New Title

UPDate! Sean (my 13-year old readaholic daughter and critic) says Annette is an old-fashioned name and is wierd. APologies to my real-life high school friend, Annette. So I changed the name of my YA to Dear Jules. I´ll live with that for awhile and see how it feels.

YA entry for San MIguel Writers Conference contest

I sent an entry in to the Meet the Agent contest sponsored by the San Miguel Writers Conference. It was the beginning of my memoir, the one that´s published by moi on Amazon.
Maybe I´ll win and get some decent feedback.

Today I´m going to send the first 12 pages, as I only have 12 pages so far, of the Young Adult novel I started, Dear Annette. I spent most of yesterday working on a one-page synopsis. It required figuring out my plot once and for all. Exhausting but a chore I´m glad I completed.

THE IMPORTANT PART: I asked my readoholic daughter, Sean, aged 13, to look at the synopsis. She tore herself away from Hannah Montana and read it.

"It´s cool," she said.

"Really? You like it?" My heart was doing gleeful little jumps.

"Yeah."

Then the commercial was over and Hannah Montana back on and she wouldn´t say more. But I liked what I got.

Off it goes to the annonymous judges today. Wish me suerte.

A Soul Train Soul

Last night, my husband´s snoring woke me up, and while I readjusted my ear plugs, I thought of my YA novel. I don´t want gore or violence or vampires. So, what happens to a 15-year old girl. This is my big question.

Here´s what came to me: Katie is new in school and wants to be POpULar! It´s 1974. (This much I arlready knew.) She´s a Soul Train-loving chick from Philadelphia, entering a conservative school in Wisconsin where kids still go to cotillions (she has to look the word up). She gets pulled into all the geek groups, like the Cable TV Club, while her younger sister´s popularity star shines. I don´t want to give everything away, but let´s just say that she discovers that the very elements that keep her from rising from obscurity, are suddenly the things that rocket her to not just popularity, but fame.

I mean, who doesn´t want to be on TV?

OK, my dilemma, now that I´ve started my YA novel, is this: I am thinking of so many plots, I can´t decide. I have Katie, which is her new name - when she was in Catholic school, it was Mary Katherine - starting junior year in high school in her Sly Stone platform shoes. Of course this is totally the wrong outfit in the conservative Midwest. She wants to be popular and will give herself Popularity Ratings throughout the book.

Now, she needs a PLAN! What is her plan for becoming popular?

Of course, she´ll misread all the signs (like in the new school, watching Soul Train is not only not popular, the kids have barely even heard of it), and her sister makes all the teams she tries out for and is elected to Student Council, but what about Wanna Be Cool Katie?

Stay tuned.

I started my YA novel!! THIS is what I want to be writing even though the short story from 1992 and my novel about a shady Mexican lawyer have been tugging on me too.

My writing partners, both published authors - Sandra Gulland and Beverly Donofrio, liked chapters from my novel King of the World when we were reviewing them about two years ago, but the structure needs work and I have to admit, I was disillusioned by the reaction of a famous editor (non-fiction editor, mind you) who read it. He took my $175 US dollar consultation fee, sat back and said, "I hated it." And then offered nothing more.

Putting King of the World aside allowed me to get to the serious work of rewriting my memoir. So that´s done, and the memoir, Fast Break South, is up in NY seeking an agent, and I´ve been in the state of not working on a story, memoir, novel, project ever since I sent it. What anxiety!

Back to the good news. I´ve solved at least a couple of the questions about the protagonist and the young adult story. It´s about a high school junior starting a new school in Wisconsin, having moved from Philadelphia in 1974.

Another sign I´m on the right track: a writer on Twitter asked for book reccommendations for her 11-year old, who didn´t want wizards either (like my girls) but rather stories about real people.

The best news so far: I´ve written two pages!

Teenaged Fish Out of Water

I´m thinking about what to write next, and a YA novel keeps coming to mind. My 12-year old, Sean has become a voracious reader after galloping through the Twilight series. When I take her to San Miguel´s library, I see her pick up and put down book after book. A boy and his dog. No. A kid who escaped evil parents and has to live underground or be found. No. A girl befriends a welfare mom when she babysits her kids. No. So what does she like?

Sean´s recent favorite is I´d Tell You I Love You, But Then I´d Have To Kill You by Ally Carter. It´s about a fancy prep school for girls that´s actually a spy school. These girls can speak twelve languages and dismantle bombs, but still fret about regular adolescent stuff. Sean likes the voice, which is a little bit sassy but not dumb. She doesn´t like overly bitchy voices or characters. In sixth grade, she loved Beverly Donofrio´s Thank You, Lucky Stars because the conflict about what to do when your best friend dumps you was so true-to-life.

I asked what she likes in a book and Sean said, "Funny. Or has a funny friend."

"Do you like fantasy, or super hero girls?"

"No. Just regular kids."

Suddenly I thought of myself at 15, having to move from Philadelphia and all things comfortable - aunts, uncles, cousins, summer picnics, two best friends in high school called Annette and Cheryl, and another one, Meg, from grade school. We moved to a Milwaukee suburb called Whitefish Bay. For the first day of school I polished up my Sly Stone platform shoes and pulled on my wide jeans, ready to conquer the halls of Whitefish Bay High School. But I walked into a school where the kids had walked right out of the Preppy Handbook. They went to cotillions. I didn´t even know what a cotillion was!

So I´m playing with this idea. The teenaged fish out of water. I think I´m going to get an outline together and then, later, have Sean read my first chapter.