Mittens, The Vegetarian

October 5, 2012

I’ve been in the “writing cave” lately, finishing up edits on THE CLASSROOM 2. Fortunately, there were a couple of beautiful days and I was able to take my office out to the beach for my “cave time.” Awful, I know.

When I’m busy with revisions I usually don’t eat very well and order food out to save time. However, I also discovered I don’t eat well because APPARENTLY my kitty, Mittens, is stealing my healthy food from the counter. She’s totally taking advantage of me–it makes me want to start reading her journal. But I am pleased that she is turning into quite the vegetarian! Woohoo Mittens-the-thief!

In other news, I spoke at Central Coast Writers last week. They asked me to help head up the teen writers program and I was like…YES!! There were about 20 teens who showed up at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning, smiling, happy and ready to learn. I taught them the screenplay format and the 5 turning points and discussed how to use it in plotting novels. We used Harry Potter as our example so the discussion was LIVELY!! It was SO much fun! I ate lunch with them and they were downright adorable.

I also taught a class with my agent on how to break into the kidlit genre and then I taught a class myself on techniques to develop your voice in middle grade and teen fiction. It was a great discussion on how to get that “it factor.” I LOVED spending the day with other writers (and they also sold out of copies of DITCHED!).

And if you’re a writer in the SoCal area, I’ll be speaking at the SCBWI Writer’s Day in Thousand Oaks on October 27th.

Finally, I was beyond thrilled that Scholastic put together a promo video for THE CLASSROOM of me chatting about the characters. I don’t really have a “broadcasting” voice…more of a “mom” voice, but if you want to see me chatting about the series check it out HERE!