Fracture

For this week’s book recommendation I have to tell you about Megan Miranda’s wonderful debut Fracture. I met Megan last Friday at a signing at Powell’s and then dedicated a large chunk of Saturday to reading her book. I was a wonderfully entertaining read.

Fracture is about a teenage girl who falls through the ice in a not quite frozen lake in northern Maine. After spending almost a week in a coma, Delaney wakes up with a new chance at life and a disturbing new ability. Delaney can sense death and feels pulled toward people about to die.

During her signing event, Megan explained that before beginning her career as a fiction writer she worked as a scientist in the medical field. She has always been fascinated by the things about the brain we don’t yet understand. Fracture has a bit of a paranormal feel to it – after escaping death herself, Delaney is pulled toward death in others. But Megan approached the unknown from a medical angle in way that makes this book read more like a fascinating contemporary than a fantasy.

I loved reading Fracture and can’t wait to see what Megan comes up with next. Megan Miranda is a debut writer that is sure to make a big splash in the YA world. If you want to know more about Fracture, here is what goodreads has to say about it:

Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine

—despite the scans that showed significant brain damage. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she's far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can't control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she's reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy's motives aren't quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening?

For fans of best-sellers like Before I Fall and If I Stay, this is a fascinating and heart-rending story about love and friendship and the fine line between life and death.

Book after Borders

Last Friday, I went to a book signing at Powell’s by Megan Miranda and Marissa Meyer. Both authors were great as were their books. You can expect reviews/recommendations on both books to come. But I’m not actually planning to talk about these amazing authors in today’s post. I want to talk instead about one of the people I met at last week’s signing.

I am spoiled, and I know it. I live in a Beaverton, Oregon which is a suburb just west of Portland. Powell’s is the largest independent bookstore in the world, and its flagship store is in downtown Portland less than a mile from my office. Powell’s is a standard stop on most author book tours and they typically have about a dozen author events each week. Yes, I know that is more than one per day.

The downtown Powell’s is the big one, but they have two other smaller stores too. One in Beaverton, and on in a boutique neighborhood in SE Portland. More than half of the author events (and all the YA events) Powell’s sponsors are held at the Beaverton store, which is close to my house. So I subscribe to Powell’s newsletter and usually go to an author event once every couple weeks.

At the event I attended last week, I met a fellow reader named Michelle. Michelle doesn’t live in Beaverton, she lives in Gresham. Gresham is a suburb on the East side of Portland. Michelle still lives close enough to Portland that she can head downtown to the main Powell’s and occasionally make the trek across town to the Beaverton Powell’s for author events. But where can she go for her day to day book purchasing needs?

Michelle used to work at the Gresham Boarders. She said they were always busy. Gresham is a large residential community and Boarders was the only bookstore in town. Now Boarders is gone. Michelle got a new job working in the illiterate retail world. She misses Boarders. She misses going to a bookstore every day for work. And she also feels bad for all the other readers in Gresham who now have to travel all the way into Portland every time they want to buy a book.

In hopes of staying connected to the book world, Michelle started a blog. She writes book reviews, has contests, and does what she can to stay connected to the literate world. I know I’m spoiled and have far more options that the average reader. In addition to Powell’s, there is also a B&N about a mile from my house and about a half a dozen other independent bookstores within ten miles. But Michelle is probably a lot more typical. If she wants to buy a book, she has to drive about fifteen miles. And she should feel lucky because only thirty miles from her house is a standard stop on most author tours.

How many other towns lost their only bookstore when Boarders went under? And how many of those towns were in more remote areas where there isn’t a big city with giant bookstores close by? I love ebooks, but I also love going to actual bookstores where I can meet authors like Megan Miranda and Marissa Meyer, and fellow readers like Michelle.

I don’t know what the future of books will be. I don’t know how many more bookstores are going to close their doors in upcoming years. I don’t know how many more former bookstore employees are going to have to start blogging as their only way to stay connected to the book world. I do know that I’m glad I live in a community that still has bookstores, and people who like to shop at them.

Friday Five - Best Contemporary YA

Seriously? You expect me to pick just five? I could totally do twenty-five. But I'll follow the rules. Here are five of my favorite contemporary YA novels. I can't promise they are my five favorites because I REALLY wanted to include eight and am feeling super guilty for leaving off those other three even as I post this. Anyway, here are my five.

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

The Sky is Every Where by Jandy Nelson

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

and Spanking Shakespeare by Jake Wizner

What about you? What are your five favorite contemporary YA novels? Head over to Paper Hangover and see what everyone else is saying.

Look Mom, I Can Spell - Almost

I had a “Friday Dyslexia Day” feature on this blog for a couple of months last fall before I ran out of things to say about dyslexia. As a point of clarification, I am severely dyslexic. The book I currently have out on sub is about a dyslexic 15-year-old. Before I started this blog, I had another blog specifically about dyslexia. Except I ran out of things to say about dyslexia pretty quickly and ended up blogging about writing and giving book reviews and doing all the things I do on this blog and it just felt pointless.

So I started this blog with the intention of only posting on that other blog when I had something dyslexia related to post. That lasted for a little over a year, then I decided to come out of the learning disability closet and start posting about dyslexia here. If I have a book about dyslexia come out, I should have a dyslexia platform and all that good stuff.

My intention was to take down the old dyslexia blog once I’d reposted a few of my favorite old blog posts. But even though I haven’t posted anything on that old dyslexia blog in almost a year, and I haven’t posted there regularly for almost two years, I still get comments from other dyslexics. People stumble upon that blog and feel connected to a larger dyslexic community. So I can’t take that blog down, ever. All I can do is try to make honest posts here too, so even more people can know they aren’t alone.

I just got an extremely gracious comment from a fellow dyslexic on this post I made in December of 2009. I’ve decided to repost it here for your enjoyment. Oh, and you should note that I intentionally never ran spell check for any of my blog posts at that other blog. Also know that I do run spell check now, and continue to misspell 1-3% of all the words I write.


Lately I’ve been impressed with the quality of my own spelling. When I started this blog, I decided not to run spell check, so that my non-dyslexic readers could experience the pleasure of sounding out everything they read. While my spelling isn’t always accorate, I did endure nearly four hundred hours of one-on-one phonix training as a child. So my guesses are always phonetic.

But here’s the thing. My spelling has improved. A lot. By cutting Wednesday’s post into word and running spell check, it appears I misspelled 10 out of 477 words. 98% accuracy isn’t perfect, but if that post was a spelling test, I would have gotten a high A. And the words that I did misspell were all really close. Spending 30 seconds running spell check, and I could have been error free.

I’ve noticed my improved spelling in my fiction writing too. I completed the first draft of my first novel about eight years ago. At that time, I misspelled about 25% of the words I attempted to write. I would have to stop and correct my spelling at the end of each sentance. And it would often take me ten or fifteen minutes to figure out the correct spelling of the words I wanted to use. But I can’t even remember the last time I made it to step ten in the dyslexic’s guide to spell check. Now my fiction is just as accurate as this blog. I type a couple paragraphs, zip through spell check, and move on.

I know that I still misspell a lot of words that the average twelve year old can write with no problem. But I railrly feel self concious about my spelling. I can limp along well enough to get my point across. And my failures tend to fall close enough to the mark that they are easily corrected.

So I was a bit shocked when my husband started making fun of my grocery list yesturday. It turns out, of the fifteen items I put on the list, two were spell correctly. His favorite was pretselz. Apparently that isn’t how it’s spelled.

I’m not sure why I can spell revelation without problem, but I still haven’t learned how to spell cheeze. My guess is practice. I’ve been spending more and more time writing. And after correcting the same word a hundred times, my guesses slowly move closer to the mark. But I never worry about making my grocery lists legible. Perhaps I just need to write a cook book. Then I might figure out how to spell orenges.

Permission to Follow the Muse

Lately, I’ve been less than excited about writing. I started a new project back in September and in the past four months I’ve managed to force out a truly crappy first draft. The amount of revising this thing needs basically amounts to a complete rewrite. And I’m so not excited about putting in all that work. I’m tired of these characters, and working on this project feels more like a chore than a creation.

Yesterday, I finally admitted my frustrations to my agent. I wanted to quit working on that book, maybe even quit writing completely. But even thinking that felt unprofessional. I kind of expected my agent to yell at me, except she’s super nice and so not a yeller. But I expected so form of tough love.

She reminded me that the book I’d been laboring over for the past four months is not under contract. Nobody is requiring me to finish it. So if I don’t want to finish it, I don’t have to. And if my muse is no longer interested in that project, it probably means deep down I really want to be writing something else. Her advice was to listen to my muse and write the book that I really want to write. Once I get that other book out of my system, maybe I’ll have a new found energy to go back and finish my revisions/rewrite. Or maybe I’ll never come back to this project. And either way, it doesn’t matter.

This permission to quit was a huge relief. But I still had no idea what to write. I feared I may never come up with a good idea again. I felt that way for maybe two hours. Then BAMB, full force assault of a great new book idea. I have a half a dozen great characters all chattering together in my head. I have a plot that I feel passionate about and genuinely want to write. I have a book that NEEDS to be written.

I haven’t started this new project yet. I probably wait until this weekend. But I did jot down a few notes of scene ideas. So far I have just over 20 scenes that I know I want to include. Maybe I won’t wait until this weekend to start writing. Because this story really wants to come out. My agent was right, there was a reason I didn’t want to write that other boring book. I wanted to write this book. And unless a book is under contract, you always have permission to listen to your muse.

I’m Bored

When I was a little kid and complained about boredom, my mom always told me that only stupid people get bored. I was smart, and thus needed to use my own intelligence to find a way to entertain myself. I have been making up stories in hopes of killing the boredom known as reality for as long as I can remember. And now I’m a writer. Maybe my mom was onto something.

But I’m bored. Right now, this instant. Totally bored. Does this mean I’m stupid? Probably. I’m still daydreaming a lot, but I’m making up all these pointless boring stories. I don’t even want to think about writing them down, because then someone else might read them and my boredom will spread to other people.

It’s tragic. I know. But pretty much all of my blogger friends are intelligent people. So can you guys help me out? What do you do to kill the boredom? And worse of all, how do you kill/transform your characters when they start acting even more boring than reality?

The Fault in Our Stars

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a Tuesday Reading Recommendation. Sorry about that. A lot of the books I’ve read lately have been less than fabulous, and I don’t want to recommend anything unworthy. But fear not, THE FAULT IN OUR STARS is beyond worthy. I’m not going to say that it’s the best book I’ve ever read, ‘cause I have read some pretty amazing books over the years. But this book easily makes the top 20, maybe even the top 10. It’s a six star book on a five star rating system.

The fact that John Green wrote this book is all I needed to pick it up. But since this book is in a whole new league from John Greens earlier masterpieces, I feel it needs more of an introduction than just a rock star byline. This book is beautifully painful, that’s the only way I can describe it. It’s a love story about two teenagers both deep in the throes of terminal cancer. These kids are smart and funny and sarcastic, and oh yeah busy dying horribly painful deaths. And this book presents their feelings honestly in a way that is so un-halmark that it’s gut wrenching.

One of my favorite parts is when the main character, Hazel, explains Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which explains that until a person’s physiological needs are met they can’t even want love or esteem or least of all self-actualization. I remember learning about Maslow’s hierarchy in psych 101 in college and finding it logical. Then Hazel came along and had to explain that even though she couldn’t breathe she still needed to be loved. And even if they should have lived at the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, the characters in this book are some of the most self-actualized characters I’ve ever encountered.

One of my best friends from high school got cancer while we were in college. She was extremely lucky and her cancer was operable. She celebrated ten years of remission a few months ago. My grandfather and uncle both died of cancer, but there is a big difference between kids dying and adults dying. So despite a few months of fear and college kid angst about possibly losing my friend, I have no personal experience with terminally ill children. This book ripped me open anyway. And I sincerely hope that the honest voices of Hazel, Augustus and Isaac can speak to sick readers, who are still entirely human even if they are also busy dying.

If you want to know more about this unbelievably amazing book, here is what goodreads has to say:

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 12, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs... for now.

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

Sometimes You Need a Little John Green

I won’t call myself depressed, but lately I’ve been feeling a little lackluster. It’s gray and rainy outside. I’m halfway through two less than captivating books. Even the stories that live exclusively in my head have been dull lately. This weekend I was really bored, and just felt totally blah. Going grocery shopping should not be the high point of the weekend.

Finally, on Sunday afternoon, I decided I had to do something about my pathetically boring life. John Green has a new book out, and I got a couple amazon gift cards for Christmas. Ordering a YA novel for my kindle might not sound that much more exciting than folding laundry. But I had to do something.

I’m currently only 75% done with THE FAULT IN OUR STARS, so I’ll wait until tomorrow to give you an official review/recommendation. But I will tell you right now, this book is exactly what I needed. It’s a seriously depressing read. It’s a romance between two teenagers with terminal cancer. Stories don’t get more depressing than that. But it was still written by John Green. Even if it’s the most depressing topic ever imagined, it’s filled with a great dry wit. And more important than that, it’s honest and emotional and not even remotely boring.

There is a reason why I read 140 books in 2010. Reality is dull. At least my reality is dull. Grocery shopping and folding laundry are not exciting activities. But the solution to this problem is clear. Sometimes all it takes to make a weekend great is a little John Green.

What a Year

I got the idea for COUNTING TO D on January 20th, 2011. I was just living my life and barely even thinking about writing when the idea just assaulted me. I couldn’t ignore it. So I started typing. Six weeks later, I had a rough draft. Six months after that, I had an agent.

COUNTING TO D went out on submission last fall. I’m still waiting to hear from publishers, because the rumors are all true. Publishing really is the slowest industry ever! I started writing PHILIA about two weeks after my agent sent COUNTING TO D out into the world. I needed to distract myself.

Now I’m putting the finishing touches on PHILIA and will hopefully have a polished second novel to hand my future publisher as soon as somebody accepts COUNTING TO D. I’m even starting to outline my next book in my head so I’ll have something to work on once I hand PHILIA off to my agent.

It is crazy to think 365 days ago all I had was a fresh new idea. It’s been a crazy year! But I have a feeling the next 365 days are going to be pretty great too.

RTW - Pennames, and the people who steel them

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question that begs to be answered. In the comments, you can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.We'd love for you to participate! Just answer the prompt on your own blog and leave a link - or, if you prefer, you can include your answer in the comments.

This Week's Topic
If you couldn't use your own name, what would your pseudonym or penname be?

I actually know how to answer this question. Because Kate Scott is kind of a penname. It's not a huge divergence from the name on my birth certificate, but it is a name I selected because I couldn't use my own name. I was born Katherine Elliott. While I answer to the name Katherine, most of my friends call me Kate, and I think the name Kate has a more YA feel to it. So the choice of Kate over Katherine for a penname was easy.

Kate Elliott, it has a nice ring to it, don't you think? Yeah, this lady thinks so too.

Sadly, I am not a best selling adult fantasy author. And the lady who has been publishing novels in my name for decades, her real name is actually Alis Rasmussen. Oh the injustice of it all. I actually met Alis Rasmussen, I mean Kate Elliott once. She’s a very nice person. She even apologized for steeling my name. But considering how many books she's written using my glorious name, she's not planning on switching back to Rasmussen any time soon.

So clearly I needed a penname. I thought about inventing something totally original. But I really do like my name. I could have been Katherine Elliott, or K. Elliott, or K.M. Elliott. But the dream of publishing as an Elliott was lost to me. So I took my husbands last name instead. By marriage I am a Scott. And so my penname is now Kate Scott. It's not quite Kate Elliott, but it does have a nice ring to it. It even rhymes with Great Scott, which makes me feel that much more exceptional.

So what about you? What penname would you chose if a fantasy writing Rasmussen stole your name?

The Appeal of Speculative Fiction

I read a lot of contemporary fiction, and up until recently everything I had ever written was contemporary fiction. I like reading historical fiction and tried to start a historical fiction project a couple years ago, but it required so much research before I could even start writing that I gave up on the idea before I had even begun.

I read a lot, and thus read in a lot of different genres. I enjoy urban fantasy, but doubt mythical creatures will ever enter into my writing. Here is the crazy thing though. My current WIP is dystopian. I’ve read most of the classic dystopian novels (Fahrenheit 451 is probably my favorite) and a lot of the current YA dystopia stuff. But I still read a lot more contemporary than dystopia. And I’m definitely not as much of a Hunger Games fangirl as a lot of current readers.

I know that dystopia is really hot right now and it is beyond stupid to write toward trends because it takes so long for a book to come out that the trends can easily change by the time a book makes it to print. So I definitely wasn’t trying to jump on the dystopian bandwagon when I started writing this book. I just got the idea for a future version of humanity, found the idea interesting and thought provoking and figured it would be a fun concept to play for a while.

Writing speculative fiction is so different than writing contemporary. I can deal with much more complicated themes and play with taboo issues in a way contemporary fiction never could. It’s definitely a lot harder than writing contemporary, and the farther I get into this novel the more I find myself fearing I’ll fail to do the concept justice. Writing this book is making me think way more than any contemporary creation ever has. I hope I’ll be able to pull it off in a manner that makes my future readers think too.

Now let’s transition back to what I’m currently reading. When contemporary fiction is done well, I still love it. But I’m starting to drift more towards Sci-Fi. When sci-fi is done well, it does all the things I’m trying to do with my current WIP. It forces the reader to think, it forces me to think. And the experience is amazing. Sci-Fi is such a huge genre that I’ve always avoided, and the more I dabble with it the more I’m beginning to think I’ve been depriving myself of some truly great literature.

While I’m calling my current WIP dystopian not Sci-Fi, I am making a conscious effort to determine how and why our modern society transformed into my future society. And the characters in my future world have a record of human history and knowledge of the archaic 21st century cultural practices. The answer to the why, is a lot of made up science. So I guess my WIP could be called Sci-Fi, not dystopia, it just doesn’t have any aliens.

It seems crazy even to imagine. That me, a longtime fan of the authentic contemporary novel, could suddenly shift to the world of Sci-Fi. I mean, I've never even watched an episode of Star Trek, in any season. But I like thinking. I like books that make me think about new and interesting ideas. And at least right now, I’m finding that speculative fiction is a very though provoking medium.

Resolutions

My 3 year old niece’s New Year’s Evolution is to use her words better because she sometimes gets messed up and uses the wrong ones. Calling them evolutions instead of resolutions is so cute, I think we’re all hoping she fails to achieve this self-inflicted goal.

As for my New Year’s Evolutions, I have a few. Except calling them resolutions or evolutions or whatever just doesn’t seem right. Goals is a much close description, but even it is a little off. Really what I have is a list of New Year’s Hopes. There are things I want to have happen in 2012. But most of those things are not entirely in my control. Some of them are entirely out of my control.

For example, one of my biggest hopes for 2012 is a signed publishing contract. I got my agent in 2011, so the publisher in 2012 seems like a good goal. But there is nothing I can do to achieve this goal. I can keep writing. I can work with my agent. And I can cross my fingers and hope with all my might that a publisher gives me a contract so I can sign it. Yet sign a publishing contract is still at the top of this year’s resolution list.

Most of my other resolutions or hopes for 2012 are very personal and I don’t feel like sharing them with the world at large. But most of them are also outside my control. I still hope they all happen. But I know they might not.

At the start of 2011, I had a list of resolution/hopes. Getting an agent wasn’t anywhere on the list, it seemed way too unobtainable to wish for. One of my goals for the year I achieved during the second week of January. And another one I didn’t achieve and have instead rolled over to the 2012 list. 2011 was still a great year for me. So even if I don’t achieve all my New Year’s Evolutions this year, I’m going to allow myself to dream big.

What about you? What are you hoping for in 2012?

RTW - Writing Retreat

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question that begs to be answered. In the comments, you can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.We'd love for you to participate! Just answer the prompt on your own blog and leave a link - or, if you prefer, you can include your answer in the comments.

This Week's Topic
Describe your dream writing retreat. Where would you go? Who and what would you bring?

This is a tough one, because I LOVE to travel and thus can’t pick just one place. I think I’ll go with Newport Oregon though. There is a cute little hotel in Newport called the Silvia Beach Hotel. Each of it’s rooms is decorated in the style of a different author. So you can stay in the Mark Twain room, the Jane Austin room, or the Dr. Seuss room. It seems like a good place for a bunch of writers to gather.

The hotel is relatively small, just 20 rooms, and I think the retreat would be best with a relatively small group, so everyone could gather together and talk easily. I think I would want the retreat to be geared towards more experienced writers, they don’t all have to be published yet, but I like the idea of a gathering of writers who are there to write and discuss writing freely, better than a more formal workshop.

The more I think about this, the more I want to plan myself a writing retreat. I just need to gather up nineteen of my writing friends and head out to the Oregon Coast. We can write all day, and when we get stuck head down to the bayfront for some clam chowder, then go back and write some more. Just out of curiosity, if I did plan this retreat would any of my dear blogger friends want to come?

What about you? What is your dream writing retreat?

Ender's Game

I spent the holiday’s in Southern California visiting relatives. Instead of flying, we decided to drive. We took the scenic route, via Death Valley and other less traveled locals, and thus spent many hours (days) in the car.

I pre-loaded my iPod with more than a dozen audiobooks to keep us entertained during the trip. Then I struck a deal with my husband, I would play whatever I wanted and he would have the power to say when we had to stop listening to a book and start something else.

On past road trips, I have attempted to select books that I thought my husband would like even though we have different taste. This time I gave him the veto power and told him he was going to have to learn how listen to YA.

Coincidentally, all three of the books he made us stop listening to were OA (old adult), and his absolute favorite book of the trip was Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. It was my favorite too and is thus this week’s book recommendation. It’s great if you love YA, or if you love Sci Fi, or even if you’re my husband and only like reading tractor catalogs.

If you want to know more about the actual plot, here is what goodreads has to say about it.

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut--young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.

Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.