Shakira was right, the hips don’t lie.

And unfortunately lately they’ve been telling me that they don’t fit into my jeans anymore. Probably because I’ve had an indulgent summer with conferences and retreats where chocolate always floated around within arm’s reach.

So last week I decided to turn over a new leaf. (A lettuce leaf, if you want to be exact.) I and my family were going to eat more vegetables. Along with the other groceries, last Saturday I bought a squash, two heads of celery, two heads of lettuce, two heads of cauliflower, asparagus, cabbage, and tomatoes.

I am all about good intentions.

By the end of the week we’d managed to eat the squash and some of the lettuce and tomatoes. But I was not going to waste the stuff. I wasn’t going to let it wilt in my refrigerator. So on Friday for dinner we had cauliflower, asparagus, and a salad.
My children came to the table with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “What’s for dinner?” younger son asked.

“This,” I said waving my hand over three bowls of vegetables.

“These are side dishes,” middle daughter said. “You’re not supposed to have them as the main course.”

“Well, tonight we are,” I said.

Oldest son headed to the refrigerator, trying to circumvent my meal. “Get over here,” I told him. “You’re eating healthy tonight.”

“I’m not hungry,” he said, going into the family room.

“Sit anyway.” While I went and tried to pry him off the couch, little sister sat down and ate all of the hard boiled eggs from the salad.

“No fair!” younger son yelled pointing at his sister. “She took the only real food!”

Middle sister picked the melted cheese off of the cauliflower and then pronounced that she only liked the cauliflower stems.

Younger son went into a litany of his sufferings. “No white bread or sugar cereal, and now this. Do you know what my friends at school said when I told them we only had basic cable? They said, ‘Well, what about the TV in your bedroom?’” He then glared at me because he doesn’t have a TV in his room.

At the end of dinner, we had lots of leftovers and the children probably all had cold cereal as soon as I left to go exercise.

But all of my hard work did pay off. The next day middle daughter came up to me and loving told me that I was very skinny. “You don’t need to buy more vegetables,”
she added.

Well, that’s probably the fastest diet in history.

No matter, this week I bought artichoke hearts, tomatoes, celery, avocados, lettuce, spinach, onions, potatoes, and a few other things that I’m not sure what actually are—but they look healthy. They still have dirt clinging to them and what not. We will eat veggies throughout the week, and if not, we’ll eat them all on Friday.

Book Update--the marketing department strikes again

Does it seem like my latest book is taking forever to come out, or is that just the effect of me wading through 1,200 revision comments? And by the way, that number is not an exaggeration. I showed fellow writer, Kristy, my first two drafts (435 comments and 407 comments) and she said, “Wow, I thought you made up those numbers on your blog for the comedic effect.”

I wish.

Anyway, now the title has gone through the revision process. Marketing wasn’t thrilled by Faking It. They changed it to My Secret Life as a Pop Star. I wasn’t thrilled by that title. I felt that calling the book that name would make everyone remember the title as: Yes I’m Trying to Cash in on the Hannah Montana Phenomena.

The Bowed-Tied One and I had several conversations about this in which he told me that I was wrong. Very wrong.

Luckily, the title has changed once again. I’ll pretend it was because of my input and not because someone in marketing decided a shorter title would fit on the cover better.

It is now . . . drum roll please . . . My Double Life

I like it.

The Bow Tied One also sent me some cover mock ups that are being test run with the sales people. I'll put them up as soon as Technology Bob converts them into files that my computer will recognize.

I suspected as much

The good folks over at the institute of We Have Too Much Time On Our Hands have done a study on word usage. Specifically which words we use the most in the English language. The number one word is no surprise--I've already used it four times in this blog--it's the ever popular, totally unassuming, cute as a button: THE.

But the second word may surprise those of you who aren't writers. As for we writers--yeah, we know it's number two on the list, we're always trying to pull this pesky fellow out of our prose. It's sort of a weed word. It pops up when you're not looking. It has already shown up seven times in this blog and will assuradly score much higher than that before I'm done typing. (*Ping* Now we're up to ten times.)

It's the ever present To Be verb with all of its tag-along little brothers: is, was, are, am, and were. I just went through my manuscript and plucked quite a few off the pages. But never fear all you Hamlet lovers (To be or not to be) there are still plenty to go around.

I also have to go through pulling out THATs and JUSTs. I sprinkle JUSTs through my stories like they were chocolate chips. This time I also noticed a lot of gazes. As in: His gaze ran over me. His gaze zeroed in on me. His gaze flickered to my eyes.

His gaze obvioulsy is very busy and athletic to boot (running, zeroing, flickering--it makes me tired just to think about it.) His gaze most likely does pushups in its spare time.

Oh well, it's on to the next draft.

How are you at blond jokes?

The bow-tied one and I are having a disagreement. This is usual for the revision process. We have many disagreements, generally because he does not see nor appreciate my artistic genius. (At least that is what I keep telling him.)

The latest thing is a blond joke problem. Here is the situation: (SPOILER ALERT--this next part contains some of the plot for my next book, which will be aptly named: Yes, I Stole This Idea From Hannah Montana. Okay, that is actually not the title--that is just what I'm afraid people will think when they see the book, but I digress. If you're one of those people who doesn't want to know about the plot before you read the book, don't read on.)

Alexia, the main character is secretly a double for famous rock star, Kari Kingsley. She is even lip-synching some concerts while Kari is busy with other things. Kari Kingsley is half Latina but has dyed her hair blond and also has been known to say some stupid things to the press. During the course of the story, the press thinks that Kari is cheating on her boyfriend, soap star Micheal Jung, because they see what appears to be Kari out with another rock star, Grant Delray.

Kari can't fess up that she has a double and so when a cameraman catches up with her and asks if she is dating both Micheal and Grant, she answers, "Not at the same time."

A couple pages later I say:

The entertainment shows gave Kari's botched dating explanation a lot of play time. the late night shows commented on it too. They said things like: "Well, who would have thought it--it looks like Kari Kingsley is a natural blond after all."

The bow-tied one wrote that he didn't get this joke. (By the way, he is blond, so that might have something to do with it.)

So my question is: Did you get the blond joke and if not, can you think of a better one to use?

Muchas gracias

One more reason to wish you were Barbie

Forget the fact that even at 50 Barbie looks great. Forget the dream house, convertible, and an endless supply of evening gowns (and apparently somewhere to wear them all). Even forget Ken, her always smiling, six-pack abs boyfriend.

This is why your really want to be the doll.


In case you can't read the numbers. This is Parade's issue of what people make. In between a math teacher who makes 66,000 and a public housing analyst who makes 65,000 Barbie makes 3.3 billion a year.

I noticed that Parade didn't report on any writer's salaries. That's probably for the best. No need to disillusion people about our glamorous lives . . .

Teen Writing Classes

For any of you teens out there who are interested in taking some writing classes—you’re in luck. Or at least you’re in luck if you live near Tempe Arizona, because that’s where I’ll be teaching.

The classes will be held at Changing Hands Bookstore
6428 S McClintock Dr
Tempe, AZ 85283
480-730-0205
McClintock at Guadalupe

TEEN EVENT: WORKSHOP: WRITING THE NOVEL 4-5:30pm
Do you have a great idea for a novel? How do you get started? In this five part workshop, Janette Rallison, author of more than 10 middle school and teen novels including My Fair Godmother and Just One Wish, discusses the building blocks of novel writing. Learn how to outline the plot, produce chapters, and build the story that turns your idea into a page turner.

When: Mondays and Wednesdays July 1, 6, 8, 13, 15 from 4-5:30pm. Cost: $75 for five sessions. Registration and pre-payment required at 480.730.0205.

the BYU writers conference--it rocked!

The writing conference at BYU was great this year. There’s just no other way to put this: Writers are cool people. They’re fun to hang around with, they’re fun to teach. And I’m not just saying that because several of my students gave me chocolate (thanks guys!) and tried to set up my single daughter. (Extra credit for Ally and Erin!)

I taught the romance class this year—perhaps because I kept trying to insert romances into all of my students’ novels last year. It was great. Here you can see we were totally getting into the romance theme.


And here again we’re trying to personify the perfect romantic heroine. All of us are murmuring Ben Barnes name at this point. He made an appearance in Stacey’s manuscript and just hung around the class after that.


Here I am, probably pondering my old nemesis: to be verbs.


My lovely assistant, Heather, saw from my blog that I’ve always wanted Mattel to make a Barbie doll out of one of my characters. So Heather created a Chrysanthemum Everstar doll for me. Is that cool, or what?


Now I'm back home, wearing my pajamas while I write and trying to convince the children not to trash the house, flood the backyard,or mindmeld with the Playstation. And no one cooks yummy meals for me. I miss you, writers conference!I miss you, Ben Barnes! Sigh.

We interupt this blog for the following announcement:

It's book signing time again. That means it's time for me to beg friends, strangers, and potential stalkers to come to the Barnes and Noble at Chandler Fashion Mall so that I look like I have a following. Tomorrow, June 20th, 3:00.

Lisa McMann will be signing there too and since she is a NYT best seller she will no doubt have hordes of fans screaming, "Lisa! Lisa! Sign my book!!" (Okay, probably not--book readers don't tend to be a wild group--but you know what I mean.) And I will be twiddling my thumbs and examining the table cloth.

I know how it goes. I've been through this before.

Here are a list of the mega selling authors I've done signings with:

Gary Paulson (Hatchet and a gazillion boy books)
Christopher Paul Curtis (two Newberys)
Barbara Park (Junie B Jones)
Stephenie Meyers (Twilight)
Brandon Mull (Fablehaven)
Shannon Hale (Newbery, Goose Girl Series)

I'd write more but frankly this is just a depressing list.

So come. Even if you have all my books. They make good gifts and Christmas is just six short months away. Besides, if you do I'll come to your Tupperware party. See, it's all good.

Now I just need to find and post a picture of Robert Pattinson so people will stop by this blog . .

And the winner is . . .

First off, sorry it's taken me so long to post this. I was teaching a writing workshop at BYU (the subject of my next blog) and fell into bed every night around midnight. But let me say I was blown away by all the responses I got to the Mind-Rain give-away. Should I be offended that I didn't get 56 comments the last time I gave away one of my books? Hmm. I will tell myself that it was due to the interesting nature of the question and not the fact that you all like Scott Westerfeld better than me.

I was surprised with the thought provoking and often poignant responses that so many of you gave. I was also surprised that most people took the five years, hands down.

Apparently the rest of you are not nearly as vain as I used to be. I still remember those awkward years when I had braces, glasses, hair that I had no idea how to style, and zero fashion sense. Not surprisingly, I also didn't have a lot of self confidence and social situations--like talking to guys--baffled me. (Really, if I dug out my eighth grade picture and posted it here, you would understand. But I'm not putting that out on the Internet. Nope. Sorry. You'll have to use your imagination.)

During high school I shook off the feathers of the ugly duckling years, and it was like a whole new world opened. Guys paid attention to me. Girls treated me with more respect.

True story: (which will sound like bragging but is really just illustrating a point)I went to visit my parents in California one year when I was about 21. They were renting a house and the (fairly young) landlord was constantly rude to them,complaining to them about this or that and not taking care of things that needed to be fixed.

So during my visit, the landlord rang the bell and I answered the door. He looked at me with this sort of stunned expression on his face and mumbled that he was there to take care of a few things. My parents introduced me to him and he was completely nice to everyone while he went about taking care of his landlord things.

After he left, my parents laughed about the change in him and told me I should visit more often, but it puzzled me. Clearly, the landlord changed his behaviour because there was a pretty girl around even though there was no actual benefit for him to do so. I never saw him again. But it did teach me that being pretty is like going through life with bonus points. I liked that. I never wanted to lose it. If really given the choice when I was young, I would have gone for beauty instead of the five years.

(I tried to find a picture of me when I was young--but where the 80's hair wasn't too prominent. Don't ask me what I was doing with my arms.)

That said, one day as I was getting ready for college classes, I realized it was a trick question. In between clothes shopping, clothes ironing, showering, shaving, blow-drying, hair-curling, and putting on make-up, I realized that I probably would spend more than five years of my life "beautifying" myself. I'd already made the choice.

Now in my older years, I make the opposite choice. I can't tell you how many days I walk around looking like a bag lady because I'm so intent on getting my writing done. These days, I take the time over beauty.

Still it's made for some interesting discussion here and also as I've visited my daughter this week. You can actually get a lot of mileage out of those five-year jokes.

Me walking into the room looking like something the cat dragged in: Hi!
Her: So, I see you've decided to take those five years back.

Gotta love her.

Anyway, it was hard to pick a winner because everyone was so profound. Really. I'm in awe of all of you. But I'm going to go with Jenilyn because I liked the way she picked the beauty but made it look like she was doing it for altruistic reasons. (making life easier for the nursing staff.) I think it was a reason New Pretty Town could totally support. So, Jenilyn, send me your snail mail at rallison 1 at cox dot net. And I'll send you you're book!

And the rest of you--I'm proud of you! Just don't waste your five years watching tv.

Mind-Rain book give away!

One of the fun things about being a writer is getting to rub shoulders with other authors. (Another is living vicariously through your characters while they do things like tell off people who remind you of your home owners’ association board, but I digress.)

I was happy when Ben Bella Books asked me to write an essay for a book they were doing on Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series. I really enjoyed the books, so not only did I get to pontificate on the role of beauty in our society, but I also got the thrill of knowing that Scott Westerfeld himself read and edited my essay. (Yes, This is how much of a book geek I am. I was like, “Scott Westerfeld’s eyeballs read the words I wrote!” I think this means I am allowed to hang out socially with him now, you know, assuming I ever meet him in real life.)

So the book is officially out now. It’s called Mind-Rain and is available at your local Borders.

Here is a blurb from my essay about the role of beauty in our society:

When I was a teenager I read a book of difficult questions. One of them was: Would you choose to be beautiful if it meant you’d lose five years from your life span?

Would you?

The question bothered me because I knew the answer should be easy—who in their right mind would trade part of their life—1,825 days—just to look good? Looking good doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of your life.

But I kept finding myself wanting to refine the question. Exactly how ugly would I have to be to have that extra five years? And were we talking about a life span of seventy years? Eighty years? Perhaps only forty? The question just wouldn’t go away. The answer hovered around, revealing all sorts of uncomfortable things about myself and my society--because let’s face it we do judge people based on looks.

Oh, as a society we like to pretend that we aren’t really all that vain, that we don’t obsess about our appearances, and that we’re capable of seeing past all the superficial stuff. As Martin Luther King Jr. would say, if you know, he happened to live in a Scott Westerfeld novel: People should not be judged by the prettiness of their skin, but by the content of their character.

We throw around phrases to emphasize the point. Beauty is only skin deep. Beauty is as beauty does. It’s what inside that really matters. You can’t judge a book by its cover.

Any high school freshman will tell you differently. As will your local plastic surgeon, or the person in charge of hiring models for advertisements.

If you want to sell something, you show a beautiful person holding, eating, wearing, or driving it. There is a reason we call beautiful people attractive. We are attracted to them just because of their looks. As a society we want to be them so badly that we will buy the soda we see them drinking, the clothes we see them wearing, and the cars we see them driving.

Okay for those of you who are still with me, to be the winner of a free copy of Mind Rain, answer the question: Would you trade five years of your life to be beautiful? Why or why not?

Beauty tips for the writer

I have stumbled upon a sure-fire way for writers to make themselves feel beautiful.(This probably only works for women writers, but hey, the guys don't have to worry about being beautiful anyway.)

Step one: have revisions due on a certain date.

Step two: ascertain that you will not make this date unless you give up several things in your life like showering or grooming.

Step three: repeat step two for several days.

Step four: by the time you finish your revisions you will resemble the troll-like figure on the front cover of Brandon Mull's first Fablehaven book.

Step five: now that your revisions are done, shower, dress in something besides the lifeless sweats you've been wearing, and do your hair and makeup. You will be astounded by how good you look. In fact, you will be downright stunning in comparison to how you've looked for the last few days.

It works every time.

In which I terrorize the office staff of my son’s school

I blame it on revisions. When you’re working nonstop for a month on rewriting your novel for the third time, you get testy. I’d told the bow-tied one that I’d have the manuscript to him today, which means that in the last week I showered approximately twice.

So I wasn’t happy yesterday when son number 1, code name Gaston, called and told me he forgot his tennis shoes. He asked if I could bring them so he could participate in football practice. I nearly told him, “Forget it. Just skip practice and come home with the rest of the carpool.”

I didn’t want to take forty minutes out of my work day (twenty minutes there, twenty minutes back) to bring them to him. The deadline was looming and I still had quite a few of the bow-tied ones 407 comments to go through. Instead, I gave myself a pep talk about being a good mother (see last blog) and told him I’d try to get them to him. First I called around to the other carpool mothers in the neighborhood to see if they could bring up Gaston’s shoes when they picked up the other kids. Four phone calls later I found out that carpool turn fell to one of the fathers, who picked up the kids on his way home from work. So that wouldn’t work.

I got in the car, unshowered and covered in cat hair. (One of the cats feels it’s her duty to lie on my chest while I write.)I brought the shoes to the school’s front desk, explained the situation, and asked if they could give them to Gaston.

Imagine my surprise when Gaston came home with the carpool kids instead of staying for football practice. “What the heck are you doing home after I spent forty minutes to bring you your shoes!” I said lovingly. Because that is the type of mother I am. (see last blog)

“You didn’t bring me my shoes,” Gaston said.

“I gave them to the front office and they said they’d give them to you,” I said.

“They didn’t,” he said.

I called the school and left a message for the front desk. Which is probably something I shouldn’t do—leave messages when I’m angry. When you do that, you have to worry that your message is being endlessly replayed while people mimic you and do gargoyle impersonations. Not that I’m saying the office staff did this. But just, you know.

Anyway, the secretary called me this morning and apologized. She said she had called Gaston’s teacher and told him to send Gaston up to get his shoes. Apparently the teacher hadn’t passed along the message.

“Didn’t you notice that he never picked up his shoes?” I asked. Gaston doesn’t have small feet. He wears a size twelve.

“Yes,” she said. “So we sent his shoes to football practice with one of the other mothers.”

Which would have been nice if Gaston had gone to football practice, but he hadn’t because he had no shoes.

I pointed that out to the secretary, and then we hung up. That was the phone call.

Today when my husband came home he said, “I think the office staff is afraid of you now.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked. I had sent off my manuscript, showered, cleaned the downstairs, went to the grocery store to pick up frosting, baked a cake, and taken seven junior high kids to the movies for a party. I was back to loving mother mode. (See last blog.)

“The school didn’t know what happened to Gaston’s shoes after they were sent to football practice,” my husband said, “so they went out and bought him new ones.”

Oh.

Now I feel terrible. I suppose the office staff thought after I called to complain because I had to drive forty minutes to deliver the shoes and they didn’t give them to him, there was no way they were calling me to break the news that Gaston once again didn’t have shoes for football practice, and they didn’t know what had happened to them.

“The whole school knows about it,” Gaston told me with irritation. “The football coach came up to me and asked me what the shoe problem was.”

Turns out one of the football carpool kids had taken them home last night and he’d forgotten to bring them back to school today.

We have them back now, along with new shoes that the office lady bought. I really do feel bad about it. I told Gaston to ask the secretary how much they cost so I can repay her.

On the bright side, probably no one at that school will ask me to volunteer for the PTO.

My real job

During Project Book Babe one of the questions that was asked of the panel was: When did you know writing had become your career? Shannon Hale had a great answer. She said, "It isn't my career. Being a mom is my career."

I've always felt the same way. I'm a mom first. I hardly did any promotion or travel before my kids went to school all day. If truth be told, I didn't do a lot of writing before my kids went to school. It was mostly done during nap times, favorite kid TV shows, or sitting beside soccer fields pretending that I cared which way the ball went.

Sometimes I forget this though. I imagine we all do. We have a goal to get xyz done and our kids seem to be the thing standing in the way of getting xyz done, so they seem like a job-hinderence instead of our real job.

But today I'm remembering. Being a mom is my real job. I will make cupcakes for my daughters class, and take another daughter shopping for the shorts she needs, and make dinner.

I can't complain. All in all it's a great career.

Writing Class

Hey, for any of you around the Casa Grande area, I'm going to do a writing class on May 30th. Here's the vital info:

Writing a Young Adult Novel?
Get the Foundation Right: Point of View, Plot, and Characterization With Janette Rallison, Author of Books for Young Adults

Saturday, May 30, 2009
10:00 AM to 2:30 PM

Holiday Inn - Canyon Room
777 N Pinal Avenue
Casa Grande, Arizona 85222

Writing a young adult novel? Learn how to use the most important building blocks of fiction: point of view, plotting, and characterization. Did you know that 90% of the manuscripts in publishers' slush piles have point of view problems and as a result, are immediately rejected? Don't let your novel be one of them. Learn about point of view and how to use it effectively. Also, find out how to save time and effort in the revising stages by setting up your plot and characters right the first time around.

Janette Rallison is the award winning author of 15 novels and has sold over 800,000 books, including Fame, Glory, and Other Things on My To Do List IRA Young Adults' Choices List 2007 and It's a Mall World After AllIRA Young Adults' Choices List 2008.

Most of her books are romanticcomedies because there is enough angst in real life, but there Is a drastic shortage on both humor and romance. She lives in Chandler, Arizona with her husband, five kids, and enough cats to classify her as eccentric. Some of her other titles include My Fair Godmother, Just One Wish, and How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-Boyfriend.

Registration is limited.
For more information, contact Michelle Parker-Rock at
RegionalAdvisor at scbwi-az.org

book giveaways

I’ve meant to do a blog give away of a couple of my friends’ latest books for awhile. What can I say, when I’m doing revisions a lot of things fall through the cracks. This is mostly because I’m sitting by my laptop rocking back and forth, mumbling things about certain editorial comments, but I digress.



First up is Kersten Campbell’s book, Confessions of a Completely Insane Mother. I immediately liked this book because I am often a completely insane mother. If you’ve ever taken a group of boy scouts to the police office for a tour, you can relate. It’s a book full of Erma Bombeck-like vignettes, you know, supposing Erma Bombeck had five kids that she had to get ready for church in ten minutes because she overslept. (I have done this. I can relate. One day I’ll have to tell you about my two-year-old son who refused to wear pants to church. Ahh, happy memories. Well, not really.)

The odd coincidence about this writer is that although I’ve never met her in person, she is now living in my old hometown of Pullman, Washington and is married to my friend’s little brother. It’s weird to think of him as a grown man since he was about six when I left home.

I suddenly feel old.





The second book is for all of you regency romance lovers: Donna Hatch’s The Stranger She Married. It has a guy in a mask. That’s always cool. Alicia, our heroine is in dire straits (or maybe straights, I can never keep all of those dire places, um, straight) and vows to marry the first wealthy man she meets. Enter Cole Amesbury, a dashing lord. Personally, I think there are not enough dashing lords around when you need them, so I was glad this book was doing its part to help the shortage. Plus I liked it because I love romance, but not bodice rippers. So potential readers, rest assured you will not be impaled by flying bodice parts if you read this book.

For this give away tell me one insane mother moment, or one romantic one (or a romantic one you’d like to have some day) and I’ll enter you in the giveaway.

LDStorymakers conference--fun, fun, fun without the T-Bird

Granted, I know it makes for a boring blog to just go on and on about how much fun a writing conference was--but I can't help it. I'm a writer and therefore live a boring and solitary life until I go to conferences. Then I not only get to hang out with other writing adicts, but I get to be around people who actually think I'm cool.

It's such a nice change from hanging out with my children, who rarely think I'm cool.

So here are some pictures of me with other cool people. Try to pretend like you're interested, because that's the polite thing to do.

Here I am with James Dashner, whose book Maze Runner is Random House's lead book for the fall. His publisher is sending him on a book tour where he'll be given VIP treatment, the works. After he becomes Stephenie-Meyer-famous, I'm going to use this picture on my Christmas cards to make other people jealous. Some My Fair Godmother readers may notice that his name popped up in the book. (James still hasn't read my book though. Thanks, James. Next time I use your name for a character he will be turned into a toad in chapter four.)

Here I am with ANWA founder, Marsha. She rocks!

Okay, here are more pictures of me.

This is me with James, Jeff Savage, and Rob Wells. I'm in the middle of reading Jeff's book Farworld right now (unless you happen to be my editor, in which case I'm not reading anything at all; I'm working diligently on my revisions for Faking It.) So far Farworld is great. Jeff is the master of the cliff-hanger chapter ending. Plus he's an all around wonderful guy and has an incredible wife. I want her to come live in Arizona and work for me.

Rob is a crack up. He did a presentation of how the LDStorymakers came to be and I laughed until I cried. I would put his phone number on my speed dial so I could call him at random times and make him tell me jokes, but unfortunately the restraining order forbids that sort of thing.

This is Jennifer Savage and Annette Lyon. I'm just guessing, but I think Annette may have been up late working on her presentation.

Here is a more alert Annette with Elodia Strain and me. Elodia made my day by telling me she loved my books and then laughed when she realized I'm Sierra St. James too, because she's also a fan of those books. Elodia clearly has great taste in literature.

Here I am with the amazing Kerry Blair. Kerry walks on water. Seriously. Kerry's only failing is that she hangs out with Jeff, Rob, and few other malcontents on the Six Writers and a Frog, blog. Maybe it's just me, but I've always found that frog annoying. Sadly, it mysteriously disappeared from the conference table. Don't worry frog bloggers, I'm sure a ransom note will show up soon.

Stupid things celebrities say

I've finally started doing the revisions on Faking It. One of the things the bow-tied one wants is for my celebrity diva, Kari Hale, to say more stupid things. Believe it or not, it's actually hard to come up with stupid dialogue so I googled some real celebrity quotes for inspiration.

Here are a list of my favorites as reported by other blogs: (And we all know you can't get more reliable news from random celebrity bloggers)

Brooke Shields - "Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life." (Glad to see that tuition to Princeton wasn't wasted.)

Britney Spears - "I get to go to lots of overseas places, like Canada." (Well, some people consider Lake Superior a sea . . .)

Christina Aguilera - "So, where's the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?" (I think they keep the location the same every year so blond celebrities can find it.)

Mariah Carey - "Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff." (Mariah has obviously been talking to Brooke about death.)

Pretty bad, eh? Personally I think the politicians are worse.

"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country." - Marion Barry, Mayor of Washington, DC. (I'll stay in Arizona, thanks.)

"I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law."
- David Dinkins, New York City Mayor, answering accusations that he failed to pay his taxes. (And the thing is, I bet he paid his publicist a lot of money to come up with that answer.)

"I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president." - Hillary Clinton commenting on the release of subpoenaed documents. (Come to think of it, my editor uses the royal 'we' too . . . coincidence?)

And even after all of that, I still can't think of a stupid line for my character. It's something she should say in a library to a guy she's trying to pick up. Any of you with celebrity or political aspirations--comment away!

And for those of you attending the LDStorymakers conference this weekend--see you soon!

Taxes--even Robin Hood isn't spared

Paying taxes as a writer is a hassle (all those expenses and mileage to keep track of)and also really painful. Taxes don't get taken out of royalty statements, advances, or school visit payments, so there's always a big chunk to pay at the end of the year.

Never fun. When you have to pay the check, it becomes real money not just numbers on a paycheck.

Luckily my husband, Techno Bob, patiently pours over the tax code--which by the way is so thick it could be used as a step stool. Also it's written in legalize a language about as coherent as computer code.

But at least the good folks at the IRS have a sense of humor. I mean they had to be joking when they defined income to report.

They wrote--and this is a direct quote: "If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless in the same year, you return it to its rightful owner."


Do you suppose a lot of criminals are going, "Oh, Dang I guess I have to report those stolen cars after all . . ."

Sorry Robin Hood, but you owe a lot of taxes.

Project Book Babe

Where do I start about Project Book Babe? I would have blogged about this earlier, but for the last few days my computer joined my children’s labor union—meaning it only worked when it wanted to, which was about three minutes a day.

Project Book Babe actually started the night before when Stephenie Meyer, Shannon Hale, Laini Taylor and I went over to Jon Lewis’s house where his lovely wife fed us dinner and made us feel at home while we signed roughly a gajillion posters.

Laini shares an editor with me: the illustrious bow-tied one.
Here she is posing with My Fair Godmother. Maybe it's just me, but I think there’s a striking likeness to Chrissy.

The next day we went early to Marcos De Niza High to practice our fab dance number where James Owen would be singing Baby Baby I Love You, by Aretha Franklin. Shannon had sent us backup dancer instructions earlier, which my six-year-old and I practiced faithfully.

Unfortunately the band was practicing on stage plus we found out that we had not in fact signed all of the posters and there was another bajillion waiting for us.

So we had to go on stage and do the song without ever practicing it. As you can see I came up with a gold sequined top to wear because I am just that cool.

Despite not having practiced together, the dance number went pretty well. Okay, there was a moment when Brandon Mull thought we were doing our free dance portion of the song, and we had to tell him that no, actually we weren’t to that part of the song yet, but that sort of thing adds to the ambiance of our free spirits.


Next we did the author panel. Since we were running behind we were told beforehand at our author pow wow

(and yes this is what our pow wow looked like from underneath) that we shouldn’t all answer every question and that in fact we should only speak if we had something smart or funny to say.

Luckily we are all very smart and witty people so it went well.(Here we are clearly being smart as opposed to witty.) And the audience laughed at all the right places which goes to show you that we have brilliant fans. (Okay, they were mostly Stephenie’s fans, but they were still brilliant!) They were also very generous when it came to the auction items and we raised lots of money for or dear friend, Faith, and breast cancer. Faith is the lovely lady in blue.

Here is P.J. Haarsma with Dean Lowery modeling one of the auction items, Stephenie’s Eclipse Prom dress.

Didn’t have a chance to come? You can still bid on some cool items at ebay under project book babe.
Next we did a story activity where we let the audience choose the title of a story—they chose Stephenie’s dress-- and then we went down a line and gave a one sentence to add to the story. Yeah, it was bizarre but funny and just goes to show you why there aren’t a lot of books by ten authors.

Anyway, I have to say that all the authors there were wonderful and I was so glad to have a chance to hang out with them all. (And I haven't gotten all my pictures off of my camera so I will add a few more to this.)

Project Book Babe is Saturday, April 4th

Just a reminder that all the hot vampires and ultra cool werewolves will be at

Marcos de Niza High School Auditorium,
6000 S. Lakeshore Dr.,Tempe, AZ 85283
from 2:00-5:00

Stephenie Meyer will be auctioning off her Twilight prom dress and if you can go by some Twi-moms blogs, it looks like the competition will be fierce.

I've offered to auction off my prom dress as well, but somehow the project organizers don't seem to be thrilled with this suggestion.

Ah well, it's all for a good cause.

Hope to see you there!