I hope we’re coming to a bookstore near you, and I hope you’ll come out to see us when we do!

TOUR DATES:

If you are in any way affiliated with a library, then you probably know that this week is a special one because it’s National Library Week!  Being a long-time library lover myself, I’d like to show my appreciation for public and school libraries by giving away–what else? BOOKS!

One library (school or public) will have the chance this week to win a set of 15 books: Five copies each of MOONGLASS, IN HONOR, and GOLDEN, to be used for library circulation or library book clubs!

**Who is eligible to win?

Any US school or public library

**How do you enter???

Easy, just fill out the form below and submit by Friday, April 19th 12pm, PST.  Winner will be announced on Saturday April 20th!

When I wrote MOONGLASS, I had just moved into a little beach cottage, where I fell in love with every little detail and nuance of the beach. While I was writing IN HONOR, I took a road trip to Sedona, where I went on a sunrise vortex tour, swam in the creek Rusty and Honor took a dip in, and spent one heck of a Dime Beer Night at the Museum Club, which inspired the country bar they visit.

But writing GOLDEN was different. I wasn’t writing about a place that was all new and fresh to me, or a place I’d never visited. I was writing about a place where my friends and I spent too many nights to count driving endless loops around our little town hoping it’d somehow get bigger; where we spent our summer days hiking trails and daring each other to jump into the freezing lakes, and where I spent many a winter night looking up at the stars from my bedroom window that perfectly framed Orion against the black sky. 

When I was writing this book, I was writing about home.

In the fall of 2012, while I was working on it, I decided to take a trip home, and drive the roads I drove as a teenager, and find all the old spots I wasn’t sure I’d remember how to get to, because it seemed important for this story. And it was. The places I remembered, and the way I saw them through old and new eyes all found their way into Parker and Julianna’s story. So today, I thought it’d be fun to give you a personal, behind-the-scenes tour of the place I called home as a “young adult.”

And, if you’re so inclined, you can share the good news by tweeting about it or sharing it on Facebook: 

Saturday April 6^th 
Irvine Marriot

Panel: Young Adult-The Awesome Age, with Josephine Angelini, Cecil Castellucci, and Sarah J. Mass

Saturday April 20^th

USC Campus

Signing in the Simon & Schuster/Once Upon A Time Booth at 1pm

 

Does falling in love mean falling out of faith?

“Lacey Anne Byer is a perennial good girl and lifelong member of the House of Enlightenment, the Evangelical church in her small town. With her driver’s license in hand and the chance to try out for a lead role in Hell House, her church’s annual haunted house of sin, Lacey’s junior year is looking promising. But when a cute new stranger comes to town, something begins to stir inside her. Ty Davis doesn’t know the sweet, shy Lacey Anne Byer everyone else does. With Ty, Lacey could reinvent herself. As her feelings for Ty make Lacey test her boundaries, events surrounding Hell House make her question her religion.”

Melissa Walker is a writer who has worked as ELLEgirl Features Editor and Seventeen Prom Editor. All in the name of journalism, she has spent 24 hours with male models and attended an elite finishing school for girls in New Zealand, among other hardships.
She co-founded I Heart Daily with fellow ex-ELLEgirl Anne Ichikawa in 2009. It’s a daily newsletter about likable stuff.
Melissa lives in Brooklyn and has a BA in English from Vassar College. She would tell you her SAT scores too, but, you know, the math part was hard.

 She loves meeting teenagers, and is game to speak at your library or school about writing, books, fashion, magazines or pop culture (but, you know, in a smart way).


Before we get to the GCC interview, Melissa has a special behind-the-scenes peek at Dean, one of SMALL TOWN SINNERS main characters:

And now for a few hard-hitting questions…
1. Do you have a pre-game writing warm-up? Something you do before you write to help get you in the right frame of mind?

Sadie can’t wait to get away from her backwards small town, her delusional mom, her jailbird dad, and the tiny trailer where she was raised…even though leaving those things behind also means leaving Brendan. Sadie wants a better life, and she has been working steadily toward it, one con at a time.

 What things do you always have on hand when writing? Special pens, notepads, snacks…
A cup of a tea, my Mac Airbook and my dogs. I am an office supply junkie so I love any excuse to buy pens, Post it Notes, or those Moleskin blank notebooks.

 How do you stay focused when writing?
For me I need to get started. Once I start writing I feel as if I fall into the story and it seems easy to keep going (and difficult to remember things like making dinner or walking the dog). If I haven’t begun writing for the day I seem to be able to come up with a million excuses of why I can’t.

 What is your worst writing distraction/procrastination tool?
The Internet. I am constantly amazed at my ability to spend huge amounts of time looking at cute dog and kitten pictures. My current favorite is Dog Shaming. www.dogshaming.com

 Describe your perfect writing day:
The perfect writing day would mean writing in a house near the ocean. There’s something about water that I love. I’d write during the day without a single beating my head on the desk moment, and spend the evening reading by the fire.

Eileen, thank you so much for stopping by!  And I think you need to come visit me one day.

Sadie can’t wait to get away from her backwards small town, her delusional mom, her jailbird dad, and the tiny trailer where she was raised…even though leaving those things behind also means leaving Brendan. Sadie wants a better life, and she has been working steadily toward it, one con at a time.

 What things do you always have on hand when writing? Special pens, notepads, snacks…
A cup of a tea, my Mac Airbook and my dogs. I am an office supply junkie so I love any excuse to buy pens, Post it Notes, or those Moleskin blank notebooks.

 How do you stay focused when writing?
For me I need to get started. Once I start writing I feel as if I fall into the story and it seems easy to keep going (and difficult to remember things like making dinner or walking the dog). If I haven’t begun writing for the day I seem to be able to come up with a million excuses of why I can’t.

 What is your worst writing distraction/procrastination tool?
The Internet. I am constantly amazed at my ability to spend huge amounts of time looking at cute dog and kitten pictures. My current favorite is Dog Shaming. www.dogshaming.com

 Describe your perfect writing day:
The perfect writing day would mean writing in a house near the ocean. There’s something about water that I love. I’d write during the day without a single beating my head on the desk moment, and spend the evening reading by the fire.

Eileen, thank you so much for stopping by!  And I think you need to come visit me one day.

Sadie can’t wait to get away from her backwards small town, her delusional mom, her jailbird dad, and the tiny trailer where she was raised…even though leaving those things behind also means leaving Brendan. Sadie wants a better life, and she has been working steadily toward it, one con at a time.

 What things do you always have on hand when writing? Special pens, notepads, snacks…
A cup of a tea, my Mac Airbook and my dogs. I am an office supply junkie so I love any excuse to buy pens, Post it Notes, or those Moleskin blank notebooks.

 How do you stay focused when writing?
For me I need to get started. Once I start writing I feel as if I fall into the story and it seems easy to keep going (and difficult to remember things like making dinner or walking the dog). If I haven’t begun writing for the day I seem to be able to come up with a million excuses of why I can’t.

 What is your worst writing distraction/procrastination tool?
The Internet. I am constantly amazed at my ability to spend huge amounts of time looking at cute dog and kitten pictures. My current favorite is Dog Shaming. www.dogshaming.com

 Describe your perfect writing day:
The perfect writing day would mean writing in a house near the ocean. There’s something about water that I love. I’d write during the day without a single beating my head on the desk moment, and spend the evening reading by the fire.

Eileen, thank you so much for stopping by!  And I think you need to come visit me one day.

1. Those who are close to me know, and you may have guessed by my Tweets, that this school year I had the opportunity to go back to my middle school librarian job after two years away.  This was/is a job that is near and dear to my heart, so I snapped up the chance.  And then I freaked out.  While I love the job itself, trying to balance it with writing and deadlines and family had been a rough road, I’m not gonna lie.  In the last couple of months, I’ve had those “What was I thinking???” moments on multiple occasions.  I’ve also had those crushing ”I cannot possibly do this” moments more than once.  But the good news is that today is the last day of the first quarter…and somehow… I’ve made it. AND…

2.  Last week I finally got the greenlight for the next book, GOLDEN, to go to copyedits!!!! Which means it’s 99% finished–which means I am 99% relieved. Oh, this book. I don’t even know where to begin with it, except that it was a book I was a little intimidated to write from the very beginning, one that gave me a run for my money in the process, and now is one that I am very proud of (but, honestly, a little bit nervous about still, too).  I think this is a good thing, the nervousness.  That it means something. This is a book that I lost sleep over, did not share with any of my usual readers, and second-guessed just about every line I wrote.  I think that means that it’s close to my heart.  And important to me.  And, fingers crossed, it will be close to yours too when it comes out in May!

3. Having finished GOLDEN, I’ve found myself in that strange place that feels a little bit like a vacation for the writing brain, which is SO nice, but it’s one that leads to restlessness pretty quick, which means I’m getting ready to dive back into writing a whole new story.  It’s a strange thing.  I’ve got the outline for it, and the synopsis. I’ve even got 16 pages that I wrote way back in July.  But at this point, it all feels foreign. The characters seem like strangers. I don’t know how they sound yet, or what they fear or love most.  This is the best and worst thing about writing, this beginning again. On the one hand, I’ve got a clean slate, and on the other hand, that clean slate? Well, clean is another word for blank. Empty.  And filling it in is a big job, so I’m building myself up to it because I know that once I start, and truly commit to a story, I’m a goner.  I will stop sleeping, and start grinding my teeth, and become used to this whole new thing occupying my mind and taking over my life.  It takes some working up to, but I think I’m ready.  Just about.

4.  TV–I am not a huge watcher of it.  In fact, Monday through Thursday, I don’t watch any. My husband works those nights, and after my kids are tucked in, I take the opportunity to read or answer emails, or generally just chill. But Friday nights, we stay up late and catch up on them all.  We’ve pared it down to a select few–SUPERNATURAL, VAMPIRE DIARIES, and now NASHVILLE. Oh, NASHVILLE.  Can I just say right now that Connie Britton is one of my favorite actresses of all time? And Hayden Panitierre, though I want to hate her character like we’re supposed to, I also feel a little bit sorry for this little girl lost (like we’re supposed to). And I have a feeling that Connie Britton’s character will too, though it may pain her to do so.  Like FNL, this is one of those extremely well-written, true shows that grabs you right by the heart from the very beginning. If you haven’t watched it, do.  You’ll totally thank me.

5.  And finally–I cannot let this week go by without a shout out to Taylor Swift and her beautiful new album, RED, which is poised to sell a million this week!  The girl is magical.  And such a writer. If you know me, you know I am an unabashed fan, as is my my 6 year old daughter.  Not only did I have a special package pre-ordered for her, but I bought it on iTunes as soon as it was available so I could listen to it on the way to and from work.  There is nothing more exciting than hearing an artist’s newest album, and with this one, Taylor does not disappoint. RED shows her growth as a woman and a songwriter, and since Monday, my commute to and from work has been devoted time to listen, appreciate, and try to figure out which guys the songs were written about.  Any insight on this would be extremely helpful, as I am totally out of the loop.