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Today, an excerpt from Extras, the #1 New York Times Bestseller by Scott Westerfeld:
“Come on, Hiro,” she said. “Unicorns aren’t real, and I know stuff about them. Like… they have horns on their foreheads. And they can fly!”
Hiro groaned. “No, that’s Pegasus that flies. Unicorns just have a horn.”
 Now, I ask you. What can that possibly be except a shout-out to yours truly?
Take that, Justine. Guess we know where your old man falls on that all important unicorn/zombie divide. I’ve yet to see a zombie reference in this novel. Also, thanks Scott, for clearing up the confusion, even if we do have to wait until the future.
However, I must disagree. Unicorns are real. And they are very, very dangerous…
I’m pretty sick right now — started last night on the plane flight home, and has gotten worse since, so this blog post will, most likely, reflect the pathetic state of my body and brain. Regular readers know how poorly I deal with illness. There might be rants coming up.
The timing couldn’t be worse. I’ve got a major deadline coming up, and my brain and typing fingers need to be in top physical condition for the next few weeks. Ugh… can I will myself to get better?
Enough downers, however. Let’s talk about some cheerful stuff:
 There’s a cool article about me in this week’s edition of the Washington City Paper, complete with this picture (which apparently makes my hair look quite long), and the compulsory discussion about the value of chick lit. I’m actually starting to wonder if there’s a class on this topic at journalism school, seeing how often reporters write articles about it. I was also surprised to learn that the phrase “killer unicorns” is inherently chick litty. Who knew? I always thought it was pretty gory (ba DUM ching!) Regardless, I’m pretty happy with the way the article turned out (and glad that I got to use Sophocles and Harlequin in the same sentence!)
And there are a few new reviews out of my books:
From Teen Book Reviewer, Jocelyn, on Secret Society Girl:
I wish I’d picked up SECRET SOCIETY GIRL sooner! Once I did, I was hooked. The world Diana Peterfreund creates in this novel is totally different from mine, and maybe a little far-fetched, but still completely real once you start reading. Her characters all step right off the page—even the most minor background characters are three-dimensional. Peterfreund really breathes life into her protagonist, though! Amy’s voice is witty and funny and perfectly suited to the character that the (rather brilliant) author creates.
I’ve been gushing about the characters so much this sounds like a character-driven book with no plot, but that would be the wrong impression. SECRET SOCIETY GIRL is nothing if not a suspenseful page-turner! There’s not a dull moment in this book. I couldn’t put it down! This smart, wickedly funny novel is a new favorite of mine.
From CanaryNoir, on Secret Society Girl:
The way Ms. Peterfreund works out that drama, and fills-in several of the principle supporting characters inside the society, makes for a great story. There is a large cast of characters, most of whom come from very privileged backgrounds in comparison with Amy’s own hard-working, self-made origins, and Ms. Peterfreund has a lot of fun with undercutting stereotypes by having Amy face up to her own acceptance of them. She also leaves a lot of threads open for future books (and this looks to be the first of some number of these books). While not quite as dark and dangerous as it implies itself to be, Secret Society Girl is fun and interesting and intriguing enough to pull the reader along. It also stands out as a book more focused on the main character and her new friends figuring themselves out and showing what they’re made of instead of tying up the end in a big romantic bow. This book is about Amy coming into her own as Amy; not Amy finding twu wuv to complete herself.
From The Yale Alumni Magazine, on Under the Rose:
Cross Dink Stover with Nancy Drew and Bridget Jones and you get Amy Haskel, the sarcastic senior at transparently disguised “Eli University” who briskly narrates this winning mystery. When Haskel gains entry to the elite secret society Rose & Grave, she finds that its stodgy alumni are still cold as a crypt on the subject of women being admitted. Then erudite and threatening anonymous e-mails begin to fly around the society-only server, and naturally, Haskel investigates. The mystery is twisty, but the real fun lies in Haskel’s tossed-off asides about Yale, oops, Eli traditions–from shopping period (during which undergrads “weren’t hunting for good bargains, but rather, for gut classes”) to the annual Halloween concert, when students wear costumes aimed at “inducing everyone around you to marvel at your brilliance and beg you to tell them what the hell you’re dressed as.”
I also found out in that article that Lynn Harris, author of Death by Chick Lit, is another daughter of Eli. I’ll definitely have to pick up her book.
Okay, and now, the important stuff:
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie might be the best HP film yet. LOVED it. Also, whoa, sexy! That was certainly a change from the book! Now I’m very looking forward to the final installment. I may or may not actually go to one of the release parties. If so, I may or may not go dressed as Tonks (I do have the pink wig, after all.)
 The Seventy Days of Sweat Challenge is back on, since the wedding extravaganza is over. I hope I can wrangle my broken body and brain into shape for this thing. Write write write!
And the bloggy stuff:
The fabulous Jo Leigh blogs inspiration. This woman has written over 40 books and she just keeps getting better. How cool is that?
The Buzz Girls tour Marley around RWA Nationals. They owe me a new keyboard after reading their posts.
Scott and Justine talk about how Justine has never even seen the inside of a box, let alone wanted to think there. Having gone first-reader rounds with Justine, I know how very valuable her input is.
And now I sleep. And take my medicine. And wonder why we haven’t progressed to the point where we can just upload our consciousnesses into some kind of invincible, impenetrable, can’t-get-sick bionic machine. Ugh. Would someone get on that, please?
This may be my last post for a while. We’ll see how things pan out once I’m in California, where two people who are not me and Sailor Boy are getting married.
 Day 2 of the challenge (Monday) was a bit slow for me. I only got a couple of hundred words down, and I was doing a lot of revisions. So I’ll really have to kick it up today to keep on track. To wit: this post shall be short.
Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld are the current “writers in residence” at Inside a Dog this week, and are discussing writing, lucky numbers, each other, and the weird way Justine likes to talk (wait, they are making fun of Scott’s accent? Crazy Aussies!) The post on first drafts and rewriting was especially interesting to me right now because I find that my process (barring the Zero Draft) is very similar to Scott’s: I like to read what I’ve written the day before, fix it, and move forward. I tend to revise as I go. Scott said:
I write about a thousand new words a day. But I start each day by reviewing the previous three days’ work.
This has two effects. One, it means that I ease into my writing day, editing and rewriting those 3,000 old words before facing the deadly blank page. By the time I finish that I’ve got a head of steam up, I remember what’s going on in the story, and writing new words doesn’t seem impossible, like it did right after coffee.
It’s like getting a running start.
The second effect is that by the time my first drafts go to anyone else, I’ve been through every word at least four times (usually more) and across several days, when I’ve been in different moods and have had different tolerances for purple prose, bad similes, and fuzzy language.
This is usually me. Except not this book. No, for this book, I’m just biting the bullet and moving ahead, even though I’ve changed something and I know I’ll have to go back and fix it. It’s definitely a new challenge for me. But new challenges are fun, huh?
Or maybe this is my first “zero draft.”
Hey, check it out! Vicki Lane is doing a giveaway and what’s this? Why, it’s Under the Rose! Vicki is a friend of mine from my Tampa RWA chapter. Sigh. Yet another person I won’t be seeign at RWA this week. A bit weird not to go. It’s the first one I haven’t been to since I joined the organization.
And finally, I leave you with a little something care of Holly…
… Are the Luckiest Writers in the World.
So I’ve been having one of those weeks where the writing has not been going well. At two separate times, with two separate projects, I threw my hands up and entertained those insidious ghastly thoughts. The ones that say:
“… your a hack. you suk.”
The insidious ghastly thoughts always speak ungrammatically and with misspelled words.
I couldn’t tell you why.
Each time I curled into a little ball and spent a little while contemplating what I was going to do if my book was broken, or if I’d lighted on exactly the wrong essay topic. What I would do if, in fact, I had to admit that I’d totally screwed things up, and was a big sucky hack.
And then I yanked myself up by my bootstraps, swallowed my pride, and emailed my editors, saying, “Hi, I have a problem.”
And this is why my editors (Kerri, for SSG; and Scott, for the Philip Pullman anthology) rock.
Kerri read the scenes I was having a problem with, and agreed with the problem I was having (I had plot needs that were difficult to wrangle, given the personality one character had been displaying for two books, and thus I’d written him a bit out of character). We discussed why I wanted the plot to go the way I wanted it to go, and brainstormed ways to get there without sacrificing established character traits. And the solution she came up with was elegant and simple and actually made the plot and timeline even STRONGER than it had been before. Why couldn’t I see that by myself? I don’t know, but man, am I grateful that I have Kerri.
I’ve also been pulling my hair out over my essay for the anthology. Sometimes, I felt like I had a really fun idea. Other times, I felt like I didn’t quite have the linchpin that would hold it all together. naturally, this inspired a panic spiral (did I mention that the deadline is upon me?). I panic-whined to Scott, and without even knowing he was doing it, he fired back my linchpin quote. I’m actually mildly concerned about how much of His Dark Materials the poor guy has memorized, but that’s neither here nor there. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: thank goodness for Scott Westerfeld.
So, crisis averted, I go back to meeting my deadline. Speculation like Justine’s about how much my epic blog entries of late have been inspired by my artistic frustration shall be heartily ignored.
Speaking of epic blog entries, I have my first blog post up at the urban fantasy LJ community, Fangs Fur Fey. I’ll probably be doing the bulk of my killer unicorn posting there, but I’m undecided about whether or not to simulcast on blogger. What do you think? Killer Unicorns everywhere? (I can see my heroine shuddering now…) I think it might be tough to keep track of two different comment threads, so if I do simulpost, I might close the blogger one for comments. FFF is an amazing blog, by the way, and I encourage everyone to visit. I’m thrilled to be a part. It’s my only “author group blog” (I don’t count RTB, since it’s not just authors, but readers and industry folks).
I realize I don’t often talk about the sucky writer days. In fact, I think I’ve blogged about my reticence to discuss such matters in the past. But yeah. This last week has been one of those, “Does trepanning help, I wonder?” weeks, but maybe I just had trepanning on the brain, given my immersion into His Dark Materials. In fact, earlier this week, I had written a blog post in my head that went like this:
You Know You’ve Got Philip Pullman on the Brain When…
SSB is telling you about this World of Warcraft bug that makes hunters lose their pet, permanently, and your response is “intercission.”
But, obviously, that was too short for a proper post. Especially when I’m on deadline. 
FINALLY!
Justine’s Great Australian Cricket Mangosteen Monkey Knife-Fighting Fairy YA Novel has found a home at Bloomsbury Children’s. YES! I can scream it.
So excited. No words. I read this book and it’s INCREDIBLE, folks. Very out of the ordinary. She deserves every molecule of that Norton Award.*
Yay, Justine! Set your calendars for Fall ‘08 and The Ultimate Fairy Book.
In other news, will be drawing the winner of Colleen’s book in the morning.
In yet other news, saw a poster for The Golden Compass movie tonight. Looks perfect so far, though all I’ve seen is Lyra and Iorek. No glimpse of Pan, oddly enough.
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*How obvious is it that I don’t know what Norton Awards actually look like?
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Updated to Add:
The winner of the RISES THE NIGHT Giveaway is: CATSLADY. Please email me with your address to receive your prize.
Recent prize winners: Your prizes are on their way. With all the traveling, I’ve been a slacker at the P.O.
Probably won’t be posting again for a while, due to a moderate family emergency. Rest assured: everyone will be fine.
Meanwhile, we are still having a giveaway of Secret Society Girl, the paperback, this week. Leave a comment in this post to enter.
In passing, winners from the last two weeks, Susan Hatler and Crystal G, have yet to contact me to receive their prizes. Since my access to email is spotty this week, let’s give them until Friday and then I’ll draw new names.
I’m tremendously behind in what’s going on in the world, on email, on loops, on blogs, etc. right now, but I do know these things:
1) Justine Larbalestier won an Andre Norton Award for her debut novel, Magic or Madness. Wow. Go, Justine! I am completely blown away by this and would be more eloquent except that I haven’t slept in thirty hours. (Justine, if you’re reading this, I am buying our next round in celebration.)
2) Gemma Halliday’s debut, Spying in High Heels, is currently in development as a television series on the USA Network!!!
Now I sleep.
Pursuant to yesterday’s post (is this the proper usage of pursuant? If not, it so should be! I’ll have to ask SB when he’s around):
Anonymous said:
Get out your wet noodles and what have you. I’m ready for my lashes.
I started writing a middle grade novel. I’ve read plenty of MG and besides, this is more tween-y and I am a YA-oholic. So no problems there, right?
But then I AM READING a science fiction novel. I do not love SF. That’s not why I picked up the book. I am reading it because it is kind of YA SF, has been recommended to me a gazillion times and is touted as one of the best in the whole SF genre. I am surprised that I don’t love it so much.
I talk to my writing partner about my expectations and how they’ve been dashed. It’s the words, mostly. They just aren’t beautiful. The prose doesn’t sing to me. On top of that, though the main plot is very good, I feel like I can tell when the writer came up with some of the new twists. To me, they feel like they were spackled into place.
I propose to my partner that I might like SF better if the story was written first, then the SF elements worked into it. As a joke, I take the first chapter of my sweet MG relationship story and move it two centuries ahead.
Amazingly, it makes the story come alive. I research SF a little, just for fun, and find:
A. I’ve already read 20 of the top 100 SF stories of all time but
B. It’s not SF unless the science part is crucial to the story.
I give up the idea of writing a SF MG. Until I take a shower and Boing! the What If bomb goes off in my head and I see how the science really could affect the plot.
My questions to you Oh Wise One:
1. Am I crazy? Pathetic? Misguided to think I can pull this off?
What a great question, Anonymous! (Seriously, though, don’t be a stranger.)
And then Patrick (being Patrick) said:
I am assuming “Oh Wise One” is me.
Worrying about the ‘definition’ of SF is a waste of time. There’s a bunch of ninnies who make *those* rules.
YA SF the rules are different than the ninnies who make silly SF rules.
Call it Futuristic Fantasy rather than SF if you are worried about that SF label.
Yes, you are crazy, but that has nothing to do with your writing or your ability to pull your story off.
Patrick is probably much better equipped to discuss what exactly science fiction is than I am. I was always a little hazy with the details. Like, officially, something like Star Wars isn’t “science fiction” because it has nothing to do with science? It’s space opera or space fantasy or whatever? I’m not in SFWA, so I don’t know all the rules of what’s SF and what spec fiction and what’s fantasy and what all.
And of course, Justine is in Texas right now, and probably not checking email/reading blogs, and she’s the actual science fiction expert around here — PhD, lots of lovely science fiction history books with her name on them, etc.
And then I started getting curious, so I decided to look up these “top 100 science fiction stories.” I found two lists near the top of the Google results: A statistical survey of sci-fi literary awards, noted critics and popular polls (of which I’ve read 23), and David Pringle’s (of which I’ve read 7). They are decidedly different. (I think I like the first one better, though I may be biased by my own results.)
So now, being the curious sort, I’m wondering what YA our Anonymous buddy is talking about that is supposedly one of the best SFs of all time. I’m thinking it’s likely we’re talking about Ender’s Game. My favorite Ender book, Speaker for the Dead, does in fact appear on that first list. We can’t be talking about Wrinkle in Time, here, right? That’s a YA classic which is also, arguably, SF.
(SB just walked in and goes: “Ender’s Game, right?” Too funny. Please note, we are basing our guesses here on the description “famous YA SF novel,” and not on any value judgment about the prose.)
Alternately, we could be looking at a LeGuin, though I think she tends to write her fantasy for kids and her SF for adults. Or, we could be looking at the type of classic SF that people tend to read as teens in school: Bradbury/Asimov/Orwell/Huxley (or even Shelley/Wells!) . All of which I read in English class in high school. Or, you know, Heinlein/Herbert/Vonnegut/Dick/Clarke are also teen favorites. (Hee hee. Dick/Clarke.)
Well, all this is besides the point, anyway. I just like playing guessing games. Anonymous is under no pressure to tell us which book he or she is talking about. (Let’s just say it’s a she, to make my typing easier.) She is also under no pressure to like a book, even if it’s been recommended to her a gazillion times and is very popular. (Justine will agree with me on this one.) There is a much-beloved bestselling novel out there that I can’t wrap my around at all. Yay for opinions!
Patrick’s suggestion is a good one, regarding not thinking of it as SF if there’s no science involved. Futuristic is a perfectly cromulent genre all on its own (cf. Nalini Singh’s bestselling series). And the poster does say she’s very well read in MG/YA. I wouldn’t worry about the SF too much. After all, I consider myself a fan, and by one count, I’ve only read 7 of the top 100 SF novels. The poster has read 20. And, of course, the poster is doing the important thing — looking into it, reading it, exploring, etc.
And, I may get lashed for making this argument, but classics, though all well and good, aren’t necessarily going to help too much if you don’t know what’s being written on the topic NOW.
If you want to read more YA futuristics/SF, here’s a list of recent titles to get you started:
-I Was A Teenage Popsicle and Beyond Cool*, by Bev Katz Rosenbaum
-Uglies, Pretties, Specials, and Extras* by Scott Westerfeld
-Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer (yes, I know you can argue that it’s not futuristic, but it’s at least ahead of “now.”)
-Feed by M.T. Anderson
-Rash by Pete Hautman
*forthcoming
I’m sure that the comments section will bring more suggestions as well. (Sara?)
And, if you want to read a classic YA SF, I’ve always been a huge fan of Heinlein’s Starman Jones. It’s really old school, kind of Horatio-Alger-in-space.
The part of Anonymous’s post that makes little alarms go off for me the most though, is the idea of:
“I might like SF better if the story was written first, then the SF elements worked into it.”
All those books that I listed up there would not exist without the SF element. It’s integral to the storyline. And this doesn’t just go for SF, or futuristic — it goes for everything. Story elements must exist for a reason, otherwise they are, as the poster said, “just spackled on.” The science fiction element of any story is Chekov’s gun on the wall. It must come into play at some point in the story.
The thing about science fiction is that, really, it can be any genre it wants to be — thriller, cozy mystery, romance — but the science fiction element needs to be there for a reason. For example, take one of my favorite science fiction movies: Alien.
Alien is a haunted house story. It’s a classic haunted house story, with all the genre elements: a group of people are trapped in a structure with an evil “magical” entity that kills them one by one.
Now, the problem with all haunted house stories is that, in a perfect world, people would just leave the house. Open the door and walk away. (As I yell at the screen in every horror movie.) So every haunted house story needs to have a REASON that people are staying in that house: in The House on Haunted Hill (and remakes), the residents are being offered a huge amount of money to stick it out. In Poltergeist, their daughter is missing and they have to save her (why they stay in there afterwards is beyond me). In Alien, the filmmakers have hit on the perfect reason to trap people inside the “haunted house”: It’s a spaceship, and they can’t leave, or they’ll die in space. BRILLIANT.
But you see how Alien would not have worked in any other setting. Put it elsewhere –here, now–and you’d have The House on Haunted Hill. Or maybe 13 Ghosts, but no one wants to remember that crapola (right, Jana?)
So I’m having a tough time seeing a book that can be SF (or futuristic) without the SF (or futuristic) being an integral part of the storyline.
But then, near the bottom, Anonymous gives us her twist:
Until I take a shower and Boing! the What If bomb goes off in my head and I see how the science really could affect the plot.
Yeah, I love that. Showers are the best. And yeah, sometimes story pieces fall together at odd times, and they can fall together in any order — plot then character; character, then premise; setting, then character, then hook — whatever. That’s fine. If you’re still trying to piece the story together, then, in my opinion, you aren’t really “working the SF in afterward.” But if it helps you to think of it that way, then don’t let me stand in your way. (I’m sure that my way of putting story ideas together is anathema to lots of people.) Viva la difference, and all that jazz.
So no, to answer your question, Anonymous, I don’t think you are crazy or pathetic, or misguided.
And there is a point when I’m working on every story where I decide I’m crazy to think I can pull it off. Then I know that I’m on the right track, because the project that scares you is also the one that makes you grow. I say: GO FOR IT!
The only other piece of advice I have for you is that, if you are entering a genre as a professional in the genre, it behooves you to become familiar with it. Once you are published in this genre, you will meet a lot of other writers. Your fans will have read lots of books in the genre and will want to talk to you about them. They will want you to give them recommendations for what to read while they are waiting for your next book to come out, etc. It’s just a good thing. Even if you are writing “the X book for people who don’t like X books,” it’s a good thing to be part of the community.
Good luck and Godspeed!
PS: Sailor Boy says that he’s only read 20 of these books. I thought for sure his count would be higher than mine. He also says he hasn’t read Dune. I may have to call off the wedding.
PPS: Crisis averted. He’s seen the Lynch movie. The one with Sting.
 My roommate from the NEC Conference, Marley Gibson, has some pictures up on the blog Books, Boys, and Buzz today, so if you want to see more costume party snaps, click here.
Here’s the picture of Jennifer O’Connell and me, in all of it’s grainy, blurry goodness (thanks, Marianne).
It was a little bit awesome to be at the NEC Conference, since that’s where the whole SSG ball got rolling. There, Marley pitched my book to an editor sitting at her dinner table. By the end of the conference, I had a bunch of requests and didn’t even know it. Within a week and a half, I had an agent, and within two more, I had a book deal. (Four years, four manuscripts, and three weeks, huh?) All weekend long, I kept hearing, “Oh, you’re the one.” Too funny.
On the plane flight home, I read Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s new YA release, Angel’s Choice, in one sitting. It was riveting. I actually sat on the plane while people were getting off because I wanted to finish it before I moved. Highly recommended. (Weird, though — Amazon shows it with a different cover than the one I have.)
 Also recommended is this week’s book giveaway, Magic’s Child. This novel is the thrilling conclusion of Justine Larbalestier’s debut trilogy, Magic or Madness. It’s the story of Reason Cansino, an Australian girl born with magic in her blood who has to make a terrible choice: use her magic, and die young, or refuse to do so, and go insane. Justine’s books have won a ton of awards, which you can read about here and when I got my hands on an advanced review copy of this book, here’s what I said:
“The Magic or Madness trilogy is a rare treat: a naturalistic glimpse of a world in which magic is a dark gift indeed. Magic’s Child concludes the series with Larbalestier’s signature style of bewitching images, heartbreaking choices, and of course, the beauty of math. (Or, as Reason would put it, maths.)”
You can also download a free Magic’s Child screensaver on the Penguin website.
And now, you can win a SIGNED copy of Magic’s Child right here on the blog. Simply leave a comment and I’ll draw a winner on Friday. Good luck!
8:00 AM: I (groggy) am dropped off by Sailor Boy (only vaguely less groggy, and thereby qualified to operate a motor vehicle) at the bus station. Pick up my tickets at the Will Call machine.
8:28 AM: Bus arrives. I get in line to board. Smarmy guy behind me points at my ticket and says, “I think you needed to get in the real line and get a boarding number.” Points at his own ticket, which resides in a fancy folder emblazoned with a giant number 23. I smile and say, “Oh, I got mine from Will Call.” Begin looking at other people’s tickets, which all reside in fancy folders with numbers on them. Have never once, in all the times I’ve taken a bus to NYC, gone to the “real line” to get a boarding number. Have never been asked for a boarding number. Begin to get nervous.
8:29 AM: Bus driver comes out and begins to take tickets. Smarmy guy behind me says, “Aren’t you going to board by boarding number?” Bus driver looks sheepish, and says sure he will, gives the people at the front of the line the tickets he already took, and starts out by calling #1. Smarmy guy smarms. I freak out until I notice that on my non-fancy computer printed Will Call machine ticket, it says, “Boarding #19.” Take that, smarm!
8:35 AM: Boarding is taking approximately ten times longer this way, especially given that there are obviously enough seats, and it’s not as if the seats are assigned anyway. At last my number is called, and I get one of the last empty rows.
8:40 AM: At last we are away. I have an empty seat beside me! Joy! I will get to stretch out and nap on the way to NYC! But first, I will finish this chapter I’m reading and eat my breakfast bar.
8:59 AM: As I finish my breakfast bar, this guy appears out of nowhere and asks if he can sit in my seat. I am wondering what seat he was sitting in for the last twenty minutes while the bus was in motion. He promptly plops down besides me and does that guy thing where he spreads his legs into a veritable split. Cramped, I try to make myself comfortable.
11:30 AM: I wake up, and try to divine from glimpses of the road signs where we are. The guy who made me uncomfortable the whole trip up is nowhere to be seen, leaving me to wonder if he was not, perhaps, a hallucination. We pass a sign for the Lincoln Tunnel. Wow, we’re going to be an hour early!
11:35 AM: Bumper-to-bumper traffic. Nix earlier observation.
12:35 PM: Arrive Port Authority. De-bus. Exit. Walk several blocks down 42nd Street, through Times Square, which just gets less enjoyable every time I have to do it, and emerge, victorious and unscathed on the other side near Bryant Park.
12:55 PM: At Bryant Park, two boys from a middle school in the Bronx are doing a video project asking passers-by about eating disorders. I participate.
1:15 PM: Arrive NYPL. Check coat and scarf, which later turns out to be a mistake. Head into bathroom to make myself presentable, which only mildly succeeds (evidence: photos, below, show hair that has clearly been on bus for four and a half hours)
1:17 PM: The glamorous part of the day begins. Yippee!! The Celeste Bartos Forum of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library is quite lovely, all gold marble and glass vaulted ceilings and tiny turn-of-the-century lights that reminded my friend Margaret of a carousel. Lots of people milling about. Our books are all on well-populated tables at the back. I am shelved in a section marked: The A-List: Adult Novels for Teens, along with Jodi Picoult, Marisha Pessl, Curtis Sittenfeld, and fellow Bantam Dell author Sandra Kring (The Book of Bright Ideas). I find my editor, and we find Secret Society Girl, and we gush and get our pictures taken holding the book.
1:30 ish PM: I see someone holding my book open to the back cover flap and pointing at me and then referring to the back cover flap again, so I go up and introduce myself. I am also wearing a name tag that reads: Diana Peterfreund / “Secret Society Girl” which cracks me up because it makes me sound like I am, in fact, a secret society girl. (Though I think I have it better than Patricia McCormick, whose name tag reads “Sold“.) The name tag helps. Anyway, turns out that the people holding my book are all NYPLibrarians who were trying to decide, based on my hair, if I was the girl in the photo. My hair is several inches longer now that it was in the photo, but apparently close enough.
 I get to meet Cara, the librarian who blogged about my book those many moons ago (hi, Cara!) and recommended my book for the list. Cara works at the St. George Staten Island branch of the library, and just opened a teen reading room. If you live in or near Staten Island, I recommend you check it out. I’ve never been in a library with a teen reading room, but the very idea fills the sixteen year old girl living inside me with actual spasms of delight. And, as you may imagine, Cara rocks. We spend a long time discussing YA books, Dartmouth, the audience I intended for my books (“anyone who likes to read about college?”), and how cool libraries are. I give her a pin. She introduces me to some other librarians. Chatting occurs. (Please note how fantastic Cara’s skirt is in the picture to the right. Please also note how very coordinated and brown we are. Aren’t we in sync?)
We interrupt this recap for a worthy aside: I never knew any librarians personally before my book came out, but I have met so many lovely ones in the past year, and yesterday’s events just drove home the point that librarian may be the profession that draws in all the cool kids. Hollywood totally has it wrong about the “librarian” image. More wrong than they do about the “author” image, if that’s possible. Maybe I just hang out with too many lawyers here in D.C., but yesterday I met about a dozen librarians and began to get depressed that I didn’t live in New York so we could exchange phone numbers and get drinks and be buddies.
1:45 ish PM: I meet Delia Sherman, who swears she recognizes me. Later, Scott Westerfeld will propose a theory about how “blog recognition” sometimes crosses over into real life, as Delia and I know each other “virtually” on Justine Larbalestier’s blog. Delia’s book, Changeling, is gorgeous. I need a copy for me and a copy for some lucky ten year old I know. Sandra Kring arrives with her daughter, Shannon Kring Biro, and we chat.
 1:55 PM: I see my friend Margaret, who looks rather fetching in a bright blue coat with her hair all red and not looking like it’s been on a bus for four hours. Margaret agrees to take a picture of me with Fortitude, the lion who has joined us for the festivities, as long as he doesn’t come too close to her. Yes, it was most definitely Fortitude, and not Patience. I know because I asked him. Margaret and I run into Libba Bray. Hi, Libba! Libba is there for moral support. Margaret claims she brought a foam #1 finger. Doesn’t Margaret take a lovely photo? I think I need more pictures of me with giant furry creatures.
2:00 PM: The festivities begin. Sandra Payne, the coordinator for Young Adult services at the NYPL, welcomes us all, and gives away prizes for a high school graphic design award. The runners-up and winner are incredibly talented and stylish young women who are so much more put together than I was at their age. I really wish I took a picture of their designs. The winner’s design is featured on the front cover of this year’s New York Public Library Books For The Teen Age List (this link currently goes to last year’s list).
We interrupt this recap for an amusing aside: After a few glasses of wine, the joke, “I’m on the New York zzzzzzzz List” is surprisingly funny. Without wine, it’s not even the least bit so.
All the authors are named and stand, or at least wave. (Sandra Payne pronounces my name perfectly on the very first try, a feat which always makes me fall just a little bit in love with the person in question.) All the publishers, etc. are asked to stand. All the librarians too. Everyone claps. I am humbled to be included on this list.
One librarian, Jack, introduces Alice Hoffman, who looks exactly like you think Alice Hoffman looks, and is even wearing this glorious flame-colored shawl. Alice Hoffman gives a beautiful, inspiring, and rousing speech about what is is like to write, and to write for Young Adults, and how she was inspired to write her List book Incantation (and tells a story about a taxi driver who may or may not have been there and reminds me of my bus experience that morning which did not, unfortunately, inspire me to write a book about the Spanish Inquistition) and how the most important books she can remember are the books she read as a teen, and everyone in the audience is nodding and it’s all quite fabulous. Unfortunately, I am totally consumed with envy for Alice Hoffman, because she was smart enough to be wearing her shawl, and I checked mine in the coat room, and I’m freezing. So while she is discussing Edward Eager and Wuthering Heights and this hilarious run-in she once had with Hilary Clinton re: Heathcliff, I am wondering if there is any way to a) steal out of the room, grab my shawl/coat and come back, b) steal Alice Hoffman’s shawl without anyone noticing. (There wasn’t, so I didn’t.)
3:45 PM: The formal part of the festivities are over, and we are once again mingling/chatting/etc. I meet Maureen Johnson (hi, Maureen!), whose book, Devilish, is a Faustian yarn, and is thus in the “Do-Over” section of the list reserved for classic tales retold, and some more librarians. I meet Anne from the Tompkins Square branch on the LES and she and I talk about SSG. She’s so funny! She has many theories about the trajectory of Amy’s love life. And, as I pointed out to my editor later, I have no poker face. I think if I were someone who wrote long, drawn-out mystery series, I’d have been made a long time ago.
Reiterate: love librarians.
4:00 PM: My editor, Sandra Kring, Shannon Kring Biro, and I try to find a place to get something to eat. Because it is before 5 PM, this is harder than it looks. Eventually, we stumble into a sort of Irish Pub/tapas bar on 40th St., where we drink wine and talk writing. The Krings are amazing. Shannon is an accomplished cookbook author, and she and her husband, a chef named Marcel Biro, have a chain of restaurants, run a cooking school, and have an award-winning cooking show on PBS. As if that’s not enough, she has a memoir coming out with her sister Natalie Kring next week called Sister Salty, Sister Sweet. (I really wish I had a link to Shannon’s webpage, which features a dancing Ken doll.) I had so much fun talking to them both! If you haven’t read Sandra Kring’s novel, The Book of Bright Ideas, I highly recommend it. It was a Target Book Club pick last year, and is making major waves.
5:30 PM: The Krings go off to live it up in New York. My editor goes to a dinner party. I go to meet Scott Westerfeld, Justine Larbalestier (whose book, Magic’s Child, is out now!), Maureen Johnson, and Cassandra Clare (whose debut, City of Bones, is out now!) at the Campbell Apartments in Grand Central Station. It’s dark and loud and apparently, half the party was not allowed in due to dress code restrictions. (Sorry, Margaret!) There are a lot of writers at that table, but I really only get a chance to chat with Eric Luper, whose first novel Big Slick, about a teen poker whiz, is out from FSG this fall. Hi, Eric!
Eric and Scott help me demonstrate how very dark it was in the Campbell Apts.
7:00 PM: Scott, Justine, Maureen, and I decide to have dinner. Justine has not brought a coat, and practically freezes as we make our way across town to this no-dairy organic place called Josie’s on Third Ave. I give her my shawl, which I did not steal from Alice Hoffman. At dinner, we talk about geekdom, YA books, writing, writing, and schtuff. Maureen and I are disappointed to discover that, despite clearly listing arugula juice as an option on the menu, we can’t actually get a glass of plain arugula juice, which we had made a pact to drink if we could. We must mix it with a more normal sounding juice, such as apple, pear, carrot, tomato, etc. So much for that. However, we do indulge in a five dollar glass of ice tea, which is made with hibiscus and cinnamon, and may in fact have been worth five dollars. I am consumed with envy for Justine and Scott and Maureen, who, from all accounts, seem to get to have dinners like this with other writers all the time. (And yes, I know I had lunch with Justine just last week, but it was the first time since, like, June.)
8:30 PM: I hop in a cab and go to Port Authority
8:48 PM: Cab is stopped in traffic in Times Square. I start to get nervous.
8:50 PM: I don’t get the etiquette of cabs. If I can walk quicker, should I just get out?
8:51 PM: Screw it. I get out, and walk to Port Authority.
8:52 PM: I buy a totally unnecessary magazine to read on the way back to D.C. It turns out that the bus driver doesn’t even turn on the personal booklights over each seat, so I couldn’t have read if I wanted to.
8:54 PM: I arrive at my gate, and am given a “you were almost late” look by the ticket taker. No one notices my boarding number. I get on the bus to discover that, joy of joys, the back seat (three across) is totally free. I proceed to spread out in hopes that no one will arrive after me and that this morning’s mysterious disappearing passenger won’t reappear. When the bus starts, I realize why that spot is open. There’s this huge bright blue emergency light over my seat. Also, the back of the bus is a good fifteen degrees colder than the front. I spend the next three and a half hours trying to find the most comfortable way to cover my entire body with my coat and my face with the shawl I didn’t steal from Alice Hoffman so as to block out the big blue light.
1:00 AM: Sailor Boy arrives in Nikita (who totally needs a wash, not to mention an oil change) to pick me up. Ah, SB, how I love thee. Ah, Nikita, you’re the coolest.
Except for librarians.
Justine, never one to shy away from the Big Questions in Life, asks:
If you could only choose one which would you choose: the publishing house with a wonderful editor who brings out the best in you, or the house with fabulous publicity, marketing and sales departments?
And then the opinions pour in. From editors, some of whom said “publicity,” having felt the sting of editing wonderful books that died on the vine; from writers who longed for that genius revision letter, and others.
Best quote in the discussion was from Doselle Young, who said:
If you want great publicity, just leave copies of your book at the scenes of violent crimes with your key passages of sex and violence underlined. That’ll pretty much always work.
As a conspiracy theorist by trade, I must say, I adore this idea. If only I weren’t so adverse to hanging out with serial killers (except for maybe Sylar. I don’t have special powers to entice him to eat my brains, and he’s so cute).
So, let’s play a game. Say you are going to leave a copy of Secret Society Girl at the scene of a crime. What kind of crime would you choose? What key passages would you underline as potential clues for the media to pounce upon?
I’m thinking a probably a museum heist of some sort. And probably the bit on page 133 about what kind of stuff Rose & Grave has hidden in their tombs.
Anyone else have an idea? Best entry wins a prize, TBD by Sailor Boy. Leave your comments here.
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Now, I ask you. What can that possibly be except a shout-out to yours truly?
