Outsiders

For this week's school theme, I wanted to start off with a shout out to the librarians and students at ASIJ. When we lived in Japan, my kids went to the American School in Japan. I celebrated my first book launch there. Visiting ASIJ is like going home. Domo! Minna genki?

I was actually preparing to post a little more about Japan and ASIJ, but then...

Glee came on.

(Who else caught the season opener of Glee tonight? What did you think of the cast additions? I'm excited for this season!)

After watching Glee, I decided to switch up the post a little because I thought it was worthy of discussion. In this episode, we meet Shannon Bieste - a woman coach of the boy's football team, and new to McKinley High. Coach Sylvester convinces Mr. Shue that it's in the best interest of the glee club budget to drive The Beast - as she calls her - away, and sets about in true Sue Sylvester fashion to make Coach Bieste's life miserable.

One scene especially rang uncomfortably true. Sue and Shue refuse to let Coach Bieste sit next to them in the faculty lunchroom, and actually drive the Coach to tears. I know the show's fiction, but still it made me wince. Although I had a group of friends I ate with in the cafeteria back in high school, I remember too well the kind of ostracism and intimidation that could go on at lunch time. Especially to anyone who was new. Or different.

This was especially fresh in my mind since I'd had to dredge up the dark side of my school years recently to write an essay for the upcoming Young Adult Authors Against Bullying anthology. It wasn't pleasant remembering how many students were labeled "outsider" for one reason or another. Not rich enough. Not popular enough. Not cool enough. Not whatever. I was often a label-ee. Sadly, I'm pretty sure there were times I was also a label-er. If someone else is outside, that means we're in, right?

Have you ever been singled out? Have you felt like an outsider? Have you ever - intentionally or not - made someone else feel like they didn't belong? More importantly, what's one specific thing can you do this week to make someone feel "in"?

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Old School

Okay, so I'm going to confess it. I went to school in the eighties. Yes, that's right, I'm talking big hair, Duran Duran (team Simon of course!) and leg warmers. Thankfully, since digital cameras weren't invented back then I have managed to come through my high school years with absolutely no incriminating evidence of what I got up to. Which actually got my thinking about just how different high school is today.

Back when I was in high school there were no computers (okay there were about six in the entire school and I don't even think the teachers knew what we were meant to do with them). There were also no cell phones, no Facebook or Twitter, let alone iPods or CDs. In fact, I still remember taping songs straight off the radio onto a cassette tape (Friends of Mr. Cairo springs to mind for those who are interested).

Which, in turn got me to wondering if we didn't have all of that stuff, then what did we do with our time back then? Well, for a start there were lots of telephone calls. We also hung out in real life and went to loads of concerts and parties. I'm guessing we must've done some school work along the way since I somehow managed to get in University, but honestly I don't remember much about that. What I do remember is having lots of fun. I'm not saying that I want to give my computer back (or get the big hair again) but I loved my school days just the way they were.

So what about everyone else? Do you ever wonder what it would be like to go to school in a different era?

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My subconscious is always trying to humiliate me

Embarrassing tales week is always a toughie for me. Not because I don't suffer from embarrassment, but usually the "incidents" that cause it are so minor that if I retold them, I'm pretty sure the response would be a collective: Um, now explain again why that embarrassed you? (Yes, I am working on my shame issues.) I have very few Epic Embarrassments - at least ones I'd share online.

But - the embarrassment that takes place in my dreams is fairly hardcore. In the last few weeks, I've dreamed the following:

- It's finals day at college. I walk into class and realize I haven't attended class all semester, and have no idea what's going on. Usually the class is something in math or science, so I can't b.s. my way through it.

- It's opening night of the school play. I'm back stage, possibly pantsless. It dawns on me that perhaps I should have taken at least a cursory glance at my script before NOW. I frantically try to memorize the lines in the five minutes before curtain.

- My next book is out. Only it's not the version I worked so hard on. It's the unedited, uncorrected, first draft of my book. Hard bound and with my name on it.

- I run into an ex-friend, who yells at me in public about everything I did wrong in our friendship.

Classic anxiety dreams, probably telling me that my fear of embarrassment/messing up/shame is way more powerful than any real-life incident I could probably experience. Back to therapy!

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Embarrassing Moments: Mortified!

I am a big fan of embarrassing moments, which is the topic of discussion on TFC this week. Without our goofy doofy moments, life wouldn't be nearly as fun.

At one teen magazine where I worked, I handled the Embarrassing Moments page--you know, the one where people wrote in to talk about how their white jeans got stained during that time of the month or how their dog ran into the living room with a bra in his mouth when a cute boy was over doing homework.

We only ran real emails that came in, but I always wondered if the stories were true, partially because my friends and I used to sit around and think up embarrassing moments to submit to magazines. It wasn't that we didn't have enough of our own, it was just that we were too scared to share true mortifications. Can anyone relate?

Today, I've come to embrace the awkwardness of life (I wouldn't have started Before You Were Hot if I weren't game to celebrate geeky times). That's why I adore, adore, adore Mortified!, which is a show and a series of books and a generally hilarious good time where people read past diary entries, school papers, etc. and relive their own wonder years.

Go see a show if you can--so worth it!

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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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Good News Friday!

Holy cow, it's been an exciting couple of weeks here at the TFC. Three books have had birthdays: Lauren Baratz-Logsted's The Twin's Daughter, Alyson Noel's Radiance, and Alyson's Noel's Kisses From Hell (anthology.)

And I'm so excited to help Alyson celebrate the HUGE news that Radiance debuted #2 on the New York Times Bestsellers List for Children's Paperbacks. WOW!!! Congratulations, Alyson!

I also found out that my Lifted is in its second printing and it's an ALA/YALSA 2010 Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers nominee. It's in good company, along with Elizabeth Scott's The Unwritten Rule. Click HERE to see the list. Any more good news this week?

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Breakfast Club Friendships

One of my favorite movies is The Breakfast Club. I love all the quotable, witty lines, but more than that, I like that these people who on the surface seem to have nothing in common, can find common ground (don't we all have family and self esteem issues when we are teenagers? yes, we do. let's bond.), and become friends. Will they stay friends come Monday when their allegiances to their cliques resurface, who knows. When I was in a high school, a place that felt very cliquey and often left me feeling quite ostracized, I would have said cynically, "Probably not." But now, I like to think they do. If not in high school, maybe they meet up in the summer after they graduate and become better friends.

This is because I love what I call "Breakfast Club friendships"--the bond between people who, on the surface, don't seem like they'd be friends.

When I was in high school, most of my friends were my fellow punk and indie rockers and freaks and geeks. I love these people. I always will feel an incredible bond to them. But now as an adult, I also treasure several friendships with people who either would have rejected me or I would have judged them back in high school. I've met most of these people at the bar where I work. It's a neighborhood place, kind of like Cheers, where people come in for the laid back atmosphere and generally are looking to make friends, not be judgmental. And instead of just looking at each other and concluding that for example the thirty year-old punk rock writer/bartender with pink hair would have nothing in common with the union carpenter in his mid-fifties, we start chatting with each other and discover a lot of commonalities, like we both love to garden and are avid readers. Would he have guessed that by looking at me and vice versa? Probably not, but we were both open minded and now are friends. And it's not just a surface level friendship either. He's listened to my problems and everyone in the bar came together when his son was injured in the Middle East. I've also become friends with a couple who is younger than me, who totally seem like they would have been much cooler/more popular than me in high school. Maybe we wouldn't have been friends then, but we love to joke together now. The girl brought me a big bag of makeup samples the other night and it felt like we really could have been teenage girlfriends in that moment. There are a bunch of others too, who have become my good friends even though on the surface we are different people. They have all taught me new things and been there for me when times are tough.

I think that is part of the reason why bartending has become my muse for one of the books I'm working on. I really like how I've built and watched others build friendships with unlikely folks. I'm sure it doesn't just happen in bars (nor am I encouraging people, especially under age people to hang out in bars to meet different people!), so where have you made some of your "Breakfast Club friendships" and what have you learned from them?

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The Staying Power of Best Friends

Oprah and Gayle King, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox Arnette ...

They're best friends and have been for quite some time. So what makes a friendship last?

Sure, it can be nice to have things in common, especially at first. For example, some of my best friends are authors, others are moms, and others work out at the same gym or go to the same church. Then again, some can't write their own Christmas cards, some don't have and never want kids, some have never stepped foot into a gym, and others are a different religion or atheist.

Mencius defines friendship as "one mind in two bodies." I have to disagree. I don't want to be best friends with someone who's exactly like me, who has the same ideas and inspirations and opinions and talents and dreams. Talk about boring! Instead, I like to surround myself with people who are different than me, who see the world in a unique way and help me to expand my mind.

So how would I describe a best friend, someone who will remain a friend for years to come? It's someone I can be my true self around, and someone I truly enjoy being with. Like Megan, my friend for 15 years, who when I say, "I'd love to come over for a glass of wine but I've got to make dinner for my family," says, "Get your butt over here. I have a fridge full of left-overs you can reheat and no one will know the difference." Like Tonya, who I've known for 25 years, and every time I'm back in Denver, she drops everything to see me, even if for a half-hour. And like Christina (pictured in the red shirt, and I've known for 15 years), who can tell if something is wrong behind my biggest smile.

What are the reasons you and your best friend(s) have stayed tight for so long?

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Boyfriends: Constructing the Perfect Boyfriend

It's Labor Day here in the U.S., meaning Americans will all be going to picnics or shopping at the mall to celebrate the country's workforce, and the only people to read what I write here will be my Kiwi compatriots at TFC. This means that I get to say pretty much whatever I want to without fear that anyone will actually be paying attention.

Mad Men stunk last night!

Actually, last night's episode was probably the best ever on Mad Men. I just wanted to see if the two people reading this were awake.

There is something that does stink, however, and that's me drawing "Boyfriends" as my TFC subject to write about when I'm an old married lady and my husband is now a contributor at TFC.

So here's what we're going to do instead: we're going to construct the perfect boyfriend.

Now you need to wait a minute before we get back to that because I need to do a product endorsement here since I never took advantage of Good News Friday last week:

On Tuesday my YA novel The Twin's Daughter was published. The novel is set in Victorian England and is about a teen who discovers that her gorgeous and wealthy mother has an identical twin who was raised in the poorhouse. The novel has suspense, murder, mystery and romance, and Booklist says that it is "rife with twists" and "elegantly written."

Did I mention that it has romance? It does. And the male love interest, Kit Tyler, is the most perfect male I've ever written. Now, I can't tell you how and why he's perfect - you should read the book to find out that - but what I can do is help you construct your own perfect boyfriend and here's how we're going to do it. In the comments section list 1-3 qualities, physical or personality-wise, that you think the perfect boyfriend should have. And here's the trick: you can't use anything anyone else has said before. This will eliminate the possibility of winding up with 50 answers that say "Good sense of humor."

OK, I'll start.

Three qualities the perfect boyfriend should have:

1. Good sense of humor. (HA! Now no one else can take that one!)

2. Intelligence.

3. An appreciation of the protean and mercurial creature that is me.

OK, now it's your turn! Have fun here and then go out and enjoy the day!

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(Writer) Friends!

We're talking about friends this week! (Well, and also boyfriends, but I'll skip that topic so as not to confuse my wife.) And just look at this picture! Just look at my new friends! One of them you may recognize as TFC's own Stephanie Kuehnert. On the right is Jeri Smith-Ready, who is another new writer friend. (The person in the middle is me. Was that obvious? Probably.) The picture was taken at the PAYA (Pennsylvania Young Adult lit) conference last month and man was it fun! Look how smiley we are! (Also: look how tall I am! Stephanie was even wearing 4.5 inch heels. Why am I so proud about being tall?)

There's just something about meeting other writers, readers, and book-lovers that can't be beat. I've said it before -- one of the coolest things about writing for teens is how supportive, fun, and just plain nice the other authors have been. I mean, I can't compare it to any publishing sector or anything, but YA authors are so great! This also goes for YA readers, editors, agents, bloggers, teen librarians, and pretty much everyone I've run into in the teen publishing world. I was so intimidated before I became a part of it. I thought publishing was cut-throat, that published authors were all snobby & superior & scary, so it's been really cool to discover that the opposite is true. I guess there are some jerks out there, but I haven't met them. I've just met lots of wonderful people and lots of new friends. Hurray for friends!

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In the news... e-readers for everyone! (maybe)

It seems like everywhere we go these days, we're bombarded by e-reader comparison articles and testimonials and in-store demonstrations. The Great E-Reader Debate. I've even been tweeting/lamenting for the last month or so about my interest in buying an e-reader. This is probably more surprising to me than anyone because I am a fervent believer that you cannot properly snuggle up with a piece of technology on a cold winter's day.

But.

I would love to be able to do full read-throughs of my own work on a device that does not make my eyeballs want to fall out. Since staring at the computer screen for 200-300 pages is out, I usually make the margins and text really small and print it for proofing. I always print on both sides of my paper and then recycle them after the second printing, but still. An e-reader would be a very earth-friendly way to manage my manuscript proofing.

And I do love the idea of having reference books on it. I have so many reference books for research and would love to be able to bookmark passages that I want to refer back to later while I'm writing.

But the more I compare e-readers, the more I realize there is no such thing as Kay's Perfect E-Reader out there. At least not that I've found so far. Why? Here are the things I'm looking for all in one e-reader:

** Searchable notes. Most e-readers allow you to make notes, but I need one that allows you to search your notes for certain key words. What good is making notes if you end up with 47 different notes that are simply listed as "Note - page 171" and "Note - page 335". Tres helpful, no? Let's make a fully searchable notes feature. The technology has been around for eons and you already have it in your searchable book text. Why not expand that to your notes as well?

** Easy page turning. I have radial tunnel syndrome in my arm from the typing and mouse work I do and the e-readers I've tested have stiff page turn keys. Some have the finger swipe option as well, but that repetitive motion is problematic too.

** Privacy. What is this about Amazon backing up your notes for you? That is a bit too Big Brother-ish for my taste. I want to know that my research notes for manuscripts aren't floating out there in cyberspace. Because we all know nothing is truly secure in cyberspace.

** Full access to books. What drives me the craziest about the whole e-book thing is the exclusivity of most platforms. If I choose a Kindle and decide after a while that it's not for me, is there really no legal way for me to transfer the e-books I've spent all that money on to a new device (other than iPad)? I understand that everyone's trying to be proprietary for business purposes, but I know there are a lot of people like me who haven't bought an e-reader solely for this reason. If I move 14 times, I can take my books with me. If I buy a new computer from a different company, I can take my documents with me. That would be like Sony saying "If you create a document on a Sony computer, you can only ever read it on a Sony computer." They would never in a million years do that. Why do we let e-reader companies get away with it?

So there you go. An ode to Kay's Perfect E-Reader. Some e-readers have bits and pieces of this criteria, but none have everything I'm looking for. Where does that leave me? I'm not sure. Probably waiting to see what the e-reader world has in store for us as we head into the holiday shopping season.

What about you? How do you feel about e-readers?

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Color and Design on TV

I wanted to chat about the new The Contemps blog--but Melissa already chatted about it! So yay, Melissa and Elizabeth!!

And world news seems to be a little depressing these days...

So let's talk...

COLOR & DESIGN

on television!

Recently, I've been obsessed with home decorating since we moved this summer into a new home. I watch all these cool decorators on the Home and Garden channel turn blah rooms into pizazz!

I am amazed at all the talent. Sometimes the designers make it look a lot easier than it really is, right?

Here are some of my FAVE decorating and designer shows on HGTV...

Color Splash

David Bromstad brings color to homeowners each week!

Divine Design

Candice Olson is Wow. This lady has glamour in her veins. She turns rooms into sleek and dynamic styles!

Dear Genevieve

Genevieve receives letters from homeowners to redesign rooms in their homes. So fun!

And I can't forget Design Star!

Designers compete to win their own TV show!

So yes, I'm a little home decorating crazy at the moment, but it's fun and it's fresh. :) Anybody else watch these shows?

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