14 Ağustos 2012 Salı

Telling the truth

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About a month ago, I was sitting in a Marriott ballroom trying to explain to my husband that although he had been so sweet to fly up to Provo just to be with me for the Whitney Awards, and that although I had two finalists in the romance category, and that although I was eligible for three awards that night, he would not be hearing my name called.
I'd read all the books. I knew exactly who would win. I'd known from the minute I hit the halfway point in Carla Kelly's novel Borrowed Light that it would win. And I was right. 
So I've had a month to process the loss. Want to know how I feel about it?
A hundred percent fine. The woman who won the Whitney Award for Best Romance has studied and honed her craft over a couple of decades in the national market. It's obvious when you read Carla Kelly's book that she's got a clear grasp of storytelling, a deep love of history, and she marries those two things here to write an utterly enjoyable novel.
The reality is that my first two novels ever published were chosen as two of five finalists from a crowded field of romance novel nominees. That felt amazing. I admit that the only thing that bummed me out about losing is that I feel like Not My Type is one of the best things I've ever written, so if it didn't win then I'm not sure anything I do in the future will ever have a shot of winning, either.
But here's the thing: I was bummed for about a day. And by "bummed" I mean that I eventually consoled myself with an extra piece of chocolate and that pretty much cured me. It's hard to be bummed when you agree with the outcome of a decision. Borrowed Light deserved the win.
And just so you know, there are at least two dozen people who can tell you I was on record as saying it would win weeks before that awards ceremony ever happened, so this isn't me trying to be a good loser.
However, the whole experience just affirmed for me how much I appreciate what the Whitney Awards does in recognizing great fiction from LDS authors, and specifically for me, LDS fiction, which is sometimes a hard genre for a newcomer to navigate when trying to figure out who to pick up and read. It's not a perfect process: There were a couple of head scratchers, and I think a couple of categories were weaker than they should be, but that's utterly subjective. Who's to say that those books aren't all excellent but I just don't care for the genres, you know? So many of the finalists this year knocked me right out with how good they were.
Anyway, reading books for the Whitneys consumed all, and I do mean ALL, of my reading time from Thanksgiving until the beginning of April. But now I've had two months to pick up books I like all on my own and I'm about ready to make some nominations again for books that I believe deserve consideration in this year's nominating process. 
Which is all to say that I'm fixing to tell you about some good books I read, and that you should check them out. Also, if you've read something great from an LDS author then you can and should nominate them here. It's about a ten second process.
Also, this is a list based purely on what I've been able to get to so far, so no friends of mine better be getting in a snit about not seeing their books. If it's not here, I haven't read it yet, so chill RIGHT NOW.
In the always crowded YA category, here are some great contenders:
Becoming Bayley wins the award, hands-down, for the author who I could not for the life of me figure out why she wasn't published yet. Susan is a dang good writer, and this is a great story that I fully expect to see as a finalist this year in the YA general category. Strong, imperfect, lovable main character. Soccer. First love. Hard choices. Doing the right thing. Being bone-headed sometimes. Learning. Hot soccer guys. Really, what else do you need to know? Not going to lie: I don't do scary well. Hate scary books. Hate scary movies. And when Luisa Perkins asked me to blurb this book and I had to read it, I was like, CRAP. Because she's a friend and I couldn't say no, you know? And I'll be honest, I read Dispirited only in broad daylight and usually at the park where nothing could sneak up on me without me seeing it coming. And I can't even really describe this book but I'll say this: it does a great job of being creepy without being terrifying. I didn't have to sleep with my light on, but I thought about it often when I wasn't reading it. So what's it about? Er . . . k, try this: a kid mourning his mother figures out how to slip out of his body and let his spirit roam to find her. And then something awful locks him out of his body. For years. And then there's this new family with a sweet girl. And a mysterious disappearing and reappearing house. And her sense that something isn't right. And she's brave. And . . . all right, I can't explain it. It's an eerie, haunting, awesome read. 
If your 8 to 13-year-old hasn't discovered this series by Julie Wright and Kevin Wasden, let me do you the enormous favor of recommending it to you. My 12-year-old son loves these books and I jumped all over the chance to review this book because it's so FUN. Great illustrations and a wonderful story of kids traveling through space on a quest. I love the plot, the creatures, the adventures, the resourceful kids AND the present, trustworthy, COMPETENT adults who help them (such a rarity in middle grade fiction, it feels like). Seriously, your kid, boy OR girl, will love these books.
And now, for the grownups:For the grownups, here's another debut author to keep your eye on. Krista writes with so much heart. This novel, like mine, is a bit escapist. But where my books are kind of citrus-y meringues on the dessert spectrum, this book is . . . oh, come on: look at the cover. This book is CHOCOLATE. It's not an airy confection like my work tends to be, but it's not one of those choke-a-horse death-by-chocolate-cake-slices either. This is a premium milk chocolate book. Which is to say it's about a girl (but a grown one) who has some unexpected people drop into her life, like an ex-flame and a wayward sister and a love-her-on-the-spot baby niece, and bad guys--drug-dealing bad guys, no less--and a dad who tried but didn't get it right but maybe he will now. So read this.
If you like mysteries, then you need to discover Josi Kilpack's Sadie Hoffmiller series if you haven't already. My mother-in-law loves them. But so do a bunch of my friends around here. And Banana Split takes Sadie on a hard emotional journey where your heart breaks for her. It's a different flavor than her other Sadie stories, but in my opinion--and I'm right about this, btw--it's Josi's best work in the series. And that's saying something because the rest of the series is great.
There's a growing list of books I haven't read but already suspect will be finalists this year too. And I'll get to them, believe me. Obviously, I focused in this post on releases this year from LDS publishers. I'll have to do a future one about stuff I'll be reading in the next two months that's non-LDS fiction by LDS writers. I imagine you're going to want to keep an eye out for work from authors like Jolene Perry and Jennifer Shaw Wolf and Kristine Tate.

Summer time and the living is easy

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A normal blogger would say, "Look what I did to my nails this week" and then show you a picture. But I'm not a normal blogger because I can't even do that. I mean, if I just stuck some picture up without context, you might think I like doing my nails or something. So instead I have to tell you some long story before I even show you what I did with my nails.


When I was kid, pretty much all the way through middle school, if someone said, "Do you know Melanie?" then you'd hear not, "Yeah, that's the really skinny girl," or "Uh-huh, that really smart girl," or "Yes, the girl who never brushes her hair?" because those were all true things. No, if you said, "Do you know Melanie?" then you'd hear, "That girl with the really long fingernails?"

Because that was a very true thing, too. I had super long fingernails, a genetic "gift" from my  mom. I'm talking really long, like a minimum of a half inch and sometimes as long as an inch. I know: GROSS. I didn't paint them. Or file them. Or do anything interesting with them, for two reasons: 1. I was lazy and very casual in my grooming and I didn't have the interest in keep uping with the constant clipping, etc. and 2. It was one of the few things I was good at without even trying, this long fingernail thing, so I let them grow.


I don't do that now. I keep them short. I type a lot, you know. Like between forty and fifty thousand words a month. I used to get monthly manicures because I truly am not competent enough to cut my own fingernails. And I never even did anything fancy. Never got them painted or did nail art. Just told the lady, "Buff them." But honestly, I can rarely find the time to go do that any more unless it's for a special-ish occasion and even then it's this big ole production. So I figured out how to cut and file my own nails. They're not pretty but they're serviceable. 


And then I saw this lady's nails that made me laugh. Super cool design and it turned out it was just stickers. I thought I might have a chance of doing that so I found the Sally Hansen stuff at Target and did it. And this is seriously maybe the third time in five years (probably less) that I have tried to "do" my nails, and it didn't suck and it's lasted a week through the kitchen, the beach, and the pool. I picked the romance words one because it seemed apropos to my writing:
Ten bucks and two hours later, (although it probably only really takes half an hour if you concentrate, which I wasn't doing), ta-da. Kinda fun nails.


And actually, this post isn't even about nails. It's about stuff I'm doing this summer. Um, I was just barely called as second counselor in the Relief Society (our women's service organization at church). I've never done that before. I think it will be taking most of my free time, and that's okay. I kinda love Relief Society.


Also, since I'm obsessed with So You Think You Can Dance, the day after that one Bree Hafen girl's two-year-old got up and did her twirls on stage, I signed Eden up for dance because she loves it. And then I took her to her first class and now I love it. And this is a picture of her on her first day, standing at the barre.


She's the second one in. After watching this class twice now, I've decided that teaching dance to two-year-olds would be roughly equivalent to training goldfish, but man, she can't get enough. Even after she spent the whole first class thinking "tiptoes" means "walk on my heels." She still loves it, so I love it for her. And when she twirls, I'm pretty sure I'll give her anything she asks for because OH THE CUTENESS KILLS ME.


And then our ward invites everyone in the congregation to join a summer humanitarian mission. This year we're trying to raise money for LDS philanthropies to build clean water wells in six drought-stricken villages. I do the blog, where you can check out the concept here, and I put together the optional kick off FHE lesson about living waters, etc. For the activity, we had the kids run and get a drink of water from the bathroom to see how it easy it is, then we had them try balancing an empty bowl on their head and walking to the end of the driveway to see how hard it was. We explained that they'd have to walk as far away as our church building with a giant jug on their heads just to get a clean drink of water. And I had to snap this picture of Eden BECAUSE. Just look. I won't even have to explain myself.

And my 12-year-old had an end of the school year Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction Dads and Dudes party and they built stuff and shot it and it went well. But those pictures are too hard to pull off of my camera to put up so I think you'll just have to believe me.
And we are doing smoothie experiments and visiting farmer's markets and going swimming and to the fake beach and soon the real beach and watching cartoons in the mindless too-hot hours of the afternoon.


I like summer.

Tears and cheers

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I figure I'm going to spend the first two weeks of August crying. Because I'm lame. Because it's the Olympics. Because I watched the women's gymnastics Olympics trials just now and I cried at least four times.


So stupid.


But here's the thing: there's just something about watching an athlete who has trained for years, who has sacrificed so much, who has worked so hard, who has pushed their natural talents farther than any of us can imagine . . . there's something about watching them stand on the brink of the moment that they have dreamed of for most of their lives--and then watching them make that dream come true.


IT JUST KILLS ME. 


I am a giant bawl-baby. When they stick a landing, or smash a speed record, or slice into the water with a flawless dive: it's a handful of seconds strung together to give them what they think is the defining moment of their lives. 


It's not of course. The thousands of early mornings and late nights, ofdrilling, and drilling, and drilling, of passing over food they'd love eat and skipping parties they'd love to go to, and the injuries, and the falls, and the getting-back-up? Those are the defining moments.


But I cry every time I get to witness the moment it pays off.


So sorry, husband. It's going to be a wet August around here.

Scarlett O'Hara can kiss my grits

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Lots of little girls in the South are named Scarlett. Having just watched Gone With the Wind and started in on the novel, I can state with total authority that it is a TRAVESTY that they aren't named Melanie instead. My fabulousness aside, I mean.


I love Melanie Wilkes. I loathe Scarlett O'Hara.


What's more, as a Southern-raised woman, I'm not sure I even get her. Anyone want to argue her case for me? Because here's how I see it: she has NO redeeming qualities. 


Even the ones on the surface that seem like redeeming qualities to other Southernors in Scarlett are NOT. Like love of the land, for example. We love our land, yes. And no matter how long I've been gone from Louisiana, it's like invisible roots shoot out the second I step out of the airport and connect me to the place that shaped my spirit. My grandfather owned and worked a good bit of acerage all his life, even until his death in his eighties. I spent countless hours working in the huge gardens my father planted every summer. Loamy, stinky, gorgeous soil. It's what we do. 


But Scarlett . . . I don't know. I don't understand why she loves the land. It's a possession thing, not a connection thing, I think.


And another Southern commandment: she reveres her parents. But when she escapes Atlanta to be taken care of by her mother,  she flips to find out she's dead only because it's now inconvenient for her to lose that source of comfort.


I don't get it. Melanie Wilkes is kind of the awesomest and Scarlett pretty much sucks. When all is said and done and Scarlett's all alone at the end, I kinda don't give a damn, either. 


Discuss.

A cheap awesome book

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So I got kind of a cool email this morning. My publisher just put my latest book, TWITTERPATED, on sale on Kindle for $2.99 (only until Saturday!). Get it. Tell your friends to get it. This is a cute book (if I do say so myself, and I guess I do), and it hasn't done quite as well sales-wise as I would like, so give it some $3 love, hm? (That sounds wrong, doesn't it? Too bad. I'm not editing.)


Also, you can win the spy thriller Red Cell by Mark Henshaw or The Thing About the Truth by Lauren Barnholdt, my agent-mate, at my other blog if you like free books and such. 


And lastly, if you haven't yet but you feel so inclined, if you read Twitterpated and you liked it, would you mind writing a review on Amazon and/or Deseret Book? Rumor is that such things help sales. 


Shucks, you guys are nice.


(All is well in Jacobson land, btw. My latest excuse for not blogging is . . . I started writing a new book. Also, summer cramps my blogging style and whatnot.)