Is there such a thing as too much yummy goodness?
If so, The Lipstick Chronicles has it. I have several posts bookmarked to blog about, but I couldn't decide. Nor could I in good conscience steal their content for weeks at a time. (But Oh! the Temptation!)
Instead, here's a re-cap and teaser.
How to Kill Anybody with Anything and Never Get Caught -- Like you really need a blurb for that title.
DISCLAIMER: The information in the following piece is for mystery readers and mystery lovers who enjoy learning about poisons for the sole purpose of driving plot. It is not meant as a technical primer. And I'm so bad at science that it's probably useless anyway.
Geesh, What Ya Gotta Do to Get into Harvard These Days.
But what I really, really hope is that teenage girls stand up for themselves and refuse to be manipulated. I hope they find the great authors who are out there, whom they will think about and draw strength from for years to come. Like Betty Smith. Not a day goes by when I don't think about A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, about Francie and Sissy and Katie and, especially, Johnny. Smith didn't have a book packager. She had a voice. And a gripping story about ordinary people who tried their best and often failed and sometimes achieved a minute of happiness if they were lucky. She is Anna's favorite author, too. That says something about what the YA market should be publishing. We want stories about real people, not The O.C. knock offs.
Do blogs sell books? Create communities? Distract or attract or repel readers? Or are blogs over already? This discussion has come up around our neck of the woods lately. So we here at The Lipstick Chronicles, in the never-ending effort to stay cutting edge, thought we'd ask you, our visitors, what you think.
Seriously, how can you resist giving your opinion?
I am writing this post at the end of a day in which I have written 9,000 words.
My 43-year-old hands are veined and arthritic from hovering over asdf - jkl;, ready for action. My world is no longer my reality. My reality is Lehigh, Pennsylvania, a fictitious town based on my hometown of Bethlehem where I am battling a murderer who kills with lethal hair extensions. The characters are named haphazardly after kids I knew in high school, thereby courting possible lawsuit. Stiletto and Bubbles are into heavy petting. They are having more sex than I feel I ever will. I am, in short, at the end of writing BUBBLES ALL THE WAY. The pub date? November.
That's right - this November. As in seven months. The manuscript was due today. My editor will get it Friday. This is what we call insanity.
Last week, in an upscale suburban neighborhood of an average American mid-Atlantic city, it came to light that some rascally boys at the local high school had created a list of the Top 25 Girls, which rated their classmates according to their physcial attributes, plus useful info on their drug use and willingness to perform oral sex.
Needless to say, if your first thought was, "Gee, I wonder how I would have rated at that school?" you are hereby dismissed from the discussion. Take your copy of Marie Claire magazine and go back to getting your daily dose of Judge Judy.
The Fly-by-the-Seat-of-Your-Pants Club
It's something else, and it's hard to explain.
When I work on a book, I write everyday. Deadlines wait for no one, not even muses. Despite the whining you heard while NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEB was in progress, I really like writing. It feeds me in some freaky way, a little like the chocolate-covered pretzels I've been craving. Maybe it's trite to say, but it's like breathing. I don't want to try to live without it, no matter how much I bitch and moan in the process. I also belong to the Fly-by-the-Seat-of-Your-Pants Club, which means I don't outline. I don't fill a binder with copious notes beforehand. I don't even scribble out a synopsis before I sit down at the computer and have at it.
I'm sure I made my point that I love these ladies and hope that you'll give them a read too.
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