Ruh Roh

Something funny happened at work yesterday. A student, who is an admirer of reading and writing, said she found my website one night when she couldn’t sleep. She read my blog and saw that I called another student “obnoxious,” and she tried to guess who it was. Now, I had a total right to call this student obnoxious for giving away the death on my favorite TV show. I don’t feel bad about that. I did, however, have a little panic in my stomach about what else I have said on my blog. Hmmm. It’s stupid to think that no one from my day job would possibly be interested in my other life, and I know at least one person that has had an actual boss confrontation about her blog. But, do I need to worry? Is this another thing in life I have to worry about? I am full of worry lately, as well as boredom. I want an exciting (good) thing to happen. Like an email from out of the blue. Or a really early review of GET WELL SOON. GWS is actually providing a lot of my anxiety. Over the past two days I have read a million book reviews for a book order I placed at work. While I read the reviews, I kept thinking about my upcoming novel and what its reviews will look like. It seems like the publishing business is like any other reviewing business, where one influential person says something good and everyone agrees. That’s what it looked like from my review reading. The weird thing was when three review sources gave starred reviews to a book I thought was really bad and completely inappropriate for its age group. What if reviewers all decide that my book sucks? I know it doesn’t, but what if it does to the review world? Or the book award world? I can’t stand the waiting! And I have to wait for another eight months! I have way too much time right now to think about stressful things. I’m trying to start writing a second novel, and I’m having a lot of trouble. So that’s not making me feel any better about the book career. Is this boring? Does it matter? Does a blog have to be great literature? Please don’t give me a negative review on this blog entry.

J.T.'s Dead!

Does anyone who reads my blog watch Degrassi? Not the old school Degrassi, but the new stuff on The N [cable channel I can only watch at my parents' house]? If not, go to http://www.the-n.com/ and click on "The Click." You can watch episodes from the current season. Anywho, they just killed off a main character, J.T. An obnoxious student of mine told me he was going to die (I had already guessed it, but I didn't want to believe I was right) because he figured out a way to download the episodes from a Canadian website, where they air earlier than here in America. Even knowing who was going to die, the episode was very emotional. I couldn't hold back the tears. I loved that character. He was the Joey Jeremiah of this generation- a clown with heart. Sigh. J.T., you will be missed.

I hope that when Get Well Soon (my novel, out September 2007!) comes out that Degrassi is still on. And after that I hope that teens read my blog. Cause then we can discuss Degrassi.

If anyone is interested, I found this article about the publisher of my book. When people ask me who's publishing Get Well Soon, I tell them Feiwel and Friends, which no one has heard of. Here's a link to an article that explains it: http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/RBI-0072-13309119.htm

The galleys for my novel come out in March, which means that reviewers should start receiving copies. Yikes! I am going to change my web page to make it more "teen," so I have to figure that out. My goal is to do it before the galleys come out, but I'll have to find the time. I usually just build my webpage through HTML, but that's super time consuming. I'm thinking I may explore Dreamweaver. Matt's very good with it, although I'm annoying and don't like to ask for help. Stay tuned.

Flushy Weekend

So who watched "The Office" last night? I do really like that show- like the way it makes me cringe. I think Stanley is my favorite character. But last night, the whole Jim, Pam, and the new girl thing was not fun. Matt's theory was that Jim still likes Pam, but wants to like the other girl because she likes him so much. And he wants to hurt Pam. Guys.

This weekend we're going to go see "Flushed Away." Every time I see the little slugs in the preview sing "Everybody Dance Now" I laugh.

My novel is almost in its complete form. Sort of. I mean, I still can go through it and decide to change something, but it's getting ready for its final form. Matt is almost done with the cover illustration, although they have to tell him what colors and lettering they'd like him to use. I'm voting for the brighter colors, but I always am.

I went to Oilily yesterday because they were having a sale. It's my favorite store. I was a little disappointed. I bought a couple things (OK, I will admit that my mom bought them for me. Thanks, Mom!), but I wanted to buy more. They are using too many itchy fabrics. I can pretty much only wear cotton, because other things make me itchy and rashy. Speaking of, I have these three red dots on my upper arm. Sexy.

It's 6:50 in the morning, and I should get to work.

Gay Office

The gay episode of The Office is on now. It's a painful one. The kiss scene. Ugh. This seems to be a re-runny week for TV shows. Degrassi is also a rerun.

This week I received my manuscript back with copyeditor marks all over it. What a crazy job. It made me feel like a moron to see all of the mistakes I made. It was also funny to see how many words I made up that we she to figure out how to spell. Perhaps I should make the Julie dictionary.
Matt is sitting next to me clapping with laughter as Oscar and Michael kiss. The best part of watching The Office is watching Matt watch it.

Runnnnnnnn

You know, I have had a million things to write about and just have not written. I am lazy, I suppose, although if I were lazy would I do another extracurricular thing like write a blog? Perhaps not.

Tonight is #1 of the Runway finale. I'm happy to watch, but not happy because of the extreme negative action of this season. That will continue tonight with the Jeffrey sewing conspiracy. How much do I care? Not much. Do other people?

Rainy Doodles

It's Labor Day. I have been a slack blog writer. Ah well. I have a very small audience who I don't think will mind the absence.

It's raining, and I have am now set up in our "dining room," in quotes because we have only dined in here once, and we had to move a table in to do it. Now I am at a card table in the middle of the room, my trusty Tobin at my side, trying to finish my second revision of my novel. It's not going to be so bad, but why is it so hard to sit down and do it? I'm already at page 121 out of 158, so that's nothing really. I do have an extra page/section thing I have to do, also. It's a character description list that I have to fit into the story so readers are less confused. At this point, I am working on the novel at such large intervals that even I am confused about who's who. That's because I changed most of the characters' names after the first round of revisions, as too many were the same or similar to the real-life people they were based on. So that's going to be a little work.

Speaking of work, I'm back (although the kids don't come back until Wednesday). That means the sleep problems are also back. Sigh. I can't wait to see the kids, though.

I would like to wish my Tobin a happy tenth birthday. I have had him for almost ten years!!! I love him so much. One blog I will tell the wacky story of how we got together. Yes, I am talking about my cat.

TV!TV!TV!

I am trying really hard (ie. not very hard) to work on my novel revision, but Roseanne is on. I just love this show. It's realistic and funny and sad. John Goodman is truly my favorite actor. This is my last day of freedom (my work contract starts tomorrow), so I might as well get rid of my guilt. If that were only possible.

Sooooo- Project Runway. Last night's show was very upsetting. I think it was a bad idea for the producers to bring family members on the show, and even worse for them to make others design for them. People were mean, and no one's family members need to see their children being insulted by obnoxious design people. It took away a lot of the show's fun. They better make up for it next week.

Tobin is on my lap, purring while I type this. I will definitely miss this when I go back to work. He is so mellow and sweet in the morning. At night, he gets the crazy attack bites. Today will also be my last day of official vacation hang-out time with my mom. We have had such a wonderful time together this summer. We even went to the Jelly Belly Factory in Wisconsin! It was tasty and fun. I bought Matt roasted garlic flavored jelly beans (which I later regretted because they made his breath smell like a garlic tire. I forced him to brush, floss, and use Listerine that night).

I am now going to turn off the TV for a half hour so I can work on my book. Can I do it???

Get Well Soon Editing

I just finished the first major round of editing of Get Well Soon. Actually, I still have one part left. I edit this way: Liz Szabla, my editor, sent me my manuscript filled with suggestions and grammatical fixes. She also included two pages of things to focus on while editing. I went through the whole manuscript and rewrote a ton of it, either directly onto the manuscript or into a notebook if I had a lot to write. The next step was typing in all of the changes, which is my least favorite part. After that, I printed up the manuscript. The part I just finished was reading the entire mansucipt again, fixing things and circling parts I questioned. I have a lot of grammatical insecurities, and I want to make sure Liz knows that she can't rely on me to punctuate correctly. Finally, I will type in the last of my corrections, and then I will send them off to Liz!

I have obviously read my novel before, but tonight I really cried when it ended. Not because it was so incredibly moving (although I can hope; it's hard to know how it will make others feel), but because it brought back so many strong memories. I don't want to give away the ending of the novel, but it's insane how I remember everything and every feeling I had when I was hospitalized in high school. I really hope this book connects to other teens feeling wrong about life. A little over a year (Fall 2007!) and I'll know.