awesome vacation + awesome friends + awesome determination = awesomesauce.

The title is just for you, Steph. <3



Hey everyone! Sorry I've been gone so long, I think I'm still suffering from a small case of brain lock from inhaling too much Hollister body spray and finding sand in places I thought I cleaned it out. Twice. But all is well, and I'm working to make everything stay on the timeline I'm dedicated to completing. Vacation was flat out AMAZING, and I think the best part (aside from getting some of the best cuddly sleep ever with my boy) was the fact that I put on next to nothing weight wise. Tim says it has to do with the fact that we walked a typical eight hours every day. Well, no wonder I slept so well. Too bad my couch here at home isn't the same.



I think I'm still stuck in beach-mode. I keep looking for a boardwalk to pour quarters in to win red tickets to save for a new pair of headphones, and I keep expecting to find fried calamari at every food place I stop at (come on PA! I miss my fried seafood!). Don't even mention lobster to me unless you have a box of Kleenex nearby. Tim took me to this cute little place called Red's Losbster Pot not even ten minutes from where we were staying, and I got the most delicious pound and a half of steamed lobster. If I keep talking about it I'm going to ruin my keyboard with drool. Ew.



But the whole trip wasn't exactly sunshine and daisies. Tim's Dad had a huge habit of calling... every two hours. Asking for cigarettes. Really? Tim even bought him a pack when I showed up, and we had just checked in to the room when he called asking for another pack. I have nothing against people who want to smoke because my parents do it, but going through a 20-count pack in less than two hours is a smudge excessive and left me a little jaded.



Then there was the rain. No, I don't mean the cutesy drizzle you run out to kiss each other in just so you can brag to your girlfriends that you were smooched under showers. I mean hurricane worthy storms (actually, it wouldn't have surprised me if it had been a tropical storm that had passed through. That bad, guys, that bad) that made it impossible to see two feet in front of you or your car. We had been making our way to Six Flags on Wednesday when the sky just cracked, lit up, and opened a faucet on us. People were actually pulling over it was so nasty.

That umbrella wouldn't have lasted two seconds.

So Wednesday's plans were tossed out the window. Tim spun around and treated me to the small mall in Tom's River, where I picked up my Hollister splurge I'm still sniffing addictively every thirty seconds. Hint; if anyone at Lehigh Valley Mall wants to hire me for the Hollister store, ahem. Hai. I live in their clothing, right down to the sweatpants when PMS bloating kicks in.

Overall, though, the week was just mindblowingly amazing. I won so many ticket jackpots in the arcade that I really thought I would go home with a second iPad, until I realized I only had 50k points and the iPad was 1.2million.

But enough about my wildly mild vacation! I want to hear about your recent vacations, good or bad! Or maybe you share a Hollister addiction like me? Or even better; maybe you love lobster! Either way, I want to hear about it.

And if any of this post didn't get your blood pumping with a little excitement, I'll give you one last ultra-super piece of information. A really good friend of mine, Amanda, said she would love to design the cover of Illumine for me! I'll be posting the synopsis here on the blog under the Illumine tab on July 6th, and the faster I edit this baby, the sooner I'll start the awesome haul of ARCs and teasers. Now come on, doesn't that make you happy?

that is a crazy amount of ink.

Okay so, I have a few things I realize I needed to remedy from before on one of my last blog posts, and then post more stuff that may or may not ever be read by anyone other than me, my boyfriend Tim (I know you creep my page, honey) and a few friends.

Remember how I said I had multiple things go talk about after the whole WSJ article? Well, I originally did.
I don't remember them now. Moving on! (In restrospect, this sounded funnier in my head than it is on here.)

But honestly, I do have a thing or to I wanted to write about. First, I'm crazy beyond excited to say that I'm going on vacation next week! Five days of beach and the boy, and I'm a lady melting into a puddle of water on the floor just thinking about it. We keep reminding each other every day as we count down to the big day. This Tuesday, we celebrate our year anniversary together. Is it weird that I never actually thought I would spend a year with someone without strangling myself or my cat? (I promise you my cat is still alive!) Either way, it's going to be great. He even promised me tons of foot rubs and back rubs while I finish Illumine so I can actually start posting teasers for everyone to find online! And tons of seafood (my kryptonite) and maybe Red Bull? Mmmm, Red Bull. So yeah, I can promise-promise-promise that I will post my big teaser of Illumine in early July! Are you as excited as I am?! /happy twitch

But because of the whole vacation thing, I probably won't be chatting up with everyone on Twitter or compulsively searching for new inspiration. I probably won't really post on here for those five days, either, unless I have the utmost awesome thing to show everyone (which I'm sure will happen. I'm at the beach where shiny things come into my sight all the time. Wh doesn't love shiny things?!)

Then there's this little idea I'm pondering about posting a strictly online story, just a short one, like novella sized, and making a blog just for that but linking to it here so others can read and comment/suggest what could happen next. I love this kinds of interactive things. I actually started a lot of my intensive writing after spending years on RPG boards creating people from thin air and embodying them. I even ended up dragging a few close friends into the mix during Middle School and High School. If I ever grow the courage to some of the old stuff I have in the many notebooks in my bedroom, I'll post them up so you can see the insanity we created between classes.

...my sister's listening to the Glee version of Friday by Rebecca Black. /twitch

I'm gonna go find the power box and claim we ran out of power. Ahem.

depression hurts. writing helps.

The title sounds a little tragic, I know, but this was a spur of the moment post that just kind of snowballed into a post for the blog.

I've been feeling a little... 'eh' the past two days. By eh, I mean more or less that I'd rather watch paint dry in the middle of a root canal without anesthesia than write another word for Illumine. The love-hate relationship I have with my writing is very 80-20, 80 being pure hate and frustration and the lone 20 being this obsessive love compulsion about it.

But recently it's take a bigger dominance over everything. On an average day, I can ignore the eighty percent telling me that I should have gone to college to get a better job like all my friends are working towards and write pretty prose into my works. Bad days like today and suddenly that college application to my local community college starts mocking me in the corner of my room, saying something along the lines of, "Nah nah told you so!"

I typically call these days Writer's Block days to feed my inner troll and get him to leave me alone in a week or so. Today, the troll isn't just asking for a question to get over the bridge or all the coins in my pocket. He's asking for my firstborn, my baby story.

I'm wondering if this is happening because I haven't edited my first draft yet, or maybe if I had written it in order like some say to do this wouldn't have happened. Maybe if I had indulged a little more in me-time instead of forcing to pound out the words a little harder maybe I wouldn't be staring at my draft going, "Why did I even write this?" The funny thing? Even as I'm mulling about the house doing mindless activities like washing dishes and breathing, I'm figuring out some of my faults to the story; missing scene here, character development lacking there, etc. Hopefully I can write it all out before the troll comes over the bridge again.

Ugh. I hate frustration.

so many topics, so little time.

I think my brain's been trying to explode on me for the last few hours between the few things I wanted to cover in my next post on my blog, and it's really taken about two days for me to finally straighten it out and say, "Okay, I think I got this now. Quick, write it before it changes its mind."

The first thing I wanted to talk about was the whole post here from WSJ (@wsj via twitter). Being a little new to the whole Twitter network and blogging lifestyle as a whole, I turned on my iPad Sunday morning to find my newsfeed in the process of a nuclear warhead explosion. Some of my favorite writers were sounding of on the article. So what did I do? Well, I went and read it, and I have to tell you, it made perfect sense why every one of my favorite authors were frothing at the mouth over it. Saying that a YA book is 'too gruesome, scary, or destructive for children to read' made me want to start spamming my own little 160 character attacks right back at WSJ.

Did anyone ever stop to think what kind of world we live in today? Welcome to 2011, home of murder every day, robberies closer than you know, drug addictions around every corner, and abductions if a child isn't careful enough. If parents think that just because you can shun a child through some books that accurately tell close-to-home tales like a girl cutting herself or another one refusing to eat to stay in her comfort zone, people need to open their eyes. Kids are exposed to this way earlier than when a kid can pick up a book and read it front to back without using a dictionary or asking a friend what something means. School, the internet, and their own parents are just as destructive as a book can be to the hands of the wrong child.

Then you have to contend with the other part. You know, no one ever forces a kid to read Harry Potter or Twilight. The books on YA shelves weren't put there to complete a summer reading list or made a parent happy that they'll be ahead of their class by reading something advanced. They're there for a reason; it's what they want to read. And kids pick them up for a reason too; they want to read it. I'm not going to say that peers don't factor into it, because I know first-hand that they do, but it certainly isn't the whole iceberg.

Overall, it really boils down to an individual basis. Not all kids are going to digest Fallen the same way, just like not all kids are going to read the Blue Bloods series and not take the same thing away from it. Each child, teenager, young adult, adult or what have you, is different, and will read and interpret everything different too. So for WSJ to say that we need to watch out for those 'Darkness Too Visible' books, shame on them. I can't tell you how many books I read longing to feel like I held self-worth or value, or that it was normal to be weird and not fit in. Reading those fantasy and paranormal books that gave me a new world to dive into provided me with that escape that kept my sanity in check and left me feeling better than ever.

What about you? Sound off on the #YAsaves hashtag either on Twitter (you can follow me on the right side of the screen) or post something in the comments!

call me crazy, but maybe I need to stop procrastinating.

Ohhhhhhh how I loathe blogging. Correction; I loathe starting a blog post. All I ever think about as I stare at the screen is why I can't come up with a witty, informational piece to inspire others to read me, or why I can't just share my whole novel, Illumine, for all of you to read on here, right now.

I think I can answer the first part easily; I am not a naturally witty person. I am one by trial and error. As terrible as this sounds, I trolled friends online for years to see when I got away with witty, side jabs and remarks versus when I crossed boundaries and made them hate me for months on end and never tell me, they'd just ignore my texts or random commenting on their facebook page. I guess this is my subtle form of an apology, but not really because then I would have to drop the witty act and lose my hold on my snarky vampire, Dimitri, who I'm pretty sure isn't actually named Dimitri either. So to my sane friends, I'm sorry my inner character enjoys trolling you at the most inconvenient times.

The second, while terribly demeaning, is glaringly obvious; I'm not all that smart. I'm not calling myself dumb by any means, but I am hinting that when people joke and ask me if I was dropped on my head one too many times as a kid, well, joke's on you, buddy. I rode my noggin like a personal unicycle and have all the lumps to prove it. So I'm only 60 watts instead of 100, meh. I like looking at the empty space as more room for all the troll like characters I'll craft in the middle of the night for the sole purpose of driving one of my MCs completely bonkers.

Sadly, the third part makes me sadder than the whole blog post. I want to share my happiness with all of you, I dream of letting everyone read Essie and her coming into her gift, but it's just not edited enough yet. I want to make my first book the best I can offer lacking a publishing house, agent, and all that stuff. As soon as I edit the first draft, it's getting shoveled to about ten or so people to critique, rip, tear, maul, love, hug, and cry about to help me fix the terrible of it and polish the perfect within it. Everyone wants to have things fast, trust me, I caved on my iPad only days after deciding to want it and I split for Best Buy and bought it instantly. It just sucks that some things, like books, require time to bubble and boil over the writer's stove-noggin before they're ready to digest.

I'd post a sad face with this, but that wouldn't do all the trolling characters in my head justice. Plus, I just wrote a whole new blog post, so now I'm no longer fuming and instead grinning from ear to ear. Now where to end it...?

Oh yeah. Here.