Chatted about YA ghostly reads

I'm back from vacation and slowing getting back into blogging and writing life in the middle of helping my daughter celebrate her eleventh birthday.

Over at CatWinters.com I've written about a couple 2010 young adult ghostly novels on my have-read and to-be-read list:

http://www.catwinters.com/2010/08/more-ghostly-ya-books.html

At that same link, you can also read my current Blackbirds one-sentence synopsis--a crucial step in trying to sell one's books to publishers.

August updates

I'm about to embark upon another set of revisions, so I thought I'd catch up a little before I get busy.  I just had company visit, I'm heading on a short vacation in the middle of the month, and there's a slumber party taking over the house toward the end of August, so this may be the only blog post over here for a while.

As for the current status of Blackbirds, four people have now read the manuscript: two family members, a YA editor (the first ten pages), and a critique partner.  So far, all the suggestions I've received are easily doable.  No one has offered revision ideas that have made me ask, "Are you out of your mind??"  I'm going to work on incorporating the feedback during this month, and then I'm swapping books with one of my other critique partners in September; I'll be copy editing hers while she reads through mine.  I still plan to hold off until 2011 to send the book to my agent.  I'm tempted to turn it in sooner, but I want to make sure the writing and characters are as strong as they can possibly be before the manuscript travels to New York City.

I've been having some hesitations about using the pen name.  I've got the new website up and running over at CatWinters.com, and I still like the idea of starting from scratch with the YA books: new Amazon identity, younger-sounding name, no older books coming back to haunt me, etc.  However, I'm hoping it's the right choice.  I've had the CatherineKarp.com domain for ten years and have been blogging under the name for three and a half years.  I'll discuss the pen name with my agent some more.  In the meantime, you can head over to my alter ego's website and check out news about some intriguing-sounding ghost movies that will be going into production.  I'm thinking about possibly revealing the first line or paragraph of Blackbirds over there soon.

My Suburban Vampire blog has been keeping me extremely busy, as well.  I'm starting to get ready for all the Halloween contests and promotions already.

One more thing--if you're a fan of Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games Series, check out The 13 District Blog Tour that's currently making its way around the web.  The tour stops at one of my hangouts, SciFiGuy.ca, tomorrow.

HOT WINGS: A hilarious New Yorker piece about the current state of teen fiction

I took my daughter to the eye doctor for a checkup today and, while there, stumbled across a highly amusing New Yorker article: "'Hot Wings': Notes on My Next Best-Seller," by Larry Doyle. First of all, I was thrilled that the eye doctor provided copies of the New Yorker; second, I had to control my laughter in the lobby when reading Doyle's attempts to come up with the perfect title for a book about a hot, teen, male angel (my personal favorites are his Mangel suggestions).  The piece was written in response to a April 5 headline in The Huffington Post: "Angels May Replace Vampires as New Trend in Teen Lit."

Read Larry Doyle's full humor piece.

Interviewed about my YA lit at Write in the Shadows

Novelist Nicole Hadaway has interviewed my YA-fiction-writing alter ego, Cat Winters, over at Write in the Shadows today.  I've revealed much more than usual about the plot of Blackbirds, plus you can learn my least-favorite food and my gripes about the color pea-soup green.

A snippet from the interview:

A near-death experience straddles my heroine between the world of the living and the realm of the dead, and she’s able to communicate with the frustrated spirit of an eighteen-year-old friend of the family who’s been told he was killed in battle.

Read more at http://writeintheshadows.com.