For anyone crazy enough to disagree:

For reals, the lists are a fantastic resource for any reader and I have to say I was particularly excited to see CJ Omololu’s Dirty Little Secrets, Amy Reed’s Beautiful and Carol Lynch Williams’s Glimpse on the Quick Picks list and Lucy Christopher’s Stolen, Tara Kelly’s Harmonic Feedback, Melina Marchetta’s Finnikin of the Rock, Daisy Whitney’s The Mockingbirds and Glimpse on the Best Fiction for Young Adults list. They’re all books I’ve read in the last year or so and loved very much. If you haven’t read them wat, I say wat, are you waiting for?!

So judging by the fact my last blog entry was written last year, I have been deliciously neglecting… my blog. Sorry! Despite this, I’ve been taking care to keep the What People Are Saying section of Fall for Anything’s page updated, so if you want to check out what people are saying about it head on over. Thank you, as always, to those who have taken the time to help spread the word about Fall for Anything, online and off. It really, really helps.

Anyways, the reason I have been so deliciously neglecting certain aspects of my online life is because, well. I’m busy and I’m tired, Internets! I spent the holidays launching Fall for Anything whilst juggling family-centric holiday stuff (as you do) and revising the last 130 pages of Book 4, which blossomed into 160 pages or something ridiculous before emailing it to my editor directly after the new year. Yes, it is with my editor, which makes me equal parts afraid–the good kind of fear–and happy. I think that emotion is called ‘hafraidness,’ but don’t quote me on that. But sweet beautiful wonderfulness it is off my desk for the moment and that is a very nice feeling.

And because my new year’s resolution is to write two books this year (I never make new year’s resolutions but the world is ending in 2012, so), I decided to take the opportunity to start outlining and working on Book 5. This is what that outline looks like so far:

But anyway, let's BACK THE EFF UP and talk about my treadmill desk! If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you have heard all about it and you are bored of it all by now but check out my treadmill desk those of you who don’t know and those of you who have seen it already:

That’s awful.

But this! THIS! This marries productivity and healthy exercising in such a beautiful way that time actually flies by on it which is the most amazing thing. And it did not take long to get the hang of walking and typing AT ALL. Basically, I love it.

I also love adding “sent from my treadmill desk” to the end of the emails I send from my treadmill desk, which is way awesomer than sending an email from an iPad/Pod/Phone, Blackberry, whatever you crazy kids are using to communicate with other people these days. SENT FROM MY TREADMILL DESK. AW YEAH.

(This blog entry, I should note, was not written from my treadmill desk but it could have been. I KNOW. I just blew your mind.)

I get a little consumed by reader response a couple months before and after one of my books is released, not going to lie. Fall for Anything is in that tender stage where I want everyone to like it. I’ve gone through this with all of my books. Of course you want people to like what you’re putting out there–I think that’s a very natural and human thing to want–but as The Rolling Stones say…

When I decided I’d write with the eye of hopefully getting published, the first thing I did was prepare myself for People Not Liking My Work and the word ‘no.’ Every writer knows this and knows it well–want agent? Want book deal? You’re going to hear the word no in your quest for both–a lot. And yes is never guaranteed.

(Sometimes no is even delivered by a stabby knife that stabs you directly in the heart stabbingly and you just have to try not to bleed all over the furniture while you send your next query and sometimes you’ve just barely stopped bleeding when the next no comes and you’re like HOW AM I STILL ALIVE? HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE?)

What got me through the query stage was reminding myself that fiction is subjective. When Cracked Up to Be sold to St. Martin’s, I immediately started Phase 2 of this line of thinking, which means I thought the same thing but much harder and consequently gave myself forehead wrinkles and headaches. By the time December 23rd, 2008 rolled around–Cracked Up to Be’s release date–I thought I was totally ready for whatever people had to say about Parker Fadley and her bitchy disposition.

Ha ha ha!

I don’t think you can ever truly be prepared to have your work out there, whether people ultimately end up loving it or hating it. Even if you do your absolute best to ignore the stuff people say about yer stuff, it’s hard to be unaware of the fact that people are out there, saying stuff about yer stuff. It’s a nearly impossible concept to wrap your head around. For me, it was much easier to understand in theory, but experiencing it was something else ENTIRELY.

So Cracked Up to Be hopped off the presses and promptly ran face first into one of The Worst Reviews I’ve Ever Received (So Far) and I immediately forgot all of my own advice. The funny thing is, I even had an inkling this review was coming and tried to steel myself for it–fiction is subjective! It is subjectivvve!–but this review took my breath away with its utter loathing of my writing.

The first thing I did was email it to my agent to make sure I wasn’t overreacting. What if it was one of those reviews that was actually not so much mean as it was critically even-handed and I was just too close to my book and not seeing that? My agent and I quickly established this wasn’t the case. That settled, I stepped back from the computer and thought, there! It wasn’t just me! So that’s it! My first really terrible review and I survived!

And then I got REALLY upset!

How to describe it–I kind of felt like I’d shown up at a prom full of a bunch of strangers with my dress tucked into my pantyhose and also I am wearing really, really ugly underwear in this nightmare. I felt very naked and looked at and the people who were looking at me hated what they were seeing and I didn’t even know them!

That’s a really humbling feeling. It’s good to be humbled. But like I said, it’s also a bit overwhelming. After I had My Moment and then My Moment (Extended Version) and then My Moment (Remix) and then My Moment (Extended Version Remix) I did a lot of thinking. I’m a person who Likes Things A Certain Way (read: control freak) and I was quickly learning that I could not control what other people thought of my work. That was quite the personal epiphany.

So was I going to let a bad review be the worst thing that ever happened to me? Well, no. Would I let the expectations surrounding a positive review paralyze my writing? Absolutely not–I have a lot more stories I wanna tell. And then came the mental smackdown: like Jen Trynin said and which I like to remind myself of a lot: “No one deserves anything.”

No one deserves anything, let alone a book deal. I didn’t want to spit in the face of the hard work and luck involved in getting my own or the hard work of people who are in the process of pursuing one. I decided I needed to learn the fine art of compartmentalizing (or ‘sucking it up’ as the Canadians call it).

But how does a writer do that? How do they cope? Well… I don’t know. I don’t like speaking for all writers!

So I can only tell you what this one did.

I am three books into my writing career (hopefully there will be more) and I’ve received my share of reader response–both good and bad. I have been called irresponsible. I’ve received emails that praise my first book in one paragraph and ask me why my second was so terribly written in the next. But I’ve also been told Parker’s story inspired someone to get help. I’ve been told Regina’s enabled a reader to speak up about their own bullying. Someone told me my books made them realize they wanted to write. That’s crazy–but good crazy. In three books, I have learned to view all responses as positive ones–even the negative ones. If you’ve written a book that causes people to react, that’s a very good thing. It’s something I’ve learned not to take lightly.

But I also can’t let any response get in the way of my writing and I think at the end of the day it’s important to write a book YOU, as its creator, love and believe in above all else, because other people’s praise and criticism will only take you so far. You will likely never believe your best review and it’s way too easy to talk yourself into believing your worst. It can also be a dangerous thing to get completely caught up in positive responses and dismiss all your critics as haters…

Ani Difranco has this great song called Tamburitza Lingua. It is pretty depressing but it ends on this great (albeit sad) note: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three two one and kerplooey, you’re done, you’re done for, you’re done for good now tell me did you do did you do all you could? Uhm, like I said, depressing–but worth thinking about in terms of writing. Did you write the story you wanted to? Did you say everything that was in your heart? If you answered ‘yes’ to both of these questions, realize how amazing that is, objectively. It’s a gift and you should take it seriously.

Finally, I could never overstate the importance of WORKING ON SOMETHING NEW. When you’re fully invested in a new story, you’re detaching, on some level, from the last one. Allowing yourself distance from your previous work makes the response it gets feel like not so much of a ‘hit.’

But it’s still intimidating to be judged. Of course it’s scary. And even more comforting: it’s inevitable. NO MATTER WHAT YOU ARE DOING. And in spite of all I’ve written here, as I said–I’m currently in a tender stage of Fall for Anything’s release, where I want everyone to like it. I still have My Moments and their Extended Versions and their Remixes over some of the feedback I get. But I know now it will pass and I try to remember the only thing you can do is let the chips fall where they may and then turn your attention forward.

You HAVE to, or at least I do, because above all, I firmly believe that once a book is released, it’s not mine anymore. I’ve had my time with those characters and now it is over. Such a big part of putting your work out there is letting it go. And I think in this particular case, letting go is just something you have to learn over and over again but that you maybe hopefully get better at the more and more you do it.

Lest you become this Duffy song.

Internet, that draft needs polishing, so guess how I am spending the holidays?

Internet, I am very tired and very behind.

I hope you will bear with me while I catch up. I always feel guilty about writing blog entries before I’ve caught up on other people’s blogs, my own blog comments (sorry for everyone in the queue), my emails… etcetera. But I’m really hoping I’ll be in the clear by the end of this week. I thank you for your patience. Meanwhile, I have a bunch of stuff to tell you about! Like the short story that I wrote for you to read and the big giveaway I am holding in celebration of the good books I’ve read this year and do you like books you could win some good ones so stay with me here.

(How awful. Trying to buy your attention with book giveaways. Tsk tsk!)

But first can I just say oh-my-goodness-I-finished-that-draft? Because oh my goodness I did. Wow. It used to be I’d finish a draft of a book and RIDE AN ADRENALINE HIGH right after, but apparently I have graduated to a new phase of writing where every time I finish a draft I just want to rock back and forth in a corner and not talk to anyone forever. That’s bleak. Maybe payback for the horrible things I put my characters through? Who knows. Anyways.

So about a month ago, St. Martin’s Press asked me if I would like to write a short story related to Fall for Anything in anticipation of its release and I said yes! The best part about it is that you do not have to read the book to ‘get’ it. But hopefully, if you haven’t read the book, it will make you want to read it! And if you have read the book it will add an ~extra dimension~ to your experience. And get this–it’s from a dude’s perspective!

… Phew!

So I was going to do a Fall for Anything giveaway when I announced the Milo short story, but given all of these chances at it floating around, I thought I’d mix it up a little and give away books that I’ve loved this year! And Fall for Anything. Which I love in a different way. I think it would be a nice wind-up for 2010. Also, the best part about reading great books is sharing them with other people. The toughest part about this giveaway is that I’ve read SO MANY good books this year, it was really hard to narrow it down to four. So I took into consideration previous giveaways and decided on these four (plus Fall for Anything):

This contest is open to people who live anywhere The Book Depository ships! Visit this page to see if they ship to you. If they do, you gots to enter this contest. How do you do that? Just comment on this entry by December 20th and tell me what your favourite book of 2010. Easy!

BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE.

I got a lot of good natured ribbing about all the US/CAN only contests held this year for Fall for Anything. Do you know who heard your cries? One of my oldest and dearest friends, Damon Ford. A truly wonderful human being, he is one of those friends you have to stop and stare at the sky and you’re all like sky, Damon is such a great friend. Thank you. In Fall for Anything, I named a river after him! In Some Girls Are, he was the convenience store Regina bought all her antacids in!

Anyways, Damon is generously putting up a second prize of a copy of Fall for Anything for Australian/UK residents only. So if you live in Australia or the UK and you want a shot at the 5 books above AND a shot at the second prize of a single copy of Fall for Anything, just include Damon rocks! in your comment.

So let’s have those rules one more time:

1. Everyone! To enter to win my four fave reads of 2010 and a finished copy of Fall for Anything, comment telling me YOUR favourite read of 2010.

3. You have until December 20th. Winners will be contacted by email and will have 48 hours to give me their details before I will draw again.

Clear as mud, right? Please note that The Book Depository ships their books individually, and they won’t be shipping Fall for Anything until January 3rd–but you’ll get it!

Anddd that is about everything, I think! I am off to catch up on… everything. Oh wait! I’m so excited to announce that Some Girls Are has been nominated for a 2010 GoodReads Choice Award in YA Fiction. If you have a GoodReads account and you dug SGA, it would mean the world to me if you gave it your vote!

And that actually is everything. Seriously. I promise.

NOW ENTER MY CONTEST!

Remember when I said there would be more Fall For Anything giveaways? And you guys called me a liar? Okay, that ‘liar’ part didn’t happen but it all works out because I wasn’t lying! St. Martin’s Press is giving away 24 copies of Fall for Anything on Goodreads right now (US residents only). Check it out here. There are 32 days left to enter.

I’ve got a wealth of book related updates and then I am going to tell you a sad Halloween tale. First, I’m thrilled to announce that Some Girls Are has been nominated for OLA’s 2011 White Pine Award! I am so excited. The Festival of Trees is making less of a hermit outta me. I attended the celebrations last year and I will definitely be attending them next May in Toronto. They are way too fun to miss.

Second, Fall For Anything ARCs have been making their way around the book blogosphere (scary!). The amazing Sara of The Hiding Spot gave it a stellar, spoiler-free review that you can read here AND the rockin’ James from Book Chic Club featured FFA for Fragment Friday! Fragment Friday is a meme where you vlog an excerpt of your current or favourite read. Remember how I posted the first five chapters of Fall For Anything? Well, he read the sixth! Watch it here. Thank you, Sara and James!

AND NOW ONTO SAD HALLOWEEN STUFFS. If you have been following my blog for a couple of years, you know that pumpkin carving is a relatively serious past time in the Summers’ household. I say relatively serious because there are people that take pumpkin carving REALLY seriously and I don’t want to undermine them. Here are the pumpkins Megan and I carved last year:

This year, we had big plans. BIG PLANS! We got two pumpkins EACH. We were both going to outdo ourselves and carve the best pumpkins in town. Not only in town, BUT IN THE WORLD! But that is not what ended up happening. If we had known this, we might have made different choices. But we didn’t. Blissfully unaware of our pumpkins’ sad fate, we put these movies in the DVD player and watched them while we worked:

(Hocus Pocus, Disney’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Night of the Living Dead, oh yeah.)

I’m making grilled lime chicken with black bean sauce and braised onions from Simply Recipes. I made both of these things before, very recently, and they were big hits. So not the spookiest things ever, but something everyone will enjoy. Alterations to the chicken recipe: it’s baked in the oven with the onions. I also make garlic sauce to go with it (a bunch of minced garlic mashed with salt, mixed into some sour cream, mayo and lemon juice–all to taste) which–YUM! Tastes amazing layered on top of the black bean sauce. I am also debating boiling and simmering the black beans in vegetable broth for some ~extra flavor~.

This will be served with Martha Stewart’s Mashed Boo-tatoes because they are the CUTEST THINGS:

picture from Martha Stewart

picture from epicurious

It is going to be so good.

AND YOU ARE ALL INVITED!!!!

I have given you two day’s notice and left a trail of clues for you to follow all the way to my dinner table.

Now I am going to go start chopping cilantro in preparation for this fantastic feast, while my wrists can still work after all that traumatic pumpkin carving. :(

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.

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!

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!

HOLD ON, COURTNEY. BACK THE TRUCK UP, you are saying. THAT AS EXTRAORDINARY. HOW DID THIS COME TO BE?

Well, Internet, I will tell you.

First, I am a big fan of Survivor. SINCE SEASON ONE. And then some people invented Twitter. Flash forward to I don’t know how many years it has been, to January 7th, 2010. I had just woken up from a nap. It was a day like any other, except it was not quite day. It was early evening. It was an early evening like any other. I logged into Twitter and checked my @ replies, where Adele of Persnickety Snark (who is also having a blogoversary celebration which I contributed to here–happy anniversary, Adele!) tells me that JEFF PROBST now has a twitter.

I immediately made it my new goal in life to get Jeff Probst to tweet hello to me on Twitter. And questioned how that could happen. And THEN! The wonderful Catt AKA The Dreamer Reader tweeted to get the ball rolling.

And then I questioned whether or not Twitter would make a dream come true (SPOILER: IT DOES).

MEANWHILE, Scott Tracey (whose novel WITCH EYES, which I can’t wait to read, comes out in 2011 from Flux) dubbed my new goal in life Project #sayhitocourtney. And then so many wonderful folks chimed in, asking Jeff Probst to say hello to me (THANK YOU WONDERFUL FOLKS).

CAN YOU BELIEVE THE AMAZINGNESS OF TWITTER? I always have. May this story make you doubters see the light.

And then I think an hour went by.

(TOTAL ELAPSED TIME: AN HOUR)

… And then, THIS MAN, Internet:

Photographic proof:






WHAT? YOU WOULD LIKE A CLOSER VIEW, YOU SAY?

HERE IS A CLOSER VIEW:

Internet, between THAT and the release of this:

So Some Girls Are had an incredible release week and I have to thank everyone who tweeted, Facebooked, emailed, called, and blogged about it. To wake up to that was totally overwhelming and I don’t think I can say thank you enough. THANK YOU! Quite a few reviews of Some Girls Are came in this week and I promised I’d do a round-up in my blog entry. Thank you to everyone who took the time to read it and review it:

I really hope I am not missing anyone. If I am, accept my apologies as it has been Quite a Week and don’t hesitate to let me know and I’ll add it here ASAP! As always, I put all reviews on the Some Girls Are page and try to stay on top of sharing them on my Facebook Page.

I was also lucky enough to share release dates with Lisa Schroeder and Dia Reeves, whose novels Chasing Brooklyn and Bleeding Violet, respectively, also came out. I am looking forward to reading Bleeding Violet and I devoured and LOVED Chasing Brooklyn–it was brilliant! I posted my review on GoodReads here.

So that is how epic my week has been, Internet! Next week won’t compare. Sad but true.

I want to tell you about Annika. Annika, who is awesome/wry/hilarious/clever/cool (or AWHCC for short), and who also has an AWHCC blog right here, HAD A BABY. Annika and I originally shared release dates. Her, for her little girl and me for Some Girls Are. Annika clearly won this race because uhm sharing release dates also makes it a race? Or maybe because when you have a baby this adorable, YOU WIN. EVERYTHING. Anyway, this is BRILLIANT NEWS, INTERNET! And I am so happy for her and her family. Congratulations Annika, Will and big brother Sam and welcome Grace! In truth, I think these four people are strong contenders for Coolest Family on This Planet right now, and I mean that.

Hmm.

DEAR ANNIKA, WILL, SAM & GRACE,

Leave a little cool for the rest of us, Gawd.

Love, the Internet

DEAR INTERNET,

On January 1st, 2010, I woke up and discovered that this book:

I was majorly shocked. When I first found out Cracked Up to Be was nominated (and many thanks to Robin Prehn who nominated it in the first place–thank you so much, Robin!), I blogged a bit about how I felt about the Cybils and why Children’s and Young Adult book bloggers are so important here. To be on the longlist was exciting and this is just beyond…. beyond! Beyond anything I expected and I truly cannot believe it at all. Cracked Up to Be is in some incredibly humbling company. Thanks to Team Cybils ’09 for all their hard work! They do an incredible job. My favourite part of the Cybils is that it’s a fantastic representation of the passion and care that makes this community so amazing to be part of.

So that was a really nice way to ring in the new year, to say the least.

GUESS WHAT ELSE, INTERNET! Tomorrow, this book comes out:

Do you know, I cannot believe THAT either. January is turning out to be quite unbelievable. It feels like yesterday I was in the throes of a massive revision for Some Girls Are. It really, really does. I don’t know what to say about that, but January 5th was the day I clung onto when I was quite certain Regina’s story would never see an end, whilst my editor and my agent and my wonderful friends and family insisted that it would. In the event that the 5th flies past me–as all days seem to have been doing lately–I just want to say THANK YOU to everyone who has been so supportive and encouraging every step of the way and if you read it (and I really think you should and I am ENTIRELY UNBIASED), I hope you enjoy it.

Even though “enjoy” seems like a really strange word when it comes to a book like Some Girls Are. I hope you CRINGE. CRINGE LIKE YOU HAVE NEVER CRINGED BEFORE. But I hope you like it while you are hopefully cringing like you never cringed before.

Related news: I uploaded the last of the video teasers to my youtube account, and you can watch them all on a playlist right here.

Happy 2010, internet! I think it is going to be a good year!

Love,
Courtney