Orange ya glad

When I was a lad, my favorite color was orange. It was close. Green was in second and threatened to overcome orange, as did red. But orange won out.

This might have been because orange is the color of fire. Or because the carpet in my room was orange. Or my hair. It's irrelevant.

The point is this: My bike is orange. It's one of my prized possessions. My blog is orange, as you can quickly see by shifting your eyes slightly up. YA MS the Third (soon to be titled; watch this space) has always been orange in my mind. (The Absolute Value of -1 has always been black and red, for what it's worth; it's a happy coincidence, perhaps, that it was black and red for the cover designers, too.)

With all that in mind, I present you with these:I coveteth them.

Furthermore, they represent a burgeoning movement in YA literature borne of Heidi R. Kling's debut novel, the beautifully written and achingly romantic Sea.

So buy a pair of orange chucks--or yellow ones, sure--and don them proudly. And when you see another person out in public, particularly at the Jacob Javits Center May 25 to 27, wearing cool-ass Chucks in orange or yellow, you'll know why.

Trailer for |-1|

It's here! It's here!

The trailer for THE ABSOLUTE VALUE OF -1



And with it, the last chance to enter my big signed ARC giveaway. To refresh your memory (yeah, the first chance to enter was like five months ago), the prize includes an ARC of |-1| signed by me, Dia Reeves, Kristin Walker, Jennifer Hubbard, Heidi Kling, and Phoebe Kitanidis. It's a Tenner extravaganza! Also included is a signed copy of Dia Reeves's BLEEDING VIOLET, a |-1| poster, and whatever other swag those lovely Tenners send me to include in the package!

Okay, so, several people already have a bunch of entries from previous opportunities, but folks, this is the big one. You can get crazy entries right now!

• To get one entry, comment on this entry.
• To get another entry, link to this entry in Twitter or on your blog. Link to your tweet in your comment.
• And to get TEN ENTRIES, embed the trailer on your own blog. Link to the blog entry in your comment.

So that's twelve entries you can get right now! No one else has more than four yet! Four is chump change. CHUMP. CHANGE.

Okay, and, just for fun, the first five comments* I see pop up will automatically get a poster in the mail, just for entering and being awesome.

*Please do not enter if you're under 13. Please do not enter if you find fictional accounts of drug use or sexual encounters to be offensive, or if you find swear words to be offensive. If you've already won something on this blog, you are not eligible for one of the extra five posters, but can still enter the bigger giveaway. ETA: The contest will end officially at 9 pm EDT on April 21.

ARCs and giveaways!

Saturday morning! Sam and I are awake and just sort of hanging around. Beth went back to bed for a couple of hours. We all need to catch up on sleep, and sometimes we have to do it in shifts.

Later on today, I'll finally get back to work on the trailer for |-1|. I don't know if I'll have the time to get it done. In fact, it's been so long since I touched it, I'll probably spend most of the time just sort of reacquainting myself with the project.

In other |-1| news, I have ARCs! I only got a small handful personally, and the rest are jetting off to review types the country over. So that's exciting and frightening. But the point is, as far as what's relevant here, is that one copy of my ARC is now flying off to Heidi R. Kling, author of the gorgeous SEA, and thence to Dia Reeves, and Kristin Walker, and Jennifer Hubbard . . . for their autographs! And that means that finally -- FINALLY -- the big ARC giveaway can be decided!

I'll post one more opportunity to enter in the near future, but for now I want to give away something. So how about a couple of autographed posters?! They're not very big, but hey, they're free and cool as heck, right?

So, I'll pick a random commenter on this entry, with an extra entry if you Tweet the contest. Here's what they look like!




















Anyone in the US or Canada can enter! Do it today!

Anti-advice

Just a quick note today. Fellow Tenner and author of Inconvenient (coming from Flux in 2010) Margie Gelbwasser is hosting the 8 Nights of Hanukkah Writing Tips over at her blog. My guest post went up last night, and I'm calling it my anti-advice. Anyway, pop over there, and please comment!

Dia Reeves, and the big giveaway!

Well, look at that! It's December first!

This mostly means pain and suffering to me, of course: short lengths of daylight, lots of cold, shoveling to do, ages till the thaw. But it also means it's time to start the Tenners tour of the Exile!

So, without further ado, here's the first guest post, from the wonderful, funny, and talented Dia Reeves, author of Bleeding Violet, which you can pre-order from this page! Remember: the topic is "fish out of water," keeping in the spirit of the Exile. (Stay tuned after the post for some more info about the signed ARC giveaway!)

I can't really think of any fish-out-of-water stories, Steve. I'm always at home wherever I go. You know, as long as people aren't looking at me. The only things I can think of that might even be remotely fishy is, sometimes at parties people insist that I get up and dance because of that old chestnut about how all black people are great dancers. Heh. Well, usually after about ten seconds of watching me strut my stuff, I get asked to sit back down.

Or like this other time when I went trick-or-treating in college and I was so old that no one would give me the good candy--just candy corn and those nasty brown things that taste like root beer. And, like, a toothbrush I think.

And this other time, my mom and I went to the movies to watch one of the sequels to Children of the Corn (can't remember which one) and we laughed the whole way through it, especially at the parts that were making other people scream. Only three movies scare me--The Exorcist, The Return of the Living Dead, and Evil Dead. Everything else is stupid.

So that's all I got. I think my way of being different is largely internal and would require a weird-girl brain scanner or something like that to pick me out of a crowd. Otherwise I just blend in.

Thanks, Dia.

Now, as promised, more info on the giveaway. The contest* will officially begin right now, with this post. To enter, simply comment below. If you Twitter or blog link to this post, I'll give you an extra entry, just make sure to let me know. And on future Tenner posts, there will be more opportunities to enter. As a reminder, the prize is an ARC of The Absolute Value of -1, signed by every Tenner featured on the Exile (so far, that means me and Dia, but many more will follow). I'll also add other fun gifties down the road, so stay tuned.

*US and Canada residents only (sorry, Roo). Please do not enter if you are under 13.

Good cause, good stuff!

Quick post. I twittered about it already, but I realize not everyone is using Twitter (and god bless 'em), so I thought I'd mention it here too.

Cynthea Liu, to celebrate her new novel, Paris Pan Takes the Dare, is having an auction for charity right now. What's more, the wonderful Aforementioned Editor, Tenner and Otter Josh Berk and Otter Kurtis Scaletta, and many, many other brilliant minds of KidLit are offering crits. The bidding is open now.

Go and check it out! The prices are so low right now.

Books to make you cry

I never meant for this to become a review blog, but I have to just drop a quick five stars on Margo Rabb for Cures for Heartbreak. Once again, when I was within about fifty pages of the finish, I was overcome with a sense of dread: What will I have to look forward to when this book has ended? Will life--will the world in general, indeed all of the natural universe--continue to exist?!

Lo and behold, it did, clearly. Still, I loved the book and will likely buy it. (I read the library's copy for once. I underuse our local library; it's rather a shame.)

In other news, SIL will be here in four hours or so to babysit for the afternoon. Class doesn't begin until six, so that will give me a good chunk of hours to do some work. Revisions, this time, rather than straight writing. This is both a shame and a thrill: it's the first round of revisions on YA Novel the First, so I'm excited about that aspect; but my WIP is feeling ignored lately, I think. Still, it can wait. After all, YA Novel the First waited years upon years to be finished, and it turned out okay.

What else? I'm the first Tenner to read The Snowball Effect, by Holly Nicole Hoxter, fellow Tenner. The ARC arrived unceremoniously on my porch yesterday morning, and upon finishing Cures, I started Snowball. More deceased mothers. But still, excellent, and yes, Holly, there are indeed many funny parts, too.

ETA: Thank you, Micol, for reminding me to note that The Snowball Effect will be on sale 3/23/2010.

Id est

I didn't realize it had been five days since the last post.

As I think I mentioned, Saturday (i.e., two days ago) was WYAODII for me, and it happily coincided with a Tenners weekend event, known through the Twitterverse as #ChapterChallenge. All in all, though I didn't follow the oh-so-strict guidelines as establish by Trish Doller and Josh Berk (i.e., write one chapter per day, Friday to Monday), I did manage to write on Friday, Saturday, and a little bit today over 5000 words, in a total of four chapters and change, most of which, even in the cold light of the morning, seem pretty good. This is for YA MS the Second, naturally, which you will recall enjoyed a Eureka! moment over lunch with Beth last weekend.

The rest of the weekend was spent grilling with friends, of course, and going on many, many walks, including two good ones today alone. I even got out on the bike for a short while today with no place special to go.

In other news, holy crap Sam is pulling himself into a standing position. I'm glad I got a lot of writing done this weekend, because it may have been my last chance for a long while.

BEA is this week. I remain jealous of those attending.

The "check engine" light came on in my car this weekend, too, and, having exhausted my own know-how in car maintenance (i.e., I checked the oil level; it was A-OK), I'm going to have to bring the ol' Camry in to Midas this week. Hopefully, the student art show is still showing at Harmar Mall!

It's all about moi.

Just a quick note: The wonderful Christy Raedeke, fellow Tenner, has posted an interview of me on her blog! Go there now and read it.

Free Tree

Today is Earth Day. To celebrate, if I go to the grocery store, I will bring my own bags. As usual. And if I finish a gallon of milk today, I'll recycle the empty bottle. As usual. Oh, and also in two days at McDonaldses in Minnesota, they'll give you a free tree for Arbor Day. I swear. It was in the Strib.

Sam won't take his nap and he's making me mental.

I finally finished this paper for class. One of two papers due. The other is not done, and yet is due tonight. I'm thinking I'll skip class. Truth is, I could use a write-night, as it's been ages since I got any writing done, besides an SAB job or two. (And speaking of, I'm still on the two-per-month schedule for them, which means if I don't get some YA MS the Second work done in the next few days, I'll have missed my window.)

And that's not to mention that this weekend will be almost exclusively dedicated to cleaning up this pig sty we call home. My mom, you see, is coming to visit on May the first. And the place has to be presentable. Even the guest room--which is also my office that I never use--is in complete disarray, mainly thanks to my intricate filing system known as "fling papers around the room while looking for old pay stubs."

Oh! One more exciting thing: I registered for one summer course. It's called Adolescent Literatures, and actually goes toward my teaching license! I hope it will be as fun and awesome as it sounds.

Ah, and one more thing. I've been brainstorming for a way to promote my fellow Tenners here at the Exile, so over the coming weeks, keep your eyes peeled for the occasional special Tenner of the Week thing, or something similar.