And you are...? bloghop

The wonderful Emily King and Tammy Theriault are hosting this fun hop, in which we all compete to win prizes from none other than Mrs. Claus!!

Which makes me SO EXCITED. I'm Mrs Claus around our house and honestly, it'd be nice if someone else shouldered the whole present-load occasionally. Hopefully one of the prizes is my own set of elves because I could use them right now.


These are the "And You Are...?" questions:


1. How many speeding tickets have you gotten?

Actually gotten? One. It resulted in a warrant for my arrest in the state of Missouri....which makes me an "authentic" Alaskan.

2. Can you pitch a tent?

Of course. I can also build my own campfire and wrassle alligators. *spits*

3. What was your worst vacation ever?

The vacation where, three hours after we'd arrived, my son opened our camper door and my 18-mo. old daughter fell head first onto the concrete camper pad. Her forehead swelled alarmingly, we spent six hours in the ER and then all night calming her down so that, when it was time to cut our losses and leave the campground, she was still screaming in the morning. We packed up at 5 a.m. while she cried inconsolably. When I asked her to "please quiet down, Gracie" our poor tent camping neighbors called out: "Yes, Gracie, please QUIET DOWN!" *burning red with remembered shame* She cried on and off the entire twelve hour trip home where we discovered she was cutting four teeth in addition to having an enormous headache. o.O

4. What was the last thing you bought over $100?

A hockey stick for my son.

5. We're handing you the keys to what?

A spaceship. With light speed, please. Or Wonder Woman's invisible plane. Either one works.

6. What was the last meal you cooked that made even you sick?

A chicken rice soup where the rice blew up and looked like tiny maggots.

7. Fill in the blank: Oh my gosh! Becky, look at her butt! It is so big. She looks like ____?

A spaceship. With light speed.

8. What was your first car?

A 1989 Dodge Horizon.

9. Your best friend falls and gets hurt. Do you ask if he/she's okay or laugh first?

Ask if she's okay. Unless of course her falling involves a wet butt or poo.

10. What's the worst song ever?
Ice, ice, baby.

The Next Big Thing

So I mentioned last week how stuck I was on my latest WIP. Thanks to Adam Heine, this week I can focus on the completed WIP-I-love-that's-with-betas.

What is your working title of your book?
RUNNING WITH WOLVES

Where did the idea come from for the book?
From a newspaper story about a woman killed by wolves in a Alaskan village. She was the first death ever recorded by wolves in Alaska (contrary to Hollywood) and there was such mystery around  her death, I thought the wolves were the perfect cover for a murder.

What genre does your book fall under?
YA mystery

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
No idea.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
When Tabby's sister is killed and authorities say wolves did it, Tabby knows this is a lie; after more people die, Tabby decides to follow the clues to the Iditarod trail's end, where a killer is waiting.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Hopefully represented by my agent.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? May we see an intro?
Three months.
 Intro:

On the last morning of her life, Lara Holt woke right at dawn. It was barely past 7:30, and this late in October, just getting light. Two wind storms had packed icy dirt to a pavement sheen, so Lara hooked a pair of rubber ice studs over the soles of her running shoes.

Micah whined when Lara tucked her pony tail under a thermal knit hat.

“Okay, okay,” she muttered, bending to scratch the border collie’s head. “You get to come. But no messing around. If I call, you come immediately, right? Or no more runs for you.”

Micah yipped, his chocolate eyes laughing at her while his hind end wiggled so it almost knocked over the coffee table.  Lara put on some gloves and patted her pockets – iPod, check. Emergency leash, check. Extra pair of gloves, check. Cell phone, check. Bear spray, check.

Not that she’d seen a bear lately. They’d been in hibernation for a weeks but as the light faded, there was the occasional procrastinator. A winter bear was fat, slow and sleepy.  Lara was pretty sure she could outrun one.

          Wolves were another matter

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I'd say it's a cross between Gary Paulsen's survival YA stories and Dana Stabenow's Alaska mystery series.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
When I wrote for the Anchorage Daily News, I did several stories on dog mushing - including following a Jr.Iditarod musher and a profile on the world's only government employed dog musher in Denali National Park - and a series on the fur business in Alaska, including trapping. I'm fascinated by the people who run the Iditarod and jumped at the chance to combine all three interests into one great story.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
 As anyone who follows this blog has noticed, I'm firmly in the cat-person camp, but this is a story for anyone who loves canines, self-sufficient heroines and the Alaskan wilderness.


Since almost everyone has already been tagged, I'm cheating a bit and including them even if they've already posted:
Amy Sonnichsen
Emily King
Jolene Perry
Ilima Todd
Krista Van Dolzer 

Rules of The Next Big Thing:

*Use this format for your post
*Answer the ten questions about your current WIP (work in progress)
*Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them.

Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing:

What is your working title of your book?
Where did the idea come from for the book?
What genre does your book fall under?
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? May we see an intro?
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

The brilliance of Graceling, a bloghop and a winner

 Thanks to everyone who stopped by last week and voted in an informal poll. I had to take it off my blog due to a weird formatting glitch but the results were helpful.

 Tied for first place was diagramming of successful YA, and a fun bloghop. For the next several Mondays, I'll be examining passages from popular YA books (if you have a title suggestion, let me know) and preparing for a Most Embarrassing Writing Moment bloghop sometime in July.  I need a co-host or three. It'll be a one-day hop with a People's Choice prize-to-be-determined. If you're interested in co-hosting, email me.

Random.org choose Michelle of Books on the Run to receive an ARC of ARTICLE 5. Yay! Michelle, I'll be emailing you soon.

Now, on to examining the brilliance that is Kristen Cashore's Graceling...
I first read this book as an ARC when I was working in a middle school library in 2009. The cover caught me first - that shiny, glinting sword with the girl's eye peering out at me. And then the blurb mentioning a female spy/fighter who was Graced with kick ass power.  (I mean that literally: Katsa is able to kick anyone's ass.) Right away, Cashore appealed to the latent ass-kicker in me because even though I've never been in a physical fight in my life, that hasn't meant part of me didn't want to be. I'm just too small (and too smart) to pit myself against the odds. My teeth are fine where they are, thank you. But if I could kick ass with impunity...well, then, BRING IT ON.
So I was hooked enough to flip open the cover. The first paragraph is all about setting - the dungeon, the smell of moss and damp, the feel of cold stone and flickering torch light. As a reader, I love tactile hints of setting  - they draw me in, give my brain lots of clues to trick myself into going into that hypnotic state only good writers create. But Cashore doesn't stay here long. She tells me in the third paragraph why we're here: Katsa has been sent for the guards. It was for them she was sent first.

As a reader, I'm wonder what the heck that means and turn the page. Katsa dispatches four guards before amazement had even registered in their eyes. There was only one more guard, sitting before the cell bars at the end of the corridor. He scrambled to his feet and slid his sword from his sheath. Katsa walked toward him, certain the the torch at her back hid her face, and particularly her eyes, from his sight. She measured his size, the way he moved, the steadiness of the arm that held the sword toward her.
"Stop there. It's clear enough what you are." His voice was even. He was brave, this one. He cut the air with his sword, in warning. "You don't frighten me."
He lunged toward her. She ducked under his blade and whirled her foot out, clipping his temple. He dropped to the ground.

Cashore shows me four things in this short piece of writing. (There would be five if I'd included the first two graphs of setting but I didn't want to make this post super long.)
BLUE - character building -  Katsa is a fast and efficient fighter. She's been trained and she doesn't waste time.
GREEN - play to engage reader sympathy - Katsa notices the guard's behavior with approval; it shows us both her business-like attitude and her fairness. It's important we root for her despite her ass-kicking abilities and showing us her other qualities makes us like her. A few sentences later, this impression is reinforced when she treats the knocked-out guards gently.
YELLOW - backstory/worldbuilding. Her eyes give away what she is, although her attempt to hide this from her next opponent isn't successful. He's guessed it from everything that's just happened. This tells us that her ability is widely recognized and feared in her world.
RED  - mystery. Why does she hide what she is? It isn't for her protection (she obviously needs none) so I have to read on to figure it out.
Cashore does all this in less than 500 words. Her writing is tightly designed to give your brain all the tools it needs to stay engaged - setting, sympathy, intrigue, mystery, a hint of a world to explore. This is exactly what agents are talking about when they say: write tight, keep it moving, hook me fast.

What are some other examples of great opening scenes?