Lists

Hello TFC, my name is Amanda Ashby and yes, I have been missing in action for many, many months but now I'm back and I promise that I won't go wandering off again for so long! Of course I do have lots of lovely excuses but listening to my woes of moving countries and crowd surfing through bureaucratic red tape probably isn't anyone's idea of a fun time so instead I'll just give you all some Cyber Skittles and promise to do better!

So now that I've dusted off my long forgotten rota, I can see that the topic is about Lists. Which is totally fine for you A-type folk out there but what about people like me who can't even decide what their favorite chocolate bar is (though I've narrowed it down to three, which I think is jolly good going). But, because I'm feeling remorseful I'm going to give it a go and come up with a list. Let's call it:

Amanda's List of Small Crimes That Shouldn't Annoy Her But They Do*

(*please try not to judge me too harshly for what you are about to read)

1) When the checkout person at the supermarket who is meant to be scanning my magazines stops to read them.

Nooooooooooooooooooo. This should be illegal. It's wrong on so many levels. Oh, and I'm not talking when they just glance at the headlines and comment on someone's haircut, this is more a stop work and flick through it and START READING IT. And honestly, if this had only happened once then perhaps I would be more forgiving, but no, it happens All The Time so my payback is putting at the top of this list (see how they are now all quivering in fear)

2)Husbands who refuse to learn where light bulbs are kept (also applies to cutlery, towels, scissors and sticky tape) (also only applies to one husband in particular)

Actually, I have no words for this one. If you live in a house and are over the age of five you can learn where things are kept. It's that simple.

3) Anyone who says 'can I ask you a question?'

Actually, if I wasn't feeling so grumpy about the magazine business, this one would be at the top of the list because it drives me nuts. Why waste a question with another question? It's wrong (plus stupid because I will naturally always answer 'no'). TV and movies use this lame piece of dialogue all the time and if anyone who is reading this has also used it, then 'I'm sorry, I love you, but please, for my sanity consider deleting it next time it appears on the screen!'

4) People who try and phone me when one of my favorite TV shows are on.

Anyone who knows me knows that I will not answer the phone when I'm watching a show so therefore it stands to reason that if you are ringing me, then you don't know me so I'm perfectly entitled to let the machine pick it up. The only exception to this rule is when Sara Hantz texts me so that we can pass judgement on Australian X-Factor. I'm down with that!

5) Bananas

Just because I really hate them and tend to blame them for pretty much everything that goes wrong in the world. Not only are they a displeasing color and shape but that squishy noise they make when people are eating them is just a world of no.

Of course being an indecisive person, this list will change by tomorrow (or even in ten minutes) but for now they are definitely the main offenders!

So what about everyone else, what is a small crime that annoys you, even though it shouldn't!!!!

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Good News Friday...continues!

As Friday leaves down under and enters Northern America, the good news continues!

Thanks to Amanda for the lovely shout out about my newest release! I'm thrilled to announce that my new young adult novel, MY LIFE UNDECIDED releases THIS week! And I'm very proud to be sharing such a kick-arse release week with Amanda Ashby and Alyson Noel (hands down two of the coolest peeps I know!)

Below is a book summary for MY LIFE UNDECIDED and the aforementioned (by Amanda!) "movie-style" book trailer that I produced for it! I hope you all enjoy!

BOOK TRAILER:



BOOK SUMMARY (From the Inside Flap):

PLEASE READ THIS! MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!

Okay, maybe that was a bit melodramatic, but I’m sorry, I’m feeling a bit melodramatic at the moment.

Here’s the deal. My name is Brooklyn Pierce, I’m fifteen years old, and I am decisionally challenged. Seriously, I can’t remember the last good decision I made. I can remember plenty of crappy ones though. Including that party I threw when my parents were out of town that accidentally burned down a model home. Yeah, not my finest moment, for sure.

But see, that’s why I started a blog. To enlist readers to make my decisions for me. That’s right. I’m gave up. Threw in the towel. I let someone else be the one to decide which book I read for English. Or whether or not I accepted an invitation to join the debate team from that cute-in-a-dorky-sort-of-way guy who gave me the Heimlich Maneuver in the cafeteria. (Note to self: Chew the melon before swallowing it.) I even let them decide who I dated!

Well, it turns out there are some things in life you simply can’t choose or have chosen for you—like who you fall in love with. And now everything’s more screwed up than ever.

But don’t take my word for it, read the book and decide for yourself. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll scream in frustration. Or maybe that’s just me. After all, it’s my life.

EARLY REVIEWS:

"Brooklyn is a sympathetic protagonist with whom teens will identify. Her journey is fun to read, and decision-challenged readers will learn an important lesson about self-acceptance along the way."
--School Library Journal

 

"Brody taps into a universal human desire...An amusing coming-of-age story with many funny moments...[Brooklyn's] flustered, off-the-cuff narration should keep readers as invested in her actions as her blog followers are."
--Publisher's Weekly

 

Thanks everyone for sharing my Good News Friday! 

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The Tale of an Abused Tee-Shirt

Hey everyone! It's Embarrassing Tales week at the Teen Fiction Cafe and mine comes all the way back from the first grade! Now, mind you, that's not to say that I haven't had plenty of embarrassing stories since then (trust me, I have...and one of them features me at a Spice Girls concert in London surrounded by fifty thousand screaming pre-teens half my age, but we'll save that for another time. And maybe Amanda Ashby can chime in on that story! LOL!)

But anyway, I digress. The reason I'm reaching way back into the first grade for my embarrassing tale is because this one has somehow stuck with me all these years as one of the most humiliating moments of my life. And as I think about it now, I realize, yes, it's not all that bad, but put in the context of a six year old's point of view, I can understand (and I hope you can too) why it's still ingrained in my memory all these countless years later. So here it goes:

In first grade, right after lunch, we had something called "quiet hour." And yes, it was exactly as it sounds. One hour of quiet time. No, we didn't have to sleep or put our heads on our desks (that was for Kinder gardeners!) but we did have to do something quiet. Now that I'm grown and have close friends who are elementary school teachers, I realize that this "quiet hour" was more for my teachers than it was for me and my classmates. But alas, there I was, drawing very quietly at my desk.

Well, for a six year old, an entire hour of doing nothing but being quiet is a very difficult task. So not surprisingly, I grew a little bored. And what does this six year old decide to do when she gets bored? She brilliantly decides she's going to try to pull one arm out the top of her shirt (as in out the neckline). Just to see if she can.

And voila! She can. So there I am, sitting at my desk with one entire arm sharing the neck hole of my shirt with my head. But it doesn't stop there. Oh no. Why would it? Because now that I've proven I can accomplish this seemingly impressive task, I think to myself, "Well, if I can put one arm through my neck hole, then how cool would it be to put two arms through?!" So I set off to conquer this new and even more impressive challenge. Maneuvering and twisting and turning and wedging and pushing (all very quietly of course) until hoorah! I've done it! I've gotten both arms through the neck hole of my poor, stretched out, abused little tee-shirt. So now I'm sitting there at my desk with the neckline of my shirt sitting just under my collar bone and my two bare arms as free as the wind.

Until I realize...hmmm...I feel a little naked right now.

And hmmm....some people are starting to look at me quite strangely.

Aren't they impressed with my accomplishment? Don't they see what an Everest I've just climbed by successfully tackling this feat?

Apparently not. Instead, they would seem to think it's rather humorous. Because they're starting to giggle. And point. And whisper to neighbors.

Fine then. If they can't appreciate this totally awesome thing that I've just done, I'll just have to put my shirt back the way it was.

And so I go to put the first arm back into its proper place. Except it won't go. I can't even get so much as a finger nail back into that neckline. The shirt has been stretched so tightly, there's no possible way I can jam my entire arm back in there. I'm totally stuck. And suddenly feeling like I'm in one of those bad dreams where you're trying to run but you're feet weigh a thousand pounds a piece and so all you can do is just stand there and struggle helplessly.

And now everyone has turned to look. The entire class has been made aware of my current predicament and they're all staring at me and laughing. And quiet hour is no longer quiet. It's now a riotous comedy hour and I'm the unwilling comedian. And still...no matter how hard I struggle, that shirt is pretty much stuck around my chest. My only option would be to pull the entire thing up over my head or down around my waist, but then I'd be sitting there completely topless and that is definitely not an option. (Never mind the fact that only two short years ago I was shamelessly running around front yards and paddling pools with no clothes on at all.)

My face is flushed red. I can feel all the blood flowing to my head. The humiliation is sinking in deep. Deep enough to linger all the way into adulthood where I can still tap into it and effortlessly reel out the shame and translate it to letters as I write this post.

Fortunately, the teacher eventually did notice my situation and escorted me to the bathroom where she kindly helped disentangle me from my mutilated shirt. Needless to say, that shirt went straight into the garbage the moment I got home. It's too bad, too. I really liked that shirt. And when my mom asked me why I was throwing away a perfectly good item of clothing, I just shrugged and tried to act completely nonchalant as I told her, "It doesn't fit anymore."

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"The Zombies Are Coming!"

Hi TFC Readers!

I've been gone on a little writing hiatus that involved much hair-pulling, nail biting, and massive amounts of Fresh Vanilla Cafe. Now I've come up for a breather and since this week's topic is Reading, I just had to share about the fun book I read by our very own Amanda Ashby--Zombie Queen of Newbury High coming out March 5th!

Here's the blurb:

Quiet, unpopular, non-cheerleading Mia is blissfully happy. She is dating super hot football god Rob, and he actually likes her and asked her to prom! Enter Samantha-cheerleading goddess and miss popularity- who starts making a move for Rob. With prom in a few days, Mia needs to act fast. So she turns to her best friend, Candice, and decides to do a love spell on Rob. Unfortunately, she ends up inflicting a zombie virus onto her whole class, making herself their leader! At first she is flattered that everyone is treating her like a queen. But then zombie hunter hottie Chase explains they are actually fattening her up, because in a few days, Mia will be the first course in their new diet. She's sure she and Chase can figure something out, but she suggests that no one wear white to prom, because things could get very messy.

Sound like your kind of read? It was for me too! This is what I have to say about it:

"Zombie Queen of Newbury High is where popularity can turn you undead (with an unsettling appetite) and Prom will be a little dangerous this year. Amanda Ashby moves into the YA world with snapping prose and an entertaining high school mix of teen crushes, popularity drama, and a zombie squad. Zombies beware--you'll love to follow the twists and turns of this fresh and fun novel!"

And Amanda is like having the coolest blog launch party coming soon! Check out the vid... Be there or be eaten! (No, just kidding about the eaten part...but definitely be there! *wink*)

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So, it’s all about reading this week at the Café, and—full confession alert—I haven’t done much in the way of pleasure reading in the last . . .oh, year or so. . .

Now that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the books that I’ve read—because I have—immensely in fact. It’s more that most of them have been of the non-fiction, researchy, type, which is not quite the same as curling up with a really good story you can’t wait to sink into.

Though I was lucky enough to get an early read of Courtney Summers’s debut novel, CRACKED UP TO BE, which was so completely awesome you must go out and buy it immediately!! Seriously. My blurb did not do it justice. And, if I can ever get UNTITLED IMMORTALS BOOK #3 (catchy title, huh?!) finished, then I could finally dive into Amanda Ashby’s ZOMBIE QUEEN OF NEWBERRY HIGH that is taunting me from the top of my TBR pile, and that I can tell just from looking must also be purchased immediately!!

So while, I’d love to compile a list of all the books I’ve loved and read in ’08, as my TBR piles (yes, they are plural now!), attest, I’m just not the woman for the job.

But maybe YOU are. In which case, if you read a lot of books, and you're a teen, then you should head on over to TeensRead.com and cast your vote for the CBC’s Best Books of 2008, Teen Choice Book Award contest. The list of nominated titles is long and illustrious, and I’m happy to say that CRUEL SUMMER is on it!!

So make sure to visit sometime before Jan 31, and vote for your top five favorites. All you have to do to get started is click HERE.

Happy Voting Everyone!!
Alyson

Enter an enchanting new world where true love never dies . . .
THE IMMORTALS, an exciting new series, in stores 02.03.09
EVERMORE- 5 Star Gold Award TeensReadToo, 4 STARS Romantic Times, TOP CHOICE AWARD-Flamingnet
BLUE MOON- 08.04.09
& three more titles in 2010
www.alysonnoel.com

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Tell Me 'Bout It

Following in the footsteps of my fellow Teen Fiction Café patron, Amanda Ashby, here’s the thing about me and current events- I’m not really all that up on them. Oh sure I saw a brief clip of Britney lip synching in a black bikini, heard something about OJ getting cuffed, did a little happy dance when Ricky Gervais (genius creator of my fave TV show “The Office”) won an Emmy for the equally brilliant “Extras” (even though I didn’t actually watch the Emmys), but for the most part, well, I’m working. And when I’m working, the only current events are my own.

Like Saturday, when I helped my husband load a refrigerator onto a rented truck, only to sit in traffic forever (welcome to California!), so I could get home, do a quick change, and follow my BFF to four different parties (just another Saturday night for her- totally exhausting for me), making for a bleary eyed Sunday morning when we had to wrangle said fridge out of the truck and into the house.

Oh yeah, and last week I went here---

Donated Saving Zoë to the local library in memory of a dear friend (as I do with all of my books)

And had an overall, amazing time!

But now I hear that Michael Douglas learned how to operate a backhoe and spent time at Costco (a first for him!) while researching his latest movie role- and apparently he is now a big fan of both earth shoveling and big box shopping!

Oh, I can feel the lure of celebrity news pulling me in!

What about you- how do you keep up with current events (or celebrity scandal masquerading as current events!) -?

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Welcome to my world

Hooray, this is my very first blog on Teen Fiction Cafe, which is incredibly exciting, but before I start I do feel, in the interest of fairness, that I should be honest about some of my less than savory habits. Okay, so here goes:


The most important thing to remember is that I really AM as shallow as I seem. I really DO watch that much television, drink that much diet coke and eat that many chocolates. It is possible to sit around ALL day and do nothing (in fact I might do a workshop on this one day since it's a much maligned skill). I never get sick of being brilliant, skinny and gorgeous all at the same time. And finally, yes, I have been known to stretch the truth from time to time...


Right, so now that we know each other a bit better, it's confession time. This week's blog topic is meant to be current events and the truth is that I've got nothing. Not a bean. You see in between spending all my time watching the Rugby World Cup and drooling over cute guys, I'm getting ready to move for the second time in five months and there is just no room in my head for anything other than packing boxes, secretly disposing of children's toys and generally wandering around trying to convince my husband that I'm hard at work.


Mind you, this isn't the first time I've lost contact with the outside world. In fact, as a writer I find it happens quite regularly. I get so caught up with the story in my head that I forget to pay attention to anything else that is happening (actually, this includes whether the dinner is burning or not, but that's another blog post). So my question is, does this happen to anyone else or is it just me. Oh, and if you want to make me feel better by lying, then that's perfectly okay!

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