The only problem was I wasn’t sure how I’d frame such an entry. How to Write an Unlikeable Female Protagonist? Uhm, that would be awfully presumptuous of me and besides, I don’t think writing an “unlikeable” girl protagonist is all that different from writing a “likeable” one. Also, there’s the issue that Parker and Regina seem to be more liked than they’re hated, so have I even written an unlikeable protagonist? Or maybe I shouldn’t say readers actually like them, so much as they understand them? Also, if I write unlikeable too much it stops looking like a word and my God that is tragic, why would anyone make me do that to a word.

So THAT is why I haven’t written a blog entry on the topic: the actual writing of an unlikeable main character is less complicated than talking about writing one. But still, I get questions about and relating to the likeability of my female protagonists.

Readers seem to want to know why:

1. I would make Parker and Regina so unlikeable and
2. Do I really believe anyone would suffer their company willingly (like Chris, Jake and Michael) and
3. Do I think readers (or anyone) should like them

These are pretty great questions. If you don’t want to read the rest of this entry, the short answers are 1) because I wanted to 2) yes and 3) that’s up to the reader and there you go.

Before I wrote Cracked Up to Be, I wrote another YA novel. It had two POVs–a boy named Peter and a girl named Margot–and, get this, it was written in third person. The book got me so close to representation, there is a whole story there about how I pulled my hair out, but never mind that.

So it got rejected a lot. And what all the rejections seemed to come down to was that people liked Peter and hated Margot. SURE, there may have been massive other problems with the novel but to cope with the sting of (literally) hundreds of rejections, I needed to pinpoint what they all had in common and then uh, get defensive about it. So Margot was what they had in common. She was cold. They couldn’t connect with her. I took the manuscript out and reevaluted it, wondering if I could make her more ‘likeable’ (whatever that means). But when I read it, I had a problem: I liked her and I didn’t think I could change her.

(Just so you know, Margot spent the first half of the book hating her perfect boyfriend and wanting him to die. Then in the second half he DID and then she was like, “Oh man.” WAT is unloveable about that, I ask you.)

So I did a lot of navel-gazing soul-searching and I just kept getting annoyed because my thoughts decided to circle in this way: WHY DO GIRLS HAVE TO BE NICE ALL THE TIME THEY CAN BE MEAN AND ANGRY AND GENDER STEREOTYPING MUCH ARGH. Just. Like. That. I was bothered that the behaviours that are supported, loved, celebrated or romanticized in male characters would be, I thought, rejected in female characters because we have the perception that girls are sugar and spice and everything nice (er, not that I think wanting your significant other to DIE is an inherently male characteristic).

We are HARD on girls.

And please don’t mistake me: I’m not saying we’re not hard on guys at all, or that male characters aren’t held to their own set of ridiculous standards but I am writing an entry about writing unlikeable female characters, so. Anyway, just imagine a character like Sutter Keely (whom I LOVE) and Holden Caulfield (who I dream of repeatedly punching in the face) as girls. How do you think they would be received?

Or how about: imagine a girl who is outwardly hostile to her love interest, has violent tendencies, invades his personal space, and is just generally inappropriate. Like, you know–stalkery. I see a lot of that lately with male characters, and the implication is I’m supposed to think that’s hot. A lot of people DO think that’s hot in fiction, apparently, but I don’t know that we’d be encouraged to think the same thing if the aggressor in question was female.

I think that entire paragraph could turn into a conversation in itself and I’m sure someone can come along and passionately refute what I am saying etc. but I’m just telling you what got me to the point of wanting to write about and then actually writing a character like Parker. I was contemplating double standards, it was making me angry and I decided I wanted to write the meanest, most unlikeable female protagonist I could think of, because nuts to it all. Part of this also falls under the larger umbrella of why I like to write–I am interested in provoking strong responses, whether they’re positive or negative. The last thing I want is for someone to walk away from my books feeling indifferent (I think lots of writers feel this way).

The choice to return to an unlikeable protagonist with Some Girls Are was also informed by everything I’ve detailed above, perhaps even more so because girl-bullying is such a taboo topic. No one wants to believe the extremes girls will go to to make each other miserable. Like Rachel Simmons, I believe that the expectation that girls must be ‘nice’ abets their aggressive behaviour. I think girls can be physically violent (you wouldn’t–or maybe you would–believe how many times I was told by interested parties that if I was writing a book about girl bullies, they could not be physically violent with each other because girls are only aggressive psychologically).

Part of writing Some Girls Are was gathering up all these ideas of how girls are ‘supposed’ to bully each other and wanting to write against them. I’ve talked about why I needed to write Some Girls Are on a personal level, but so much of Some Girls Are grew out from–SPOILERS–the scene with the girls on the side of the road because I was told girls would never, ever behave that way because… girls. Just. Don’t. (Psh.)

Making Regina a former mean girl who grapples with and indulges in and, at points, enjoys her mean girl tendencies (whether it’s right or wrong) was a no-brainer for me. I wanted to make a difficult story more difficult; not only in the interest of challenging readers (hopefully) but to challenge myself. I think having Regina be a nice girl/accidental target would have been an easy, safe choice to make. I identify with Regina a lot but her instinct is different than mine. Exploring that was not always easy, but that is what made it rewarding. That’s what’s in it for me when I make these kinds of choices. That’s a lot, in my opinion.

Do I really believe that anyone would willingly suffer the company of my main characters? Would they really have a Chris, Jake and Michael inserting themselves into their lives? The answers to both of these questions, for me, is yes. I can think of about eighteen million jerks (yes MILLION) I know IN REAL LIFE who are surrounded by incredible support systems, who have love in their lives. I don’t hesitate in my answer. People are complex and it is never as simple as “bad people should have no friends, good people should.” (I don’t think Parker and Regina are bad people, though.) I think it’s realistic, I think it’s possible. Of course!

I sometimes think the reason people approach me with the question is because they (and I do this too) struggle with the idea of who deserves and doesn’t deserve that kind of support… when really, how much someone is given–regardless of how nice they are or aren’t–in terms of love and support isn’t up to us, unless we’re the ones doing the giving.

That is why reader response fascinates me; being told by people exactly what they think Parker and Regina do and don’t deserve is probably one of the most gratifying things I’ve experienced in having these books published. I don’t think anyone is wrong in what they feel about either of those girls, whether they hate them or they don’t. But I love when they feel strongly about it and I love when they feel strongly enough about it to tell me.

Finally, do I think readers should like Parker and Regina? As I said, that’s up to the reader and that’s all there is to it. As I said, I have hopes that people will respond to my work whether they like it or hate it (indifference is what terrifies me!), but the last thing I will do is tell someone how they should respond. There are no “right” or “wrong” ways to feel about Parker and Regina.

So. That is what I have to say about writing unlikeable female protagonists.

OH WAIT! I just read an interview with hilarious comedian Louis CK and he talked about likeability and I wish I’d just smacked this quote up instead of this entry BUT OH WELL, this is what he said:

“Well, I think “likability” is an overused word. I don’t watch people ’cause I like them; I watch them because they’re compelling. Sympathetic is a little different. It’s like I understand this person, and I never know quite what they’re going to do and I’m really interested in what they might do next and they feel real to me. That’s, I think, way more valuable than likable. Likable just thins you out…”

I love that man. UGH he is in Toronto in July and I won’t get to see him! Sob, sob. Wait what were we talking about again?

PS Eddie in Fall For Anything will be my first non-mean girl character. MAYBE SHE WILL BE THE MOST UNLIKEABLE OF THEM ALL! Who knows!

I can’t wait to find out.

HAR HAR HAR!

So guess what Internet! Most of you know this because I can’t shut up about it everywhere, but last Wednesday there was an EARTHQUAKE in CANADA and I FELT IT.

Here is my story:

I woke up and I was in my bed and then my bed started shaking–like little vibratey shakes–and I thought two stupid things 1) that a big truck had gone by outside or 2) it was me that was shaking (I DON’T KNOW) and then it stopped and then I went on Twitter and everyone was talking about this earthquake in Ontario and I was like oh how interesting and then I got up and then I was like

OH MY GOD THAT WAS IT!

And then I told my dad about it but because he was on the road when it happened and it hadn’t hit the news yet HE DID NOT BELIEVE ME but then my brother-in-law also experienced the same thing at the exact same time AND IT WAS TRUE THAT I FELT THE EARTH QUAKE and I have always wanted to experience an incredibly mild, non-destructive earthquake so there you have it. That is my story and I think it is a pretty great story, personally.

In other news, Fall For Anything is available most places online for pre-order! Active pre-order links are on the book’s page if you’re into that sort of thing. I will be getting copyedits for it sometime next week. I have bought myself a pack of these for the task:

While I wait for copyedits, I have been writing (while listening to a lot of Fiona Apple–God, she is so great) and reading this book:

I actually bought this book and started it last year, but for some reason couldn’t get into it. I think I tried reading it outside of a reading binge (I am a binge-reader) and that is why. So I decided to give it a go again because I am dying to see the movie–and refuse to until I have read the book–and OH MY GOD YOU GUYS IT IS SO GOOD! I am only about 250 pages in (it’s like 600 pages) and it is just deliciously thrilling and hard to put down and SO VIOLENT and what can I say, I am enjoying the violence very much! There is a girl character in the Program with a SICKLE and she is A RUTHLESS KILLING MACHINE and she is awesome and she would totally kill me ASAP if we were in the program together but oh well.

In other news I watched Doppelganger, another Kiyoshi Kurosawa film and I LOVED IT. I think it displaced Retribution as my second favourite of his (Pulse is always in first place), but I’m not sure. I just can’t say enough good things about Kurosawa’s films. I want to write books like he makes movies. JUST LIKE THIS:

I look for that in books too; books that just say it! No hiding behind prose, those ~twenty dollar words~. Just saying it. JUST SAY IT! That’s what I like. And that’s what I like about his movies. He just says it. Anyway, all that’s left for me to see is Charisma and that’s on its way to me in the mail now. Dear Internet, tell someone to distribute Loft so I can watch that too. I am so sad Charisma will be my last Kurosawa film until more are released in North America. I guess I’ll watch the ones I have over and over again until this situation changes. Sigh.

ANYWAY.

Now I am going to get back to reading Battle Royale. I hope everyone is having an amazing weekend! As you can see, I am having quite an amazing weekend myself, what with the reading and the movie-watching and the earthquake that led up to both. My weekend is WAY more amazing and exciting than the weekend everyone at the ALA conference is having, I AM SURE.

ALSO did I tell you there was an earthquake in Canada and I felt it.

I DID.

Fall For Anything appears to have a release date and that day is December 21st, 2010. In unrelated news: I hear a lot of gift-giving occurs around this time of year. It’s also available for pre-order on a few Canadian bookselling sites (how I discovered the date!), but I’ll put a multitude of pre-order links up on the book’s page after it has spread everywhere like the zombie plague I am totally prepared for. I like to update things in one go because I’m a busy person with lots of Mario Kart to play, okay (speaking of which: I unlocked! Rosalina!).

Because Fall For Anything is availble for pre-orders in a few spots, that means it’s on GoodReads! If you want to read it, I’d lurve if you added it to your To-Read list. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend.

And that is all the Fall For Anything news that is fit to print! I am anxiously awaiting permission to show you guys the cover and nervously anticipating copyedits, which is like the math of this whole publishing process to me, which means it is scary and I can’t do it in front of people.

Yeah, I know.

NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT DELICIOUS FOOD.

One thing that I love to do is cook, so I am going to talk about cooking now. CAN YOU HANDLE MY TRUTH. Anyway, I’ve noticed lots of publishing folks place a lot of stock in baked goods and sweets but no one talks about SAVORY EASY MEALS. I have decided to be the person that does.

In case you don’t know, food is awesome. I am always on the quest for ‘The Perfect X.’ Did you know that my 2010 will be defined by the fact that I found the perfect red sauce for pasta which made me reconsider everything I ever thought about food (this is a true story, please get out your Kleenex). I had been searching for the perfect red pasta sauce for YEARS (THAT IS NOT AN EXAGGERATION) and then Smitten Kitchen introduced me to Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce with butter and onions. It has THREE ingredients. THREE. This is the sauce they serve to the angels in heaven, I assume. Or this sauce is made of angels, I don’t know. I heard a choir of them SING when I tasted it, anyway. And like that, after years–YEARS!–I had found my perfect red sauce.

BUT IT WAS A REVELATION TO ME. It was in that beautiful moment I realized I was overthinking food. I felt the best recipes had to be complicated and crazy and involve many ingredients, but now I am trying to do more with less.

Yesterday I made the most awesome vegetarian sub. But it might not qualifiy as a ‘do more with less’ recipe. In any case, it was so good I am going to write it into a novel. What you do is, you chop up some green peppers, onion, portobello mushrooms, mince some garlic. Sprinkle them with dried oregano and salt and pepper. Sautee them in some olive oil until they are nice and soft. Take yer sub bun! Thinly spread herb cream cheese on one or both slices of the bread depending on how much or little regard you have for the fact that cream cheese is not all that good for you in extreme quantities. If you are like me, you prefer enough herb cream cheese to kill several men. Take your nice and soft vegetables and spoon them onto your sub. Put some sub sauce on the veggies. Put some provolone cheese on top of that! Chop some tomatoes and put them on the cheese and then you know, put the top bun on and EAT IT.

And then love yourself and the world.

photo by Liz West

…

Ok.

So basically this year I have been trying to be as uncomplicated as possible in my endeavors in the kitchen. But I want every uncomplicated meal I make to taste like angels. I picked up The Flavor Bible and am totally hoping this will help me do that, but we shall see. Now that I have found the perfect red sauce, I am on a quest for the perfect vinaigrette and salad dressing and vegetable sandwich. Though the sub comes very close, IT IS NOT SIMPLE ENOUGH. And also I want to make an entire raw food meal one of these days BUT WHO KNOWS. I have many great aspirations in the kitchen when I am not writing novels and now you know.

Anyway, I think the whole point of this entry is that if I can impart any knowledge to you today, dear blog readers, it is not future book release dates, it is that LIME AND TOMATOES WERE MEANT TO BE TOGETHER.

That is all.

photos © Sarah D.

How cool is that?! Thank you so much, Sarah. Also: it is official-official. My books are more well-travelled than I am.

Speaking of Some Girls Are, Angie of Fat Girl, Reading, a blog worth bookmarking and keeping on your radar, gave SGA an incredible review that made my day. On top of THAT, she’s giving away her copy of the book. All you have to do is comment for a chance to win. Check it out here! And since this entry is turning out to be somewhat of a round-up of book news, recently, I’ve done interviews with the wonderful Briony Williamsom and at the awesome Confessions of a Book Geek and you can read them here and here respectively. Thank you for having me on your blogs, ladies!

I’ve been getting a few emails lately asking me about Fall For Anything and why there’s no page up on my site. Well, now there is! You can check it out here. There’s not much there at the moment–just a vague teaser and the promise of more information.

ALTHOUGH I DID GET TO SEE THE COVER ON MONDAY!

Aaaah. I can’t show it to you yet, but oh my God, you guys, it is my most favourite cover of them all. And I felt passionately about the two before it so what I’m saying is I might explode of passionate feelings about the cover of Fall For Anything before I can actually reveal it. For reals. I am trying to figure out if I can hint anything about it just to calm some of my passionate feelings. Hmm. WELL. It is a different cover from the last two! And, where the focal colour (is that what I should call it? I did not go to school for this, guys) for Cracked Up to Be was green and Some Girls Are was red… the focal colour for Fall For Anything is NEITHER OF THOSE COLOURS.

/tease

In other news, I am trying desperately to unlock Princess Rosalina on Mario Kart for Wii. It is making me homicidal. BUT I’M GETTING CLOSE.

Oh and I’m writing too.

But mostly, you know. Mario Kart.

I hope you are all having a wonderful week, people!

The last week of May always reminds me of trips to and from the hospital, navigating the back streets of the city in the car with my mom and my grandmother. One trip stands out. I am not sure how close he was, if we were right in the middle of it or nearing the end, but it was a beautiful day and I made a mental note to remember that. I can still see the houses, the trees and the shadows they cast in the sun. I don’t know why I told myself not to forget that exact moment but it’s stuck in my head and it is so vivid.

Waiting rooms. Soft cushy chairs and couches, the carpets. Standing outside the hospital at night, watching people go in and out. How the air felt out there. I remember the breeze exactly.

This is probably so morbid, but if there is one subject I think I could write about over and over again, it’s loss and grief. The way it transforms us. I will never stop being fascinated by the inescapable reality of losing people and the the things we carry after someone we love has gone. How we cope. The questions that kind of loss inspires.

I try to carve out answers in books, one published, one to be published, lots not, knowing full well I’m not going to come away anymore satisfied than I was when I started. I just end up with more questions, which almost inevitably become more books. But there’s something in asking those questions out loud, I think.

Sometimes it’s not just asking those questions, but trying to articulate a certain feeling–physical and emotional–so it can be more understood, so there is less loneliness in having it. Like, I’ve always wanted to know if everyone’s throat gets so constricted it aches right at the top and it’s like there’s something there you can’t even swallow around? And it hurts so much you can’t even speak. But in that exact spot. At the top of the back of your throat? It’s sort of like how I get brain freeze except not, which is totally weird, I know, but the best way I can describe it. Or how grief can make your skin feel like an electric bruise.

Fall For Anything is a book about grief and loss. It was a hard book to write. Sometimes it would veer left when I thought it should be going right and other times it was just the opposite, but in the end I think it did what it was supposed to and I think everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be on the last page. Mostly, I wanted it to be honest. Peeling off a band-aid. At one point in the book, Eddie thinks, I think to find some kind of understanding, you have to be as close to the truth as you can get to it. I believe in that, whenever I write and whatever I write. Otherwise, what is the point?

I drafted Some Girls Are at my grandparents’ house, that summer. It is not a book about death, which is sort of funny because I was surrounded by my grandfather’s absence when I wrote it. I wrote in the kitchen all through the night and I always had a bottle of water, a cup of coffee and a can of coke next to my laptop. Sometimes, when I was stuck, I would wander into the dining room, where there are photographs of him. I would look at them. I would go back into the kitchen. I would sit in his chair. I would get back to work.

It will be two years this Thursday.

We put a solar light on his gravestone. I like to go past it when we’re in the car at night and see it.

It was pretty exciting.

But it was not the most exciting thing that happened to me in the last month (I don’t like those things so much anymore, though). I have missed you, Internet! Thank you for being patient with me while I scrabbled to meet an incredibly intense deadline, fell drastically behind in emailing and blogs and thank you in advance for your continued patience as I scrabble to catch up.

I have to say, the best thing about my absence was some stuff happened so I’ve got blog entry material. I HAVE THINGS TO TELL YOU! That doesn’t happen often as we all know.

So the first exciting thing is that Fall For Anything is DONE. Done, done, done! Okay, copy-edits and first pass pages are all on the horizon but it’s pretty much done. When I can share more–plot summary, cover, release date and whatnot, I will. But the main thing is that it’s finished and that is a very nice thing to type. I got chills.

The second exciting thing is I’m thrilled to report Some Girls Are has been nominated for YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults and it is a nominee for their Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers. So cool! And it’s in very good company. And speaking of Some Girls Are, it’s now available for a few e-readers, so if you’ve been waiting for it to come out on the Kindle or the Nook, it’s here…

When I wasn’t working on Fall for Anything (or ‘Eddie’ as I call it 99% of the time, for it’s main character), I was preparing for the OLA’s (Ontario Library Association) Forest of Reading/Festival of Trees. Last October (LAST OCTOBER! Where is time going?) I announced that Cracked Up to Be was nominated for the White Pine Award. On May 12th, the nominees gathered for the Festival of Trees at the Toronto Harbourfront Centre. It’s a HUGE event that takes place over two days and thousands of readers visit and interact with authors.

It was an incredible day. I was up at four AM and on the road shortly thereafter so I could arrive in Toronto by 9:30. When I arrived, I got a badge with my name on it and a green ribbon and I had to note that because I <3 green. I met Pam Bustin first, (the author of Mostly Happy, which went on to win the White Pine–congratulations, Pam!) who is lovely and energetic and then directly after breakfast in the green room, I went to my signing tent which I shared with Susan Juby and Tim Wynne Jones, who were both very friendly and engaging and very cool and looked like they knew what they were doing at all times (which I envied!).

And then it was time to go onstage! Sabrina Jalees MCed the event and she was so hilarious we (mostly) forgot about the cold. And then the authors were paraded (literally!) onstage. Each author was accompanied by two people. One person holding a sign with the authors’ name on it (my sign holder’s name escapes me but she was a really nice girl–thank you!) and your speaker, who introduces you very kindly (thank you, Mel!) and then oh my goodness, the author has to speak. Which I did. And I didn’t fall down or nothin’ so that was awesome.

(Any day I don’t fall on my face is awesome.)

So, in short: a GREAT day. I want to thank everyone who worked hard to make it all possible and to make it run so smoothly. I can only imagine how much planning goes into an event that huge, but from where I was sitting it was flawless. I got to meet so many wonderful librarians and volunteers and readers and authors and I feel truly grateful to be in such a wonderful community.

And then the four hour drive home!

The next day, I gave three talks to teen readers about writing and publishing at a Voices of the Forest event at a local (for me!) education center, along with the wonderful Lesley Livingston, Pam Bustin and Susan Juby. I was incredibly fortunate to have my talks attended by awesome readers and writers who asked great questions and were just–I know I’m using a lot of positive adjectives in this post but they all apply! They were great, cool, awesome, nice. And now I must make use of this space to thank Pearl H., who tirelessly organized the event, but was unable to attend it. THANK YOU, PEARL! I’m sorry we didn’t get to meet.

So that was also a great day. And after the talks, we got the keys locked in the car and had to get a man with a coat hanger to fish them out so that was pretty exciting too.

SO MUCH EXCITEMENT!

Andddd that is what has happened in my neck of the woods since I cruelly abandoned this blog to uhm, do those things (I can’t emphasize enough that if you want up-to-the-minute news, you can get it if you follow me on Twitter). I am so going to spend June reading, relaxing and getting caught up on, well, everything and thinking hard about what book I will write next after Fall For Anything. Also maybe blogging more regularly? (Ha ha ha!)

Basically, I’m briefly deadline and outside-obligations free, so THE WORLD IS MY OYSTER.

And what I would really like to know is–

How are YOU?

AND please stay tuned because later this week, I’ll be posting an interview with the amazing Anna Jarzab, which will include a giveaway for her debut, All Unquiet Things, which I absolutely loved.

I have some news:


1) Some Girls Are is a nominee for YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults (!!!)

&

2) The title of book 3 has been made official. It will be called FALL FOR ANYTHING. No release date yet, but I will be spamming everything up just as soon as I have one, no doubt.


Here is more news: I am on a major deadline for FFA and I have lots of work to do, so I must away for a couple months (well, “away” in the sense that I am going to try to strike that balance between working like mad and also staying visible enough that people still remember my name COURTNEY WINTERS remember it also I told that joke like three weeks ago on Twitter, rock). Imagine me under a book and the only way to get out from under that book is to WRITE LIKE I HAVE NEVER WRIT BEFORE! I apologize for the absence that has seem to defined so much of the first half of my 2010–I truly feel bad for my lack of participation in my usual internet haunts–but it must be so.

That said, I need you to know these things:

So stay tuned for my interview with Anna Jarzab later this week! THERE WILL BE A GIVEAWAY! How can you go wrong?

And that’s it.

OH WAIT! One more thing!

From Publishers Marketplace:

SOME GIRLS ARE and CRACKED UP TO BE author Courtney Summers’s gritty story of one girl’s attempt to make sense of her father’s untimely death, to Sara Goodman at St. Martin’s, in a two-book deal, by Amy Tipton at Signature Literary Agency (World English).

So I have known about this since December and I’ve spent all that time since uhm trying to meet my deadline, but also trying to figure out what to say when I was given the okay to announce it.

BASICALLY:

I am grateful to Amy, who got this ball rolling in June 2007, and keeps it rolling. She is a true advocate and I love working with her. I love how she makes me think outside the box. I’m absolutely THRILLED I get to continue working with Sara and St. Martin’s Press. Over the course of two books, Sara’s magical editorial eye (seriously it is actually magical) has helped me grow as a writer and I can’t wait to shape books 3 and 4 (!) with her. I am especially grateful to my family because living with a writer is hard and to my friends because boy do they put up with a lot, especially when I am complaining to them about how my family doesn’t understand how hard it is to be a writer.

Nothing in this business is a given. I feel very fortunate to be part of this awesome YA community. It astounds and humbles and inspires me every day. I don’t have ENOUGH thanks for all the people who make it what it is and I’m so glad I will have the opportunity to share more of my crazy stories with you. And I hope you will consider reading them when they come out! And I must also thank you so so much for the support you have shown Cracked Up to Be and Some Girls Are.

THANK YOU.

I am very excited about this third book and I will be excited about book four too, just as soon as I know what it is about. But book 3, I can promise (at least at this point), is pretty dark and it is about how grief is not a beautiful thing.

I can’t really say much else about it at this point except maybe that I would HATE to be a character in a Courtney Summers novel.

Hee hee hee.

But by the end of June, the honeymoon was over. It was sort of like realizing the person you’ve married has really awful table manners and smells really bad and thinks women belong in the kitchen and how is it possible that you did not notice this before you agreed to take on its last name? I discovered my marriage with my book was built on nothing. So by mid-July, I scrapped all the pages and decided I needed to rethink our commitment to each other.

“Book,” I said, because I guess I am still using lame relationship analogies, “I am taking a break so we can save this marriage.”

Ideally, this is where the soul-searching begins. You’re maybe supposed to step back and be willing to take your fair share of the blame for this failed union and then figure out how you can fix it or if you can fix it. Except I couldn’t even consider either possibility, because I was really resentful about those lost one hundred pages. I felt betrayed. Like, REALLY resentful and betrayed. How could something that felt so real at the time turn out to be nothing in the end? My wasted love.

I gave that book my heart and soul and it was like, “Whatevs.”

So I threw all its clothes out on the lawn.

We stopped speaking to each other.

But I like to keep my word document perpetually open when I’m working on a new project. It is a constant reminder that I need to work (especially when I am slacking off), and it also saves me precious few seconds when I’m ready TO work. I mean, let’s face it. Clicking the MS Word icon and waiting for the program to start is a pain in the ass. Saving time means you are HIGHLY EFFECTIVE WORKER or something.

Anyway, that opened and forever minimized word document haunted my soul. Every so often, I would look at it and be transported back to happier times. I missed feeling it (uhm, you know, like in my heart). I was angry that it all turned out to be a sham. I was angry we had stopped communicating. I grieved accordingly and found myself in this strange place where I could not let the book go, but I didn’t want to work with it anymore. On paper, it was The Next Thing. But the reality of the situation was, I wasn’t doing anything. Nothing. I was adrift on a sea of broken dreams and whatnot.

(Seriously though, I honestly felt like had no sense of purpose. That is not the most enjoyable feeling when it centers around the thing you love more than anything to do. That is one of the worst feelings of them all. Just so you know. Mark that down. LACKING A SENSE OF PURPOSE: ONE OF THE WORST FEELINGS OF THEM ALL.)

A couple weeks ago I was contacted for a blog interview by a very awesome person for a very awesome blog (I will let you know when it hits the internets!). The interviewer asked me what the hardest challenge was in working on this new book that I had been talking about. I stared at the question and then I stared at my minimized word document and then I made a decision. I couldn’t lie about the situation. To myself or to that awesome interviewer. The fact of the matter was, I was not going to work on that book anymore, and my answer said as much. And then I maximized the window. I gave myself permission to give it up. It was very freeing.

“Book,” I said, “I am divorcing you. And since I had an airtight pre-nup, as you know, I will be keeping everything.”

And then I closed the window.

And then I opened a new one.

I had something else I was planning on working on before I finished Some Girls Are, and went back to it. I quickly managed about fifteen pages of it within a relatively short amount of time, but unlike before, I wasn’t really into it. Not 100% into it. I liked the idea–I still like the idea and will return to it one day–but I just wasn’t there. I wasn’t into this relationship.

Still, I thought I could make it work. This new book was a NICE book. It seemed to be into me. Maybe if I just stayed in it, I WOULD eventually get there. I was probably being a little gun-shy, after having my heart stomped on from my previous relationship, you know?

“You are probably just being a little gun-shy after having your heart stomped on from your previous relationship, you know?” My girlfriends told me in sympathetic voices, as they listened to me cry bitterly to them over coffee.

So I continued to work on this new thing. And then, one night, a line came to me. A different line. It had no place in the book I was writing…

… but the book I had given up.

“HAH, HAH, HAH!” I thought. “THAT IS HILARIOUS. Trying to win me back, right? Go to hell, book. I remember all that pain you caused me.”

And then I got flowers in the mail. And sometimes I would wake up at night with this book staring at me, but by the time I turned on the light, it was gone. I guess my book really missed me.

Which is understandable because I am so foxy.

During the day, I would sit in front of my computer and stare at the place in my taskbar my book used to be. Sarah McLachlan would whisper her lyrics in my ear. I remembered the good times that we had. How we let them slip away from us when things got bad. How clearly I first saw my book, standing in the sun. When I felt it’s warmth upon me, I WANTED IT TO BE THE ONE.

Actually, the truth is I was revisiting Dragonette’s greatest hits and all I could think was, wow this song is hot and awesome it makes me want to write that old book I gave up.

So I took a deep breath. I confronted the truth inside of me. And I opened up my old book.

And I typed that line that was floating in my head.

“Book,” I said. “If we are going to make it work this time, we need to communicate better.”

“I know, Courtney, I know,” it said. “Let’s never fight again.”

Then I opened up the other window, the Book 3 replacement, and I said, “Look, Joe. We’ve had fun, but you deserve someone better and I just found out you are a werewolf and I really hate werewolves.”

And then I went back to my original Edward. I mean, my book.

Anyway, the point is. Actually, I don’t know what the point is. Maybe it’s if you love something, let it go? Or maybe it’s that all relationships take a certain amount of effort and talking stuff out or something? Or maybe it’s just that I really like to ramble. THE POINT IS, I am now back with my old idea again and I am not sure we have the healthiest relationship ever, but by golly, WE’RE GONNA TRY TO MAKE IT WORK THIS TIME. Who knows.

But I have rediscovered my sense of purpose and this makes me very happy.

Also, I am never getting married.*

THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT.

* Unless, you know. Jeff Goldblum asks.

GLAMOROUS.

But it’s not ALL glamorous soft weeping. Last Tuesday, I got the final cover for Some Girls Are! Unfortunately, I can’t reveal it yet but I’m seriously looking forward to that point in the future where I can. I absolutely love it. My editor and cover designer worked super hard to get it perfect and I can say, without reservation, that they did. I was also chuffed to see SGA spotlighted at Sharon’s blog for Waiting on Wednesday yesterday.

Other happy-making things: C.K. Kelly Martin, who is one of my all-time favourite YA authors, released a short story called Orange Crush for Stop, Drop & Read’s blog anniversary! If you loved her debut, I Know It’s Over, you should check it out. You should check it out anyway, though. It’s centered around Holland, Nick’s sister and it’s fantastic. Another thing I really enjoyed on the internets as of late was readergirlz’s Art Saves project. Check out the posts there or on the amazing Little Willow’s blog.

I am binge listening to Muse a lot lately. These guys are so fantastic! They know how to PERFORM. And you can tell when you watch them it’s what they were meant to do. And if it’s not what they are meant to do, they are excellent fakers. I will see these guys in concert some day if it is the last thing I do. Check out this live performance of Apocalypse Please from the HAARP DVD:

More soon.