And introducing....

Busy Week! I'm hopping from Anabelle Bryant's blog to here, then over to- well, you'll see.

While Anabelle and I have never met in person (yet!) we've gotten to know each other over Facebook (isn't it amazing how many people you can 'know' just through FB?). We're writers. We encourage each other, post about our lives, talk about books, funny things we see on social media, and writing. Anabelle's new book, To Love A Wicked Scoundrel, is

available now, for those nights when you want a little wicked romance... If you're interested in her book, tell her I sent you! You can find her here.

And now Anabelle wants me to tell her:

What am I working on?

So many things! Blonde OPS did a surprise release at YA Fest, and my co-author Natalie Zaman and I will be doing a ton more signings and appearances. My solo projects include a ghost story called Cold Water (which I think I've sent to my agent. *note to self: check!). I'm finishing up (another!) round of edits on my sci fi novel, Lethal Dose, and just beginning the revisions on my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) project, called The Meaning of Time which is not time traveling per se, but more time hopping. And there are so many ideas sitting in the pot...

Tell me one element of your current work that you really love:

In Blonde OPS, I love the non-stop adventure. There are very few spots that aren't filled with car-chasing, spy tracking, high fashion wearing, computer hacking, vespa riding, teen flirting action.

What part of the book did you most love to write?

Oooh, hard to decide! I love the scenes with bitchy Candace because she's, well, bitchy and those are the fun characters to write, and I loved writing the spy thriller stuff. After doing research on the Secret Service, and hacking, it was so much fun to write the vespa chase through Rome. I really want to do that!

In your writing process, what was the most difficult?

Blonde OPS was a work-for-hire; the premise and most of the characters were the creation of our editors, Peter Joseph and Kat Brzozowski of St. Martin's. They had a basic idea, but we had to fill in the details, add supporting characters, come up with the computer hacks, lay out the plot. Sometimes, they didn't like what we'd written, so we had to revise, revise, revise. It would have been so much easier if we were psychic and could read minds!

And now I tag Maria Andreu!

Her first book, The Secret Side of Empty, debuted March 11th, and is getting lots of notice.

You can check it out here, along with info about her other writings- magazine articles and essays. I'm looking forward to meeting her personally at the Somerville Street Fair, where we have an author's booth. If you're in Central NJ, stop by to meet both of us and other great authors, from PB to YA, on June 1st.

Finally, I tag Tori Corn! She, too, will be at the Somerville Street Fair author's booth and I will finally meet her there.

Her latest picture book, Dixie Wants An Allergy, has been getting a few nods of approval. Continue the blog hop here and check out her other works.

And now Jessica Souders! I met Jessica at the Romantic Times convention in Chicago, when her first book, Renegade, debuted. She's sequels and prequels since then- take a peek here and continue the hop to... who knows? But you can guess it'll be to more great authors you should know!

See ya soon!

Char

No Man Is An Island...

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
                     John Donne, Courtesy of Poem Hunter     

"There is no 'I' in team..."
                     Michael Jordan

On Christmas Eve, I volunteered to set up and light the luminarias around our church. The effect was breathtaking, as it is every year.

Do I deserve the credit?

No, because although I volunteered for the job, my mother and two sons helped. So, thanks guys.

But so did Andre Hughes, Adriana Calderon, and Kleber Salas. Church members? No. I don't even know these people. So how do they get to claim credit and get kudos with us?

They made the white paper bags that we poured the sand and set the candles into. Their names are proudly stamped on the bottom.

And then there are those people who made the candles, packaged the sand, transported the supplies, sold them, and church people who ordered them.

One simple job, so many people deserve credit and thanks and acknowledgment.

So too with Blonde OPS.

    
By now everyone knows that Nat & I wrote it together, but it was the brainchild of our editors Peter Joseph and Kat Brzozowski, and we were brought together by our agent Natalie Lakosil. They've all been acknowledged and thanked, along with family and friends.

But the creation of this book, like the luminaria display, involves so many more people. Copyeditors, packagers, artists, publicists, bloggers, readers, booksellers, truck drivers, shippers, postal workers, typesetters, and too many more to count. I wish I knew everyone who had a hand in making this book a reality just so I could personally say thank you and list them in the acknowledgments.

Some people need a deeper acknowledgment; they deserve the dedication. Here's mine and Nat's.

When I was in seventh grade, my father, who'd worked on lunar modules that orbited and eventually landed on the moon, was out of work. As he struggled to find a job, my mom waitressed. It was a tough few years, and sometimes my parents had to borrow money from family in order to feed us. There was nothing left for trendy fashions; I had hand-me-downs or what clothes my mother made. Enter the rich kids with their overpriced designer outfits and overblown egos.

I was bullied. It made me shy, afraid to talk to people, willing to do anything to fly under the radar. But there was Mr. Cavuto, my English teacher, always with a smile, quick joke, or praise. When Jimmy (and I'm glad I can't remember his name otherwise I'd send him a letter telling him what a lowlife he was) laughed and taunted me because although my clothes were clean and pressed, they still looked poor and out of date.

Mr. Cavuto told him to shut up. And I still remember the look on Jimmy's face. Someone didn't think his jibes were funny? They were telling him to be quiet?

Mr. Cavuto didn't make a big deal of it, but Jimmy never bothered me again, and all through the time I spent there until we moved several months later, Mr. Cavuto praised my work, encouraging me to write. He even had the whole class write farewell Haikus on my last day. It still chokes me up thinking of the kindness he showed.

He deserves the dedication because I may not have continued to write or learned how to deal with criticism if it weren't for him. Thank you, Professor George Cavuto.

And then there was Mr. Grattan, high school English teacher. A sensitive, intellectual man, often bullied by snotty, 'I'm so cool but I'm really a jerk' students, he taught all the literature that seems to be the bane of students (sometimes even English-loving kids like myself): Romeo and Juliet, Silas Marner, Great Expectations, A Streetcar Named Desire. No one loves all the assigned readings, but even with the ones that I could have lived happily without having read, discussed, and written about, Mr. Grattan forced open my narrow view of what literature should be. Great literature doesn't have to be iambic pentameter, or a play, or 18th century English prose.

Literature can be anything I want it to be.

Without having been exposed to the greats and maybe not-so-greats, I might not have let my mind expand to the point where now I can say, "yeah, there's a story in that."

So thank you, Mr. George Grattan, for enlarging my vista, and I'm sorry that I didn't say it sooner while you could hear it. I'm no less grateful.

I proudly, humbly, gratefully, and lovingly dedicate Blonde OPS to you.

Char