I’m way jealous.

About Swoon at Your Own Risk

You’d think Polly Martin would have all the answers when it comes to love—after all, her grandmother is the famous syndicated advice columnist Miss Swoon. But after a junior year full of dating disasters, Polly has sworn off boys. This summer, she’s going to focus on herself for once. So Polly is happy when she finds out Grandma is moving in—think of all the great advice she’ll get.

But Miss Swoon turns out to be a man-crazy sexagenarian! How can Polly stop herself from falling for Xander Cooper, the suddenly-hot skateboarder who keeps showing up while she’s working at Wild Waves water park, when Grandma is picking up guys at the bookstore and flirting with the dishwasher repairman?

No advice column can prepare Polly for what happens when she goes on a group camping trip with three too many ex-boyfriends and the tempting Xander. Polly is forced to face her feelings and figure out if she can be in love—and still be herself.

About Sydney Salter

Sydney Salter has never had an ex-boyfriend or worked in a water park, but she did once babysit a bulldog. Sydney now lives in Utah with her first and only boyfriend (now her husband), two daughters, two cats, two dogs, and a pair of tortoises. She loves reading, writing, traveling, and really tall, really twisty water slides. She’s also the author of My Big Nose And Other Natural Disasters and Jungle Crossing. Visit her on the web at www.sydneysalter.com and www.mybignose.blogspot.com

Advice from Sydney Salter

What’s one of the best pieces of advice you’ve ever received?

Don’t borrow trouble. In other words, don’t worry about things that might happen, but haven’t actually happened. Usually, things aren’t as bad as they seem so don’t make them worse–or catastrophic–in your imagination.

What’s one of the worst pieces of advice you’ve ever received?

Date lots of guys so you know what you like. I think you can know what works without having to experience everything that doesn’t.

What advice would you give to your sixteen-year-old self, knowing all that you know now?

Accept yourself–and all your flaws. You’ll find plenty of people–guys–who like you just the way you are.

Wh-hoo!

While writing TMI, I listened to a ton of White Stripes, especially Get Behind Me Satan. I quote “Blue Orchid,” a song off this album, at the beginning of the book. In early drafts, I actually made Becca a huge fan of the band, but I eventually removed the references because I was worried that it would date the book. Of course, I imagine rocking out to Jack and Meg when I’m eighty, but I don’t know if anyone else will be. Time will tell.

I’m going to continue to be tight-lipped about my new book, but my playlist provides a few clues to what the book is about:

1. “Piano & I” by Alicia Keys
2. “Hey Hey What Can I Do” by Led Zeppelin
3. “Alcohol” by Barenaked Ladies
4. “Summer’s End” by Foo Fighters
5. “Start Choppin’” by Dinosaur Jr.
6. “Animal Girl” by Liz Phair
7. “Making Out” by No Doubt
8. “Hymn to Her” by The Pretenders
9. “House of Cards” by Radiohead
10. “The Waitress” by Tori Amos
11. “Wish Fulfillment” by Sonic Youth
12. “She Looks to Me” by Red Hot Chili Peppers
13. “Positive Bleeding” by Urge Overkill
14. “Effect & Cause” by The White Stripes
15. “Like a Luminous Girl” by Mike Doughty

P.S. Today is the year anniversary of TMI’s release! Last April 16, I was eating a lot of sugar and trying to find a bookstore that had copies of TMI in stock. You rock, Book Passage.

P.P.S. Still haven’t read TMI? Trying to track down a copy? Check out author Malinda Lo’s post about why your local bookstore might not have the books you want and what you can do about it.

P.P.P.S. Support your favorite authors! Support independent bookstores! Rah, rah, rah!

I’ll be honest: I’m not the sort of girl who enjoys scary books. I’ve never read anything by Stephen King, and I have no interest in most of the paranormal young adult novels that are wildly popular right now. So why did I pick up Carrie’s books?

The Forest of Hands and Teeth snagged me with the title. I mean, it’s a really good one, isn’t it? I just had to see what it was about. And even though I barely took a full breath while reading, I couldn’t put it down. I was completely hooked into this world of the living versus the undead and the main character’s struggle to survive.

I was worried that The Dead-Tossed Waves wouldn’t be as good; after all, it had an incredibly tough act to follow. It didn’t disappoint. In fact, I think I actually enjoyed it more. The main character faced more complicated dilemmas, and the tension was even thicker.

I’m already looking forward to Carrie’s third book, which will be out next year. I can’t wait for her to scare the pants off me again!

This is probably one of the most common questions posed to any author, and it’s one of the hardest to answer. At least for me. While it’s true that I take plenty of my own experiences and twist them into something more compelling, a lot of the time, I just think of stuff. Ideas spring from my imagination. And what’s my imagination tapping into?

I have no idea.

I taught writing to international college students for several years, and they were constantly asking me how they could make their papers more interesting. I did exercises with them on how to write attention-grabbing first sentences, how to play around with metaphor, how to spice up their sentences with new vocabulary. Some students worked hard and incorporated these suggestions into their own writing. Others continued to struggle with stringing together coherent ideas, but that was largely a function of the fact that they weren’t writing in their native language. I was a Russian major in college, so I know what a challenge it is to try to be creative with linguistic limitations.

Where am I going with this? I guess my point is that there are a lot of variables at play when it comes to inspiration. What are you writing about? How close is the subject matter to your own experiences? And most importantly, have you done any creative writing before? Many of my students had not. They were from countries where rote memorization and exam scores were the key to academic success. Plagiarism was a huge problem; the whole notion of creative ownership was completely foreign to a lot of them. They’d been taught that the ideas of others were much more valuable than their own, so writing was an exercise in collecting those ideas, not thinking up new ones.

Now, I know that there are very few original ideas out there. I take comfort in the fact that the things I think and feel are part of the human experience, and that somewhere out there, at some point in time, another person was thinking and feeling the same things as me. But when I figure things out for myself, I am more likely to learn and grow. If someone shares an idea or gives me advice, I may hear it but fail to truly internalize it.

So while I like to think I’m a naturally imaginative person, I have also been writing fiction in some form or another for nearly thirty years (OMG–I can’t believe I’m old enough to write that!). I’ve had a lot of practice. And that’s really what it all boils down to. Writing is very much like athletic training. You have to do it consistently and continue to challenge yourself to see improvement. And even if your ideas aren’t original to the world, what matters is that they’re original to you.

Last month, I featured Stacey and her latest book, Undead Much? in this post. Well, if you can’t get enough zombies, you’re in luck because her third novel, My So-Called Death, came out last month.

About My So-Called Death

Just because you don’t have a pulse doesn’t mean you can’t be perky.

One second, freshman Karen Vera’s on top of the most fabulous cheer pyramid ever. The next, she’s lying on the pavement with seriously unflattering cranial damage. Freakishly alive without a pulse, Karen learns that she’s a genetically undead zombie.

Suddenly, Karen’s non-life is an epic disaster. She’s forced to attend a boarding school for the “death-challenged,” her roommate is a hateful wannabe-Goth weirdo, and she’s chowing down on animal brains every day to prevent rot (um, ew?). Even worse, someone is attacking students and harvesting their brains for a forbidden dark ritual. And it might be the hottest guy at DEAD High, the one who makes Karen’s non-beating heart flutter!

Armed with a perky smile and killer fashion sense, it’s up to Karen to track down the brain snatcher and save her fellow students from certain zombie death.

About Stacey Jay

Stacey Jay is a workaholic with three pen names, and a sick sense of humor. She loves creepies, crawlies, and of course, romance. What would a zombie novel–or any novel–be without kisses that make your toes tingle?

Stacey has been a full time writer since 2005 and can’t think of anything she’d rather be doing. Her former careers include theatre performer, professional dancer, poorly paid C-movie actress, bartender, and waiter.

More advice from Stacey Jay

What’s one of the best pieces of advice you’ve ever received?

Grow out your bangs. It was the early nineties and my mother begged me to keep them, but I insisted on letting them grow. The day those huge, fluffy things were gone from my face was one of the best of my life, lol.

What’s one of the worst pieces of advice you’ve ever received?

“Why don’t you just elope?” Um, if planning a wedding with someone freaks you out, that’s probably a clue that you’re not ready to get married at all!

What advice would you give to your sixteen-year-old self, knowing all that you know now?

Smile more. It’s not all as serious as you think it is.

Carrie is a peach of a gal, with a great sense of style and charming Southern accent. I was instantly drawn to her warmth and intelligence. She recently quit her job working as a litigator to pursue writing full-time. It was interesting hearing how she went from practicing law, which she enjoyed, to penning zombie novels.

Carrie had many interesting and inspiring things to say about writing, but I was most struck by her attitude toward the writing process. She said that it’s important for writers not to be too hard on themselves, especially if they don’t find time to write every day. Carrie recognizes that other life events sometimes get in the way of writing, and it’s okay. Even on the days she doesn’t write, she reminds herself that she’s still a writer.

I really needed to hear this. It’s not possible for me to write every day, and I’ve been stressing about it. Revisions on my new book are going slowly, but I’m doing the best I can. In order to speed things up, I’d have to sleep less, leave my daughter with a babysitter more often, and/or eliminate what little time I have in the evenings to relax. And right now, I don’t want to do any of those things. My day job is caring for my girl. She’ll eventually go off to school, and maybe I’ll decide to write full-time. Who knows? But in the meantime, even though it’s going slowly, even though I can’t do it every day, I’m still a writer.

My first car was a 1972 Dodge Dart. I bought it with my own money when I was sixteen. It had a brown body and forest green roof. Although its official name was “The Mallard,” I mostly just called it “The Dart.” I also sometimes jokingly referred to my car as “The Sex Machine.”

Trust me, no sex was had in this vehicle.*

There was some kissing, though. The passenger seat belt had a tendency to jam, and I had to lean over and yank on it in just the right way. I took advantage of this when giving rides to boys. They liked it when I helped them with their seat belts and felt compelled to thank me properly.

Okay, it only happened with two boys, but they were both mind-boggingly cute. Thanks, Dart!

*At least, not by me. But the car was already twenty years old when I bought it, so who knows what kind of action that back seat had seen over the years?

I first heard about Natalie Standiford’s debut novel, How to Say Goodbye in Robot, at a book signing for David Levithan. He was in town promoting his new novel, Love is the Higher Law (which is sitting in my to-be-read pile, screaming, “Pick me! Pick me!”). Someone asked David about the best books he’d read recently. His first pick was Robot, and then he sheepishly admitted that he’d edited it.

No need to be sheepish, David. You took on Standiford’s manuscript because you loved it. I’m sure I would do the same. I mean, whenever I take my daughter to the playground, I always secretly think that she’s by far the cutest kid there.

We’re all biased, right?

Biases aside, I knew I had to read this book. It’s the story of Beatrice, a.k.a. Robot Girl, who starts her senior year of high school at a new school in Baltimore. The popular girls offer friendship, and the cutest boy wants to date her, but Beatrice is more interested in hanging out with Jonah, a.k.a. Ghost Boy, a social outcast who enjoys late-night radio. Their relationship hovers in an area between friendship and romantic love, and Beatrice starts to feel her robotic armor peel away to make headway for real feelings.

I enjoyed so many aspects of this book, from Beatrice’s crazy, chicken-loving mother to the regular callers on the radio show. I got a kick out of the Baltimore references as well; my husband is from there, so I’ve done some time in that town, hon. How to Say Goobye in Robot is a book for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider. Haven’t we all felt that way at some point?