Veerry busy today. I'm working an outline (and cooking up evil mean girl tricks for a book...) and writing an article for Children's Writer. Yep, that big batch of queries I sent out at the end of April is starting to come back. Trickling, thankfully, but still coming. I've got a few windows open on my protesting laptop and am switching back and forth between the article, my outline and Dreamweaver for the new Website I'm designing for fall launch.

I got the SCBWI LA summer conference brochure yesterday. The line up looks fantastic! Wow. It's neat to "know" so many people on the speaking list and it sounds like it'll be a blast. Is anyone going? The date doesn't look as if it'll work for me, but I'll be reading lots of attendees' blogs to get the scoop.

I started blogging today as a distraction to keep myself from chasing down the mailman. I sent a VIQ (very important query) to a big, glossy teen mag about a month ago and I'm trying not to check the mail the second it is put into the box. The mailman prob thinks I'm a stalker because yesterday I almost took the mail from his hands to see if my VIQ had a response.

*dashes off to mailbox

Good guesses from yesterday! It was fun to read them and I promise to reveal very soon! :)

There's a meme floating around and I read it on Melissa Marr and Sarah Prineas's blogs. You're supposed to list every book you've ever written and when. I'll give it a shot.

Freshman 15 (November 2006) This was a YA novel that I wrote in 30 days during NaNoWriMo. It became High Jumps at Collins Academy which later turned into Take the Reins. With this novel, I snagged Agent A in January 2007, it went on submission in May 2007 and sold in May 2007. This was the first book I'd ever written and boy, it showed! :)

Untitled YA (started May 2007 and abandoned it until December 2007) I started this YA while waiting to hear back from editors when Take the Reins was on submission. It's a fun, sexy YA set in Wyoming. During Christmas break while I was in between edits for Canterwood Crest, I finished this book.

Chasing Blue (December 2007-January 2008). This is the second MG book in the Canterwood Crest series. I was worried about how I'd know how much back story to put into the second book, but I think I got it. :)

Untitled YA (started February 2008). This YA is completely different than my other books. Not a horse in sight. Anywhere. I'm working on this when I'm not working on Canterwood and it's fun to switch back and forth from YA to MG.

So, those are the books I've finished or am currently working on. If you want to do this meme, consider yourself tagged!

Book Bit

Last weekend, I started reading The Other Boleyn Girl since I thought the movie trailers looked so good. The film hasn't done incredibly well at the box office, but I like the actors. I haven't seen the film yet, but the book... W-O-W.

For the past year, I've been reading mostly YA with some MG thrown in. I haven't read many adult novels and if I did, I read that and a YA at the same time. I hadn't read an adult novel that gripped me recently. Until TOBG.

I also haven't read many historicals. But I should. Especially if there are other historicals as sizzling as this.

TV Time

Anyone else watching Dancing with the Stars? If so, you probably correctly predicted, as did I, that Penn and Monica would leave. No big shocker there! Penn's attitude bugged me. A lot. But Monica really tried hard! I thought Adam Corolla had a shot at leaving last night, but he's sticking around.

On the guys, I love Steve G. for purely sentimental reasons. I watched him a lot as a kid.

Marissa Jaret Winokur makes me smile for the girls as does Kristy Y. If the winner was solely declared on dance talent, Kristy could win right now.

What are you watching and/or reading?

* Thanks to everyone who commented on my new movie! I appreciate it! :)

Just a reminder--Kat, I need your name and address by tomorrow morning for the SA Harazin giveaway! E-mail it to me. Thanks!

What is everyone reading right now? I just finished FRENEMIES (ARC) by Alexa Young. Such a fun, good book! Before that, I read Sara Zarr's SWEETHEARTS. If Sara published a book a month, I'd get each one. :)

I'm getting ready to read THE FICTION CLASS, an adult novel, and then I have to see what's next in my pile.

Share your current read!

All right! The holiday season is behind (well, almost behind) some of us and I'm looking forward to the New Year. Later in the week, I'll post my resolutions for the New Year and I hope you'll share some of yours. :)

Yesterday, just as my mom was taking the roast beast out of the oven, I typed the final words on Chasing Blue. It took about 7 weeks to finish and I'm thrilled to have the draft down. Sure, there are lots of revisions to be done, but that feeling of elation of having 200+ pages down on paper is AMAZING.

When I first started writing this book, I was a wreck. I've never written a sequel before, had no idea how much to reference the first book and worried I'd screw it up. But when I got started, things felt natural. I somehow knew how much to reference Take the Reins, my characters were more familiar than before and the luxury of not having to create an entirely new world (aside from a road trip the girls take) was nice.

My holiday break was fantastic! I spent lots of time reading (the Mob Princess series by Todd Strasser), writing (obviously) and watching movies (Wild Hogs and Order of the Phoenix).

Today, I'm printing and rereading CB and writing thank you notes for holiday gifts. (I'm waving at you, Aunt G, in case you read this!) :)

Cross-posted from Blogger
You guys had some great thoughts yesterday on the Facebook vs. MySpace debate. I do think that for now, anyway, MySpace is THE place to be to market to teens. But now that Facebook is open to everyone, we'll see how that changes things later, perhaps.

So, is anyone writing through the holidays? Going to be scribbling in a notebook while sipping Aunt Lena's eggnog? :) I'll be working because... I'm just over 10k words away from finishing my second book in the Canterwood Crest series! Yahoo! It's all downhill from here, baby. I want to have it all bright and shiny when I present it to Agent A next month. The lack of good TV has kept me writing much later into the evening than usual.

Also, I rearranged the blog a little and put 2007's read books at the very bottom of the page. The new titles for 2008 will fill their old position in the sidebar. I really wanted to create one link that would take you to all of those titles, but I haven't figured out how to do so yet.

So, I'll ask. What's your favorite book that you read in 2007? It doesn't have to have been pubbed in 2007, if you wish.

Note: from now on I'm going to keep cross-posting here and on LJ. There's such a great LJ crowd (waves!) that I was leaving them out by only posting here.