Author interview--Janette Tells All!

Blogger tells me this is my 100th post, and I know it's tradition to tell 100 facts about yourself, but instead I'm going to give you a link to an interview with Betty Webb where I talk about all sorts of juicy things like my alien abduction and the time I've spent as the governor of New York's love slave . . . oh all right, it's just writing stuff . . . but still, you want to check it out.

Betty Webb, who used to review books for the Tribune in Arizona and is now a mystery writer, has all sorts of interesting author interview's on her site, and I'm the latest.

http://bloggingwebb.blogspot.com

(and really, I will blog about my trip to Utah . . .)

It's really a book for writers

I need to blog on my trip to Utah, and I will, really. But when I got home from my trip yesterday, my youngest daughter handed me a stack of picture books she'd checked out of the library. I read this one and cried at the ending. And the next time I read it, I still cried at the ending.

So I immediately ordered two copies of it. One for me and one for a friend who also needs this book.

I don't usually--well, ever actually--plug books on my blog because frankly I have way too many writer friends and I'm afraid that if I started plugging books, I'd never be able to stop.

But if you're a writer, you need to read Callie Cat, Ice Skater by Eileen Spinelli. You'll understand why when you get to the ending.

Fashion and the forgetful author

I'm up in Utah right now doing school visits and getting ready to present at the LDStorymakers writing conference. I love conferences because I get to see all of my cool writing friends. Also, the bow-tied editor himself is coming out to be the keynote speaker.

I'm going to pick him up at the airport in a little while. I wonder if I should have warned him about my driving skills beforehand. Then again, most of my girl main characters are bad drivers, so if that hasn't clued him in as to why I may have to circle the airport several times before I find his terminal, well, he just needs to learn to read between the lines a little better.

Anyway, that's not what this post is about. This post is about the fact that I continually sabotage myself with my own forgetfulness. Example one: I hate hair hanging in my face, so sometimes while I style it, I'll stick two bobby pins at the sides of my hair so it will dry up and away from my face. I generally remember to take the bobby pins out when I'm done.

But I didn't on Monday when I went and spoke to a YA lit class at BYU. It wasn't until afterwards when I was running my hands through my hair that I realized they were still there. I'm hoping that since bobby pins are brown, maybe no one noticed them.

Example two: yesterday I was hurrying to go to The King's English bookstore to sign my stock and say hello to fellow author and friend, James Dashner, who was doing a book signing. Trying to be quick about things, I put my earrings in while I was curling my hair. Then I rushed off the bookstore.

It turns out James was there on Tuesday, not Wednesday--argh--but I still got to meet and chat with the ladies at King's English and sign some of my books.

It wasn't until I was going to bed last night that I looked in the mirror and noticed that I was only wearing one earring. I thought I'd lost the other one--but no, further investigation revealed that I'd only put one in.

I really shouldn't try and do two things at once and I just hope everyone I met on this trip expects authors to be eccentric people who do things like only wearing one earring at a time.

You'd think I would have learned after my infamous sandal incident. My house has a lot of tile which is hard on my feet so I have about three pairs of flip flops I wear around the house all the time. One day I couldn't find a matching pair, so I just grabbed two that didn't match. One was black and one was bright yellow.

A few hours later the school called me to come get a sick child and it wasn't until I was walking into the office that I realized I was still wearing the mismatched sandals. Yeah, this is a great way to impress the office staff. They're probably all waiting for me to do a Van Gogh and cut my ear off or something.

The Marketing Department Strikes Again

Not long ago the bow-tied one sent me some sample covers for When You Wish Upon a TV Star to see which one I liked best. Here they are:


I emailed him back that I really loved the one of the girl blowing on the dandelion. Isn't that a great cover? Wouldn't you pick that book up?

Honestly, sometimes I think they ask me what I like just to insure they don't pick that one. It's sort of like clothes shopping with my teenage children. They ask me which outfit I like best in order not to buy it--because hey, if their mom likes it, it obviously isn't cool.

Here's where they're headed now. And I don't mind them either . . . it's just not the one I loved.

Happy Grammar Day!

Okay, technically I'm late--National Grammar Day was actually March 4th. So my apologies for not getting all of those "Wishing you a blessed Grammar Day" cards out in the mail in time. I'm way behind on everything. This is what happens when you write a 400+ book and only allot yourself time to write your normal 225 page book. So many things fall by the wayside. I didn't even put up the Grammar Day decorations this year.

But in honor of the day, I will actually pay attention to my grammar check when it shoots those little green lines under my sentences, instead of arguing that sentence fragments are a stylistic choice and thus completely valid.

After all, it should be a day of togetherness.