Why not?
THE OBVIOUS GAME update, for those of you who haven't gotten sick of me yet. (Hi, Ma!)
If you need a reset to your day, take four minutes and watch this completely bizarre but somehow satisfying video.
My Recurring Dream from André Chocron // Frokost Film on Vimeo.
Today is THE OBVIOUS GAME's official pub date, which means mostly you can now buy it in ebook form. Cheaper! Faster! Or you can just try to win it.
If you do end up reading it, writerly karma comes your way when you write reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. I write them, too. One can never have too much good karma.
DJ Nibbles loves YA
Since TOMORROW! Is THE OBVIOUS GAME's technical publication date (meaning you can finally buy it on NOOK and Kindle tomorrow on major booksellers' sites), I have been typing my damn fingers off for the past few months to spread the love around the blogosphere. (I am fully aware the entire Internet doesn't read my blog. Thank God. Some people on the Internet are super mean.)
Here are some guests posts and interviews that are already up, if you are interested.
I've been reading one of my very favorite books with my daughter this past week. THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. I still remember going to get it at a book warehouse before there were big box bookstores, the boxed set, with my special blue group or whatever they called the gifted class in the mid-eighties. I kept that boxed set my entire life, because it was the only boxed set I owned in childhood (that I recall or that I kept track of), and it has sat on my bookshelf until now, when I finally was able to interest my daughter in hearing the story of Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.
Initially, it didn't move fast enough for her, but by the time the Beavers appeared, she was hooked. Then when we got to the part in which Aslan gives the kids their weapons and tells the girls they were really just for back-up because girls shouldn't fight, my girl -- who had been lying down with her back to me, practically asleep -- actually rolled over and said, "When was this WRITTEN?"
And that, my friends, is how quickly culture changes.
The very lovely Neysa at B.O.O.K.L.I.F.E. let me guest post on her blog about making a character believable.
Here's an excerpt:
In the early drafts of THE OBVIOUS GAME, my main character, Diana, was too unlikable.Shewas all rough edges and whining. People would tell me that, and I wouldstruggle with that, because I wanted her to be realistic and goingthrough some really tough stuff, which in many cases does lead to pityparties.
Duringthe publisher querying process, my agent told me he thought the bookneeded to be funnier. I thought it ironic he wanted my anorexia novel tobe funnier, that it in fact might not get published because my anorexianovel wasn't funny enough.
Read the rest at B.O.O.K.L.I.F.E.!
Beloved may have helped with the basketball net.
Since we went through that unemployment thing this fall and winter, I haven't bought the little angel any new clothes since the beginning of the school year. She has a penchant for wearing the same thing over and over, and lately she's been looking like Little Orphan Annie with holes in her leggings. All this forced me to do what I loathe doing, which is digging through all her clothes figuring out what to donate, what to give away and what to toss before I go buy her some leggings that don't look like they belong to the cast of Les Misérables.
While she was in the shower the other night, I attacked her dresser and closet. She walked in just as I was putting a purple shirt in the paper grocery sack filled with hand-me-down play clothes for the littler neighbor girl.
And she burst into tears.
???
"You can't give away the purple shirt," she wailed.
"But why not?"
"It's what I was wearing the day Petunia died."
And then I felt tears spring to my eyes, too.
"Well, then, of course we can't give it away. But it doesn't fit. Hmm."
