A big news day!

In big news...

I'm excited to announce that I'm part of a great group blog for debuting authors--The Debutante Ball! I've been a fan of the debs since their very first book release in 2007, and I'm excited to be the first YA author on the roster.

Here's the link to the official announcement: Announcing the Debutante Ball Class of 2009

So starting in early September, I'll be posting there every Tuesday on a variety of topics. Please join me there. It's a fun group, very interactive. Even as a commenter, I was welcomed from the day I started posting, which was neat. And my fellow 2009 debutantes have some amazing books coming out. I'm honored that my little ghost story is part of the mix.

I also get to be the techie gal, which for some reason has me slightly geeked (that's a good thing).

Also in big news, you can now pre-order BAD GIRLS DON'T DIE on Amazon.com!

Buy it at Amazon.com

Buy it at Amazon.ca (for the Canucks)

I'll announce other outlets and add the link to the "purchase" page as it appears (Powell's, B&N, Borders, etc.).

Can I take this opportunity to remind you to check out the shopping page at GoodSearch? It's called GoodShop, and you select a charity from their list and then click the link to whatever site you wish to shop from. (Amazon and B&N are definitely included.) A great opportunity to give something back.

In small news:

* Winston is fine. Not 100% fine, but when does that ever happen? Yesterday at the beach, he was maniacally chasing his frisbee and he landed funny or pulled something and acted like his left leg was totally lame for about 10 seconds. I scooped him up and ran him back to my friend's house, and by the time we got there, he was fine. Apparently this sometimes happens to couch potato dogs who chase things maniacally. The only thing he was upset about was having to leave the beach. He did recover well enough to win the "tricks" contest at obedience class. Represent!

* Still no digital camera, and therefore no owl bag. I'm getting worried that this owl bag is waaay overhyped, LOL. I should probably embellish it or Bedazzle it. (I was going to add a link to a Bedazzler website, but the official site immediately starts playing a horribly loud video, and I can't do that to you.) For Mary Whitsell: a Bedazzler is a small contraption used by people who feel their clothing needs more rhinestones.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

k.

Bad Girls Don't Die: presenting... the cover!

Let me start by saying, I love my cover! My designer is a brilliant woman at Hyperion named Beth Clark. She took the design in a totally different direction than lesser folks (me) would have thought to do. She really brought out the spooky, gothic side. I first saw this a couple of months ago, and it took my breath away. I loved it instantly, which was amazing, because as an author, you hear all these horror stories about hideous covers.

But none of that here--I loved it, Agent M loved it, and I hope you like it!

(Click the image to look at a larger version, if you're interested.)



This is an exciting week... I'm supposed to be getting my ARCs (advanced review copies) soon, too! And I realized yesterday that today is the one-year anniversary of my working with the Delightful Editor. And tomorrow is my birthday! And the dog show is super busy! And I'm going to need more coffee! And more exclamation marks!!!! *collapses*

PS - Thank you all for your kindness regarding Winston's illness. He actually had a rough weekend (and so, therefore, did we), but if you have to pick a weekend to sit inside with your dog and not leave the house, it might as well be the weekend with record-breaking heat. He's very much on the mend now.

I'm going to finish this draft if I have to step on a hundred leprechauns to do it.

Somehow, the amount of words I'm writing hasn't decreased; it's just that the book keeps getting longer. I am long past (well, 5000 words past) my initial estimate of 60,000 words. I will probably finish up this draft in the neighborhood of 73k, and then by weeding out some subplots that died on the vine, I should be able to get things back to 70k before revising.

I'm sorry to be all missing and stuff, and thanks for all of the encouraging comments. Welcome especially to the new commenters, who have entered the fray right when I'm feeling least likely to win Miss Congeniality. I promise to be better soon.

In the meantime, I have had a lot of excitement in my life this week:

* I don't care who that governor's prostitute is, but somehow I know everything about her, including her name and, via some brilliant news headline, that she "left her apartment". Oh, thank you! Now my day can proceed.

* Winston likes celery. I slice off little moons and feed it to him, and the noise he makes while eating it is about the cutest thing you can imagine. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

* I submitted a complaint to Yahoo! News yesterday about a rather disturbing photo that was kind of shuffled in with a few of their news slideshows. In my complaint, I tried to have the attitude of, "Look, I'm a big girl, but this is inappropriate." I received a response today apologizing for any inconvenience the matter caused me. I find that really funny, for some reason.

Oh, and under "book news"...

* Bad Girls Don't Die probably has a cover! I've seen it and I looooooove it. Agent M has seen it and he looooooves it. The sales people at Hyperion have seen it, and they loooooove it. I'm not sure when I can share, but it's so pretty and ominous, not what I was expecting at all. (My expectations were limited by the scope of my design ability.) And it says my name!

I'm off to write. I just figured out a couple of obstacles that were sorely needed at this point in the story. I'm really looking forward to being done with this draft so I can move on to all of the wonderful alternative activities suggested to me in the comments of the last post.

Happy Friday!

The other near-the-end-of-the-first-draft fear.

What on earth am I going to do when I finish this draft? I'm a firm believer that things need at minimum a couple of weeks' cooling off period. Which is exactly how much time I have off from work. Which is bad news bears, because I'm going to make myself crazy feeling like I'm supposed to be writing something.

Now that Bad Girls Don't Die is out of copyedits (as of today! yay! and the notes were really minimal, so we did them over the phone), I don't have rushed revisions of that to work on. I could rush back into AW, the project I dumped to work on Project X. Or I could spend two blissful weeks sewing.

I'm feeling a little lost, to be honest. I guess I'll work it out when I get there. There's always laundry to do.

Ladies and gentlemen... we have a title!

All good things must come to an end. The Girl Least Likely was a great title. It served me well.

Actually, I didn't really love it at first. I slapped it on the book because someone told me my old title was taken. As time went by, it grew on me. When the book sold, the Lovely Editor suggested we look for a title that sounds less "ugly duckling turns Prom Queen" and more "wow, my little sister is homicidal."

We made lists. Lists and lists and lists. And tried to think of scary words.

As I went through this exhausting process, I decided to add some humor to the situation by making a joke suggestion* on my list. Ha ha ha. Katie funny. Ha ha ha! Nothing soothes the burden of reading a list of blisteringly bad title suggestions like a good old-fashioned joke.

A week later, I got a call from the Lovely Editor. Response from the many mysterious Powers That Be At Hyperion was overwhelmingly in favor of one title.

Can you guess which one?

That's right.

The joke title.

Ha ha ha!

After I got over the surprise, I did as Dr. Phil suggests and wore the decision around for a while. I drew on my previous experience to remind myself that things have a way of growing on me. And it did. Then when the Delightful Editor took over and we continued to make adjustments to the book, I thought maybe something solid might come out of the new stuff. But who were we kidding? There can be no pretenders to this throne.

And so, with only minimal further ado... the new title is...

Bad Girls Don't Die, by Katie Alender.

...or do they?

To learn the answer to this and many more of life's most pressing questions, you will have to buy my book next April. Preferably in both hardback and audiobook. You could also buy the ebook, if one comes out, and any foreign editions. And save some pennies for the paperback release. Deal?

* The joke was: "(sung to the tune of...)" Hey, I never said it was a good joke.

PS - I still claim The Girl Least Likely. Paws off, you dirty dogs!

Not a rocket scientist, other news.

If you should find yourself halfway through eating a turkey burger and you should pause and think, "Gee, I'm so full already, I should just stop now!"...

Stop. Stop right at that moment.

Do not finish the burger.
Do not eat more french fries, especially in that horrible way that involves grabbing multiple fries at once, because heaven knows the container might implode before you have time to eat them all, so better hurry it up.
Do not do these things.
I beg you.

If time travel becomes possible, I would like Future Katie to print this out, then go back to 1:42 p.m. and hand it to Past Katie.

In other news...

* Someone is discussing politics, really loud, in the office. Boo, hiss.

* We are down to minor tweaks on TGLL. It will, God willing, go to copyedits early next week. I hope the copyeditors notice that when I saw their notes on the old pre-Delightful Editor version, I tried to pay attention to the things they changed and change them all myself. I hope they are like, "OMG! Squee! Someone knows how to use em-dashes!" Also on this subject, it is amazing how editors have the ability to switch minor things around in a way that would make a fireworks-watching crowd go, "Ooooooh... Ahhhhhh."

* It seems like 2008 is off to a good start for many people. I think this is going to be a big year. I hope everyone is enjoying it so far. I have big plans. I'm going to sew some cool stuff and try to write another book or something. I also want to stop eating turkeyburgers by the bushel. Also, a website redesign looms.

* For those of you interested in spinning Scrabble boards

Okay, I'm actually at work trying to bust through the dog show. But I had to share these important facts.

Maybe I should move to the Yukon.

Because this week is not a good week to be a resident of Los Angeles.

Here's a little gem to turn your stomach: L.A. workers use gift cards meant for foster children.

I take on the dark and stormy night.

Nobody guessed my newsbit, but that's okay. I'll share anyhow.

The results of the 2007 Bulwer-Lytton "Worst First Line" contest are posted, and I know you all can't wait to see... (drum roll)... my dishonorable mention! Yes, I received a nod in the Detective category, and props to Amber for doing the same under Purple Prose. (Amber is the world's best beta reader -- hands off, she's mine -- and I don't actually know if she's aware she placed, because the internet gods have been frowning on her.)

In the spirit of representation, I thought I should include this link to a defense of Mr. Bulwer-Lytton.

The poor man's name aside, I have loved this contest for years, but it only just occurred to me this year to try my hand at the craft of writing bad sentences (*** on purpose). I was excited to hear I'd won a spot on the results page, although they did actually, in posting my vile sentence, correct my character's poor grammar, which I found highly perplexing. For my character Juliette, whose long and complicated past no doubt includes dancing on some sort of pole and rubbing silk hankies across the foreheads of octogenarians, would certainly misuse "whom" by substituting it for a plain old correct "who".

The gods at San Jose State did not agree.

Anyway, I thought I would post that for your reading pleasure. There are always a couple that make me just about fall out of my chair.

Here's my favorite from last year:

"Captain Burton stood at the bow of his massive sailing ship, his weathered face resembling improperly cured leather that wouldn't even be used to make a coat or something."
Bryan Semrow
Oshkosh, WI

Got a favorite from the new batch? Post it in the comments here!

The one where I realize what a nerd I am.

** A teensy bitlet of cool news tomorrow... like, really teensy... maybe only cool to me! A Moody Coaster and pop panties to anyone who can figure it out before I post it. **

(I mean teensy like teeny-tiny... nothing about a book deal or being accepted as a contestant on Project Runway -- not that I've applied -- or anything like that.)

I'm not going to blog about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, because many have done it before me and better. I finished it last Sunday and I thought it was pretty good. Especially considering all that Ms. Rowling was up against -- how much information she had to share. Man, I want to sell enough books to be a billionaire. That would be cool. Even a ten-millionaire would probably be good enough to keep me from complaining.

So this won't be a long post. We're actually going to try to see the new Harry Potter (ha ha ha, first I typed "Pooter", I'm such a fourth-grader at heart) movie.

One of the great features of Los Angeles is the presence of our fantastic outdoor amphitheatres. There are four that I know of within ten miles of my house. No, five. I've only been to two -- the Hollywood Bowl and the Greek. Just this past Thursday night, we went to the Greek to see Lyle Lovett and his Large Band. kd lang opened, which was awesome. She has The Voice, in my opinion.

Lyle and his band put on a great show. He is the consummate performer -- he makes you feel like you're in good hands. The lighting was gorgeous, the musicians were grand, the repartee was clever.

See, despite whatever else we have or don't have in LA, we don't have mosquitoes. And we do have a desert climate that means all but the hottest of days will cool into a criminally pleasant evening.

So if you're ever here in the summer, I exhort you: go to the Hollywood Bowl. Or the Greek. Or the Ford. Or the Starlight Bowl. Or that one at Universal Studios.

Oh! And, while at the Greek, I had one of those rare moments of self awareness. I saw a woman at the condiment station wearing a jacket that seemed to be made out of one of those Franklin Mint throw blankets. The back was a full-color illustration of a Papillon (a small, active toy breed whose ears resemble the wings of a butterfly).

I thought to myself, "Oh, dear. Now here's a character for you. A woman who goes to a Lyle Lovett concert wearing a jacket with a picture of a dog on the back."

And then I paused.

And then I realized that I was wearing my hoodie that Sue made for me.

And here is what Sue screen-printed on the back of that hoodie:



That's all.

It's true what they say, I'm more interesting now.

Current mood: pleased
Category: Writing and Poetry

I'll try to stick to the facts: about four and a half years ago, I started writing a young adult fiction book, and today, someone bought it. So in a year and a half, you can buy it at the store and find out if the brilliantly scripted dog shows are a fluke or not.

Special thanks to Matt (Matthew), not only an arts school reject but also my agent. And I'm starting to think there's a lot to be said for arts school rejects.