It’s official, for the time being, Simon Pulse is stuck with me!!!! I’ve signed my contract. Wanna see?
Because a watched pot never boils, I actually got my contract while I was on vacation. In addition to a little bit of difficulty printing it out at the hotel, I just figured it would be mean to take a picture of me signing the contract here…
The only thing worse than that (for you) would be if I was sipping on a chocolate shake while signing. I’m just not that mean. So I waited until I was back in NY. In fact, I’ll even make you feel better by showing you this…
*sigh* Of course, it’s only the tip of my post-vacation iceberg. But I don’t care because I can check this off my bucket list.
And if that wasn’t enough awesome for one vacation–I got the proofs from my author photo shoot. My friend, the very talented Dawn Sela, has made me blush with her kind words and beautiful photography. Dawn Sela Photography This is just a smattering of the amazing photographs she took. I don’t know how I’m going to pick a favorite.
Vacation is over but I’m still in a very happy place. *grin* It’s the perfect week to send the boys to camp–off to finish my revisions!!!!
I love vacation. I love it so much I don’t know why I always dig in my heels, reluctant to venture out into a world of things I adore doing. I think it’s the insane amount of preparation that goes into the venture and the fact that I’m a creature of habit, a slug, and sort of missing the gene that causes a person to be adventurous. To sum it up eloquently, organizing myself, three boys, the cats, the house, all other miscellaneous stuff AND being daring makes my head hurt. And I usually try to avoid making my head hurt.
But there’s more to life than worrying about laundry and the pitfalls of change. Saturday, after being on the road for 8+ hours, we started to drive across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel and I could feel the wonder and awe tugging on my steering wheel–pulling my forward. I remember the part of me that wanted to be a marine biologist and learn to scuba dive. The part of me that is fascinated by the ocean. The pull of the tides, the magic of the waves. The piece of me that has a sliver of longing for adventure. Looking out over the water, I could feel all of that bubbling over as I listened to my boys, rife with their own excitement.
There is beauty on the other side of a bridge, but also in the act of moving forward.
It’s good to journey to new places–real places and the kind you only find internally. Everyone should drive over a bridge from time to time. There’s so much to do on the other side and you needn’t worry. It isn’t a one way street–the bridge travels both ways. You can come back and still have plenty of time to marvel, at the wonderful new person you’ve become, while you’re doing all that laundry.
If you could pick up right now…where would you go?
I had the pleasure of participating in a Teen Ink Twitter chat last night. Teen Ink is a national teen magazine, book series, and website devoted entirely to teenage writing, art, photos and forums. Students must be age 13-19 to participate and from what I’ve seen this is a hot bed of artistry for the YA Crowd. I have so enjoyed the writing and photography of these kids that I ordered my own subscription to the magazine.
I’m not going to lie to you, as an author of YA books, I’m trying to make a connection with this crowd. But my fascination with them goes deeper than that. I like them. To me, teenagers are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get. But I’m finding there’s a whole lot of caramels in there and not nearly as many orange fluffs as I might have imagined. They surprise me all the time. In a good way. I no longer just want them to read my book; to listen to me. I want a two way conversation. There weren’t any visible teens on the chat last night. Perhaps they were there, lurking in the dusty corners. Or not. Either way, they were missed–I had questions for those young adults. There were things I wanted to know. It was a great chat–but it would have been a better one if they were in it. Hope we can talk again soon.
What’s the most amazing thing that you’ve learned from a young adult?
