Wind over Water

Ix-nay on the Death Cookies

2010-07-08T08:00:00.016-05:00

A lot of days I like being a nurse. It's like you can speak the secret language of medicine that's a mystery to most people. And you can make people feel better. In oncology, the patients check-in and stay for weeks. Their families become like my family, for better or worse. Usually better. Recently we've had a spate of deaths, each followed by the arrival of pounds of baked goods. Like, enough cookies and cakes to feed a wedding party. I don't mean to be ungrateful, but your family member just died! You don't have to buy us pastries.

Rejection...

2010-07-06T20:59:00.001-05:00

So, a couple weeks ago I got a rejection on my full from awesome agent Joan Paquette. She was very sweet. She said she just didn't connect with the main character (basically agent talk for 'not for me') and that the main conflict started too late in the book. I got on the carousel of self-despair and doubt for a couple of days and then hopped off and went back to my current WIP. I've got a fantastic idea for how to improve my rejected MS, but right now I'm focusing on my current project, which is flashier and more commercial, but still very meaningful to me.

She did offer to look at my future projects and EMLA is normally a closed house, so I got that goin' for me, right? Right?

My ABNA Publishers Weekly review

2010-06-10T21:30:00.000-05:00

“Weird” kid Rin, and her devoted but stoic drummer boyfriend, JB, embrace their quirky, alternative personas in a tale that threatens to sink into the well-covered territory of high school social groups in sunny California. Instead, Rin, who’s already parenting herself, thanks to an alcoholic mother and a druggie gamer brother, is thrown for a loop when she becomes pregnant. Meanwhile, popular tennis ace and “pretty” Allison Field finds herself in the same situation and also must deal with the intrusion of the gorgeously exotic exchange student, Kem, who literally beats Ally at her own game. Allison, Rin and Kem foster an unlikely friendship, bonding over their efforts to recapture a sense of security. While the plot is thin, the characters are likeable and well developed, and their self-discovery involves moral issues and personal beliefs. Maturely handled complicated themes peppered with some sexuality provide an authentic view of modern teenagers.

Not bad actually, considering that the reviewer read a much older draft than I currently have being reviewed by an agent. I'll post whatever feedback I receive on my full once I hear back

The beauty of tears

2010-04-24T15:09:00.000-05:00

Another day. Another cancer patient removed from a ventilator only to fade gracefully into the night, leaving behind wise-eyed stoic adults and inconsolable teens.

Teens who slump down to the floor like broken dolls. Teens who weep, openly, with no thought at all that they'll be viewed as 'making a scene.'

There's something gorgeous about the raw emotion of children, the sheer human responses elicited before people are programmed into believing that feelings are meant to be kept private, or at least in check.

It's not the dead people that get to me, it's the dying...

2010-04-14T23:47:00.000-05:00

Him: I don't understand. I'm confused.
Me: What the hell did I screw up now? What don't you understand, sir?
Him: I don't understand what I did to get cancer twice.
Me: Oh crap. You didn't do anything. The treatment from your previous cancer increases the chances of getting lymphoma. You were just unlucky.
Him: But why did I go through all the treatments five years ago if I was just going to get sick again? Why do I deserve cancer twice?
Me: It does seem like an awfully unfair burden. Would you like to talk to someone from social work or pastoral care?
Him: A priest? No, I'm Catholic. I can talk to God without a middleman.

Seriously, religious-type of folks, it does seem awfully cruel to make someone go through hell to beat cancer only to afflict them with a totally different cancer a couple years later. WTH is God thinking?

The New Job

2010-04-01T12:00:00.000-05:00

Still within the ginormous cityscape of Award Winning Teaching Hospital, but a different building and a different department. What a difference a few hundred yards can make. Hilarious coworkers, approachable physicians, minimal blackstabbing and shit-talking.

First day=first ever chest compressions. I think I'm going to learn a lot.

Holy Crap

2010-03-24T01:40:00.000-05:00

Running into Allison has advanced to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarterfinals. I should be thinking "Holy crap, that means my manuscript is in the top 5% of everyone who entered, and that includes published authors." But somehow, after insane amounts of revision on it in the last week (including a switch from past to present tense) all I can think is "Holy crap, someone legit from Publisher's Weekly is going to read that stinking pile of dog doo. They're going to read the parts that reek of propaganda, the graphic parts, the cliche parts, the lazy parts where I abandoned making each individual sentence come to life because I was in a hurry to get to the next juicy scene."

People say I'm too hard on myself. Sadly, this isn't a post of false modesty. This is a post of "Oh no, I've improved the story 300% since I entered it. I've fixed all those issues above and I'm working on the pacing." Oh well, all feedback from industry professionals will be helpful, right? Even if it leaves me broken and bleeding...

Up-to-date list of FREE books

2010-03-11T09:46:00.000-06:00

Yep, you read right. If you're between 13 and 21 and like to read, two of these books (and additional financial compensation!) can be yours for free if you'll agree to critique one of my manuscripts. Email me at letta326 at gmail d o t com for more information!

Abbott--The Red House
Abbott--The Ghost Road
Avi--Murder at Midnight
Briggs--Rise of the Heroes
Brooks--Dawn
Cummings--Red Kayak
Dekker--Elyon
Dekker--Lunatic
Diamand--Raiders' Ransom
Duey--Sacred Scars
Fitzpatrick--Hush, Hush
Harrison--White Witch, Black Curse
Heath--The Lab
Heath--Remote Control
Hobb--Dragon Keeper
Horowitz--Necropolis
Kahodata--Outside Beauty
Kingsley--Erec Rex: The Search for Truth
Livingston--Darklight
Mack--In Search of Watson
McIntosh--Tyrant's Blood
McKissacks--Clone Codes
Pellegrino--Journey of Dreams
Peterson-Haddix--Sent
Reeves--Bleeding Violet
Sawyer--Flashforward
Shusterman--Everlost
Taylor--Lips Touch Three Times
Wrede--Thirteenth Child

My Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Pitch

2010-03-06T11:54:00.000-06:00

There are three groups at Vista Palisades High: the Pretties, the Weirds, and everyone else. The groups don’t mix; that’s just how it is. Punk rocker Rin Vadas has no interest in changing the status quo. She just wants to spend every waking minute with her hottie-drummer boyfriend, JB, who is heading off to college next year. Unfortunately, JB is swamped with band duties and admissions paperwork and needs a little space.

When Rin has a run-in with a Pretty named Allison Field, the popular girl saves her from getting suspended and Rin is touched. Then, a positive pregnancy test causes her to forget all about Allison until the next time their paths collide, at an abortion clinic. Rin doesn’t get how the prim and perfect tennis captain managed to end up pregnant until Allison blurts out her terrible secret--she was raped.

Bonded by a choice they think no one else can understand, the girls become friends. Rin tries to help Allison let go of her guilt. Allison tries to help Rin hang on to her boyfriend. Together they decide that the best way to cope with the past is to pretend it never happened. Denial, it’s a strategy that works surprisingly well.

Until the rapist picks his next target.

RUNNING INTO ALLISON, complete at 51,000 words, is a love story about friendship, abortion, and alien laser blasters. This funny and uplifting take on the tragedies of high school might appeal to fans of Siobhan Vivian, and anyone who needs a break from vampires, werewolves, faeries, ghosts, pixies, zombies, werebears, bugbears, red dragons, mutant reanimated flesh-eating Leprechauns, and so on.

Another Kidlit Contest

2010-01-30T16:01:00.000-06:00

Hellooooooo. Anyone out there? Mom? Is that you?

Oh well. Here's a link to another contest for writers of juvenile literature, sponsored by Andrea Brown lit agent Mary Kole.

Looking for potential beta readers

2009-12-13T13:59:00.000-06:00

Who you are: An avid reader between the ages of 10 and 21. (Please send a facebook or myspace link for age verification.)

What you do: Read one of my middle-grade or YA manuscripts (140-250 pages.) Comment about anything that occurs to you while reading. Fill out a short one-page questionaire after you finish the story.

What you get: I'll mail you a free book of your choice from my list, just for accepting the manuscript. Once you read it, fill out the questionnaire, comment on it, and send it back, I'll send you/paypal you $20.00-$50.00 (based on thoroughness of review) for your troubles. Anyone who really take the time to offer thoughts and suggestions throughout the manuscript will be thanked in the book (assuming it gets published.) One beta reader for each book will get a character named after her or him.

Email me at letta326 at gmail d o t com if you're interested!

Things that currently seem vastly more important than writing a ten page paper on the pathophysiology of Hashimoto's thyroiditis

2009-11-30T20:07:00.000-06:00

1. Another cup of coffee
2. Editing other people's query letters on verla kay's blue boards
3. Petting the kitties
4. Reading a million back posts on various agent blogs
5. Editing my own query letter
6. Facebook
7. Twenty minutes on the elliptical
8. Taking a bubble bath
9. Dreading work tomorrow
10. Did I forget to eat supper?

I'm feeling a little stressed so...

2009-11-30T09:32:00.000-06:00

Thieves with Manners

2009-11-15T13:36:00.000-06:00

I park my bike in the garage of my apartment building. Since I am not one of the chosen who get to park my car in the garage, I don't have a clicker. Which means I leave my bike by the garage door, go inside and downstairs to open the garage door, and wheel my bike to the bike rack in the garage. This may seem needlessly time-consuming, but when the only other options involve hauling the bike up and down stairs, well, if you have a bike I'm sure you get it.

Normally all of this poses no problem. Yesterday I parked by the garage, came through the front door, and got distracted by the shiny new coffee machine on the lobby in the counter. Mmmmmmmm. So many pretty little buttons to spew out so many pretty little flavors. Did I mention I have what some might call a coffee addiction? I promptly took my piping hot cup of french vanilla up to my apartment to savor, forgetting all about my bike.

Until today, when I went dowstairs and saw that my bike was not parked in its usual spot. I live in Crime Central so I figure there is about a .02% chance my bike is still parked in the alley. I mentally kick myself for being so stupid but I open the garage door thinking maybe, just maybe.

And there's my bike! Not exactly where I left it, but parked across the alley. My squishy seat cushion has been stolen and the gears are all shifted meaning at least one person took my bike for a test drive. But luckily, whoever stole the cushion recognized the bike for the Craigslist piece o' crap that it is, and decided not to run off with something had a resale value of about five bucks.

Thank you, cushion klepto, for leaving me my beloved bike!

3-letter review of Richard Kelly's "The Box"

2009-11-08T12:37:00.001-06:00

Wtf?

Props to the joggler

2009-11-08T12:35:00.000-06:00

As I was riding my bike in the spacious city park this morning (and by morning I mean 1130 because I don't get up early on off days and I sure as hell don't get up early to exercise) I came across a . . . joggler? Jogging is hard. Juggling seems even harder. Jogging and juggling? Not my idea of peanut butter and chocolate. But apparently 'joggling' is an actual established sport with a large following. Look for it at the 2046 Olympics.

Lots of good query letters over at kidlit.com. Each winner so far has seemed to break at least one of the cardinal 'rules' of query writing, which I guess illustrates that rules are meant to be broken, but only in a fabulous manner. Congrats to all the winners!

Wheeee!

2009-11-05T10:17:00.001-06:00

Just scored a press pass to a screening of "New Moon." Love it or hate it, it's bound to be a fun time.

The strangely productive week from hell

2009-10-31T01:00:00.000-05:00

Monday: It rained. I stayed in bed till two pm. I tried to write, slacked off, watched an episode of House online, made a decision. (Taxing day!)

The Decision: Instead of trying to crank out book number three for the Delacorte YA contest at the end of the year, I'm going to make a concentrated effort to perfect my two finished manuscripts and send them out to some agents. This will hopefully reduce my stress level as I start to take call at work, and also allow me to hang out with my sister before she moves away. Ahhh...priorities.

Tuesday: It rained. I went to work. Standard mantra: "I've been a scrub nurse for four months and you've been a surgeon for twenty-five years. Why do you expect me to be able to keep up with you?" Corollary: "And why do you not at least acknowledge me when I almost do??"

Wednesday: I went with my mom to look at a house. How can something be a quaint country cottage on the outside and a condemned crime scene on the inside? Waste. Of. Time. I met with my workshop group and then submitted a query letter to a contest on kidlit.com, definitely not a waste of time.

Thursday: It rained. My umbrella broke. I almost fell asleep at work. I made it to the DMV at 17:34. (They close at 17:30.) I stayed up late finishing a contest submission to the "Bloom Award." In two days, I have queried both of my manuscripts. :)

Friday: It rained. My blowdryer died in an impressive display of smoke and glowing orange embers. I went to work with horrible curly bangs. Later, I tripped over my cat and dropped a cup of Airborne on the rug. (Both cat and rug are fine. I'm a little shaken up.)

Every day and Everyday, Alot and A lot

2009-10-24T12:33:00.000-05:00

Misuse of 'every day' and 'everyday' makes me as fussy as a hamster on a hot skillet. I recently got a free tee shirt from Award-Winning Teaching Hospital where I work. The shirt said (and I'm paraphrasing so the PR goons don't hunt me down and fire me for besmirching said hallowed hospital) "Nurses make a Difference Everyday." Wrong. Wrong. Wroooooong.

Let's leave out the technical grammar terms and keep it simple. If you're not a writer of any kind, if, for instance, you're a PR goon for a giant conglomeration, chances are you always want 'every day.' If you can replace 'every day' with 'on Tuesday' or 'once a month' and your sentence still makes sense, you want 'every day.' If you mean that x does something/is something/feels something on Monday, Tuesday, the 4th, the 11th, Christmas, etc., you want 'every day.'

Behold:
"Dad, maybe your house would smell better if you remembered to scoop the litter box every day."
Every day, I reminded him of how much I hated him.
I plan to go to the gym every day, but I always get distracted by life-changing episodes of Cash Cab.

Now let's tackle 'everyday', a trickier beast. 'Everyday' is an adjective that means commonplace, ordinary, normal, usual, standard. Get my drift? Considering that all of the aforementioned words are less clunky than saying 'everyday,' you should now understand why in almost all circumstances that may arise, 'everyday' is probably wrong. When is it right?

Behold
I'm not anything special. I'm just your everyday kind of sorcerer.
Don't wear your everyday shoes with that dress.

Don't believe me? Need more info?
Check out these links:

http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/difficulties/everyday.html

http://www.grammarmudge.cityslide.com/articles/article/992333/8559.htm

And while I'm ranting, let's talk about alot and a lot. According to wikipedia, 'Alot' is a town and nagar panchayat in the Ratlam district of Madhya Pradesh, India. 'A lot' means a great deal more than a little. So when you type 'alot,' you mean 'a lot.' Every time. Got it?

Now don't get me started on improper usage of apostrophes...

One of this year's best YA books

2009-10-22T10:52:00.000-05:00

Here's a review of my favorite YA novel of 2009. Reprinted courtesy of the-trades.com.

Same Difference by Siobhan Vivian
Reviewed by Paulette Suhr

Same Difference hooked me from its first few lines, where protagonist Emily describes the perfect skies she used to draw, with “clouds that looked like the bodies of cartoon sheep” and where “birds flew in flocks of little black Vs.” She then goes on to comment that the real sky is kind of a letdown.

Emily turns out to be a sixteen-year old Jersey girl whose favorite class in high school is art. When her best friend Meg gets her first boyfriend, Emily starts to feel left out, so on a whim she signs up for summer art classes at a college in Philadelphia. During the summer she goes from feeling like a complete fraud (she's the only one with brand-new never touched supplies!) to discovering a real passion for art. She also makes several new friends, including a handsome teaching assistant and a cool artsy girl named Fiona. Then, it is Meg who begins to feel left out. Emily is forced to decide if it's best to rebuild a friendship with a girl with whom she no longer has much in common, or embrace her new art friends and let Meg fade away.

The story takes place partly in Emily's Utopian neighborhood where she and Meg live in identical mansions and the days are filled with tanning and trips to Starbucks. The more interesting scenes take place in hip Philadelphia art spots--schools, galleries, museums, etc. At one point, the students are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Emily stands in front of Marcel Duchamp's "The Waterfall." The sculpture was built behind a wall and can only be viewed through two tiny holes in a wooden door. Fiona says the piece is her favorite, but that "it sucks, though...once you see it, you can never go back." This theme is reflected throughout the book. Once you see through something, once you learn a truth about yourself or someone else, you can't go back to not knowing.

Vivian's story weaves colorful descriptions of Philadelphia and famous artworks around a tale of friendship and self-discovery. There isn't a lot of action or adventure in this book, but it's still a gripping read which says a lot about the author's ability to pull her readers into the story. This is partially accomplished by writing the story in first person point of view and in the present tense, techniques which make the emotional distance between Emily and the reader almost non-existent. Luckily, Emily is much more than just the J. Crew-wearing, peppermint mocha-swilling rich kid she first appears to be. Most readers will find it easy to relate as she explores her first separation from her best friend and struggles with trying to define herself. Anyone who has ever wanted to try a new hair color, clothing style, or hobby, but held back for fear of being ridiculed will empathize with Emily who at one point feels like "a poseur in both worlds."

Sometimes change happens and sometimes people have to make the choice to become different. Vivian's story is a mix of both, and readers young and old will enjoy Emily's journey.

Why me? Why now?

2009-10-21T23:03:00.000-05:00

As an unpublished writer (unless you count a prize-winning guest editorial in a technical nursing journal, which I've recently learned literary agents don't count *sob*) it feels a little gratuitous to make a webpage. I'm not going to lie. The impetus for the creation of this page was a query letter contest by a literary agent named Mary Kole. One of Mary's contest requirements was to link her blog full of writerly advice in two places. What's a girl who doesn't twitter to do? Make a blog, apparently.

Here's the link to Mary's fabuloso query letter contest. Good luck to all who enter! Check out Mary's blog in its entirety by clicking the sidebar link. We writer types are lucky there are agents like her willing to spend so much time helping thousands of nameless scribes that she will probably never even met, let alone represent.

I don't even know if I'll get it together in time for the rapidly approaching deadline. I probably will (at the cost of sleep, sanity, and work performance), but if I don't, hopefully something good will come of this little space. It's like people say: When a door closes, a window opens. Actually, I think that phrase is complete crap, like saying that when your car breaks down that you'll be picked up by a bus of hot swimsuit models. Only in the movies...