How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

Author Adrienne Kress has a guest post on Nathan Bransford's blog about why she writes for children . Her answer is pretty simple--she writes the kind of stories she likes. Although I haven't been published yet, I've had a couple of people ask me that question as well. They say things like: "Oh Jay, you're so talented. Why don't you write real books?" Or, "I know it's harder to get an adult book published, Jay, but I think you should try." Or even just "You're wasted writing books for kids." Notice how all of those comments have a couple of things in common. The first is that they all incorporate some kind of backhanded compliment about how I'm so awesome. And I am awesome, sincerely, but I'm also not the next coming of Shakespeare or Stephen King. I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination "above" the talent level of young adult literature. And that's the second thing--the idea that somehow au...

I do try to stay away from the political here, but this day could not have come fast enough for me. Yay, Country! Good job! I leave you with this: Virginia, I have just one word for you, just one word. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. ... Tomorrow you can turn the page on policies that put greed and irresponsibility before hard work and sacrifice. Tomorrow you can choose policies that invest in our middle class, create new jobs and grow this economy so that everybody has a chance to succeed. Not just the CEO but the secretary and the janitor; not just the factory owner but the men and women who work the factory floor. Tomorrow you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that puts reason against reason, and city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we ne...

1. Okay, Winter, seriously, enough with the snowing . We GET IT. Now, please stop. 2. I read three books this weekend (short ones). Two were Really Good, and of those two, one may make a future appearance on Jay Loves A Book. One was...okay. Do you ever get the feeling that some books are considered good just because they were the first ones of their kind? Yeah, that's sort of the feeling I got about this book. 3. Speaking of books,* I find it hard to suspend my disbelief in a YA book when there is no mention of parents whatsoever. Don't get me wrong, I don't think parents need to play a very big role in a YA book, just that they need to exist. When a protag lives at home, then there needs to be a modicum of parental interaction. Just a little. Just enough to ground the book in reality. Otherwise, it's teenage fantasy-land and I find the rest of the story hard to buy. 4. ABC Family makes the cheesiest sequels to movies ever (The Cutting Edge THREE? Anoth...

I read this article recently, in the Sydney Morning Herald* about the phenomenon of oversharing, both in the celebrity world and the private world. I have to say that I'm fascinated by the phenomenon, particularly as it relates to non-celebrities. I understand how famous people, especially young ones, can get caught up in revealing too much about themselves by the press machine and then find it hard to go back.** But I don't understand why regular people do it. Maybe, if you grew up in the Facebook era and you might reveal too much about yourself before you thought about it. I can see that. What people think is appropriate is influenced, heavily, by their environment. Like, when I watch The Wire , I start swearing too much. And if I were a teenager nowadays and everyone else had Facebook and MySpace pages and were talking about their sex lives and personal habits on them, I might think it was okay to do that. (It's not, by the way. Friends don't let friends ove...

1. Remember how I was mentioning that there was no snow here in Northern Ohio in December? Yeah, um, whoops , because this weekend I shoveled my driveway five times . FIVE. I'm a good Wisconsin girl, and I'm not above a little shoveling, but five times? RIDIC . 2. When I was in Wisconsin over the holidays, I went on a walk one night and was reminded how nice it was that there was a city ordinance that requires everyone to shovel their sidewalks. Seriously, it was great to be able to walk around the neighborhood without tromping through two feet of snow. So now I'm shoveling my own walk, even though there's no ordinance in my city that requires it and no one else does.* Thanks, Wisconsin; you make me want to be a better person. 3. I may be going roller skating this coming week. While I used to be good at roller skating, I'm pretty sure that skill has abandoned me. If I don't post for a while after that, you'll know that I fell down and broke somet...

This post is not about pants, it's about Butt Covers. That is, book covers that feature a young woman's butt and, usually a weapon and a tramp stamp of some kind. Like this one: Juno Books has a post about these covers here , including a bunch other covers.* These covers are really striking and unusual, and a lot of them are very beautiful, but...they all seem very similar. Some of the commenters to the Juno post indicate that that's sort of what they like about the covers--they know what they're going to get when they pick up a book like this. But the commenters also indicate that they sometimes think because the covers are so similar that the stories are all basically the same as well, which I can say from experience is SOOOO not true. Just like, for a while, all the chick lit covers were pink and had shoes on them, but the stories inside varied greatly in terms of appeal, so too with the Butt Covers. At least Butt Covers imply that, if you don't like the gi...

I could have picked any one of a hundred songs by Paul Simon to write about; he is, without question, one of the best songwriters of his generation (or any other). Not only is he incredibly prolific, but he's also incredibly creative--while some songwriters end up sounding the same over the years,* Paul Simon always sounds like himself, but never sounds the same. His songs aren't brothers--they're cousins to each other. So, I could have picked any one of them. "Graceland." "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover." "Bridge Over Troubled Water." "You Can Call Me Al." You get the picture. But right now I'm loving "Late In The Evening" best for primarily two reasons: (1) the samba beat, because seriously, what's better than a pop song with a samba beat? Name one thing (that's not a food). There's no way to listen to "Late In The Evening" without doing a little bounce in your chair. It's impossible, like...