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The title of this post is my favorite line from a recent review of Secret Society Girl in The Toledo Blade. I read it in the atrium of the hotel in Atlanta, and started to jump up and down in excitement. In fact, I jumped up and down on the toes of my friend, RITA-winning romantic suspense author Karen Rose. I think she forgives me.
Anyway, check it out and picture me doing my little happy dance.
In other news, the party is happening on Thursday at HOME Club in Chelsea at 9 p.m. If you want an invite, email me! (Please put “party” in the subject line to help me find it. I’m massively behind on email due to the trip.) If you already emailed me, and want to make sure I’ve got you, email again. Otherwise, show up anyway. 
And, if I thought I was ecstatic with Toledo Blade news, it’s only because I hadn’t yet heard that Secret Society Girl is going into reprints! Woo hoo!
Stupid Marriott Marquis and their stupid lack of internet access. I’m so far behind on my blogging.
Ahem, today, we are touring debut author Jennifer Lynn Barnes. Her book, Golden, is about a girl who can see auras.
At Emory High, there are two kinds of people: those who matter, and those who don’t.
When Lissy James moves from California to Oklahoma, she finds herself in the middle of a teenage nightmare: a social scene to rival a Hollywood movie. And if understanding the hierarchy of the Goldens vs. the Nons isn’t hard enough, Lissy’s ever growing Aura Vision is getting harder and harder to hide, and if she’s not careful, she’s going to become a Non faster than you can say “freak.”
But it’s becoming clear that Emory High has a few secrets of its own. Around the halls, the term “special powers” goes way beyond one’s ability to attract the opposite sex, and there may be something more evil than the A-crowd lurking in the classrooms. Lissy can see a lot more than the average girl, but she’s about to learn the hard way that things aren’t always as they appear and you can’t always judge a girl by her lip gloss.
Jennifer also just graduated from Yale. In fact, she wrote Golden when she was 19 years old and a freshman. Now, those of you who have read Secret Society Girl will recall Amy’s own literary dabblings, but this chick Jen not only finished a novel, but she also got an agent, sold it, and proceeded to sell several more before she graduated. All while doing intensive research in cognitive science, publishing papers, and winning a Fulbright. Wow. (Those of you who have read SSG will remember that Amy’s college boyfriend left her when he won a Fulbright, but Jennifer, I’m sure, would never have been so heartless.)
In short, she’s totally the type who’d be inducted into Rose & Grave.
Well, it’s 12:31 on the day I’m supposed to leave for Atlanta. Am I packed? Ha! Is my house clean? Ha! Ha! Is the lasagna I promised I’d make for Sailor Boy cooked? Somebody stop me!
However, I did get a lovely pedicure, and my bookmarks arrived. Aren’t they scrumptious? (The bookmarks, I mean; I’m sparing you all a picture of my toes.)
In keeping with the theme of Author Gone Wild that I’ve been cultivating over the past few weeks, I’ve got a bunch of parties to go to this year at the RWA National Conference. Dinner with the pen girls, my agent’s party, a tea party, the Chick Lit RWA party, the Lit Signing (which is always a party!), the Bantam Dell party, an evening at the theatre with my CP, and the RITA Awards. So here’s my question: how many times can I get away with wearing this season’s party dress? I’m thinking twice per dress per conference, especially considering there’s a big crossover audience. It’s a really nice dress. Sometimes I envy men. they can wear the same suit all weekend and no one blinks an eye, but recycle a dress and you’ve got the fashion gestapo breathing down your neck.
As far as new clothes, the only thing I’ve bought new were two pair of shoes for the party dresses and a formal clutch for my RITA outfit. I think I got off easy.
Been garnering some wonderful reviews all around the blogosphere, including this one by Ranger Rebecca (otherwise known as Dragonfly). One of the interesting things about seeing my book out in the world is how various readers have interpreted the sexism aspects to the plot. Some of the most progressive people I know think the premise is preposterous because, in their feminist minds, it’s unthinkable that intelligent, educated people in this country could choose to act this way. I love hearing from women who thought the book was speaking to them. In the end, we’re talking about a club — not a job, not a career, not a graduate school — but hey, just because it’s only a treehouse with “NO GIRLZ ALOUD” scribbled on it doesn’t mean it’s okay. In the book, only one person is asked straight out why he thinks girls shouldn’t be allowed in the society. I think his answer is pretty valid. No one has asked me why they should be. My answer is because the seniors tapped them. Period. But it’s not easy to do what they are trying to do, and it’s not over. Not by a long shot.
I like the idea of a group of people who question the status quo and where such questions take them. I’m writing to entertain, don’t get me wrong, but I still think that what is going on is interesting and worthy of discussion. Or, you know, kicking back on the beach and just enjoying while you work on your tan. Either way works for me.
Today I was watching Working Girl, which is one of my favorite films, and marveling again at the skillful subtlety with which the filmmakers made their point about women in the workforce. In most of the “executive” scenes, Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver’s characters are the only women involved, and every single secretary is a woman. I think I’m going to write a whole post about it at some point but, there’s packing to do now. Anyway, great flick, and very chick-lit woman’s journey as well. I love how in the end, she does indeed get the guy, but that’s not her happy ending. her happy ending doesn’t come until she gets her career. At once point, Tess’s best friend (played by Joanne Cusack) says that Tess shouldn’t expect the hero “to, like, take you away from all of this.” But the wonderful thing about this film is that not only doesn’t he, but she doesn’t want him to. It’s all about saving yourself, which is definitely my favorite ending to a story.
I also saw Aeon Flux. I don’t know why I missed it in the theaters, but I have some idea that it flopped big time. Why? I really liked it. Strong women, tidy storyline, cool action sequences, great chemistry and love story, not a ton of humongous glaring plot holes, beautiful, stunning, exquisite design… did other people see this film? What are your thoughts?
Following the comment trail in the last post, Alyssa Goodnight asked about the plotting board. I have attended the Story Magic workshop (where I was introduced to LA Confidential, which is an amazing film and everyone should go see it right now!) but I’d already been using the board for a few years. I don’t use any of the fancy software like Writer’s Blocks or Power Structure or any of the other programs that apparently do the same thing. One of my CPs has Writer’s Blocks and she likes them, but when she prints them out, they look way more confusing to me than anything I make with my post it notes. My favorite part about the plotting board is that, when I’m done, I can go across the room and just see in glorious Day Glo technicolor where I broke my book.
The actual boards are just regular poster boards. I use the extra thick kind that stand up on their own (the kind you use for science projects), but you can just fold a regular 79 cent posterboard in thirds if you want. I drew a grid on them, one box for each scene in the book. Then I assign a color post it to each plot element. For instance, pink may be romance, purple may be the heroine’s internal conflict, green may be the hero’s, yellow may be the external force acting upon them and green may be the subplot that acts as a foil. Then, each scene is analyzed for those elements. I write little descriptions on each post it note of how that plot element is dealt with in the scene, and stick them up on the board.
I find this works best for me to assemble the board after I’ve written the book. Sometimes, despite all my intense preplotting, a certain elment will wend its way into a scene without my knowledge. So I think it can work wonderfully as a revision tool for plotters or non-plotters. I know other people do this before they write. Whatever works.
The other reason I like doing it by hand instead of on the screen is that the very physicality of the task — making this humongous board — helps activate a slightly differnet part of my brain. I think of things looking at the board that I didn’t really consider just looking at a screen. Other people tell me they do the same thing laying out index cards on a table.
My favorite part is looking at it and going, “Wow, I didn’t do green for about three chapters, Better go back and weave that in a little better!” Can’t be beat for revising structure.
Okay, really off to pack now…
First of all, I have another review, interview, and prize opportunity going on at Bookreporter.com! I knew about the interview, obviously, but I had no idea they’d include a review of the book:
SECRET SOCIETY GIRL is Peterfreund’s titillating debut entry in a new series featuring plucky heroine Amy Haskel, one of the select few with the dubious distinction of being among the first females “tapped” for Rose & Grave. The author, a recent Ivy League Grad herself (Yale 2001), knows the world of which she writes and every page rings with an authenticity that will have readers immediately recalling their own giddy collegiate romances, fast friendships and late-night cram sessions.
And I’m completely blown away by the prize opp! I wonder if I’m allowed to enter? Someone over there really knows this book, because here’s what they have as a prize in their giveaway:
 Our beach bag celebrates fun in the sun, college style, with six shot glasses, mini bottles of Absolut Vodka (both original and Mandarin Orange) gumdrops for your sugar buzz, an orange and blue striped beach towel, a one-pound bag of Starbucks coffee beans and a colorful coffee mug, and the ultimate college necessity — a $20 gift certificate to Pizza Hut, as well as a copy of the book, all in an orange-and-pink–colored beach tote.
Those of you who have read the book know what perfect choices those are! Orange vodka! Gumdrops! Whee! So head on over to the site and enter. (You have to answer a question. Posting here does not enter you into this particular contest, and yes, I’m mailing out the prizes for the contests that were on this blog.)
Right now, I’m packing for my trip to the RWA National Conference in Atlanta. I’m leaving tomorrow and won’t be home until next Tuesday, after which, it’s a quick turnaround and then off to Manhattan for the Secret Society Girl party on August 3rd. And then, down to Florida for my hometown signing and party on August 11th. And then, poof goes that coach and we all have pumpkin pie.
Seriously, though, I know my posts for the last few days have been all glamor and pomegranate martinis, but I promise you, my life is generally more like me on the couch typing into my computer, me on the floor in front of my plotting board, trying to decide where I dropped a certain storyline near page 105, me on the Metro, scribbling into a spiral notebook, or me stuck in summer Beltway traffic, deciding that all the dialogue in chapter twelve needs to be overhauled.
In other words: grind. Sequels do not write themselves, and judging from some of the mail I’ve been receiving, people actually do want the sequel, and they want it now, and since they have to wait for next summer can I just give them a little hint maybe please please please about the fate of:
1) Brandon
2) Malcolm
3) George
So I work, work I do. Um, excpet for sometimes I take a little time off. Like this weekend, I went to go see Labyrinth at midnight on the big screen, and wow, is it ever a different movie than it was when I was eight. And wow, David Bowie’s outfits are…not hiding much, to everyone’s enjoyment. Robin Brande is discussing The Princess Bride over at her blog, and of course, we all need to compare it to the other big fantasy movies we enjoyed as children. Like Labyrinth. No one has, yet, brought up The Neverending Story, but this may be because unlike the former examples, there isn’t as much overtly adult material in the latter. I don’t know though. I haven’t seen it of late. My favorite of the group is definitely PB, which I basically have memorized, and I love the book, too. I’ve been known to give copies to unsuspecting mortals who haven’t yet tasted its wonder (right, Julie?). I love every frame of that film. I think, in general, it has aged so much better than Labyrinth. (Sailor Boy, btw, warns me not to go out and rewatch NS, or it may “ruin my childhood memories.” However, I must say that seeing David Bowie has NOT ruined any of my memories about Labyrinth. I now have two very distinct memories, each which shall be cherished for their own purpose.)
I also started to watch Dirty Dancing, of which I own the Collector’s Edition. I was inspired by Colleen Gleason’s post on the topic last week, and remembered I hadn’t seen it in quite some time. I turned it off to watch Wedding Crashers, which, as it turns out, was a mistake. Ugh. I love Vince Vaughn; I love Owen Wilson; I love Christopher Walken; I haven’t seen that Rachel McAdams chick in much but I really did love her in Mean Girls; and I loved the concept. What happened? Something didn’t quite gel in that film. Maybe there was too much humidity in the meringue. I did have a few laughs, especially in the beginning, but in general, it didn’t work for me at all.
(Caution: Spoilers ahead.)
I’m trying to figure out why that is, because I love a good comedy as much as the next gal. I can’t decide if it tried to get too serious or serious in the wrong way or where I got turned off. I think it was at the point where the seventeenth member of the family hit on the protagonist. Or maybe when they threw all the sense out of the building and made out like the random asshole villain could magically figure out from a couple of fake names not only who the guys really were, but their Wedding Crasher M.O. and also why they did it? Or when the protags, who were shown at the beginning of the film working for the same company, suddenly never ever saw each other again? Did Owen quit his job? Or how they completely forgot about all the issues that the family has with Vaughn’s character (the accusations that he’d molested the son, all the other people in the house they’d supposedly seduced…)
Or maybe it’s something far more simple than that. Because I think I’ve about had enough with the old Hollywood staple of:
1) the in-front-of-family dinner table engagement announcement without prior engagement. This always happens in movies when the man is a Gaston type so ingratiated with the family and oblivious to the girl’s needs that he seeks to flatter his own ego by announcing that they’re going to get married in front of the girl’s entire extended family without regard to her feelings or to the fact that he hasn’t even asked her.
2) the girls that let these idiots push them around, even though they’d previously been shown to be upstanding, free-thinking, sassy types. Double points for subsequent scenes of engagement celebrations where girl looks absolutely miserable but for some reason keeps on with the pretense she’s going to marry this clod. Triple word score if she realizes she doesn’t want to go through with it only after they’ve zipped her into that white dress.
No more runaway bride scenarios, please! Whole books are based on the premise that it’s tough to walk away from a wedding underway (Emily Giffin’s masterful Something Borrowed is one), and I need to see that level of commitment to the plot point before I’ll buy it. How many romantic comedies have used this idea? And, not to be sexist, it annoys me when men pull the same crap (cf. the Cameron Diaz flick with Christina Applegate and the one with Julia Stiles, neither of which have names I can recall, both of which have ridiculous night-before-the-wedding premises). It was silly when Carla Gugino succumbed to it in the Pauly Shore vehicle Son-in-Law, and it hasn’t gotten any better with age. I think that may be why I like movies like My Best Friend’s Wedding, where it was revealed how patently ridiculous the main character’s actions were. The couple in question were in love and going to get married. Too late to do anything about it, chica.
Ahem. End rant. I’m going to go watch While You Were Sleeping, which might be the only film since Philadelphia Story where I can stomach a mid-aisle change of heart. The former because no one, including Peter, really wants Lucy to marry him in that scene (plus, she gives incredibly cogent reasons for agreeing to the match, which are believable and ultimately sympathetic) and the latter because, well, everyone knows she was really in love with Cary Grant all along and they all, Jimmy Stewart and the other guy, were fooling themselves that she and Grant weren’t going to sail away together on the True Love at the end.
Residents of Nassau County, Wilmington, Delaware, Ocean, New Jersey, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina may get a chance to hear the radio ad for Secret Society Girl this weekend.
But everyone else can listen to my Eye on Books Interview here on the web! Bill Thompson’s syndicated show is currently being played on a thousand radio affiliates across the country, and also here, on Diana’s Diversions…
(UPDATE: If you can’t here the bookcast, go here and try listening directly or downloading to your computer.)
I’m thrilled and astounded and excited to announce the following:
SECRET SOCIETY GIRL PARTY
sponsored by The L Magazine
Thursday, August 3
At HOME Club in New York City
Co-sponsored by Dos XX beer and Hell’s Belles
Okay, I’m off to put together my invite list and shop for swanky clothes! Somebody pinch me!
First of all, thanks so much to everyone who came to my chat last night! I can’t believe it went so late! After the official chat was over, a handful of us stuck around and talked movies until midnight (ET). Outrageous. And I learned that when you talk movies, it all ends up coming back to Love Actually. Which is kind of weird. Not one of my favorites… actually.
So all around the blogosphere, people are talking about promo,whether it’s weird maybe-viral marketing techniques, or polling on what promo works for you. having just come down off a huge promo push, I’m interested to hear about it. HelenKay Dimon, whose book Viva Las Bad Boys is on my book diet pile (sniff, sniff… ::pet pile longingly::) wants to know the following:
(Please note: this is just my own opinion. Many people feel differently, as you can see from HelenKay’s own post as well as the comments that follow it. I don’t expect other people to feel the same way I do about various promo techniques. Obviously, I’ve gravitated towards the type of promo that works on me, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize that other promo has worked on other people.)
What works for me and what doesn’t:
1. Website Banners: Never once clicked on a banner. I get a lot of requests to put other authors banners on my website. I now have banners of my own, which is fun, and arranged by my publisher. My favorite part was that it went out in a Daily Candy-style email.
2. Excerpts on author websites: Always read them. Of course I do! The whole point is whether or not I’m going to like the writing! I’ve bought so many books because the excerpts hooked me good.
3. Reviews: I read them. They usually don’t sway me as to whether or not I’m going to buy the book. I often like to read reviews of books I’ve already read and see if I agree with what the reviewer is saying. I think it does get the name out. People need to see you mentioned a certain number of times before it sinks in, so if you get two rotten reviews and then a good one, people may only remember that they’ve heard about you three times already.
4. Bookmarks or promo knick knacks: I have no use for bookmarks, and I wasn’t planning on making them until I got requests for them from a BUNCH of bookstore owners. I think the writers who are against bookmarks are approaching this from the wrong direcction. We may not need them, but they are free ads for our books at the front of the stores. As for tcotchkes, I’ve picked up a lot over the years. I never induces me to buy more or less of the books advertised on it. My favorites are the mini nail files and the tiny pads of paper. This is why I made the choice not to do random tcotchkes but only items people would be interested in if they specifically read the book (i.e., pins).
5. Author chats: I go to them, mostly for friends. This is a big discussion on one of the loops I’m currently on. Again, I think this is also looking at it from the wrong perspective. I find the chats fun for ME, and fun for people who already have the book. I don’t really expect to pick up new readers.
6. Author signings: Ditto. I had my first, and it was great, but it was massively advertised and included a lot of friends and family. I odn’t think I’m going to do many more.
7. Browsing bookstores: covers, blurbs, New Releases tables, etc: Absamalutely! I make all my greatest discoveries like that. Scott Westerfeld’s book Uglies jumped out at me from across the room because of the incredible cover, and regular blog readers know how THAT turned out (hint to others: I read every book he has written and blog about them at various opportunities). Also discovered Susan Squires that way. I’m embarrassed to admit that covers matter a lot to me (which is why I’m so thrilled by my awesome cover!) There are so many books out, and I need soemthing that draws me to yours. New Release table same thing. I browse all the new releases, and then specific genre tables. Rarely do I wander into the big general fiction section. Blurbs? Not so much. I can maybe count the books whose blurbs have induced me to read further and eventually buy.
8. Ads in the Sunday book review sections of newspapers or RT and similar trade magazines: Never noticed them. EVER.
9. Author blogs. Duh, yes! I read them all the time, and I’ve picked up MANY new authors because of their blogs: E Lockhart, Sylvia Day, HelenKayDimon, Justine Larbalestier… and many more new authors whose books aren’t even out yet because I have been following their blogs. For instance, I don’t know Rachel Vincent from Adam, but ever since I’ve discovered her blog, pre-awesome auctioned sale to MIRA, I’ve been looking forward to her book.
10. Author websites: You betcha! I’m a big web puppy, so I love author websites. The more content-heavy, the better. Nothing annoys me more than a big website that’s all flash and no content.
11. Trying new authors: I’ve gotten better at this over the years. I used to be very author loyal when I was a teenager and in college, but now I enjoy making new discoveries. You can see from my list of books read in 2006, to the right, that I’ve read a lot of new authors this year.
12. Word of mouth: on blogs (what they have begun calling book ads), personal word of mouth, blurbs on books… Personal word of mouth is probably the number one way I pick new books. Blurbs on books is like a step more distant than that. If it’s an author I love, I may treat it like a personal rec to me from “a friend.” Word of mouth on blogs is very dependent on the situation. If it’s completely spontaneous, like “y’all just have to read Scott Westerfeld because he’s a veritable demigod of YA spec fiction,” and it’s a blogger I read often, then yeah, I’m going to run out and get it. That’s how I read Spin, Flowers from the Storm, and Twilight. If it’s a blog tour, it depends on several factors. The standard blog tour where the blogger has not read the book will only sway me if I was interested in the book already, and the tour serves as a reminder that it’s available. (I’ve noticed the same effect on people who have commented on some of the blog tours that have appeared here.) If it’s part of the usual blog tour, but I can tell the blogger has read the book and/or is especially excited about it, I’ll look a little closer, because then, to me, it’s a hybrid of the tour and the spontaneous blogging about a book they love.
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So, what do you all think?
I’d also like to point out that most of the things on this list are author-generated publicity tactics. Most of the stuff my publisher and I are doing are not even on this list: ARC mailings, BEA appearances, radio spots, interviews and other articles, and, most of all, the big secret I’m going to tell you all about this afternoon…
Tonight, I’ll be chatting at the Knight Agency chat space about my new release… um, I forget the name. Something something girl.
9 p.m. Be there or be an elongated hexagon.
Yes, my jokes are lame. lame lame lame’. Come see more lame jokes tonight at the Knight Agency Chat.
So last year sometime, I started hearing about this girl named Lauren Barnholdt. I heard about her a lot. She was near my age and, like me, she’d sold her first novel on the strength of its partial. She also hooked up with her agent to write a Writer’s Digest Guide to the YA novel, and, in her spare time, taught online classes on writing YA.
She runs a hilarious blog and is really quick on the uptake when it comes to finding ways to promote her book, such as a “voice post” of the first chapter and other swank ideas. (I think Lauren would call them scandalous ideas!)
Why I Like Lauren:
1. She’s my age!
2. She gives so much back to the writing community.
3. She has all the latest goss on Nick and Jessica.
4. Her excerpt (read it now, or listen to the voicepost) is fabulous!
What a gal! Lauren has since sold another deal for a middle grade novel, and is hard at work on other books. Today, I proudly, proudly present the Girlfriend’s Cyber Circuit Tour of Lauren Barnholdt and her debut, REALITY CHICK.
This is another book I’ve been dying to read. I’ve got it on my shelf, just waiting for me to meet my deadlines. I may in fact meet her at the RWA conference, which will be great. I can’t wait.
All-hour study fests . . . all-night parties . . .
Going away to college means total independence and freedom. Unless of course your freshman year is taped and televised for all the world to watch. On uncensored cable.
Sweet and normal Ally Cavanaugh is one of five freshpeople shacking up on In the House, a reality show filmed on her college campus. (As if school isn’t panic-inducing enough!) The cameras stalk her like paparazzi, but they also capture the fun that is new friends, old crushes, and learning to live on your own. Sure, the camera adds ten pounds, but with the freshman fifteen a given anyway, who cares? Ally’s got bigger issues — like how her long-distance bf can watch her loopy late-night “episode” with a certain housemate. . . .
Freshman year on film.
It’s outrageous.
It’s juicy.
And like all good reality TV,
it’s impossible to turn off.
So anyway, go check out Reality Chick, so that later on, you can say that you were an early adopter of the Barnholdt fandom. I’m telling you, this chick is going places. Her debut is a “Can’t Miss” Teen People Pick! Go Lauren!
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PS: Okay, just a tiny bit of me. I’m pick of the week at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind. The incomparable Sarah Weinman says this about Secret Society Girl:
“I had such a great time reading Peterfreund’s debut, which details what happens when one Ivy League junior gets tapped to join a formerly all-male, super-secret society. Why? The voice, for one, as Amy is a smart cookie who shows her mettle when it counts most, and great insights into what really bonds friends together. An entertaining read for teens and adults alike.”
Also, because this is just too much, my neighborhood has gone to the sharks:
Enjoy… more to come, after I chill out for a bit!
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