commercial artist, started her first novel in 1999. Aside from crafts, camping and cooking, she loves holidays. A favorite is Halloween, a combination of spooky supernatural fun and chocolate. Visit her at http://www.jennifer-turner.com to learn more!
A Guide to Being DFF’s with a Ghost
1.Forgive the dead their wardrobe. They can’t help how they look and a makeover only happens after they move on. To be friends with someone who died a hundred years ago, you’ll have to accept them as they are.
2. Be prepared to share their death. There are few more intimate ways to get to know someone else than by reliving their murder. Don’t fight against this special bonding moment—instead go with the flow and hope you survive.
3. Bad skin is nothing like the odor of decay and the gooey mush that often accompanies a century-old murdered ghost. Be polite and don’t stare.
4. Parents are unable to see these ghostly apparitions, so if one decides to pay a visit by showing up in your refrigerator, don’t panic. Simply hold the door open and pretend to look for orange juice.
5. Communication is key. If you are unable to understand the often messed up message the dead are seeking to send you, consult your local medium. Often they can translate the moans, groans, and chain-rattling attempts the deceased friend is using to communicate with you.
6. Above all else, be accepting and patient. Ghosts are often exhausted by an effort to hang out with you. If they’re a bit too tired to hit the mall or see a movie, never fear, they’re always great fun at Halloween.
Kaylee Hensler might have not ended up convicted of grave robbery and arson had she followed the six rules above. As it was, she freaked out and ended up in court, sentenced to a reformatory for wayward girls. In Detour 2 Death, the third book in the Extreme Hauntings series, she’ll learn that not all dead things want to be Total DFF’s: Dead Friends Forever.
Thank you so much, Sarah, for hosting me on my blog tour. I’m so excited to see this book released and I really enjoyed this visit! Please offer one person, a winner drawn from those who comment, an electronic download of DFF: Dead Friends Forever. I’d be stoked to send the first book in a series out to them.

Guest Post with Julie Chibbaro

I have the amazing Julie Chibbaro for a guest post on her research for Deadly. First, here is the summary of Deadly:

A mysterious outbreak of typhoid fever is sweeping New York.
Could the city’s future rest with its most unlikely scientist?
If Prudence Galewski is ever going to get out of Mrs. Browning’s esteemed School for Girls, she must demonstrate her refinement and charm by securing a job appropriate for a young lady. But Prudence isn’t like the other girls. She is fascinated by how the human body works and why it fails.
With a stroke of luck, she lands a position in a laboratory, where she is swept into an investigation of the fever bound to change medical history. Prudence quickly learns that an inquiry of this proportion is not confined to the lab. From ritzy mansions to shady bars and rundown tenements, she explores every potential cause of the disease.
But there’s no answer in sight—until the volatile Mary Mallon emerges. Dubbed “Typhoid Mary” by the press, Mary is an Irish immigrant who has worked as a cook in every home the fever has ravaged. Strangely, though, she hasn’t been sick a day in her life. Is the accusation against her an act of discrimination? Or is she the first clue in a new scientific discovery?

And here is Julie on writing historical fiction:
The great part about reading historical fiction, for me, is the sense that I’m having a fabulous time while also learning something. After the last page, I feel full and solid, like I ate a good meal. I try to write my books that way – entertaining and enlightening at the same time.
So how did I find the story for Deadly? Well, I grew up in New York, a place that always struck me as rather notorious for its epidemics (all big cities have this problem). I’d always heard about Typhoid Mary – mostly from teachers and parents who admonished us not to spread our germs around – and I always thought she somehow injected epidemics into people, or worse. In doing research for another book, I came across the real story of (Typhoid) Mary Mallon. Turns out she was a cook for rich NY families working in 1906. She never got the fever, only spread it unintentionally in her cooking.
This epidemic seemed a perfect set-up for a historical novel. I started to think about a girl who might be affected by this epidemic, and how she might be involved in this story. I began to hear Prudence’s voice, a 16-year-old girl saddened by the loss of her brother and father, who wants, in her words, “to fight death.”
As the story began to take shape, my research brought me into wonderful areas of discovery about the time period – the latest technology: telephones, cars, electricity – and how Prudence used this new technology to hunt down the cause of the epidemic. The Internet was very helpful in this area – quick dips to Google to find out small things. For bigger facts, or for getting a whole sense of the time, I had to get on my feet and go to the Lower East Side of NY where the story takes place, or visit a museum to look at old paintings or photos, or to the NY Public Library to look at old newspapers.
Using history in my novels allows me to do my two favorite things, reading and writing, at the same time. I hope after reading Deadly, you come away with a full feeling, or at least a sense of wonder about the world that existed a hundred years ago.

I hope you enjoyed!

Humor Writing...

I have the awesome part one of Humor Writing from Leila Sales. I hope you enjoy.
Above all else, Mostly Good Girls is a funny book. I gave copies of an early draft to three different friends and asked them to mark every place where they laughed aloud. Whenever there was a page that none of them had marked, I would go in and fix it to make it funnier. That is how important it was to me to have a laugh line on every page.
Humor writing takes instinct, for sure, and I would never claim that I always get it right. That said, I did three years of improv and sketch comedy with a troupe called Off-Off Campus, and I used to write a humor column for my college newspaper and over the years I’ve learned a lot of rules for being funny. On my blog tour, I’m going to share with you a few of my best humor writing tools and tricks. Starting with:
1. “YES, AND.”
Agreement is your number one tool for getting a scene off the ground and making it be funny. If one character says, “Let’s go explore the abandoned library!” and the other character says, “No,” then, um, that’s it. Your scene just ended. But if one character says, “Let’s go explore the abandoned library!” and the other replies, “Yes, and let’s bring our ghost-finding apparatus!” then your story just got the opportunity to go somewhere.
More to the point, this is a rule about all the characters agreeing to exist fully in this world. There’s a scene in Mostly Good Girls called “The Candy and Tampon Locker,” and it talks about the communal all-class locker that’s filled with candy. And tampons. This concept would be a lot less funny if Violet and Katie kept being like, “This is really weird. Why do we have a Candy and Tampon Locker in our school?” (Even though, of course, it is really weird.) It’s funny because they all just go with it, like, “Obviously we have a Candy and Tampon Locker; otherwise, where would we go every time we need Sour Patch Kids? And tampons?”
Unfortunately, since I wasn’t man enough to own up to being the tampon thief, we all got the benefit of Mischa’s lecture. “What if somebody got her period, and there were no tampons in this locker?” Mischa asked us, rhetorically. “Would you just let her bleed all over the floor?”
Rachel’s face paled, and she looked like she was going to puke. I felt the exact same way. I’m all for the female empowerment fostered at all-girls’ schools, but sometimes I really wish Westfield were co-ed because I think if we had guys here we wouldn’t talk so often about menstrual blood.
Mischa’s so picky, anyway. It’s not like the Candy and Tampon Locker was completely empty. There was totally a half-full bag of Rollos in there.
Last thing on agreement: I have found that it’s almost always funnier to be excited about something than it is to be disparaging. Some of my best humor pieces have been about how I love Degrassi, or cider donuts, or Jock Jams. No one is interested in hearing that you hate doing homework. We all hate doing homework. But if you were super-excited about doing homework, well, that’s an opportunity to be funny.

Interviewing Survivors

Today, I have a guest post from Swati Avasthi, the author of Split. She talks about her work with domestic victims.
When I coordinated a domestic violence legal clinic, I heard so many
stories, thousands of stories, of abuse. As many as 26 people came to the clinic in the two and half hours we had our doors open for new clients seeking emergency orders of protection. My staff of volunteer interns and I went to work - leading our clients into private room and listening to what had happened to them. For these interviews, I remember closing the heavy metal door, and making sure tissues were available, I recorded their stories. Some clients wanted me to share their fear, sadness, panic or anger. Others wanted to hear it wasn't their fault. And still others were defensive, afraid of judgement. But what every person really wanted was to feel safe again, to make the violence stop.
In the first few weeks or maybe months I wanted to be able to ease their pain. Over time I settled for the handshake or the look of relief on their faces after they left our office, with their orders of protection in hand. I developed the professional distance required to go in day after day without falling apart or burning out. I focused only on the courage of the people in front of me and let that inspire me. Leaving someone is always hard, but considerably harder when you believe that you are worth little and you know that you don't have that much control over your life, whether financial, emotional or practical. And so it was easy to see the strength when they were in the office.
And though they left reassured, for me that was when the worrying began. I was acutely aware that a piece of a paper was not a shield and I was skeptical that this thin, carbon copied order could offer the protection it claimed. I clearly remember hearing a news story about a domestic violence victim who was killed by her abuser when I was working there and listening for her name. Was she one of our clients? I dreaded the day when we would hear that story or have our documents subpoenaed. It never came.
About a year into my tenure I finally asked my boss: why do these thin pieces of paper work? Clearly these are men who don't care about the law. But I found that they did. That abuses have a bully mentality and that if they are told my someone who has power over them to leave their victim alone they do, for the most part.
Which gave me comfort. And hope which I could then give to our clients.
It was only after I left the clinic that the impact of the stories, the horrific aspects that I had kept at bay, with professional distance and faith in a piece of paper, began to strike me. I remember with extreme clarity, the man who a man who lifted his shirt and showed me the stitches that arched from the notch in his collar bone to his navel; a woman whose abuser was being released after seven years in prison and who was threatening her; an aspiring model who was so terrified that she brought a friend and sat shaking as she talked. I can't say that I was noble enough to write Split to honor them. Instead, I wrote it to try to make sense of something that seemed senseless and to try to put on the page what clattered around in my head. I couldn't erase from my mind their stories, anymore than I could erase their pain. Writing Split was like therapy for me. I no longer need to erase the stories. Instead, I have come full circle, finding hope again in the courage the survivors who came in had. Hope that if they could find a way to end their abuse, we can find a way help prevent it.
Thank you, Swati Avasthi for that amazing story. As a family member of people that have been domestically abused, I found Split to be a stunning story. Swati is also having several auctions that were donated by authors, agents, and editors that will benefit Family Violence Prevention Fund. You can find the auctions here. I have a copy for giveaway, just fill out the form below.

Guest Post: Natalie Standiford on Siblings and how they shape people

Natalie Standiford used to be an editor at Random House, before she became an author. She is the author of How to Say Goodbye in Robot, Confessions of The Sullivan, and several other books. Natalie is part of the all-YA-author-band called Tiger Beat. She lives in New York City, and she can be found on her website at www.nataliestandiford.com.
I'm the oldest of four: I have one sister and two brothers, and I love having siblings. It fascinates me how people with the same parents and upbringing can turn out so different, and yet there's always a thread of similarity running through somewhere. A sibling relationship is unlike any other.
As a child I loved reading books about big families and I used to write stories about a family of seven sisters. My favorite part was naming all the girls, first names and middle names (andpets, for maximum naming fun). At night I told these stories to my own sister (we shared a room). She's only a year younger than I am and has always been my best friend. As kids we played endless games of cards, danced to songs on the radio, gossiped about boys. We're alike and we're not alike. You can tell that we're sisters, even though she's tall and brunette and I'm short and blonde, even though she's a science whiz and I love language. Puzzling out the family traits in all their incarnations is part of the fun of having siblings.
With one of my brothers (two years younger) I share a love of books, movies, music, radio, and a sense of the strange. My other brother was the baby, born when I was eight. My sister and I dressed him up like a doll in our old ballet costumes, taught him dance routines and French phrases, and put on shows starring him. Poor boy! But he didn't seem to mind, and he was so CUTE. He still has something of a performer's personality. I don't know whether that was shaped by his sisters or whether he was born with it.
I never lost my fascination with big families full of girls, and I finally got to indulge it in CONFESSIONS OF THE SULLIVAN SISTERS. I agonized over the names of every family member, of course, and enjoyed playing out that special dynamic sisters have. They know each other so well—better than anyone else in the world—and that can foster both warmth and tension. In my experience (and in the book), the warmth always wins in the end.
Scholastic was kind of enough to offer each stop a giveaway of How To Say Goodbye in Robot and Confessions of The Sullivan Sisters to one winner. The contest last until September 28th at Midnight and is for US addresses only. To enter, just fill out the form below.

Guest Post: Where Hollywood should take a page out of the Book Industry

The authors of The Familiars, Adam Jay Epstein & Andrew Jacobson asked, if they could do a guest post. So I hope you enjoy this post and check out The Familiars, when it comes out.

With the release of our debut novel, THE FAMILIARS, fast approaching on September 7th, we have readied ourselves for a marathon, not a sprint to success. That is the nature of the book industry, or so we have been told. Especially children’s books and book series. It isn’t always the first book, or even the second, in a series that catches on. Sometimes it isn’t until the third book that things really take off. By then the cycle of hardcover to paperback has been given time to play out in bookstores, schools, and libraries, and audiences have been able to discover a series through word of mouth. Which brings me to Hollywood. Oh, how times have changed since the days of our childhood, when a movie like “Back to the Future” played at the local movie theater for what seemed like a year. Now, films live and die not just by their opening weekend, but by their opening day. Whether it’s the so-called Twitter effect or the nature of our viral world, if a movie doesn’t play on Friday night, it’s pretty much toast by Monday. (“The Growing Importance of Opening Weekend”: http://bit.ly/aqA1nK)
Of course, film studios are spending tens of millions of dollars blitzing the airwaves with advertisements for their summer blockbusters, while the publishing industry rarely has much of a marketing budget at all. But rather than lamenting the more grass roots, micro-budget push given to a book’s release, perhaps authors should be embracing it. In the book world, an author has the luxury of sitting back and waiting for their novel or series of novels to find an audience over months, or even years. In Hollywood, you’ve got maybe 24 hours to connect with a very fickle public being asked to shell out their hard earned dollars. We all want instant success, and the corporate entities bankrolling these products – be it a movie or a book – aren’t exactly known for patience. But as screenwriters looking forward to an unknown Friday in 2013 when The Familiars movie gets released, here’s a plea to Hollywood: take a page from the book industry and give a film time to find an audience. Maybe one day just isn’t enough.
You can learn more about “The Familiars” at www.thefamiliars.com.

Guest Post from Kody Keplinger

I have the one and only Kody Keplinger. She is the author of The DUFF and is amazing. Here is her most memorable birthday...
The Birthday From Outer Space
When I was a kid, I had a sick obsession with aliens. The green kind with funny shaped heads and three fingers on each hand. I had aliens on my notebooks, my trapper-keeper, my T-shirts. I was an alien for Halloween, I had an alien key chain, and I even had a set of stuff animal aliens. It was a big deal to me. Like I said – obsessed.
So when my eighth birthday rolled around, my mom proposed a plan. We were living in a cabin by the river then, and we had a huge backyard for the first time in my life. She suggested we put that yard to use and have a birthday party – a real one with friends from school instead of just the family. Of course, I was completely on board with this.
I invited twenty of my closest friends and carefully selected my outfit. At eight, not only was I obsessed with aliens, but I was also a fashionista. After finding the perfect outfit, I was ready for my party, which Mom was planning with almost frightening enthusiasm. She made gift bags for the guests and decorated the picnic tables in our backyard with balloons. Then, just before everyone started to arrive, Mom showed me the cake.
It had an alien on it!!! I was so excited. An alien driving a convertible, to be exact.
But let’s back up. My eighth birthday was already my best birthday ever for one reason. Two weeks earlier, my grandmother had surprised me by bringing over her gift to me – a feisty yellow Labrador puppy named Bowser. Getting my first dog already made the year spectacular, but this party was icing on the alien-themed-cake.
Finally, my friends started to arrive. Me and the other third-graders ran around the yard, laughing and popping balloons while Bowser chased us and Mom sat up the bobbing-for-applies game. By the way, I suck at bobbing for apples. You have no idea.
After a few games, it was present time. My friends gathered around as I opened gift after super awesome gift. The big present (aside from my puppy of course) was a brand new bike (which said puppy later chewed the seat off of – sigh). It was amazing and fun, and my eight-year-old crush gave me the TY beanie baby unicorn I’d been wanting, so I was sure that was true love.
And then the moment came. CAKE TIME!!! I waited for my mother’s boyfriend to walk out of the house carrying my birthday cake, but instead . . . an alien walked out the back door.
Gasp!
Okay, not a real alien. Duh. But it looked like an alien! It was really my mom’s boyfriend – we all knew that – but he’d put on my old Halloween mask and dressed in all black and green, looking just like the alien on my birthday cake. My friends laughed and clapped as the alien presented the cake to me, and I felt like the coolest kid ever.
A few hours later, everyone but my best friend, Molly, had gone. Molly’s grandmother lived just down the road from our cabin., so we spent the rest of the evening riding our bikes up and down the gravel road, talking about all the fun things that had happened that day, with Bowser chasing our tires and barking at us when we got too far ahead. It was like a scene from a sweet Disney movie.
I’ve never forgotten that birthday. Tons of other little girls get big backyard parties. Ones bigger than mine with more people and more presents. But my eighth birthday was truly out of this world.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZOE AND SARAH!!!!

Guest Vlog from Melissa Walker

Melissa Walker is an amazing author and was nice enough to make a vlog. She also run Before You Were Hot and I Heart Daily, which are fantastic websites. Anyways, I'll let Melissa talk about her sixteenth birthday...

Guest Post with Mindi Scott

Mindi Scott is the author of Freefall, which comes out in October. I am very excited for it. I have met her once and she was very sweet and adorable. Anyways, here is her post of her memorable birthdays...

When Sarah asked if I would write this post, she gave me the prompt of my nineteenth birthday or my most memorable birthday.
Piece of (birthday) cake! I thought. I’ve had 32 birthdays so far. Surely, I can come up with a good one to write about!
So I thought back to my 19th. On that day, my boyfriend and I ended up on the same volleyball team. Every time I’d miss a shot, he’d complain. After one too many of those outbursts, I walked out mid-game and cried in the bathroom about my depressing oldness and my boyfriend’s obnoxiousness while he and my best friend had a heated argument in the hallway.
Clearly, birthday #19 is not worth remembering. And yet . . . I do remember it.
On my 7th birthday, my big party was canceled because my mom had an emergency illness and was hospitalized. Later that week, some of the girls brought in presents for me, but one of them told me that her mom said I didn’t deserve presents because my mom had been rude and canceled the party at the last minute.
Like, wow, right?
My Sweet 16 was the year my sister (who was ten) called out my boyfriend for bringing me just a card. “It’s her sixteenth birthday and you didn’t even get her a present? What kind of boyfriend are you?”
I got to spend a portion of the afternoon sitting on a lawn chair under my great-grandpa’s carport trying to get my boyfriend stop to crying.
Good times.
What else was there? For my 21st birthday, I went out to Seattle nightclubs for the first time ever. But the guy I’d brought wanted to sit just at the table all night. He told me I should dance with my coworkers because he wasn’t in the mood. Naturally, he later got upset with me for doing so.

And then for my 30th in Las Vegas, I got dressed up all glamorous to go out dancing at a fancy club. As luck would have it, all the clubs we tried to go to were closed for the night. The one that we finally found open decided to close right when we showed up. The city that never sleeps totally SHUT DOWN on my birthday!
As you can see, many of my “memorable” birthdays kind of suck. The other twenty-seven, though? They’re probably tied for my best because they were drama-free and I got to spend time with friends and family just having food, dessert, and presents.
My birthday this coming October happens to be two days before FREEFALL’s release. Which means that it’s going to be memorable no matter what happens. I just hope it ends up being the good kind of memorable!
Happy birthday to you, Sarah and Zoe!