Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Boba 4 Life: Chang for President

Congratulations NaNoWriMo winners!  For those procrastinating on our last day, here's the latest episode of Boba 4 Life.

My co-vlogger Krispy from A Nudge in the Right Direction and I answer the first half of Lori M. Lee's questions, including:  wolf v. vampire?  Dalai Lama v. Batman?  And I accidentally go on the campaign trail.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

November Book Crush of the Month: Taycob, Duh

November's Twilight Book Crush Of the Month is obvious:

Taylor Lautner/Jacob Black
or as TwiHards know him: Taycob


For the 100th time, I'm a diehard Team Jacob acolyte.  (And for you Edward freaks, can we say New Moon Nipple?  WTF?)

Earlier this month I took some gals from the Los Angeles Twilight Lovers Group to the Taylor Lautner taping of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

I wore this T-shirt with this Breaking Dawn hoodie I bought just for the event.

I even got a copy of the Cullen wedding invitation with my purchase.  It looks like something I printed up at Kinko's.

Key takeaway: Taylor Lautner is the most fan-friendly walking piece of hawtness ever.

During commercial breaks, he looked out into the audience and if you waved at him, he waved back while flashing this grin that zaps you, melting, into a pool of light.  I had, like, a religious experience when he looked at me.

Even Martha Stewart, the second guest, was not immune to Taycob's inhumanly white smile, asking him if he had a girlfriend.

photo source
Back off, Martha, I will cut you.  Video of that episode is here on NBC.

The leader of our fearless Twi group, Sharon Macross, took off from work, slept in her car, and camped for days in downtown L.A. for the Breaking Dawn premiere in order to snag these exclusive red carpet photos:

following 3 photos belong to Sharon Macross


the Adonis faces the press
Thank you beloved leader for allowing me to share these with my readers, who I'm sure are now all Team Taycob.  RIGHT?

Thursday, November 24, 2011

The Simpsons Write a YA Novel with Neil Gaiman

photo credit
Yes, that's Neil Gaiman in the back.

Anyone else catch last Sunday's Simpsons?  "The Crew" pictured above group-writes the next YA hit in an Ocean's Eleven parody and attempt to resist the vampire craze.

Meanwhile, Lisa Simpson demonstrates the writer's favorite activity: procrastination.

Andy Garcia even reprises his Terry Benedict-ish role as the Big Bureaucratic Publisher.

Simpsons, you and I are back on!  So much genius in this episode.  Thank you for 23 great seasons!

FOX doesn't release the episode until 8 days after airing, but when they do, you can find it HERE.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

BECOME Giveaway Winner and More Dark Carma

Congratulations to the winner of the signed copy of Ali Cross' BECOME:

Meradeth!


For another chance to win, the Dark C.A.R.M.A. Tour giveaway is still going on!

On a related note - those of you who run giveaways using Google Docs Forms, how do you count those entries that are worth +2?  Do you manually input them into the excel spreadsheet somehow?

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Walk Two Moons: Thank You, Sharon Creech

Walk Two Moonsby Sharon Creech changed my life.  I was well out of college when I read this, huddled on the tiny couch in the tiny Manhattan apartment I shared with a roommate.  The sun was up and I'd stayed up all night reading.  When I closed the book, I cried with everything my heart was carrying from childhood.  This book helped heal me.

And I realized then:


This is what I want to do for a living.

Written for Beth Revis' Show Gratitude blogfest:


**Don't forget to enter the giveaway of a SIGNED paperback copy of Ali Cross' BECOME and swag!**

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Ali Cross Guest Post and GIVEAWAY of BECOME

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be here on Sophia’s blog! She is awesome and I’m pretty
sure all of her readers are super cool too.

Sophia, thank you for having me, and for helping me celebrate the release of my book,
BECOME.

So, Sophia asked me to talk about how I came to self-publish, what my journey had been. Oh man, let me tell you—it has been quite the journey. And I’m not even talking about all the legwork that goes into bringing a book to life all by yourself. The formatting, the marketing, the uploading, the pricing, the marketing, the reviews, the sequels, and the marketing. All. By. Yourself. Or, if you’re lucky, you’ll do it the way I did—sharing some of the burden with a handful of other rockin’ indie authors.

Then there’s the whole journey-of-the-mind. The one in which you say (lots of times) “Oh my gosh! Am I really going to self-publish? Am I doing this? For realz?” A couple deep breaths. “Seriously? Are you SURE?”

With heavy dashes of intermittent terror and euphoria.

Because self publishing is terrifying. And completely awesome.

Right around the time I decided to go forward with the independent release, BECOME took second place in the full manuscript division of the League of Utah Writers’ yearly competition. (They like me! They really like me!)

Before that, BECOME had been rejected, in the full for the 103rd time. Wait, the full wasn’t rejected 103 times. I think it was only rejected, um, about 32 times. Oh yeah. It was read, in the full, by 28 agents.

Before that, one agent read it three times. She never actually requested any of the revisions, she just kept rejecting me, I kept fixing it up and she kept agreeing to read it again. She liked my writing, what can I say? But, obviously, she just couldn’t fall in love with my story.

Before that, an agent offered to represent BECOME! Yeah! We had an awesome talk where she told me some (but not all) of the changes she would like to see. She said she’d send me the notes, and as long as I agreed to them, she’d sign me. Hurray!

Except, the notes never came.

I emailed her and asked if she’d changed her mind about me. She assured me she still wanted me and my story. Work on something else in the meantime, she said. But four months later I had to face facts: The agent wasn’t playing fair and she had no intention of signing me. So I got back to work. Revised according to the things we talked about (because they really were great ideas) and started querying again.

Before that, I had a contract with a small publisher. BECOME was set to be released in July of 2010. But alas, that publisher went out of business.

Before that, I worked like any aspiring author to perfect my story. I wrote, revised, wrote and revised some more. I entered (and won) several competitions. My story was strong. But it would not be published any time soon.

Okay, fast forward to today. Yesterday I released my book. I spit and polished it. Had it professionally edited. Hired a professional artist for the cover image. Did my darndest to give it the best birthday I could manage.

And now it’s up to you to determine if all those agents were right to reject BECOME, or if I was right to publish it because, damnit, they were wrong.


Bio: Ali Cross is the sensei of the Writer's Dojo where she holds a black belt in awesome. She lives in Utah with her kickin' husband, two sparring sons, one ninja cat, two sumo dogs and four zen turtles.
ali's blog: http://www.alicross.com 
ali's Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authoralicross
ali's Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ali_cross 



Sixteen-year old Desolation Black wants nothing more than to stay in Hell where it’s cold and lonely and totally predictable. Instead, she’s sent back to Earth where she Becomes the evil she despises and the good she always feared.
  
When Desi is forced to embrace her inner demon, she assumes her Choice has been made—that she has no hope of being anything other than what her father, Lucifer, has created her to be. What she doesn’t count on, is a reason to want to change—something she’s never had before—a friend.



Ali is giving away an awesome SIGNED copy of BECOME, along with swanky swag!  Fill out the Rafflecopter below to enter.  Ends Nov. 20




Friday, November 11, 2011

11.11.11 and the 11 Hour Challenge

from last 4th of July w/ my (Filipino of course) friend Dennis
I'm a woo-woo SoCal hippie so of course I believe in the power of repeating numbers.  1 has always been my favorite number and 11:11:11 on 11/11/11 only happens once every 100 years.

Today the energy in the world will help us leap that much closer to our dreams.  Of debuting on the NYT bestseller list at - of course - #1.

For WriMo's, we are celebrating by taking the 11-Hour Challenge.  Log 11 hours or 11,111 words.  May we emerge from this mystical day with Gollum computer hands.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

NaNoButtKicko

Are you stalled?  Go to the Get Your BUTT-KICKING Here thread at the NaNoWriMo forums - the funniest entertainment since Family Guy.

You might get sergeant AniRemi:
*KICK*

Aw, the poor little wrimo got caught up in the forums? DID YOU SIGN UP FOR NANOWRIMO, OR NANO-WHINE-O? YOU LITTLE DIRTBAG! I don't want to see your horrid little Running-Man-With-a-Pencil face crawlin' back to this forum until you get some words in! I got three words for you, recruit, and you better read 'em and understand 'em:
Write. Or. Die.

or the spork-loving Kiriona:
YOU GET YOUR SORRY BEHIND OFF THE INTERNETS RIGHT NOW! NANO IS WRITEY WRITEY TIME! NOT CLICKY CLICKY WASTEY TIME TIME!

So you get out of there, open up your novel and give it the love it deserves! Do you not hear your characters?! They are CRYING! They want attention too!

At this rate, I'm going to need to a butt-kicking for spending so much time reading this thread.

***

Dark C.A.R.M.A. Tour
Coming on Saturday: The Ali Cross BECOME Tour stops here!

I've got a guest post from Ali about her journey to self-publication and a GIVEAWAY.  That means FREE.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

NaNoRevMo and WriMo

This is the first Saturday I haven't had to work or rehearse in over a year!


This month I'm doing two NaNo's:

1) An email group Peggy Eddleman started for NaNoRevMo, which is exactly what it sounds like - 30 days of intensive revision.

2) Rebelling as usual for NaNoWriMo.  Since I'm completely rewriting most of my WIP, I'm technically creating new words.

Buddy up with me under YellowTypingFiend and watch my erratic and low word count!

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