I love figure skating. I love novels. Figure skating novels? Swoon! Jennifer Comeaux's newest figure skating novel, Crossing the Ice, is coming out in six weeks, and I got a sneak peek of the first two chapters this weekend. Sign up for her newsletter to get your own sneak peek, or visit her web site to find out how you can receive a free ARC of the book.

Here's a short description of the book:

Falling hard never felt so good.

Pair skaters Courtney and Mark have one shot left at their Olympic dream. They vow not to let anything get in their way, especially not Josh and Stephanie, the wealthy and talented brother and sister team.

The heart doesn’t always listen to reason, though…
The more time Courtney spends with sweet, shy Josh, the harder she falls for him. But they are on opposite sides of the competition, and their futures are headed in opposite directions. Will their friendship blossom into more or are their paths too different to cross?

I belong to several writing groups. There's my online writing friends, a fantastic and brilliant mix of people from SCBWI, RWA, and Swoon Reads, who also all write YA. There's my SCBWI critique group, where we write everything from picture books to YA. I've also found a group of writers at my local library who write everything, from sonnets to graphic novels and memoir to editorials.

I find all these groups helpful and inspiring for different reasons. The benefits of critique partners who write for the genre are probably obvious. These people are well-read and experienced in my favorite field. My SCBWI group, with its talents at all levels of kid lit, help me make sure my work is appropriate for my target age group in addition to their other feedback. But sometimes I want or need to expand my writing beyond writing for children or young adults. Enter a drop-in visit to the library group.

Tonight, I owe this post to a fellow library writer. I was looking for suggestions as to where I could cut parts of a magazine article I'm working on. (800 words over count in a novel? No biggie. In a magazine article? Wince. Grimace. Moan.) Deborah pushed me to think about it in a different way. "Get a highlighter," she suggested, "and highlight all the parts you really want to keep."

Advice I'd heard before? For sure. Advice I needed to hear again, right then? Yes. And behind those words of advice, much needed subtext. The answer is there when you're willing to look at things a different way. Thank you, Deborah!

Excited to share the cover of Watch Your Back, by YA Fusion blogger and author Tracy Bilen! Watch Your Back is Tracy's newest young adult novel and will be an April 2015 release.

Here's a short description of the novel:

When sixteen-year-old Kate hears the boom that ends her parents’ life, she doesn’t even realize it has anything to do with her. Until the police arrive at her front door.

Sent to live with her aunt at a ski school in Vermont, Kate tries to adapt to her new life. But then Kate’s aunt is hit by a speeding car and a rogue FBI agent tries to force Kate into his car at gunpoint. She’s saved by Ryan, the risk-taking skier she’s only just met.

On the run, the two must unravel the truth about her parents’ murder in order to stop a terrorist plot and save their own lives.

Stay in touch with Tracy at www.tracybilen.com or at YA Fusion.

So really, I confess to having my own rating system for books:

1 star/heart/whatever: Do I really have to give it anything? Pretty much a zero.
2 whatevers: Meh.
3 whatevers: Okay, you're on to something here
4 whatevers: I like it. I'd tell my friends it was worth the read
5 whatevers: I am buying this book because even though there's already too many books and not enough time, I will want to read this again.

My "five whatevers" book of the week? Openly Straight, by Bill Konigsburg. Straight or gay, I wish all my friends, enemies, and frenemies would read this book. Protagonist Rafe has been out since 8th grade. He lives a life free from discrimination in Boulder, CO, and gives tolerance speeches at schools. But what he really wants is to be a regular guy, not that gay guy. Why does his sexual orientation have to be his headline?

Rafe transfers to an all-boys boarding school across the country and makes the decision to be, well, openly straight. He's not going to hook up with any girls, but he wants to know what it's like to have people see him first and not gay first. You can probably guess what happens to Rafe at his all-boys school, of course once he's pretending to be straight he'll finally find the perfect guy to be his boyfriend. But Rafe's journey opens up so many questions about how we let labels define both ourselves and others. Albie, Toby, and Ben are wonderfully developed secondary characters and I want to take a class with Mr. Scarborough, Rafe's writing teacher, who pushes Rafe to take his writing above and beyond.

Here's an excerpt:
"...[T]he fact that there was this party and everyone other than my grandmother was pretending that something wasn't true about me made me feel slimy, like I needed to take a long shower. While everyone else was talking, I wandered back over to the tofu pig. It looked real, unless you got up close to it. Then you could see: It was very much not. Up close, you could see how the artist molded the tofu, and the places were there were cracks in the pigskin. You could even see the finger indentations where he'd tried to massage the tofu flat. It was like when you approach a woman whom you think is beautiful and you see the caked-on blush and mascara, and you realize what you are seeing isn't her; it's her vanity. You're seeing her attempt at beauty and it's the opposite of beauty that you're looking at." (Konigsburg 236).

This book is humorous and real - don't miss the trip. Happy reading!

What makes a book as “page turner?” Noted screen writing instructor, Robert McKee, says “The music of story is conflict. As long as conflict engages our thoughts and emotions we travel through the hours unaware of the voyage” (McKee 211). Yet even among award winning novels with premises rich in conflict, some books compel us to not only turn pages but to come back to their story again and again. In A Northern Light, author Jennifer Donnelly compels reading and re-reading by making her words, sentences, and paragraphs multi-task; they advance the plot while simultaneously incorporating literary elements and enriching characters and settings.

A Northern Light is a masterful example of a high interest premise. Set in the early 1900s, the coming of age story combines romance and history against the backdrop of a murder mystery. Donnelly does not stop there, however. Her words multi-task from the very first lines: “When summer comes to the North Woods, time slows down. And some days it stops altogether” (Donnelly 1). As the lead-in to a description of the North Woods, these sentences may seem benign. However, main character and narrator Mattie Gokey is about to come face-to-face with someone for whom time has stopped: murder victim Grace Brown. This opening multi-tasks by both establishing setting and foreshadowing the soon-to-come discovery of Grace's body.

In Writing the Breakout Novel, Donald Maass states: “There is, in any great opening line, a miniconflict or tension that is strong enough to carry the reader to the next step in the narrative” (Maass 141). This idea may be applied to closing lines as well, both of which are made all the more powerful when authors make them multi-task beyond carrying a miniconflict. Donnelly closes the opening page of A Northern Light with three short sentences that form just such a line. Having described the serenity of the North Woods (multi-tasking paragraphs in their own right because the placid descriptions set a calm mood that will serve to heighten the shock of the discovery of the body), Donnelly writes, “I believe these things. With all my heart. For I am good at telling myself lies” (Donnelly 1). These three lines set up more than a miniconflict, this is major. What does Mattie lie about? To whom does she lie? Why does she feel she needs to lie? In addition to planting major conflict seeds, these lines also help define Mattie's character (she is someone who admits to self-deceit) and her voice (as a writer, she understands the use of fragments for emphasis).

Here is yet another multi-tasking gem: “Standing on that porch, under that flawless sky, with bees buzzing lazily in the roses and a cardinal calling from the pines so sweet and clear, I tell myself that Ada is a nervous little hen, always worrying when there's no cause” (Donnelly 3). It describes setting, Ada's character, and advances plot because Mattie has already admitted that she lies to herself. Another example, “Her head lolls against him like a broken flower” (Donnelly 3), uses poetic language through simile and builds Mattie's voice as a writer and North Woods girl while advancing the murder mystery conflict of the book through describing Grace's dead body.

This post on multitasking could cover Donnelly's entire book and become novel length; I had that many sticky notes marking the novel. Therefore, for purposes of brevity, I will limit my analysis to the first chapter and close with the following excerpt as an example of how these multi-tasking sentences work together in paragraphs:

“Too confident, that fellow [Carl Graham],” Mr. Morrison says. “I asked him could he handle a skiff and he told me yes. Only a darn fool from the city could tip a boat on a calm day...” He says more, but I don't hear him. It feels like there are iron bands around my chest. I close my eyes and try to breathe deeply, but it only makes things worse. Behind my eyes I see a packet of letters tied with a pale blue ribbon. Letters that are upstairs under my mattress. Letters that I promised to burn. I can see the address on the top one: Chester Gilette, 17 ½ Main Street, Cortland, New York. (Donnelly 5-6)

One paragraph, many tasks: establish time period through word choices in Mr. Morrison's dialogue as well as drop clues about Carl Graham's skill with boats; use simile to convey feeling, time period, and voice; advance plot through the miniconflict of the letters while conveying voice and providing more murder mystery clues.

Reviews described A Northern Light as a page turners, yet the multi-tasking words in the novel made me not only want to turn pages but to remain immersed in the story forever. Elizabeth Bear, fantasy writer, maintains that “[t]he skilled writer of speculative fiction remembers that every sentence performs at least two and preferably three of the following four tasks: creating or resolving tension (i.e. asking or answering questions that move the plot forward); developing theme; illuminating character; and building the world” (Bear 196). I propose that writers in all genres seek to multi-task with their words.

Works Cited:

Donnelly, Jennifer. A Northern Light. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2003. Print.

Maass, Donald. Writing the Breakout Novel. Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 2001. Print.

McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and Principles of Screenwriting. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Print.

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled programming...oh, who am I kidding? Programming has been far from regular lately as I've been hard at work on the second round of edits for The Boy Next Door but that makes it the perfect time to share a little about my writing process.

This Blog Hop is a blog tour showcasing authors and their writing process. I was tagged by Kristin Lenz, part of the excellent YA Fusion blog team. Kristin is also a fellow SCBWI member and critique partner of mine whose advice helped land my novel on the first Swoon Reads list. You can read her post and back-track through the blog tour here: http://yafusion.blogspot.com/2014/06/blog-hop-my-writing-process.html

I'm tagging Karmen Kooyers, who will post next week. See her bio at the end of this post.

But for now, here's a little about me:

1. What am I working on now?
As The Boy Next Door enters the copy-editing stage (yay!), I'm excited to continue working on the companion novel, Kiss and Cry. I hope to be able to post an excerpt sometime this summer. I'll also be sharing the Swoon Reads love with the RWA community by writing an article for RWR. Since procrastination is my friend for every project except the one I'm supposed to be working on, I won't be surprised if some drafting for my other outlined novels cannon balls into my summer writing pool.

2. How does my work differ from others in its genre?
The Boy Next Door combines sports and romance with multiple first person POVs. Voice is my passion as a writer and that's what readers have told me they love about my work, so it looks like it shows. :-)

3. Why do I write what I do?
Wow, I think I could write a whole novel just to answer this question. I write for many different ages and genres, and the reasons are different for each piece. To entertain, to spark conversation, to inspire...those are just a few from a very long list. Freud could probably say some interesting things about my fascination with YA since as a young teen I was too scared to go into the YA section at our local library!

4. How does my writing process work?
I take the phrase "write what you know" literally and glean my starting points from my life experiences. I love figure skating and let that passion out on the page in The Boy Next Door. My husband and I are renovating an 1891 farmhouse at the moment and the day I knocked down the decrepit chimney sparked an idea for an adult romance. I also love to pick up secondary characters from earlier novels and give them their own chance in the spotlight, which is what Chris and Kate get to have in Kiss and Cry.

Once I have the initial ideas, I record them either on my computer or in my writer's notebook. I use Robert McKee's Story and Donald Maass's Writing the Breakout Novel to help flesh the stories out and draft from there. I've found NaNoWriMo to be great inspiration for getting those first drafts down. Then I revise, and revise, and revise some more. (The Boy Next Door is currently on draft 31!)

So, enough about me. Check out Karmen Kooyers next week. Here's her bio and blog link:

Karmen Kooyers says, "I am a children’s writer and youth librarian who’s passionate about literature, libraries, and art. The path before me unwinds in ways that surprise, delight, and befuddle. I hope you’ll join me to see where it leads." I was blessed to be raised on stories by this wonderful woman - yep, she's also my mother!

Join her at: http://www.karmenkooyers.com/journal

Tonight, I read some of Shel Silverstein's poetry with my oldest daughter before bed, and rekindled some of my early sparking with words. So I leave you with some words of wisdom collected from Silverstein's poetry.

From IVITATION:
“If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer,
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire...”

From LISTEN TO THE MUST'NTS:
“Listen to the MUST'NTS, child,
Listen to the DON'TS.
Listen to the SHOULDN'TS, the IMPOSSIBLES, the WON'TS.
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me –
Anything can happen, child.
ANYTHING can be.”

And from THE LITTLE BLUE ENGINE:
“He was almost there, when – CRASH! SMASH! BASH!
He slid down and mashed into engine hash
On the rocks below...which goes to show
If the track is tough and the hill is rough,
THINKING you can just ain't enough!”

Write on! (And if you need a fun distraction, check out the cover directions for my novel and cast your vote!)