Back at the first of the year

We will be back at the first of the year with more things to say, books to promote and great YA authors. Enjoy the holidays!!

-Serena Robar

Me, Girls' Life and Seventeen!

A little love for my upcoming book today! I Was a Teenage Popsicle is due to be released on October 3rd, and it's getting some great promo! On Sunday, September 24th (i.e. tomorrow), go to www.girlslife.com, where Popsicle will be featured on the home page! Follow the easy instructions and you could win a signed copy! And be sure to read GL's rockin' review ("Wanna chill out? A super-cool mix of sci-fi and chick lit, this new novel will get yer blood racing!"). And when you're done there, head over to www.seventeen.com, click on 'funstuff', then 'games', and take the 'Book It' quiz. If you check out as a fantasy/sci-fi reader, Popsicle will be one of the books recommended to you!

Happy weekend, everybody!

Bev

What TV show I've waited to watch and why...

My very fave is Gilmore Girls, which hasn't resumed yet (grrr), and while a part of me can't wait to dive back into life in Stars Hollow, another part of me is kinda dreading it cuz the show's awesome creator and primo writer, Amy Sherman-Palladino, won't be involved this season. Is anybody else capable of writing the kind of crack dialogue (lines so quick and snappy, it actually sometimes seems as if the speakers are on crack--well, speed, anyway) viewers have become used to? I think not. But I'm reserving judgment.

On the positive side, maybe a new writer will figure out that NOBODY WANTS TO SEE RORY WIND UP WITH LOGAN OR EVEN SPEND ONE MORE SEASON WITH HIM.

Wow, it felt really good to get that off my chest.

Unfortunately, Rory can't get back with Jared Padalecki, because he's on some other show this season (the nerve!).

Oh, and have you heard that one of the GG couples is going to have a baby this season? Better not be Rory and Logan is all I have to say about that. I would have to stop watching. Although that's what I said at the end of last season, when another of my fave shows, Rescue Me, killed off Dennis Leary's kid. (Cheap and manipulative, IMHO.) And yet, here I am, back every Tuesday night at ten.

Any other GG fans out there? Your thoughts? Fears? Lemme know!

Till next time,

Bev

P.S. I Was a Teenage Popsicle's release day is fast approaching--on October 3rd!!!

P.S.S. Girl's Life Magazine is featuring Popsicle on September 24th--go to www.girlslife.com for a chance to win a free copy!

P.S.S. Check out my myspace blog (www.myspace.com/bevkatzrosenbaum) to enter the I Was a Teenage Popsicle casting contest! Just read Chapter One on my website (www.bevkatzrosenbaum.com), then suggest the actress you'd choose to play Floe on my blog or profile page! (G'ahead, you know you want to give it a try! And you could win another free copy!)

The best thing about going back to school...then and now

Duh, the clothes, of course! The thrill of buying that first day outfit! No matter what kind of budget the folks are on, they'll happily spring for special duds!

I vividly recall my first-day-of-kindergarten ensemble: a new white pique dress worn with an old favorite...a pink mohair cardigan knit by my mother. I also remember a 60s style minidress with a matching cap, worn sometime up the road, and my first pair of bellbottoms--navy blue, with white daisies all over them. (I'm definitely aging myself here!)

Yup, this is what memories are made of, folks--FASHION!

At this point in my life, I'm living the first-day-of-school thing through my daugher. On her first day (of high school--an arts high school!), she wore skinny jeans with black flats and one of those new extra-long waffle weave shirts. She also got a fab rock & rollish layered haircut at a tres hip downtown salon. Ah, to be a teen again!

But while I don't have a first-day-of-school coming up anytime soon, I do have a signing/launch party to get ready for--details to be announced soon! (I Was a Teenage Popsicle is being released on October 3rd!!!) Oh, BTW, if you'd like to try to win some free copies, go to the Girl's Life website (www.girl'slife.com) on September 24th. Popsicle will be featured on the home page and there are easy instructions for entering the contest!

Happy Back-to-School! (Hope you're not too traumatized...)

Bev

My Long and Winding Road to Finding a Writing Style...

Hmmm. I've had a rather strange writing career to this point. I started out, many moons ago, writing romance novels. The first one was a fairly serious effort. I decided that serious didn't quite suit me, experimented a bit and discovered my natural voice was a funny, chick-litty one, though I couldn't put a name to it at the time, as this was before the term 'chick lit' was coined!

I switched my focus to magazines for a while--until Harlequin came out with the Flipside line--romance with a chick lit voice and short in length, a bonus to the editor in me who loves slashing sentences! I promptly wrote and published a Flipside--and the line was just as promptly cancelled. (It wasn't my fault...I swear!)

But around this time, there were lots of cute, funny (and short!) YA novels appearing on bookshelves (and in my kids' rooms!), so I decided to try my hand at one of those. I wanted to do something really fresh and different, though. Et voila, a book with a cryonics storyline! Now, ideas for fun, chick litty paranormal YAs won't stop coming!

From Serious Romance to wacky paranormal YA...life is indeed a journey, folks! (In case you missed the moral here, it's do what feels right, what comes naturally, and all that jazz...)

Till next time,

Bev

How my writing has changed...

The question is, how has your writing changed since your first WIP? Tough question. Usually all my books go the same way. I start out loving them, then somewhere in the middle I hate them and am sure I am the worst author who ever lived and will never publish another book again. Then by the time I write THE END I come to peace with the book and realize it's not so bad. In fact, possibly the best book I've written to date.

I think I used to go off on way more tangents. My first book, A Connecticut Fashionista in King Arthur's Court, seems all over the place when I re-read it. And the plot is more episodic. And the hero too perfect. No one grows in the story. You don't know why Kat is how she is--what happened to her in her past that made her the shallow, fashion editor she is today. Therefore you're less likely to care what happens to her. In contrast, I just finished writing the sequel, "A Hoboken Hipster in Sherwood Forest" and I feel the heroine, Chrissy, seems like such a better developed person. I feel the same way about my Boys that Bite series. Sunny does not grow a lot as a person in the first book. In STAKE THAT!, the sequel, her sister Rayne goes through a lot of personal growth. I think this way you end up caring about the characters more.

As whether HOW I write has changed, I'm much more likely to give myself permission to write a crappy first draft. I don't stress over each scene as I'm writing it anymore. I get it down on paper and edit it later. Since I enjoy the editing process much more than the initial writing, this seems to work well for me. In the book I'm working on now, Girls that Growl, I'm going through and writing the scenes I know and leaving open spaces to fill in other scenes once I'm done. Once I see where I'm heading, I think I can more easily layer in the other stuff once I'm done with the main backbone of the book. It's still an experiment, so we'll see how it works.

Mari

Writing Style, then and now

How does writing style evolve over time? Are you aware of the evolution or is it instinctual? Could it be the more you read or input copy edits the more your brain retains and suddenly, you are writing a smoother, less rocky first draft? Or maybe nothing changes and its still an arduous journey filled with rewrites and frustration until you finally chip and polish it into a workable manuscript?

Personally (and really, this subject is all about the individual) I find I write a smoother first draft with each book. I know my copyedits come back adorned with less blue pencil than the previous manuscript. I'm either improving or the copy editor has had it with slovenly writers and just corrects the major errors. But I doubt that because copy editors are a beast unto themselves. Very anal about most things. I think they sleep with the Chicago Writing Style Manual beneath there pillow. I've heard rumours...but I digress.

I know I write faster now. I prefer to work for long hours of uninterrupted time just emersing myself in the story and letting it flow. Once unleashed, I HATE to be interrupted and pulled away. It can be so hard getting back to that place where things just happen naturally, my fingers flying across the keyboard, trying to keep up with the scenes as they play through my head. This is why I have taken up leaving the house to write. I go down to the local coffeeshop (no, not a Starbucks, gasp). This place has the cute tea tables that are pretty low to the ground and a perfect height for my laptop, so I can type for hours without getting cramps in my forearms and fingers. They play the light music that I ignore and I am the only one who hangs our there for long periods of time. So I am not distracted by conversations around me. 'Cause I loves me some juicy eavesdroppin'.

I hope with each book, I become a better writer. I've read people who don't get better over time. They stay at the same place and as a reader, I want my author to grow. I find I don't buy them anymore and I can't quite place why. Did I hate their last story? No, it was just the same old thing. And that is the scariest thing of all. When your loyal readers look at your next release and say, "Eh".

-Serena

My first place...

I could (and often did) say it was a charming attic bachelor apartment in a beautiful old stone house in Toronto's lovely, tree-lined Annex neighborhood, in close proximity to the University of Toronto, where I was studying English Literature.

In reality, it was a roach (and mouse) infested room in a broken down rooming house with bad wiring (there were no fewer than three house fires during my tenure). It was furnished with naught but a lumpy bed, (broken) chest of drawers, tiny desk (more like a shelf barely attached to the wall), and bar-sized fridge, all of which came with the place. I tell ya, no amount of orange-beaded macrame wall hangings (courtesy of my older sister) could cheer up this place.

But it beat the hell out of the dorm I'd lived in the year before, which I found totally scary. (All that conformity, all that forced buddiness with people you couldn't stand...all that drinking!) I valued my privacy and independence so much that the firetrap's teensy size and (in retrospect) depressing atmosphere (which, btw, served as a good boyfriend meter--the shallow ones ran away) didn't bother me in the least. Neither did the fact that I had to work--count 'em--three part-time jobs (while taking a full course load!) to make my rent. At last I was free to make my own rules, do what I wanted when I wanted--like eat ice cream in bed (which was also my couch), or watch movies until three in the morning. (I sort of had to, to drown out the sound of my upstairs neighbors going at it all hours of the night!)

Sure, at times it was lonely, but I knew I wasn't the roomie type. Held out there till I got married. (The roomie thing's kinda a given with that deal.) It was in my attic room (have I mentioned the sloping roof upon which I constantly hit my head?) where I learned to be completely independent.

I highly recommend it.

Till next time,

Bev