ABNA 2013 Winner and My Year Since ABNA 2012

Congratulations to Rysa Walker and her book Timebound, the Grand Prize Winner of the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest! YA rules! Best of luck to you, Rysa.


Seeing this announcement this morning made me a little nostalgic for this day last year, June 16, 2012, when I was in Seattle for the 2012 ABNA ceremony. Since then, a lot has happened and changed for me: In July 2012, I published my first two books. In August 2012, I signed with my agent. I also wrote another book.

And something unexpected happened too. I met five people in Seattle, authors like me who I like to refer to as my ABNA peeps. A year later, the six of us still keep in touch and we all support/commiserate/cheer each other on in our writing endeavors. Regina, Alan, Chuck, Brian, Casey...I feel privileged to have met you all. Does anyone want some gravlax? (Yes, we even have inside jokes).

It's been an amazing year since my ABNA, and I can't wait to see what's around the next corner.

The Beautiful Land

Happy Book Birthday to Alan Averill, winner of 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (General Fiction). The Beautiful Land is out today! Go buy it!

I've only read the excerpt of this one, but if the entire book is anything like those first couple of chapters, it's amazing. And if this book is anything like its author, it's also hilarious, awesome, and has a cool hairdo.

Congratulations Alan. I wish you much success!

On Little Wings, ABNA 2013, and an update!

First and foremost, Happy Book Birthday to 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award winner Regina Sirois! On Little Wings was released today. Go buy it! Go! Regina, I'm so excited for you and I wish you all the success in the world.











In other news, five finalists were chosen for ABNA 2013. It Happened in Wisconsin by Ken Moraff (General Fiction), The Hidden by Jo Chumas (Mystery & Thriller), A Man Above Reproach by Evelyn Pryce (Romance), Poe by J. Lincoln Fenn (Sci fi/Fantasy/Horror), and Timebound by Rysa Walker (Young Adult). Congratulations to all of you!








What going on with me, you ask? Well, last month I finished my fourth book, another YA contemporary. I can't even express how much fun it was to write. It's a little edgier than I'm used to writing, but it's definitely my personal favorite to date. With this book, I was able to get myself on a firm schedule, and writing became a habit. So much so, I feel a little lost now that I'm finished. Time to outline #5!

What do you do?

I'm sitting here wondering if my fellow YA authors have ever endured a conversation like this:

RP = Random Person (who shall remain nameless)
Me = Me

RP: What do you do?
Me: I'm a writer.
RP: Oh? That's cool. What kind of books do you write?
Me: Young Adult
RP: What, like The Hunger Games and Twilight?
Me: No, I write contemporary. Like Sarah Dessen, John Green, that sort of thing.
RP: I've never heard of them. Are they like Sweet Valley High?
Me: (thinking: how old are you?) No, not like Sweet Valley High. YA fiction has changed a lot since the eighties.
RP: What are your books about?
Me: Well, they're all about different things, but they mainly focus on teenage girls overcoming their pasts, trauma, etc.
RP: So they're realistic?
Me: I hope so.
RP: I don't like realistic books. I read to escape.
Me: .......
RP: You should write a vampire book so you can be rich like Stephenie Meyer.
Me: Nice weather we're having today, don't you think?


The next time someone asks me what I do, I'm going to say "I'm writing a non-realistic Sweet Valley High-type book about vampires."

                                             (I did not make this book cover, I found it online)

Invoking My Inner Teenage Girl

Like most young adult writers, I write YA because teenagers fascinate me. One lives in my house (my 15 year old daughter) and I study her and her friends like they're some kind of exotic, unpredictable creatures in the wild. I've been told more than once that I have an "authentic teen voice", and while that pleases me, I also wonder why I can pull it off. Because I never grew up? Because I'm still a teenager inside? Because I remember the conflicting emotions and the feeling of first love and the confusion of trying to find my place in the world?

Still, I do struggle sometimes to identify with the 21st century teenage girl. I was sixteen years old in 1993. A lot has changed in twenty years. In 1993, we didn't go around with cell phones (they were probably the size of a laptop at that point). We called each other on the phone. We didn't text...we wrote notes and passed them under desks while the teacher wasn't looking. We didn't constantly take pictures of ourselves making ridiculous faces. We didn't have Facebook or Twitter. There was no such thing as cyber bullying. There was no Lady Gaga. Music was angsty and grungy and people wore flannel shirts and combat boots and worshiped Kurt Cobain. And it was pretty awesome.

So what else do I do to familiarize myself with the modern teenage girl? I google stuff like cell phone rules in high schools. I eavesdrop on conversations. I watch Degrassi: TNG and enjoy it more than a grown woman should. I devour YA books and take note of how other writers do it. I remember myself, way back in the ancient days of 1993, and include just a tiny piece of that girl in each of my characters. 

Minus this, of course: