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In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had a lot of interaction, via social media and email, with people who are struggling with eating disorders.

The time has come for us all to get righteously angry.

Myself, I have moved past anger to that steel-eyed, axe-sharpening, calm place of volcanic rage.

I am NOT angry at the girls and boys and women and men who are waging daily battle against the eating disorders which are trying to destroy them. I love those folks. I want to help strengthen them and offer whatever support I can, both to them and to their families.

(Why photos of babies? See the bottom of the post.)

No, my fury is leveled at the industries that make money off of vulnerable people by promoting unhealthy, unrealistic, Photoshopped body images. And I am hereby calling out everyone who thinks that promoting pro-ana (pro-anorexic), pro-mia (pro-bulimic), and thinspiration sites and behaviors is a good thing.

Borrowing a quote from Mamavision’s wonderful site, “Anorexia is a disease, not a fricking lifestyle.” (Learn who ANA and MIA and ED are, if you haven’t heard about them before.)

It is time to speak some hard truth. Are you listening?

ANA wants to kill you.

MIA wants to kill you.

ED wants you to die.

I am not exaggerating. Not even a little bit. More people die from eating disorders than from any psychiatric illness. (Sullivan, P.(1995). American Journal of Psychiatry, 152 (7), 1073-1074.) Want to learn more? NEDA has a great collection of statistics.

People struggling with eating disorders (ED) spend a lot of energy convincing themselves and others that ANA and MIA are enchanted phantoms or fairy godsisters who will help them lose weight and then – magically – everything will be better. They will feel beautiful. Accepted. Loved. Worthy. Accomplished. Important. Cherished. Happy. They starve themselves because they are starving for the powerful sense of security and belonging that every human being deserves.

How does this happen?

It often starts when kids stumble into the howling desert wasteland we call adolescence. Her (his) body changes. Hormones start to drive the brain train. Insecurities fester. Pressure and stress boil. Kids look around for guidance. Advertising hammers home the bullshit message that if they just lose some weight, all of their problems will disappear.

It’s a lie. An evil, obscene lie. Advertisers want to make you feel worse, not better, because if you are feeling kind of crappy, it’s easier for them to con you into buying stuff. They hire genetically thin models, pressure them to drug and starve themselves to emaciation, and THEN they Photoshop the images of these models until they resemble aliens.

Starting to understand my wrath?

People suffering from eating disorders are often malnourished. The chemicals in their bodies are all messed up from starvation and/or purging. Their brains don’t have enough fuel to run on, which makes thinking clearly and making smart decisions even harder. This is why they need our loving support, not our criticism or disdain.

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I was talking to some friends last weekend about how much pain reviews can cause. Even the good ones can hurt because writers are mostly neurotic and we will find the phrase or the one word that is less than complimentary and then we obsess about that word until we’ve driven ourselves into a right, old funk.

And then I received word about my latest review from England.

I will never whine about a review again. Ever. Because after this one? I’m never going to read another review. I’m just going to reread these incredible words that Melvin Burgess, one the most significant YA authors in UK, wrote about my book. I might set them to music. Or turn them into an epic saga-length, ego-soothing poem.

It does not get any better than this. (Review originally published in the The Observer, Sunday 30 January 2011. )

“There is a great deal of dross written in teenage fiction, nearly all of which seems to end up on my desk. But from time to time, you come across a book that reminds you just why this is such an exciting – and exacting – field.

Wintergirls has many of the obsessions of current teen fiction, including the use of repetition and formatting to convey the state of mind of Lia, the protagonist, and the incredibly intense interior dialogue – so private, so shut off from the outside world, and which makes this particular novel so startling and memorable.

The plot is familiar enough. Our heroine, Lia, already ill, is sent on a vicious downward spiral into anorexia and self-harm by the news that her ex-best friend, Cassie, has died alone in a motel room. The desperation and self-hatred this triggers are set against Lia’s cleverness at hiding it from her separated parents, busy mum (Dr Marrigan), selfish father (Professor Overbrook) and well-meaning but unimaginative stepmother, Jennifer.

Meanwhile, the vengeful ghost of Cassie comes to haunt Lia and does her utmost to convince Lia to follow her all the way to self-destruction.

Lia’s fragile efforts to find a way out of her nightmare seem doomed to failure, but there is hope. There is love – complicated, but genuine, from both parents and stepmother, while her relationship with her little stepsister, Emma, is simple and guileless.

The novel sets a terrific dramatic pace. As soon as we realise that Cassie phoned Lia 33 times the night she died, and that Lia failed to pick up, the danger Lia faces is plain. But it is the raw stylistic power that makes this so memorable. Those clever word games are used to powerful effect, from the endless repetitions of Lia’s self-hating mantras to the crossed-out words that give the lie to her own thoughts.

The true nature of anorexia is made painfully clear. Lia starves herself because it is the only control she has over her disintegrating personality; anyway, why feed something so hateful? She cuts herself not to cause pain, but to let the pain – and the dirt – out. The dirt in this case is, of course, herself. As with the plotting, this fractured and utterly convincing interior monologue is intercut with the rather bored face she presents to the world around her.

And yet, throughout, there is the feeling that if somehow you could only reach in and talk to this girl, you could save her life. It’s an exhausting novel to read: brilliant, intoxicating, full of drama, love and, like all the best books of this kind, hope.

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I am still playing catch-up with a few things (not helped by this morning’s -25 temperature), but am getting to the bottom of my to-do list.

Here’s a Big Item.

WINTERGIRLS is now available in the United Kingdom!!!

Here’s a book trailer I made for our friends across the pond.

 

 

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Speak
Laurie Halse Anderson
Young Adult

and

Wintergirls
Laurie Halse Anderson
Young Adult

I read both of these books back to back and did not give up on life entirely, which speaks highly to Anderson's talent as a writer. These are not easy reads. Speak, celebrating its 10th anniversary in print, is about rape. Think that's edgy? Wintergirls is about bulimia and anorexia. This is tough stuff. Anderson does a fabulous job with protraying real, troubled teens. For any girl who has been through rape or is battling an eating disorder, these pieces must feel empowering because they let the individual know, you are not alone.

The reason I review them together is because, despite Anderson's skill at real, gritty portrayal of these issues through a teen character, after finishing the books, I was left feeling much like I had after a spree of John Irving books in my early twenties, i.e. like the main characters were the same person over and over. Lia of Wintergirls, birthed ten years after Melinda of Speak, nonetheless feels like the same teen. Anderson's writing chops are much improved, although the symbolism in Speak is incredible, the writing in Wintergirls will leave you rereading again and again to pick up craft points, turns of phrase, ideas on how to take mental illness and make it real for readers. Still, Melinda and Lia are interchangeable.

Why?

Their voice feels very similar. Their reactions, similar. Lia feels like a more mature Melinda, going further in her personal psychosis, more unstable, more suicidal, more detached. Yet still, Melinda.

Which leads me to ask the following questions: What results in similar characters across novels by the same author? Can we authors only get so far from our own perception? Are we slaves to our own hermeneutics? Or do similar driving motives across different stories nevertheless lead to similar characters?

I am not sure what the answers are, but I would like to know more because I find myself falling into that pattern in a present novel. Certain secondary characters feel similar to ones in an earlier novel I wrote. How do I avoid that? Should I? Or does such similarity define an author much as a defining brushstroke can define a painter?

Food for thought.

For more great reads, hop over to our fearless leader, Barrie Summy's blog.  And for those of you in the Kansas area, if you get a chance, stop by the Kansas School Librarians Conference Thursday and Friday of this week. Barrie Summy, P.J. Hoover, Zu Vincent, Suzanne Morgan Williams, and I are the guest speakers for lunch on Thursday. It's a whole panel of characters just waiting to share!

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Two quick reviews for you: Reading Rants weighs in on FORGE and WINTERGIRLS reviewed in Colorado.

How did your writing go yesterday? Mine floooowed. Like creekwater after a thunderstorm. Sugar pouring from a blue china bowl. Like round hips swaying under a loose skirt to a hot salsa trumpet.

Seriously. It was that good. It was hard to come back to the real world and do things like eat. Run. Brush teeth.

As the sun started to set, the Muse returned. Much to the dismay of my chickens, she arrived in the shape…

….of a large, hungry-looking

HAWK!

 

 

 

 

 

 

She watched the very well-protected henhouse for a while

 

 

 

then took to the air

 

 

 

 

 

and flowed

 

 

 

 

back into the Forest.

 

 

It was breathtaking. Especially for the chickens, who, I am happy to report, escaped disaster. For the moment.

Ready… “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,” Henry V, William Shakespeare

Set… make sure any rodents or poultry you care about is under roof. Then turn off the damn phone.

Today’s prompt: Make a list of ten animals that could be your Muse. Circle the one that evokes the strongest reaction in you; positive or negative.

Write a scene in which you or a character has an interaction with this animal. At some point in the scene, the animal does something to change your emotional reaction to it. Either you first find it cute, and then disgusting. Or at first frightening, and then enchanting.

After the emotional switch, you get to ask the animal three questions. What will you ask? And what are the answers?

Scribble… Scribble… Scribble!!!

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First – congrats to my friend David Macinnis Gill on the publication of his new book, BLACK HOLE SUN!!

I got to read an early copy and here is what I said about it: “Black Hole Sun grabbed me by the throat and didn’t let go until the last page. In the best tradition of Heinlein and Firefly, Black Hole Sun is for readers who like their books fast-paced, intense, and relentless. Buy it, read it, pass it on!”

I hear Mockingjay is awesome, too.

Yesterday was the first day in a long time I was able to write for hours and hours and hours. It was heaven. Am trying to sneak in even more writing today!

But first, a short speech.

Teens! Parents! Teachers! Librarians! Friends! Romans! Lend me your ears! (no, wait…. wrong speech…)

(here it is)

The voting is now OPEN for the YALSA Teens’ Top Ten “teen choice” list! Click through and vote for up to three of your favorite titles! Voting is open Aug. 23 through Sept. 17, 2010. Winners will be announced in a webcast at www.ala.org/teenstopten during Teen Read Week, Oct. 17-23.

(And if one of those titles should happen to be, um, I don’t know, like maybe WINTERGIRLS, that sure would make my day!)

 

 

Ready… “I’ve been doing scriptwriting for 27 years and books for maybe 10 years now. I think I started the first Gregor book, Gregor the Overlander, when I was 38. I’d be clicking along through dialogue and action sequences. That’s fine, that’s like stage directions. But whenever I hit a descriptive passage, it was like running into a wall. I remember particularly there’s a moment early on when Gregor walks through this curtain of moths, and he gets his first look at the underground city of Regalia. So it’s this descriptive scene of the city. Wow, did that take me a long time to write! And I went back and looked at it. It’s just a couple of paragraphs. It killed me. It took forever.” Suzanne Collins in an SLJ interview

Set…. Less than a week of WFMAD left – can you stick with it?

Today’s prompt: Identify your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Which is easier for you – plot or character? Dialog or description? Writing about sound or writing about smell or taste? First person or third person POV? Skimming the action along quickly or slowing down to savor the smallest and most significant detail?

Once you have identified what you are good at and what you are not quite good at yet but will be soon, you are going to develop a scene. First pass, use only only your great tools. Revise it using only your soon-to-be-better tools.

Need a scene? How’s this: your teenage character comes home hours after curfew. Everyone is sleeping. Except the skunk that is eating the garbage in the kitchen.

Scribble…Scribble… Scribble!!!

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Lots of people ask me how much influence authors have on their covers. The truth is (at least for me) not a lot. I have raised a few objections now and then and have always been patted gently on the head and told to leave these things to the experts and while I'm at it, go home and write another book.

I have arrived at a place of zen surrender with The Cover Issue (tho' I still voice my objections, to the amusement of the Powers That Be). Now when the publisher sends me a cover image, I can look at it with a little more detachment than I used to.

Unless I adore it. Then I get very, very excited.

Like I am right now.

WINTERGIRLS will be published in the United Kingdom by Marion Lloyd Books of Scholastic UK in January 2011. Here is the cover.

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Ask Bonnie Jacobs.

What else do we have in here,..... ::rummages:: ah, yes! A lovely WINTERGIRLS review from Norway.

And much appreciated nods from state award lists:

Wintergirls is on the Rhode Island Teen Book Award and the Georgia Peach Book Award lists and the New York Public LIbrary Stuff for the Teen Age list.

And......

CHAINS is ALSO on the Rhode Island Teen Book Award list, as well as the Beehive Young Adult list from Utah, and the Pacific Northwest Young Reader's Choice Award, in the intermediate category.

And......



And if that weren't enough, THE HAIR OF ZOE FLEEFENBACHER GOES TO SCHOOL is a 2010 National Horace Mann Upstanders Children’s Literature Award Honor Book. Wow!

THANK YOU!

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Why are we having champagne so early? Because my assistant Queen Louise has been working here (and vastly improving our lives) for one entire year!!

ALL HAIL QUEEN LOUISE!!!

In addition, we are celebrating the publication of WINTERGIRLS in Australia and Norway (where it is called VINTERJENTER).

A small version of the Australian cover. The picture was painted by a high school girl, which is doubly cool because the face on the US cover is a photo taken by a high school guy in Canada.

Part of the Norwegian cover.  It looks like my Norwegian publisher, Cappelen Damm, is seeking book bloggers. I imagine the ability to read and write in Norwegian is important.

To round out today's WINTERGIRLS coverage, the Washington Post ran a very nice review of the book last week, it was nominated for the Indies Choice Award, it was named to the 2010 Capitol Choices Noteworthy Books for Children in the (Ages 14 and up category) and was chosen for inclusion in the 2010 Kansas State Reading Circle Catalog (Senior High School) with a starred rating.

Tomorrow's news.... I sent in my seed order!

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Happy bookday!

Run, don't walk, to your nearest bookseller and pick up your copy of WINTERGIRLS in paperback!! If it is icy in your neighborhood, or you don't feel like going outside, order your copy from an independent bookseller via Indiebound.

Do you want to order a copy that will arrived already personalized and signed by me? Call my local independent bookseller, Bill at the river's end bookstore, and he will make it happen. (You can do this for any of my books at any time, btw.)

The Australian version of WINTERGIRLS goes on sale March 1st, which is very exciting!!!

Congratulations to everyone, but especially my friends Deb Heiligman and Elizabeth Partridge for being named finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize!! Don't forget your sunscreen!

Are you a school librarian? Make a video and change the world! The AASL is sponsoring a video contest  "in conjunction with School Library Month (SLM) for members and their students to share how their school library program helps their community thrive." Details here!

My self-imposed limited-blogging month is almost at an end. Am looking forward to hearing what, if anything, you got out of this month. While we're waiting for March 1st, check out a new interview with me over at Birth of a Novel.

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Santa's elves arrived in the Forest early this year!

They brought the news that WINTERGIRLS has been named a Publisher's Weekly's Best Book of the Year, Kirkus' Best YA Books of 2009, Booklist's Editor's Choice of 2009, the 2010 Texas Tayshas High School Reading List and nominated to YALSA's 2010 Quick Pick List! It has also been nominated to the 2011 Grand Canyon Reader Award by the very nice people in Arizona, who were kind enough to nominate...


CHAINS as well, on the Tween List for the Grand Canyon Reader Award.

Each one of those lovely lists feels like another filled stocking in front of the fire!

REVISION TIP #3

Many people struggle to find a way to look at the larger picture of their novel. They can line edit a page or take a chapter to their writer's group, but managing the unwieldy novel is hard.

Here is what I do.

1. Get the largest piece of paper you can find. I go to an art supply store and buy an enormous artist's pad for this task.

2. You need to carve out three hours of concentration time. Turn off the internet and phone. Loan your dog and children and partner to nice people who will return them fed and watered after the the three hours. Chain off the driveway so delivery trucks and friendly people who don't understand what you mean when you say "I'm working" can't drop in.

3. On one of your massive sheets of paper, list every chapter in your book. Describe the action in the chapter in one sentence.

4. Now prepare a separate action list. (This one will take up a couple of sheets of paper. (Did I mention that you 'll need to clear off the kitchen table for this? And maybe the floor?) This list will break down each chapter into the scenes. Keep it brief! F. Ex.: "MC (main character) drops homework in fish tank. Fish die. MC hides them in flower vase. Mother sees them and flips out."

5. (This is the fun part) With a colored pen or pencil, go through the detailed chapter list and make notes about the emotional arc of your MC and the important secondary characters. Also, make sure that changes in mood are properly motivated, and that conflicts are set up. You might use different colors to represent different plot elements.

6. The threads of your novel are laid out in front of you. Step back and study it. Do your characters have reasonable emotional responses to the actions in the chapters? Do the building levels of conflict appear in the right order? (I often move scenes around at this stage.) Which scenes and/or chapters can you completely remove from the story without affecting anything else? What characters can you eliminate? Do you have any characters that can be combined because they serve the same purpose in the story. (I do this a lot.)

7. By the end of this process, your papers will be covered with notes, stickies and lots of colored arrows.

8. Sit down with the giant map of your novel and apply the changes to your manuscript. I like to do this on a hard copy first, then type in the changes.

9. Don't forget to unchain the driveway and

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I'm pretty sure that tomorrow is the last day you can vote to put Zoe in a Cheerios box (until 11:59pm Central Time). It's not looking so good for our girl, but the whole thing has been a lot of fun. I realized yesterday that all this blogging and thinking about Zoe has led me to dream up a number of new story ideas for her, and that might be the best prize of all.

I leave in a little bit for the airport because I'll be speaking In Newark, DE tonight at 6pm. Can you come and see me?

If you can't, be sure to tune in to the streaming, live video feed of the event, courtesy of Penguin's Point Of View website!

I'll be talking about Wintergirls tonight (a BIG change from Zoe), which makes it appropriate to point out this Book Recommendation Theme I Never Considered for Wintergirls.

BIG CHANGE IN TOPIC

I haven't had a political rant in while, so I hope you'll indulge me.

There was a time in America when education was totally private: people who wanted their children to go to school paid for it. Eventually, Americans decided that public education was such an incredible public good, i.e., something everyone benefits from, that we moved to a taxpayer-funded system of education, open to all. And, of course, there are still private schools for families who want to make that choice.

There was a time in America when clean water and electricity were available only to the wealthy. The poor pulled up water from wells or dipped buckets into dirty rivers, and lit their homes with candles and lanterns because they had no choice. (My father-in-law, who died in July, did not have electricity on his street until he was 10 years old.)

Our fellow citizens argued and grumbled, but eventually decided that it was a benefit to the entire nation if all Americans had access to water and electricity. So programs were put in place, funded in part by taxpayers and in part by consumers, to make that happen.

Now the debate has turned to health insurance. My grandparents did not have it when they were young. In the middle of the last century, it became a widespread job benefit, and programs were put in place to insurance the vulnerable; elderly, poor and disabled people.

There has been a shift. In the past three generations, insurance has moved from the privelege of the rich to something that most Americans consider a basic part of life, like education, electricity, and water.

(Please let me know if you disagree with that.)

But I am confused. Why is it proving so hard to craft and pass legislation that will accomplish this? I think it's because the chuckleheads in Congress - on both sides of the aisle - are puppets and the insurance companies are pulling the strings. Don't get me wrong - I am all about capitalism. I love capitalism. I am a small business owner and so is my husband and it's working for us. Almost.

The Fat Cats have made the playing field uneven. BH and I cannot join any kind of group insurance plan. (We've spent countless hours examining this.) We pay almost $20,000 a year in insurance premiums just for the two of us. I've thought about canceling the policy and setting that money aside for medical emergencies, but I'm a cancer survivor. If I had a recurrence of cancer without insurance, we would lose our house and retirement savings.

And I pissed? Damn straight. One of my three adult kids doesn't have insurance. My friends who have been out of work for too long have no insurance. People who might take the plunge into small business ownership don't because they are afraid to leave their job and give up their health insurance. Americans die and suffer needlessly every day because health care in this country has become a trip to the roulette wheel.

The time has come for us to agree that all Americans deserve basic health care coverage - the same for all people in all states. If you want a fancier program with bells and whistles, you can pay extra. The insurance companies have to buck up. When your service is considered a public good - a public necessity - you have to trade in outrageous short-term profits for long-term secure cash flow.

If you have decent health coverage through your job, or your parents' or spouse's job, please stop and think. What would happen to your life if you had to pay 20 - 40% of your income for your insurance? How is that fair?

::wipes spittle from face:: I will rant about the evil doings of health insurance companies - denying coverage that people have paid for - another day.

What do you think about this? Is health care coverage the new rural electrification? Do we have a right to health care?

And now for the last beating of the drum to get Zoe in a Cheerios box:

You only have a day and a half or so to vote!!

1. Go to the voting page.

 

2. In the bottom right corner, click on MORE BOOKS twice. (Yes, this is the tricky part. No, I don't know why Zoe is buried at the absolute back of the pack. Kind of makes you feel sorry for her, huh?) That will take you to ZOE.

3. Click on the yellow box that says VOTE!

4. Notify every person you have ever met in your entire life to PLEASE VOTE FOR ZOE. I seriously mean that.

5. Do this every day until 11:59 pm Central Time, October 30. It's almost over and then I will stop grovelling and pleading, I promise!

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I didn't mean to alarm anyone by not posting for a week. Things have been a bit busy. Mostly with good stuff, but at such a fast pace I haven't had blogging time.

First - A wee movie for your enjoyment. This turtle belongs to my daughter, OfficeMouse. When she got the turtle, it was smaller than a quarter.

The turtle thinks it is a cat. This is very confusing to the real cats.



Second - I have heard nothing from the Kentucky high school where TWISTED and other books still appear to be banned. I have no idea what is going on and hope that everyone down there is figuring out how to have constructive, professional conversations about the place of YA contemporary literature in the classroom.

Third - WINTERGIRLS is preparing to move to the world stage. I think the Australian edition will be the first one to go to press. Authors Melina Marchetta and Alyssa Brugman said very nice things about the book - thank you! As it stands now, WINTERGIRLS will be published in Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, Norway, Korea, Poland, Spain & Latin America, Italy, Germany, and Holland. And Great Britain, I think. This is all VERY exciting!!! As soon as I get cover images of these books, I'll post them. It always fascinates me to see what images the non-US publishers choose to appeal to their markets. 

Fourth - last weekend I got to speak to the lovely booksellers at the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Conference. You can read Part One of Jennifer Brown's conference coverage in today's Shelf Awareness.

Fifth - I have been struggling a bit with some health issues. I added up the stress factors of the past year and everything suddenly made sense. In addition to the two deaths in the family this summer, and caring for a niece for a while, I was on the road for business for more than 100 days of the last year. That is officially Too Much Travel and explains many things. So please, if you have been trying to get me to come at speak at your school or conference, please understand why I am going to have to say no. I am already scheduled for 50 days next year and we're going to try and limit it to that number.

Plus One - I've been sneaking into the cottage and writing amidst the power tools, but BH assures me we are days away from being able to clear out the equipment and handing over the keys to me. Some of the interior projects, like the wall of bookcase have been put on hold until I hit the road again. Next week I might make a video that shows the entire project. For now, here are a couple of recent shots.

  The south wall with the magic window in place. It only requires a little bit of siding work (that is cedar siding) to be done. BH is planning on stoning that bit of wall from the bottom of the siding to the ground. I don't know if he'll have time to do that before the snow flies.

BH standing next to the woodstove where the fire is crackling away. The stove is covered in soapstone so it should radiate plenty of heat. The floorboards are 125+ years old. 

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Yesterday I spent the afternoon at the Brooklyn Book Festival where I had the pleasure of hearing YA authors Gayle Forman (If I Stay), Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls) and G. Neri (Surf Mules) talk about the challenging themes covered in their... Read the rest of this post

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This week there has been a flurry of announcements out of the YA book publishing world concerning technology nicely summed up in this USA Today piece. In a nutshell, Harper Collins is using mobile to promote LC's new book (Lauren Conrad's L.A.... Read the rest of this post

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I am slowly transitioning from insane farmer woman back to being a writer who gardens a little. By the end of the weekend, the new vegetable plots should be finished, seedlings in, and seeds sown. And it's a good thing because I am itching to get back to writing. All the travel and work stress is almost gone, and being in balance again is now appearing possible.

The glass is now installed in the Magic Window, the walls and most of the ceiling are up, and the cool chimney pot we found at the salvage yard is in place on the roof.

Our friend Steve, a natural born Tinkerer, has been up here helping out. He's our lead elf for alternative energy issues. (The goal is to keep the cottage completely off the electrical grid.) The small wind turbine came last week. At first they mounted it on the garage roof, but that was a bad idea. Then they put it on a 10-foot pole in the back meadow. Better. Now it's on a 20-foot pole in the back meadow - MUCH better. They are still experimenting with the exact location to take the best advantage of the winds. The other piece of the electric system will be a solar panel that should arrive next week.

Just writing all of this down makes me tired.

Aside from gardening and hanging with friends this weekend, I am going to try and make yogurt in my crockpot, thanks to a tip from Bookavore.

Don't know what you're going to do this weekend? I have a few suggestions:

Change a life. Buy a book for a boy in prison (thanks to all at Guys Lit Wire!)

Read Jezebel's review of Wintergirls.

Read this jaw-dropping interview with A. S. Byatt in which she discusses her new book, The Children's Book, a novel set in Edwardian England that examines the destructive side of creativity. (For the record, I usually like her books a lot and am looking forward to this one.) In the interview she says some rather stunning things, such as, "Yes, because I noticed that there's a high rate of suicide among the children of children's book writers."

And "I think that most of the children's writers live in the world that they've created, and their children are kind of phantoms that wander around the edge of it in the world, but actually the children's writers are the children."

In the first comment, I believe she is speaking only within the context of children's writers from the Edwardian era, but the second comment seems more general. Any thoughts on this, gentle readers? (The book is available in the UK and Australia now, comes out in the States in October.) (And thanks to Judith in Australia for the info about this!)

That ought to hold you for a couple days.

ONE LAST THING!!! Do you have any secret ingredients you put in deviled eggs? If yes, please tell me what they are!

PS - GoogleLitTrips has a very nice feature on FEVER 1793. Check it out, teachers!

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Today's Ypulse Guest Post is from HemingwayHeroine, a YA blogger who works in children's publishing. I asked HH to share her thoughts on Wintergirls Laurie Halse Anderson's controversial  YA novel about a girl with a severe eating disorder. If you... Read the rest of this post

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If you've been following me on Facebook or Twitter the past week, you've noticed I've spent a ridiculous amount of time in the garden. What's up with that?

It's my therapy.

After the insane amount of travel the past six months, my brain is fried and my soul is tattered. There was no earthly way I could dive back into writing. Many people take vacations when they get burnt out. Packing my suitcase to go away again was the LAST thing I wanted to do. So I pulled on my pink rubber boots, grabbed the shovel, and headed for the back yard.

The first order of business was the flower beds. Last year, they were home to both flowers and veggies, but this year all the beds we can see from the house are flower-based. (The beds we can't see from the house get a little more sun, that's why. And we have a short growing season, so we have to take advantage of whatever sun we get.)

It took about a week to get all the plants and seeds in. Our land is on top of a hill that is mostly glacial till. This means a large part of gardening means extracting large rocks and filling in the hole with imported dirt and/or homemade compost.

This is the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, of a boulder that was two feet tall and big enough around for me to just be able to get my arms around. Thankfully, it had the good grace to split into 5 manageable pieces when I finally removed all the surrounding dirt and smaller boulders. The extraction took two hours. My back is a little sore, but it was worth it!

This week I'll be catching up on more correspondence and beginning to shift my brain back into writing mode. And - most importantly - I'll be whipping the vegetable beds into shape. I am fretting because I am very late getting my peas in - that will be the first order of business.

A few book notes.

WINTERGIRLS made The New York Times Editor's Choice List. As did CHARLES AND EMMA, by my friend Deb Heiligman.

Last Friday, we enjoyed the very last event on the WINTERGIRLS tour, at River's End Bookshop in Oswego, NY. More than 100 people came out; one guy drove up from Philly, others came from Potsdam, Rochester, and Rome (NY, not Italy). It was a blast. Thankfully, the fire marshal did not stop in to count heads.

And finally, what do you think of The Happiness Project? Is it a load of manure or something worthwhile, useful, and life-altering?

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The unsinkable 'SpongeBob' (The Atlantic explores the enduring appeal of the decade-old franchise. Plus, the full-length HD trailer for 'Princess and the Frog') (The Atlantic) - Threadless Tees (the crowdsourced t-shirt design site talks about... Read the rest of this post

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My face still hurts... for so many reasons.

School Library Journal sent a photographer to our house yesterday to take a picture of me that will run (July, I think) with an article about the Margaret A. Edwards Award. It's going to be the cover photo, so there were specific demands of the picture in terms of surrounding space for text, etc. There was also a request to try and get the picture in a natural setting, possibly because of the tree themes in Speak, and the amount of time I spend gardening, etc.

The photographer was a super nice guy from Syracuse. He took pics of me in our Forest, on the stone wall behind the garden, in the house, and by the Magic Window in the cottage. Queen Louise developed a new job skill; she had to hold the whatsit that softened the light. Now she is officially a Grip. And she has a grip on life. Many bad puns were made while the guy shot - I kid you not - hundreds and hundreds of pictures. Here's hoping that one of them turned out OK.

Me standing on the wall. Do I look like a target for haters? Keep reading.

In other news, a small firestorm about WINTERGIRLS is raging over on the New York Times website, on the Well, a discussion section. The question posed was "In writing about eating disorders, are authors, unwittingly, creating an alluring guidebook to the disease?"

The debate is fascinating; take a peek.

Some of the comments were very painful for me to read, like the one that accused me of writing "anorexic porn." The debate seems to be boiling down to a question that pertains to many YA novels: Will our children act in a dangerous manner if they read about dangerous behaviors in books?

And then the good people at the Jezebel blog joined the fray, with a blog entry called "Are Teen Girls Really That Fragile?" Plenty of response to that question, too!

What do you think about all of this?

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I'm back in the Atlanta airport, waiting, this time, for the plane that will take me to Lima, Peru. No, this is not part of the book tour. I am going to Lima to speak at an American School there, the same way that I went to Warsaw, Poland in 2007.

Many people have written to ask if I'll be going to Machu Picchu. Sadly, the answer is no. I get altitude sickness easily and I have wicked asthma - the combination of the two makes it unsafe for me to travel to altitude alone. But I hope I can come back with the Beloved Husband one day. He will take many photos of me wheezing or passed out amongst breath-taking scenery.

I am under strict orders from BH to avoid wheatgrass, btw. He would be happiest if I abstained from all adventurous eating on this trip. Not sure I'll be able to comply fully (I'm going to PERU, for crying out loud. Must try new food!!!) But no wheatgrass. Never, ever, ever, ever again. And no llama beans, thunderchiken. No, thank you.

This weekend I will be absorbing a tiny bit of Lima courtesy of the peripatetic Hoiseth family. Monday - Friday I'll be giving presentations about my books and writing workshops at the Colegio F. D. Roosevelt. Late Friday night I start the long journey home. I would have loved to schedule some vacation time, but the next week I head to California for the LA Book Festival, and shortly after that is the International Reading Association Conference in MN.

At this point, being able to wake up in my own bed for a week running will feel like a vacation.

I am not sure if I'll be able to blog or tweet from Peru. So I will post a bunch of links right now to keep you busy while I'm gone:

1. Publisher's Weekly has a nice article (with photos!) about how I used Twitter on the book tour. Hello new media! You can read my Twitter stream here, if you want.

2. The YAthenaeum has posted a terrific recap of the poetry slam, Time Warp, and my time at Books & Books, complete with video. Booksellers - if you're looking for a model of how to run a teen book club, here it is.

3.

Watch my Q & A session from my book tour stop at Kepler's in Menlo Park, CA. Really there was a BUNCH of people there, but no one wanted to sit up front. They had no doubt heard out my tendency to foam at the mouth and spit (unintentionally, of course) when I get on a rant.

And spitting brings us, at llong llast, to llamas. I have been assured that I won't see any llamas in LLima, but I might get llucky. I am llonging for a llama encounter. I am playing with all kinds of multi-llingual puns along of the lines of "Como se llama, llama?"

(If you were walking with your dog and you saw a llama who resembled Perry Como, you might ask your dog, "Perro, como se llama llama?" And then, if LLorenzo LLamas joined you....)

I definitely need to get more sleep.

I'll be back here sooner, hopefully than llater.

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I'm about halfway packed for Peru and halfway caught up on business stuff, so I think I deserve a little break to fill you in on the second half of the WINTERGIRLS tour.


This sums it up nicely. (One of the lovely things given to me by a reader while I was on the road.)

The last time I posted anything of significance, I was in Salt Lake City. From there, I went to Phoenix, then Houston, then Austin, then Oxford, MS, one of my favorite little towns in the South. Paid homage to Mr. Faulkner by visiting his house and

his grave.

There was one minor hitch in Oxford. I drank wheatgrass juice. Why? Because everyone said how healthy and wonderful it was. (Can you hear my grandmothers asking me if I'd go over Niagara Falls in a barrel if everyone said how healthy and wonderful it was?)

Wheatgrass is healthy for some. Cows for example. And goats. Maybe pigs.

Not me.

I am deathly allergic to mold. The mold that grows on wheatgrass (not visible, btw) does not hurt cows, goats, pigs or most people. It made me into one very sick author. Combine 48 hours of food poisoning with a severe asthmatic reaction and you'll get the picture. It wasn't pretty.

But the worst of it occurred in the airport and hotel room, and I was able to (ahem) gut out all of my events and interviews. Two days later, I was perfectly fine. I bet William Faulkner and my grandmothers had a big old laugh.

After MS came St. Louis, and after St. Louis, several days of speaking at a conference, schools, bookstores

and going on television. "Good Morning, Atlanta" to be precise. With massive amounts of make-up on. The woman who interviewed me couldn't remember how to pronounce my name and became so flustered I felt really bad for her, which was good because I totally forgot to be nervous.

A great tee-shirt spotted at the conference. The phrase originated in a conversation I had with Gail Giles at an ALA cocktail party one year. Librarians are always listening, don't you know.

While in Atlanta, I spoke at the Georgia Center of the Book and got to see my friend Terra Elan McVoy whose new awesome book, PURE, was published this week. You should buy it right now.

A bunch of bloggers came out to my Alpharetta signing. Not surprisingly, they blogged about it!

After Atlanta came South Florida, including a memorable stop at Books & Books In Coral Gables, where I got to finally meet the YAthenaeum girls, who all came dressed in the their winter(girls) whites and were patient with me as we tried to do the Time Warp. In addition to our dancing, the store hosted a wonderful poetry slam with area teens!

In Raleigh, North Carolina, I did not get to see David Macinnis Gill, because he is a really good dad and needed to be at one of his kids' tournaments. His book, Soul Enchilada, came out this week, too. Please go buy that one ASAP and thank me when your ribs are aching from laughing.

However, I did get to meet the Eva Perry Mock Printz Book Club!!!! I LOVE these kids! I want to adopt them all. They won the 2009 Margaret A. Edwards Award for Best Literature Program for Teens, so I'm hoping I'll get to hang out with them in Chicago at ALA this summer.

The crowd in NC was HUGE - the perfect way to cap off a spectacular tour. And then I got to fly home, where it was snowing sideways, but it didn't matter because my BH was waiting for me.

Thank you, thank you to everyone who came out to see me!! And everyone who has purchased WINTERGIRLS - I got word today that the book made the New York Times Bestseller List for the third week in a row.

Now I just have to figure out what to wear in Peru..... Read the rest of this post

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I am home for a few days and not drowning in the backlog of mail, thanks to the gloriousness that is Queen Louise. Plus, she'll totally organized the office in my absence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Yes. I would take a bullet for La Queen.)

The, erm, somewhat frantic news is that I have to repack my suitcase because I leave again THIS FRIDAY, at 6am, for LIMA PERU.

Right.

Another country. Another continent.

Right. I should have my head examined. I think Queen Louise is organizing that.

So I am in triage mode, trying to make sure that the things which Absolutely Must Be Done get done by Thursday night. And there are a couple more interviews I have scheduled, not to mention an itty-bitty basketball game tonight.

(Which, btw, I can't lose. IF UNC wins, I'll be happy for Sarah Dessen and cheer on her boys. I already lost our bet, so what's another loss? If Michigan wins, I'll be even happier.)

If all the critical things can get done, I'll post a tour recap to the blog, and a couple of fun pictures. This was hands-down the most fun and the busiest tour I've ever had. Thanks a million to all who made it such an adventure!!!

And thanks to all for buying WINTERGIRLS - it has been on the New York Times Bestseller List for two weeks in a row!!!! W00T!!!!!!

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