There will be a giveaway on this blog!

Yes, you read that right. I will soon be doing a giveaway on this blog, based on the fabbity fab Unsung YA Heroes Project! I am looking to feature some authors here, so if you or a friend are one of the authors featured in my previous post and want to help me out, leave me a comment and I'll send you an email!

If you're a reader of this blog who just wants in on the giveaway action (duh, that's what I'd be interested in), keep watching The Tart. IT WILL COME. In the mean time, check out these videos, as I am now addicted to video blogging:

Distractions are my friend. That's what I'll keep telling myself.

Okay. So I've been neglecting this blog again and I 'm going to tell myself that it's because I've been in my revisions cave. Funny how my revisions cave looks EXACTLY like my living room. And who put these cats here? Jeez.

But you know, it's hard to stay in the revisions cave. Sometimes really shiny things come up. Today I spent a good amount of time working on the playlist for the main character in MYSELF BEHIND MYSELF (formerly called HISTORY) so that I could revise when I was done. But what did I do when I was done? I IMed my friend James to tell him what I was doing and then when he said he wanted to see my awesome playlist (it is awesome) I told him I would put it up on last.fm. And when I finished putting that one up, I put all my project playlists up. And uploaded art. Fun!

Oh yes, it is super fun to procrastinate by making pretend cover art for your books. I shared some for previous projects in a past blog post, but here is my mock cover for 1999. Look! It's so colorful and cute! I used free stock art from sites like morguefile.com and deviantart.com.

I also counted all the swear words in MYSELF BEHIND MYSELF. Why? Because I can. Scrivener -- a writing program that, incidentally, changed my life -- has a text statistics option that lets you count how many times you use certain words. MYSELF BEHIND MYSELF drops 28 F bombs in it's third draft. There are 31 variations of shit and 7 instances of taking Jesus' name in vain, including 3 where Christ is included. I am sad to say, right this second, there are no douches. I will work on that.

This option also allowed me to tell my mother, upon sending her the first draft for 1999, that this book has much more swearing than my previous manuscript and that I didn't want to hear about how offensive it is. She claims she can handle it. But you'll be happy to know it has 3 creative uses of douche/douchebag. My characters, apparently, have potty mouths. Unlike ANYONE I know...

I've been watching Olympic hockey games and telling myself that I can totally watch and revise at the same time but OH NO WE ARE SLAUGHTERING RUSSIA GO TEAM USA. Right. Women's hockey rules, and instead of actually getting any work done, I'm generating ideas for new books while screaming at the television. Also, this week my buddy Kyle explained curling to me in such a comprehensive manner that I mostly understand it and can now watch the sport with interest. Crap.

And of course there's one of the best excuses in the world: my cat is sitting on my manuscript. I know, this is right up there with "my dog ate my homework." But, you know, sometimes the truth is the truth. I mean, look. Turkleton is a very needy cat. He spends a lot of time vying for my attention, always in contention with this strange laptop machine that I'm always staring at and clicking on. When he can actually, physically PWN his rival, he's going to do it. (Telemachus, for those of you wondering, doesn't care if I'm writing, as long as I give him his own pen to chew on. Much easier to deal with.) Let's also take the time to note that, in his spare time, Turkleton also likes to sit on my phone, my keys, books I have open and am trying to read, and my arms while I'm trying to type.

Naturally there's also this classic distraction, the internet. Between micro-blogging on Twitter and this long and rambling post I'm writing right now, the web is a fun distraction that sucks up a lot of time. Of course, it is useful procrastination, right? Twitter is a great resource for meeting and chatting with other authors and industry professionals. And this insight into the glamorous life of being a yet-unpublished-YA-author is sure to, uh, help someone else along, right? And sometimes I even research things like chupacabras and 1990s pop culture items that have escaped my memory.

Hey, at least I haven't turned on my TV yet today. And it's not like YOU'RE writing right this second, are you? That's what I thought.

The Dynamic is All to Boom

Recently, my boyfriend and I watched that episode of The Simpsons where Milhouse and his mom move to Capital City and Milhouse goes all bling bling and Bart is instantaneously lonely. I've never had my best friend move away before. Until Amelia left.

I moved to Austin last month, just in time to catch some quality time with my best friend, Amelia, before she moved back to her home state of Arizona. This move occurred on Friday. Amelia, the trooper, drove all 900 miles in one day. And I rode the bus wearing my "Where the heck is Copperas Cove, TX? t-shirt that Amelia brought me from her now former town.


I found myself at some of the places Amelia and I went the first time I came to Austin, and looking for her favorite ice cream flavor (Vosges Naga - a curry flavor - weird but delicious!) at Whole Foods. I couldn't write about it. Standing at the bus stop I texted her:

"Some jerk is taking up the whole bus stop bench with his leg."
"Lame!"
"Ew now he moved and his fat hairy crack is falling out of his pants!"
"Better crack than junk!"
"Toats."

The bus was late. It was just after rush hour. A long trail of traffic stretched down Lamar from the stop light. Two old men in a pick up truck were waving and moving their lips. In New York I would have ignored them, but apparently in Texas talking to strangers on the side of the road is totally normal and almost expected. I took off my headphones.

"Take 190 from I35!"
"That's...true"

Before the traffic moved, I told the old man about Amelia and he told me that she was lucky, and gave Cove the thumbs-down. I texted her again.

"Some old dude in a truck saw me at the bus stop and gave me directions to Cove."
"Oman laffo!"
"Srs. He said you're lucky!"
"Don't I know it!"

And she is. She's going back to Arizona where her family is, and a lot of her friends. She'll have people to help her with her little girl while her husband is in Iraq.

On Thursday night, before the Great Escape from Texas, we had our last hurrahs. Mark took us to the Alamo Drafthouse to see Be Kind, Rewind - it was hilarious and sentimental, and artsy enough to quell Mark (who is just about the biggest movie snob ever). We found our friends Katy and Sarah (like little sisters to Amelia and I both) and frolicked on 6th street. I watched her almost lick the building that houses Emo's, a very scenester nightclub that Amelia never actually made it to during her time here. We shared a peach-flavored cigarette from Sarah's 75-cent pack (don't tell my gran. I don't really smoke). We laughed at the skinny sorority girls wearing their teeny tiny uniforms. We let her dogs out in my yard, where they peed on my fence. And, in the morning, she came in to wake me up, told me that I didn't have to get out of bed, and said goodbye to my cats, and then to me.

I miss her.

Star Power

I really only allow myself to read gossip magazines in two places: the hair salon, and the airport. But the internet spews the same information at me constantly. My room mate introduced me to Perez Hilton several months ago, and I'm guilty of checking his website about once every two weeks. Sorry Perez, but you bring my faith in humanity way down.

This man is famous for drawing fake coke and cum on photos of celebrities who may or may not be down on their luck. Regular parts of his vocabulary are "fugly," "pAArty," "hot mess," and "hag," not to mention his juvenile, dirogetory nicknames for his favorite celebs (i.e. Mischa Barton = Mushy Fartone and Britney = Unfitney). Hilton's escapades have moved from his blog to YouTube (his channel is mostly him going over his own personal life and dancing for the camera), a show on VH1, and, apparently, guest appearances on various other media outlets. At least Paris Hilton is famous for being famous, not bringing her peers down. I don't think I could live with myself if I centered my life around the downfalls of others.

So apparently Britney Spears is so addicted to fame that she goes looking for paparazzi. I wonder if she would have dug such a hole for herself if Perez and his colleagues hadn't given her the shovel.

At this point Perez can make or break a new artist by mentioning him on his website. This is a power to lift up, so I can't comprehend why he instead chooses to — with such unwavering joy! — make one destructive post after another.

Yeah, I read it. But I find that, generally, tales of celebrities' personal problems just make me disillusioned at best. I did, however, find this satirical celebrity gossip blog, that doesn't have the same attitude problem as Perez. Should I feel the need to feed the celeb goss cravings, I feel a little less guilty there than at perezhilton.com.

Hug Your Mail Man (or Woman)

I can really understand why postal workers are so grumpy. They do what I've been avoiding my whole life: dealing directly with the public. I was at the post office today and the line was a slow-moving fifteen people deep when I walked in. Some of these people had children with them, one of which was running wild, playing with the stamp machine and one of the mailboxes.

I don't know about where you live, but where I live, the postal workers are all behind double panes of bullet-proof glass. You speak through an intercom, and any time you give them something (or vice versa) you open your side of the window to place the item on the counter and after you close your side, they open theirs to retrieve your goods. National security at its finest.

So you can see, perhaps, why the line of customers moves slower than molasses in January. Mailing a letter requires quite the rigmarole - opening and closing windows, etc. - and if you're the attendant dealing with a cranky old woman (my neighborhood has its share) who can't hear or can't lift the heavy glass or just feels like being difficult, it's going to take that much longer, and you're going to wish that much harder for a freak tornado/tsunami/nuclear explosion to blow up your postal district.

Enter my new best friend, the Automated Postal Center. The APC, or, as I like to call him, the MailBot, is a lovely little machine that I've seen in several post offices that will do almost everything a human postal worker can do without any attitude or security systems. And, in my neck of the woods, there's never a a line. There was one man in front of me today, and the only other time I've had to wait was so that the receipt paper could be replaced. So, why on earth would you wait in that long line to mail a letter when, using your debit or credit card, you can purchase stamps, weigh and mail a package, and purchase delivery confirmation or insurance.

I'm in the post office every week at least once. I mail out submissions to lit journals like a well-oiled machine. On top of this I have friends all over the globe, not to mention a boyfriend in Texas and a wee sister at her first year in college up in Maine. Care packages are necessary. The MailBot gets me. He doesn't judge the amount of mail I send — though I'm sure the mail carrier considers it odd that I receive so many small manila envelopes addressed to me in tag-like print (my goofy handwriting) without any return label (rejection letters). And the MailBot is just so fun to use! With a touch screen and perfect postage you can affix yourself, there's nothing better. Except, well, a lot of things. But, as an individual obsessed with mail, I have to give props.

And let's give those postal workers a break, eh? They have to deal with plenty of stooges every day. I'm sure they love the MailBot, too.