But this Friday, May 11th I’ll be at the Westchester Library Association Conference in Tarrytown, NY for lunch and book signing.  There’ll be copies of The Mark and The Vision available, free bookmarks and whatever other swag I can dig up. If you’re there, please come say hi!

Details about the event are here.

SHORT TERM GOALS

1. Today – make green cupcakes. 4 y.o. has been dying for this day. My green cupcakes will not be fancypants like these, but as 7 y.o. would say, whatevs.

2. Next week – meet sister’s new baby:

omg, need I say more?

LONG TERM GOALS

1. Spit-shine Manuscript

2. Sell Manuscript

3. Start a New Book

How Long Term Goals make me feel right now: see photo.

PLACES I’LL GO

We’ve been a bit aggressive in our travel planning for summer, but if Long Term Plan #2 happens, I should be able to cover the trip to the Pagoda. Maybe.

THINGS I PROBABLY WON’T DO

two that came to mind in car line this morning…

Watch American Idol: I’m not a big TV watcher, but used to love this show. People who can sing are amazing and I love the dream-fulfillment bit, but think I’m over it. If I were watching though, I’d be rooting for Jessica or Holly.

See The Hunger Games Movie: Even though I’m kind of dying to. I’ve watched every clip, but I’m so on the fence…it looks awesome, but do I really want to see this book on the screen? I’ve already forgotten what my Cinna looked like and I’m not sure I love the Lenny Kravitz. Plus, I’d have to break my haven’t-seen-a-movie-since-Borat streak. Jury’s still out.

Disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with writing or books and none of the brilliant ideas are mine.

I’ve been vacation planning for August – which seems ridiculously far away, but people book this stuff early so I guess I have to, too. We’ve decided to go to Venice and…some other places.

That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out – where - plus the logistics and most important: how to keep three kids, eight and younger, happy.  Europe is really cool for grown-ups, but kids – mine at least – have little or no tolerance for museums (truth? neither do I) and trekking through historic towns.

Hence, the first Brilliant Idea: Kids Go Europe: Treasure Hunt Venice.

Seventy-two pages of scavenger hunt challenges in Venice (How many lions are in Such-and-such Square? Say “bongiorno” to a stranger). You get points for completing stuff and rewards like gelato. I am SO buying this. And I would buy one for every place we go. Sadly, there’s only one other. Someone should make more of these. Preferably before August.

There are similar books like Kids Europe: Italy Discovery Journey that has a checklist to keep track of which gelato flavors and kinds of bread you’ve tried. Add to Cart.

Another Brilliant Idea: the Travel for Kids website. My very favorite thing about it is that for each destination, they recommend relevant books for kids (okay, this post is a little about books, after all). There were eleven on the Venice page alone, fiction and non, including picture books like This Is Venice by Miroslav Sasek who did a whole series of these that are fantastic – kids loved the San Francisco one we read pre-vacation last year. Also on the list was a Magic Tree House book, Looking for Marco Polo and MG/YA novels by Donna Jo Napoli and Cornelia Funke. More Add to Cart.

ATTENTION kids’-authors-whose-books-are-set-in-tourist-areas – promo opp? Contact them here.

My other favorite travel website and Brilliant Idea #3: HomeAway.com. I’m not sure I’ll ever stay in a hotel again. Jamming me, husband and three kids in a hotel room would be a nightmare, but that aside, there are so many ah-mazing places with more space, terraces, better views, character and a lot of time they cost less.  There are plenty of sites that list vacation rentals, but I think the price/quality/ease ratio is best at HomeAway and the selection is BIG for just about any place I’ve searched, US and other.  And look at these incredible houses in Italy *swoon*:

So, after a bunch of research, I have: a shortlist of houses and apartments, a tentative itinerary of places to go after Venice and car rental, train, plane and ferry info for all of it. Now, to lock it all down before Agent Melissa gets back to me with thoughts on the latest version of the soon-to-be-retitled TOUCH.

The Manuscript Itself. Sometimes there’s a phrase or word that fits the story perfectly, like Touch. I was hoping there’d be something else. I found Stark Black Numbers, Don’t Touch Me, The Things They Say About Me, A Huge, Ugly Something…nothing quite right.

Poetry. Super-evocative short phrases work great as titles.  When There Is Nothing In You, Only Stand and Watch, The Things You Give Your Life To.  I think poetry-inspired titles are really memorable and intruiging, but they tend to sound very literary. My book is a YA speculative fiction pre-murder mystery, not Moby Dick.  Next.

Quotes. Like poetry, but not as poetic. I plugged in my key words touch, see, death and a few others at brainyquote and got Finishing Touch, The Human Touch, If We Touch Tomorrow, A Touch That Never Hurts and a bunch of other stuff. Nothing I loved.

Friends. My agent threw in some ideas and I asked some other writers. A Touch of Murder, Touching Murder, The Hands of Death. Too mystery/genre. Destiny’s Touch, Touch Me Not. Too…romance novel?

After a while the eighty-plus titles on my “maybe” list all sounded equally bad. Or equally good. So I took the weekend off, came back to it this morning and think I have a favorite - a combination of friend suggestions, the original title and a poem.

Naming a book, like naming a child, feels really hard. At first, everything sounds weird and foreign and it seems so important to pick Just The Right One. But eventually you decide, maybe still second-guessing, and a month later, you’ve said and thought it so many times, it just is and you can’t really imagine it being called anything else.

I’ve signed with a new agent, Melissa Sarver of Elizabeth Kaplan Lit.

If you don’t know Melissa, let me tell you a few things about her:

1. She wears glasses (okay, that was a gimme…but doesn’t she look like she’d be fun to hang out with?)

2. She worked as an assistant at multiple agencies before starting to take on her own clients a bunch of years ago which means she’s paid her dues and learned the business from people with different styles and perspectives. Invaluable experience.

3. Her clients say things like: she’s patient, a fantastic editor, great communicator, I LOVE her, fantastic, professional, smart, enthusiastic cheerleader, the one part of publishing I’m never frustrated with, got my manuscript read by [super-editor] I was fixated on, supportive, clever, fun, works very hard to get the best exposure for each manuscript, my ideal agent (sorry, clients, I hope you don’t mind my sharing!)

4. None of her clients had a single bad thing to say - not one caution. You might think: well, of course not, she’s their agent!  But three times before when I’ve asked about agents, current clients have red-flagged things. In one case, it was about my former agent and the red flag ended up the reason for our split. Current clients speak the truth – often delicately, but still honestly. They don’t want to be on the hook for your future problems.

5. She was the first agent to request a partial of The Mark way back when. Funny coincidence, no? Ultimately she rejected it. Good call since that version was about a year and four drafts from ready.

6. She remembered The Mark and read it when it came out (major bonus points!)

7. I was referred to her by another agent, Holly Root, who said even more good stuff about her and her publishing contacts.

8. She’s fast. Read my manuscript lightning-quick and gets back to me right away. LOVE that!

9. She’s a Pats fan living in NY. I’m a Pats fan living in NY (okay, we haven’t actually talked about this but I saw it on Twitter. Also, my husband’s the real Pats fan. I’m from PA, but the Eagles stink and I can’t root for a guy who beats dogs so what the hey)

10. We’re already knee-deep in manuscript and title changes, write-ups of the next book and it is all good. She’s had really solid suggestions and guidance so far and I am super-psyched to be working with her!

If you want to know more about Melissa, you can follow her on twitter, check out the agency page and read interviews she’s done here and here.

What I Read in 2011

1. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

2. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

3. 13 to Life by Shannon Delaney

4. The Help by Kathryn Stockett

5. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

6. A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner

7. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

8. Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson

9. The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

10. The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy

11. Numbers by Rachel Ward

12. My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent

13. Gone by Lisa McMann

14. Glass by Ellen Hopkins

15. Undone by Brooke Taylor

16. Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A. S. King

17. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

18. Stolen by Lucy Christopher

19. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

20. Crank by Ellen Hopkins

21. Trapped by Michael Northrop

22. The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch

23. Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

24. Story by Robert McKee

In 2010, I read eighteen books. Seventeen of them were young adult. I was hoping to be a little better rounded this year and I was…a little.  Five of this year’s twenty-four were adult novels. I really liked most of them, but what’s funny is they were all in the early part of the year. After that, my true bent took over and I went back to YA. SO many of the YA books I read in 2011 were awesome. I’d be hard pressed to pick a favorite, though Glass by Ellen Hopkins wowed me so much I did something I rarely do: sought out the first and last book in the series and read them, too (I usually like some breathing room between like books). All of them were such powerful and powerfully written stories.

For all the re-reading I thought I did, neither this year nor last year’s lists include any re-reads. Too short on time these days, I guess.

I’m not a huge non-fic reader, but ending the year with a book on the craft of writing was the perfect way to launch 2012. I couldn’t do much writing in December with the holidays and kids off school, but reading Story was a great way to gear up for digging back into my WIP this week.

My reading resolutions for this year? Read more books, pick whatever speaks to me and end the year with another book on writing.

If Santa or someone else brought you an ereader, The Mark ebook is still $1.99 in all formats (links in the post before this one) for a few more days.  And, if he didn’t, there are two copies of The Vision (ARCs) up for grabs until January 1st on goodreads.

Merry everything! I’ll be back when there’s SOMETHINGHAPPENING.

Bloomsbury is having an awesome holiday sale on e-books from now through January 6, 2012.  There are over sixty adult, YA and MG titles under $3.99, including The Mark for $1.99.  The full list of available books is here.

Direct links to The Mark for $1.99 are below:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Mark-ebook/dp/B0045I6TO4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1322443368&sr=8-2

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mark-jen-nadol/1100390532?ean=9781599906607&itm=2&usri=nadol+jen

Sony: http://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/jen-nadol/mark/_/R-400000000000000286716

Powells: http://www.powells.com/biblio/95-9781599906072-0

Because love

I’ve finished the first revision of The Box (the book I wrote this about four weeks ago) and we’re definitely on speaking terms again.  I recognize all the things I was head over heels for way back when, though starry-eyed infatuation has been replaced by more practical considerations like whether the storyline is believable or whether the characters feel as fleshed out on the page as they do in my head (and some of them weren’t even that fleshed out there)

There’s SO much more to do.  Like deal with…

-Chapters that start with a nice, voice-y paragraph and devolve into: WRITE MORE HERE

-Notes like: make MC nicer/more sympathetic and add a scene where MC and love interest talk about X and do something with the Y theme

Plus I know I need to map out the story arc on about five different levels, cut out at least two chunks of text that are in there twice (I couldn’t decide if they belonged in chapter A or B so I put them in both!), work on making emotions more tangible and, at a more detailed level, stop having everyone “glance” and “shrug” so damn much.  Oh, and change the title and make sure the chapters are numbered correctly and eliminate the second space after every period in the whole manuscript (when did this change?  and why?  and, no, I probably won’t actually do this.)

In short, there’s a long way to go.  But what I have done is find the story.  I know who it centers on, what their conflicts are and it’s set up to move in a steady progression from beginning to end now.  And, lemmetellya, that’s a long way from where it was a month ago.

So, I’m going to take a break, let it stew over the next few days and give thanks that I’m out of the wallowing misery of reading a freshly minted first draft and on the road to making it something possibly worth reading.

Happy Thanksgiving to all those celebrating.

In other news, goodreads has giveaways of The Mark and The Vision running through November.

And a nice review for The Vision came in from Booklist that said (among other spoiler-y things): This sequel to The Mark (2010) offers up a second helping of romance and ethical puzzles.  Nadol maintains character integrity and tension, and readers will anticipate the next entry in this series.

That’s about it.  Back to the grind.