Creative Blossoms

Never Have I Ever

2012-01-11T13:06:00.000-06:00

....been SO excited to finish writing/revising a novel before my latest one: Tattoo Love.

I got the idea for Tattoo Love last August. I was up late because I couldn't sleep, and I came across my uncle's Facebook page and I checked out his profile pics. He had a picture edited with two pics within it. Both were dragon tattoos, similar ones, on his wife and him. The dragons were around a Yin Yang symbol. I immediately thought up of making Joe from Call Me Robin Hood have a tattoo of a Yin Yang symbol since it's mentioned in the book.

Anyway, I started wondering about tattoos. And if it can be associated with love. That's when I got the SNI for Tattoo Love!

My girl MC gets tattoos of qualities in her dream guy.

I fleshed out the idea, and I figured out that she got a tattoo after each one of her jerk exes. And each quality would be something an ex lacked that she hoped to find in her dream guy. The title came to me soon after. Tattoo Love. Because she loves tattoos and she's basing it on her ideas of love.

At first, I had her brother be the tattoo artist. BUT THEN I wondered...what if the LI was her tattoo artist? And he had a crush on her but he was so not the right guy for her as being so far away from her dream guy. That was the conflict.

Then, because the LI was too interesting of a character, I decided to add his POV, too.

I'd worked on the idea here and there before, but just last Monday, I decided to take a break from revising CMRH. I was starting to get bored/tired of the plot/characters. But I knew I wanted to work on something else. I figured I should work on Tattoo Love.

The cool thing about Tattoo Love is that the girl and guy MCs (Maira and Kieran) mirror my boyfriend and me. And I created the characters before I met him. Pretty cool! Well, also last Monday, I had issues with him. Our relationship was super rocky, and we might really break up. So living vicariously through Maira and Kieran helped out loads. Then, my boyfriend and I, Zack, agreed to stay together, and suddenly I didn't want to work on TL that much.

BUT by last Thursday night, I knew I wanted to finish this baby up. I ended up writing 17K within 24 hours (Thursday at 11:04 p.m. - Friday at 10:34 o.m.). It was such a crazy all-nighter! By 9, I had 1.5K left and I honestly thought I wouldn't make it. But I did. YAY!

I didn't write much from Saturday-Monday, but yesterday/early this morning I made some progress for revisions. Yeah, I decided to revise as I go.

So yeah! I'm totally excited to finish TL. I'm really hoping this will be the novel I query and then publish first!

YAY!

:D

My reading goal for this year

2012-01-10T17:20:00.001-06:00

I've hardly been reading ever since I became a writer. Reading was totally my thing growing up. I could never put a book down. But ever since I began writing seriously when I was 16/17, I tend to only start reading books but never finish them.

This has gone on for far too long.

So I made a plan.

Every month, I'll read at least 1 book. That's 12 books a year, and still more books than I managed to read last year. I think I only read 10 and maybe 3 or 4 of those were for novels for school.

That's totally doable. And here are the books I'm planning to read every month. Note, I chose things with gradually increasing pages!

1. I Heart You, You Haunt Me by Lisa Shroeder
2. Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott
3. Love Story be Jennifer Echols
4. Something Like Fate by Susane Colasanti
5. Two-Way Street by Lauren Barnholdt
6. Rules of Attraction by Simone Elkeles
7. The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen
8. Matched by Ally Condie
9. Original Sin by Lisa Desrochers
10. City of Bones by Cassandra Claire
11. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audren Niffenegger
12. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

If I have time before the end of the month, I will read another book that I think I can finish before the start of the next month.

But yeah! Hopefully I can get through this list of 12 books at least! I really want to start reading more and more!

2011 Reflections and 2012 Hopes and Dreams

2012-01-01T16:48:00.000-06:00

I usually do this post on New Year's Eve, but I completely forgot. I was too busy with a certain crisis I won't mention on here. So yes! Here's what I was up to in 2011 and my 2012 resolutions!

These were last year's resolutions found in this post:

1. Lose 10 pounds. A nice number that should be doable.

This one was a success! I actually lost possibly 20 pounds or so! Without really trying lol. I just hardly ate lol

2. Finish writing/polishing Love Square and at least one other book (possibly Always With Me).

Sadly, this did not happen. BUT I finished Call Me Robin Hood's first draft during the summer! Current;y working on revisions. Have been doing that on/off while I attempt other WIPs. I also got a new idea which is really exciting to me!

3. Read 100 books.

This didn't happen either. I think I read 10. Yeah....so bad. I bought loads of books this year, so I'm planning to do A LOT of reading!

4. Land an agent! :D (Maybe the agent I mentioned above, yeah? ;) )

The agent I mentioned in my last post was an agent who first requested CMRH back in December 2009. I still have yet to submit anything to her. And yeah, this did not happen either. BOO!

5. Meet a nice boy and fall madly deeply in love. Yeah, because I cannot be in love with love and NOT wish for a boyfriend :P

THIS HAPPENED! YAYAYAY!

Though, things are a bit shaky at the moment, but I hope things fix themselves for the new year!

2.5 done is great! That' 50% which is really good for me considering I hardly reached my NYR the years before.

Anyway, now here are the 2011 highlights:

I turned 20
I finally finished a first draft of something!
I started my junior year at DePaul (though technically sophomore since I took 3 quarters off) and 3 quarters is a year
At DePaul, I had a new major - Environmental Studies instead of Creative Writing. Though, I still had CW as a minor
I quit DePaul
I went to a psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt and learned so much about myself
I asked a guy out for the first time :D
I met the love of my life!
I had more indecisiveness with what to work on writing-wise lol
I traveled long-distance alone for the first time
I got engaged! (though not sure at the moment if it's still on :( )
I met some great new friends
Bought lots of books!
Lost loads of weight and I'm pretty sure I'm back to my old weight in HS lol
On my way to conquering my depression for good!

And yeah, that's all I can think of for this year. There's probably more, but whatever lol. A little bit more eventful than last year at least! :D

So my NYR for 2012!

1. Gain 5 pounds. I bought lots of pants that are too loose now lol

2. Polish CMRH and/or another novel or two!

3. Query CMRH or a different novel

4. Land an agent!

5. Conquer my depression FOR GOOD!

6. Read 50 books.

Yeah, I've got 6 this year lol. Though, 2-4 can count as 1 lol so I have 4 :P

Here's to hoping I can reach all my NYR this year! I hope you all have a great 2012!! :D

Being happy with your writing

2011-12-23T10:45:00.002-06:00

So every writer's got their own writing style.

I've always been not-so-happy with mine. Simple and minimalistic and just plain. I didn't like it at all.

I hate admitting this sometimes, but...I don't have the strongest vocabulary. It's definitely not at the college level. I'm not very proud of that at all. I'd read published and unpublished works of fiction and tend to feel so negative about my writing.

I'll say things like... "I wish I had prose like this." "I wish I could describe this well." "Why can't I write like this?" "Why does my writing suck?"

It's hard to get out of that train of thought sometimes. And then I'll talk to some writer friends and they'll tell me that simple and minimalistic is perfectly fine. Everyone is different. Yet I'll still go back to thinking my writing is not stellar at all.

So how does one feel comfortable in their "writer shoes"?

Here are the responses I've received from fellow writers:

Try to avoid comparing your writing to others. Everyone's got their own style, and it's your very own "voice" that sets you apart from other writers.
Focus on positive beta comments (if you've ever had something beta-read before). If not, try posting a snippet of your novel in a writing forum where other writers can comment on it.
Don't write to trends. Write what YOU want to write.
A Publishers Marketplace subscription may not be helpful if you know you will freak out seeing what's selling
Take a break and then new ideas will pop up.
Shut yourself off of any distractions, shut off your fear, and your doubts will work themselves out.
Ask yourself why you write. Most often than not, it's because you LOVE it. Find that passion deep inside when you're in doubt, and let the words flow.

So there you have it. I hope any of you can use something on this list to help you when you're in doubt!

If you have any suggestions to add to the list, please add it in your comment and I'll add it to this list!

When you really want your hard work to pay off

2011-12-21T03:36:00.001-06:00

I really want my hard work to pay off. I've been doing so much research for The Perfect Crime lately. So much important research that I feel like really makes the story come even more alive.

And I've gotten a couple signs that this was the novel I am meant to work on. That includes a Simpsons episode I watched called The Book Job. It was about Homer, Bart, and others writing a YA novel hoping to get it published. Well, the phrase, "the perfect crime" was in it and that's my title! And then there was a song that popped up on shuffle when I asked the cosmos for a sign on what on. "Damn Girl" by The All-American rejects. The lyrics, "all you need is an alibi" and "you stole my heart" were in it, and those are major components to TPC.

But yeah. I really, really, really want this novel to work out. I'm thinking it'll even be the first novel I query.

It's also a regular YA contemporary rather than the YA romance I'm used to writing, and it's a nice change.

I haven't felt this strongly about a book ever. I'm so, so excited. I will keep striving to finish writing the first draft and second draft and subsequent drafts until I get it polished enough for agents' eyes. And boy am I excited to finally query! I feel like I'm so behind my fellow writer friends lol.

I hope my dreams come true!

Writing by hand

2011-12-20T16:40:00.002-06:00

I attempted to write my latest novel, my newest idea, The Perfect Crime, by hand. I wrote maybe 6K worth of words (Though, 3.6K was words I actually kept - I counted words by hand) before I finally decided that writing by hand wasn't for me. I was afraid my hand would cramp up too badly. It started to tighten the other day and yesterday too.

The cool thing that I found out is that I write ~2x slower by hand than I do on the computer at my best time. I can write 500 words in 15 minutes as a best on the computer. And 550 words in 30 minutes as my best by hand.

And I didn't consider writing by hand a waste of time if I was slower. I was more able to think about what I wanted to write instead of flashing through that 500 words in 15 minutes with hardly thinking. That helped me focus better.

But yeah, my main motivation for writing by hand was that I knew I expanded in second drafts, so I figured I'd expand as I typed up my handwritten words. And this actually worked, too, because I started typing up the first 700 words I wrote by hand that turned into 1200 words. Not bad!

I'll miss writing by hand though because the internet isn't a distraction! LOL

So yes, I'm back to writing on the computer, which might be better anyway since I'm striving to finish TPC by the end of December (but most likely it'll be mid-January). That's 4K/day for the rest of the 11 days to hit 50K, so here's to hoping I make it to my goal! :D

Ressurecting this blog

2011-12-19T10:43:00.000-06:00

Hey guys!

So I'm resurrecting my blog. I think I'm going to be posting about my journey to publication. Creative Blossoms seems to be a great blog name for the process of growing as a writer. So I'll try to post regularly. I won't have a blog schedule, and will, instead, write about whatever comes to mind.

So yes!

I'M BACK!!!

I love plot breakthroughs!

2011-09-07T14:54:00.000-05:00

I LOVE a good breakthrough whenever I'm blocked from writing. Whether the block is from laziness, a laziness, a lack of motivation/inspiration, something feeling off in the writing and my inability to figure out what's wrong yet, not knowing what happens next, and so on; breakthroughs are AWESOME.

And just having a breakthrough with Call Me Robin Hood moments ago finally gave me a blog idea after nearly 2 months off. I can't believe it's been nearly 2 months since I last finished CMRH's first draft. And revising has proved very difficult since my last blog post. Although I dropped the idea of revising within 13 days, and instead, I'm trying to finish the second draft by the end of September.

The problem was that within the last month or so, I'd been completely stuck with my Act 1, which I had to restructure and cut a lot of scenes and add extra ones. The first 4 chapters were fine, but after that, I had no direction with what the extra scenes would be.

So in that last month, I'd been going back between CMRH and other WIPs since then -To Find Love, and, as of 2 weeks ago, a SNI called Tattoo Love. (Tattoo Love I'm really excited about, by the way. I'll talk about it a different blog post. The way I got the idea was pretty cool, I think.) But the only thing I'd do on CMRH was tweak various parts. I did nothing major to it.

It was only until recently (last week) that I decided to buckle down and try to figure out what was the deal with CMRH. I realized my main problem was that after I was missing scenes about the actual premise (matchmaking Robin Hood). How I didn't realize that sooner, I'll never know. So last week, I brainstormed some ideas for scenes that had to deal with my MC's matchmaking Robin Hood idea. But then I didn't do anything with it. Until last Friday when I started to hand-write an outline for Chapter 1 and hardly got past those 4 good chapters (I ended it at Chapter 5). And only today did I try to finally figure out the entire Act 1.

So after some cutting/pasting some scenes around and expanding my outline which I'd typed up, I finally figured out the logical order of events in Act 1! And now I finally, finally, can continue revising again!

I'm so freaking excited. CMRH is my baby :D And this, by far, is my best plot breakthrough I ever got based on how long it took hahaha

Ahh that story was longer than I'd expected, but I'll take the focus to my blog readers now!

Have any of you had a major plot breakthrough?

You don't have to go into as much detail as I did about it though. I swear, anyone who gets me talking about my novels better watch out because I can ramble on and on haha

So yeah, I'll talk about Tattoo Love probably on Friday. I think I'll try to blog at least 2x a week.

Tomorrow I start school! Eek. I actually switched my major from Creative Writing to Environmental Studies, which is now my fallback if the writing doesn't work out.

Sorry for the tangent, I swear I should rename my blog back to Ramblings of a Writer, which the title was before lol

Ta ta for now!

Sorry I haven't been around...but I've got an announcement!

2011-07-19T20:27:00.000-05:00

All right. I have no excuse for avoiding my blog. I wasn't always busy.

BUT something awesome happened 4 days ago. I know I announced it on Facebook, Twitter, and my writing forums, but I figured I needed to do an announcement on my blog to really seal the deal. :D

I FINISHED CALL ME ROBIN HOOD!!!

Last time I finished a novel was Dec. 22, 2009. That was also CMRH, but it was an old version with a bad plot. V2 has the same matchmaking-Robin Hood premise BUT it's got a new plot. I've said that before, but I figured to say it again in case you missed it.

And I was super excited to finish it! I did a lot of jumping and grinning and fist-pumping lol. And that's basically because I had serious trouble the last year and a half from lack of motivation, constant WIP-changing and wanting to give up again and again. But ever since Nov. '10, I've been a single-WIP gal. That was Love Square for a couple months, and then I switched to CMRH on Feb. 10 (I know this because of my Liquid Story Binder writing program). I actually did switch back to LS for a month because CMRH was a bit difficult to write - I felt like since my male MC is kinda a male version of me, the authentic male voice was sounding girly (like me, obviously). But I came back to CMRH, almost changed novels again, but stuck through one of my fave plots I've ever come up with. And yeah! After a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, I've finally finished the first draft from start to finish! :D

The blurb/query is on the Call Me Robin Hood tab if you want to check it out.

I'm currently trying to revise by August 1. That's 13 days away. So I'm afraid I have to disappear from blogging yet again. :( But I will be back with a teaser from it! I've also got a couple ideas for future blog topics, so I'll be around at least twice a week.

So yeah!

All I have to say :D

I hope you all had a great day!

"Why can't I finish a damn novel?!" A Theory

2011-06-28T09:36:00.000-05:00

The I-Start-Things-But-Never-Finish-Them Syndrome

Symptoms:

Moving from one novel to another quickly
Making up silly excuses to avoid accomplishing it
Desire to give up
Feeling like nothing good will come out of finishing it anyway
Feeling like the magic is gone
And others

Probable Causes:

You have a Shiny New Idea
Exhaustion of creative energy
Loss of passion/desire/interest/patience/drive
Distractions keeping you away from working on it
Lack of routine/organization
And others

Suggested Remedies:

Speed writing: If you're letting the words flow without stopping every day (but in manageable chunks so you won't exhaust yourself), sooner or later, you'll finish an entire novel. You can use things like Write or Die or the #wordmongering hashtag on Twitter)
Locking away SNIs/other WIPs in the back of your mind to focus on a single WIP. BUT if you're really struggling, working on a scene or two of the SNI to quiet down your needs should do the trick (Make sure it's ONLY a scene or two!)
Rewarding yourself when you reach your word count/time goal or word count in general, when you finish a chapter, and so on
Getting a writing buddy to urge you on and exchange small chunks of your novel with - that can be very motivating.
Setting up a routine that helps get you in the mood to write, maybe always at a certain time with a cup of coffee or always wearing a favorite pair of pjs even.
Sometimes, not always, but sometimes if you're in a rut, it can help to just go back over what you've written, especially parts that you really enjoy so that you become engaged in the story again and feel motivated to press on
Self imposed deadlines
Making lists like of little things you want to work on (character development or making some scene more visual) and then as you finish them you can check them off and see the red checks grow
Close the browser on your computer when you write - major distraction.
Taking a break to read a book helps get you back in the mood to write again

Thanks to Angie and Erin for a bunch of the remedies!

Hope Dream Inspire #4:

2011-06-17T11:57:00.000-05:00

A series where I post an inspirational writing quote (or a photo) and what it means to me.

Here's the next writing quote.

"I try to leave out the parts that people skip." - Elmore Leonard

This particular quote is something I personally need to keep in mind. I tend to write scenes that don't advance the plot. This is what sometimes happens when I wing it or let my characters take over. Ever since last week, when I wrote a chapter outline to the end of CMRH (from where I left off), I've been thinking I should start doing at least chapter outlines. Hopefully it helps me focus in on what needs to happen.

Now that I think about it, there's a difference between scenes that people skip and scenes that don't advance the plot, so I guess I misinterpreted the quote. And to focus back in on the quote, I guess it generally means boring scenes, scenes full of fluffy descriptions, confusing scenes, and whatever else. At least, that's what I usually skip. I haven't skipped in ages though. I like to give the author a chance, I guess.

And now that I think about it again, the scenes that don't advance the plot could be scenes that people skip. For instance, a scene where the characters arent' doing anything. Boring and doesn't advance the plot.

Wow, this post is now all over the place lol. Guess I'll end it with a question to you, blog readers.

What kinds of scenes do you think most people skip? Have you skipped a scene lately?

P.S. Sorry I missed Wednesday's general writing post. I'd forgotten all about it in my attempts to figure out what the heck I was going to do for CMRH. (I got stuck on Tuesday but I'm unstuck now!)

Writing male POV as a female

2011-06-14T16:18:00.001-05:00

I'd first written first person male POV for my very first serious YA romance WIP, Love Square. I had no idea my male POV was actually GOOD until I'd started posting teasers and posting on Absolute Write and getting rep comments about it being good. Kyle Brewer's and Chase Santiago's voices came easily to me. And so did other male MCs following LS.

It took me a while to figure it out, but I think my secret to nailing the male POV is listening to how guys talk. I started LS straight out of high school, and being a listener rather than a speaker, I picked up on guy speak from all the times I'd be in class sitting around a group of boys. I will admit that my male POV can have bits of narration or dialogue that can be more girl-sounding, but I get it right more than wrong.

My weakness for male POV is sensitive, shy guys. As a sensitive, shy girl myself, I tend to lose focus on how a guy might say something and put in what I might say instead (on accident of course). I'm trying really, really hard not to do that for my latest version of CMRH, though.Writing is forever a learning process, and I have yet to figure out Joe's voice in CMRH. It seems that I can only get it right when revising and not drafting. Ah well...

So what are your thoughts on writing in the opposite gender? Can you pull it off or do you wish you could pull it off? Do you have a favorite book (or more) where an opposite gender writer wrote a really good male/female POV? What is it/are they?

P.S. This post is a day late because I'd totally forgotten to finish it and post! Same as my Wednesday/Friday posts last week, which I will post this week.

What inspired Call Me Robin Hood?

2011-06-06T11:11:00.002-05:00

I've posted other "What inspired . . ." posts but I can't believe I hadn't done one for CMRH yet! So here it is:

On the Teens Writing for Teens thread under the Young Adult forum on Absolute Write, some twifties were talking about Greek mythology and retellings and whatnot in early December 2009. I figured, I wanted to do a retelling, too!

I rushed down into the basement and found this book of mine called Legends of Long Ago. It's copyrighted from 1964, so it was a very old book. I'd gotten it in a book sale my school library was having in fifth grade at St. Viator's Elementary School. I saw the book, decided it'd be cool to read, and paid $0.50 cents for it. I never truly read it, though.

But anyway, I flipped through the book looking at the titles of the legends, myths, tales, and whatnot to figure out a retelling that I could make into a romance. Then I came across one called, "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood." I think about how he takes from the rich and gives to the poor. And then I wonder what if girls are like the money (EDIT: I wrote rich at first)? And a guy MC would take girls from the jerks and give nice guys a chance?

Thus, CMRH was born.

Of course, my logline is now "Joe Parker exposes jerks for who they really are to their girlfriends, giving nice guys a shot at love" since "Joe Parker takes girls from the jerks and gives nice guys a chance" objectified the girls.

But as some of you probably know, CMRH's very first version was no good. I'd written a post about it here. The old query is there, too.

And as some of you know now, I have a very new version of CMRH that avoided the God complex I described in that post I linked! Instead of searching for jerks on his own, Joe gets requests from girls, and he also offers to give a recommendation rather than choosing for them immediately without asking. And the new blurb/query is on CMRH's page here or if you click on the link above.

And that's pretty much all I have to say about CMRH!

Wednesday's post on general writing will be about outlining vs. winging it!

Have a great day!

A Writer's First Influence

2011-05-22T10:37:00.002-05:00

I know I blogged just minutes ago, but I thought I'd write a story from the viewpoint of the 10-year-old girl I was when my teacher, Miss Garrett first piqued my interest in creative writing. I've mentioned this once, maybe twice before, but never wrote the story from what I remember of it.

Ms. Garrett said to our class our next writing assignment. "Write a short story retelling a fairy tale in a modern way." This would be the first story I ever wrote. I wanted to do my best. I had to. My grades were the best in the entire fifth grade class - even with Mrs. Kitson's class combined! I knew Daddy would be proud of me if he was still alive. Maybe he'd even help me get an A+ on this short story! I always imagined him giving me the answers on test questions, so maybe he'd guide me for this too!

I knew I wanted to write about Cinderella. The title: "A Modern Cinderella." I got busy as soon as I got home trying to write this story. Cinderella, or Kaleigh, her real name, would live in an apartment with her stepmother and stepsisters and Kaliegh had to do all the work. Then she hears about a race to win the prince's heart.

Every girl wanted to enter, including Kaleigh, but she had no way to get to the race, and her stepmother and stepsisters would never bring her along. So she tries to get a taxi, except she has no money. The first taxi comes to won't give her a free ride, but he mentions the next taxi driver, a woman, would give her one. So Kaleigh waits at the curb again, and the woman driver rolls down her window, inviting Kaleigh to get a ride to the race. Kaleigh wonders how this lady knows, and she says, 'I just do, honey, I just do." Kaleigh gets to the race and it begins. She and another girl are neck and neck on the final lap, and she sprints to the finish line right into Prince Charles' arms and they live happily ever after.

I was proud of this story, and when it was due, I turned it in hoping for that A+ and a pretty sticker.

A week later, Ms. Garrett announced to our class that she would read one of ours out loud! In my head, I was crossing my fingers. She read the title, and I couldn't believe it! She chose mine! I could feel my cheeks heat up, and the kid next to me, Frankie, asked if it was mine. I gave a slight nod. She finished reading it the next day, and when she read the last word, the whole close started clapping, and I felt so special. My crush even gave his infamous, "Ow, ow!" wolf howl. I could not stop smiling the rest of the day. I thanked Daddy for helping me. After, I realized writing was so much fun, and I couldn't wait for the next short story assignment.

Okay, that didn't REALLY sound like a 10-year-old girl, but oh well lol.

I didn't know it then, but years later, when I was a freshman in high school, I remembered Ms. Garrett for being my first influence in wanting to be a writer - a novelist. I don't know where she is right now, but hopefully I can find her and thank her in person.

I hope you enjoyed my story - also, this is the first time I mentioned the details of what it was about! What do you think? Would a prince actually want his wife to be the winner of a race? LOL

Here comes the sun!

2011-04-29T21:30:00.001-05:00

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs - I mean rain. And boy has there been a lot of rain in Chi-town. And I'm pretty darn sure that the rain has been ruining my writing mood. The gloominess reminds me of my past. I've mentioned a couple of times my issues with depression. When I'm super depressed, I don't see the light - I feel like I'll be forever in this dark, gloomy place. Thankfully, I have people who love and care about me. They're my happy drug. Writing, too. Oh no! I went off on a tangent. It sorta applied, I suppose haha.

But today was a beautiful sun-shiny day. And I was able to write a good 4.2K so far! YAY! Of course, I'm lacking sleep thanks to my desire to want to write for the next 24 hours. That was a huge fail, though, because I haven't touched my WIP in the last 9 hours -_-

Anyway, I'm hoping to finish CMRH in the next 2ish weeks. May 16 is my new goal. That'll be a novel in 36 days. And I'm pretty sure I've mentioned a number of times that 3, 6 (my birthday), 4 and 7 (my dad's birthday) are my lucky numbers. I don't know why I tend to pay attention to numbers all the time. I get excited when I see 3:36 and 3:06 on the clock. I know, weird, right? LOL I'm special :D

Recently, I made the decision to go back to CMRH's original MC's name of Joe Parker. I slowly changed Nick Dupree to Nick Parker then back to Joe Parker.. Because Joe Parker ain't your average Joe Schmoe - he's Robin Hood. Also, I came up with an interesting reason. "Joe" is a pretty darn average name. Nothing special about it. And that's why it's the perfect name. Any guy at Joe's school can be the mysterious Robin Hood who disses jerks and is a hero to both girls and nice guys. And the mock cover I have on its page totally fits, too. The guy featured on it, can be any guy. And this can apply to real life too. You may think you're just a normal everyday average typical type of person. But you can still do something big. Anyone can do something big. That's what Joe attempts to do.

And now I leave you all with a super short and simple tease. The first couple paragraphs of my latest version. First draft stuff, so it most likely will change.

There was nothing fun about going to a party when I knew I wouldn't break it out on the dance floor or drink until I passed out. Especially when I also knew no one would talk to me. Better yet, I doubted anyone noticed I was even here.

So why did I go?

Well, earlier today, I'd gotten a text from a number I didn't recognize. "Party 2nite. Be there. You wont regret it. Keep your eyes on Jon Boo-dro."

Obviously, I listened.

So there you have it. I'm back to writing, (YAY!) and I'm hoping I can be submission-ready sometime in the summer.

Have a spectacular night, y'all!

P.S. This post was ALL OVER the place. I've been running on caffeine all day lol. My apologies...

The Beginning of my interest in YA Romance

2011-03-24T10:00:00.005-05:00

Most of my current works in progress (WIPs) and shiny new ideas (SNIs) are straight-up romances. Why romance? Well, I'm honestly a romantic. Before, I'd been into science fiction and fantasy writing. My first serious novel was a SF/fantasy one and that was the first and only book where I finished a first draft (March 2007) for a while. The second and last book was a romance one finished December 2009.

So, throughout my second half of HS, I had a boyfriend, and I'd write love poems, love letters, sweet texts, said sweet things, and so on. It was what I really enjoyed doing. Then toward the end of my senior year, my heart got trampled upon when I'd found out he'd been cheating and lying to me. You'd think I'd give up on romance, but oh hell no. After I graduated HS a couple weeks later, I got a romance idea after watching Mean Girls (an idea I'd since dropped because it ended up being a ripoff of Mean Girls lol) and soon after, I got my idea for Love Square the first night I'd slept at home since getting discharged from the hospital for scoliosis surgery (June 2009).

I started to fall in love with Love Square, and well, soon, I realized I'd been writing in the wrong genre for 3.5 years since I first started that SF/fantasy novel. With all those romantic things I did for my ex-boyfriend, I knew this genre was right for me. And for many months after, I'd get idea after idea after idea for novels - all romance of course. Then I hit on a gem of an idea in December 2009 - Call Me Robin Hood, the romance novel I'd finished a first draft for. As some of you already know, I'd gotten agent interest on it that same month I started it. And all the agent read was the premise: My character, Joe Parker, takes girls from the jerks and gives a chance to the deserving. Since then, to avoid objectifying girls, I've changed the logline to Nick Parker (had to change my character's name due to using the name Joe in a different book) exposes jerks to their girlfriends and gives the nice guys a shot at love.

The problem with CMRH was that my character had a God complex. And that was no good at all. I think it was last September (2010) where I got the new idea for CMRH, and the blurb (which needs work) is up on CMRH's page linked above. That new idea found agent intern interest, which was hella sweet, too.

Before working on this new version of CMRH, I've tried my hand at 10 different romance novels. All are listed on a right sidebar titled "The Novels: Progress". This was in the past year and eight months. If you do look on that sidebar you'll see all of them need revamping or are trunked. I'm a perfectionist, and I try not to be, but it's a part of my life (I hate it, though).

Currently, I've been working on this new version of CMRH for the past month and a half. I'm at 25K words, which is half of my goal of 50K. My goal moved from finishing this on March 6 (my birthday) to March 17 (36 days of working on it) to March 28. March 28 won't happen either, sadly. So I stopped with the end deadline. Instead, my new goal is to write or edit (or even stare at my document) for at least one and a half hours a day. This will start today.

So yeah, this post got a bit on the long side, but that's pretty much all I have to say about my beginning as a YA romance novelist!

I'm going to try to post these at least 3 times a week - Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Call Me Robin Hood's Playlist

2011-03-07T16:09:00.002-06:00

I have 22 songs on CMRH's playlist. A lot of them fall under certain topics. I'm going to organize them that way.

Guy falling for his best friend/in love with his best friend:
Lucky by Jason Mraz
Just Friends by Jonas Brothers
The Search is Over by Survivor
You're My Best Friend by Queen
My Best Friend by Weezer

Guy losing girl and sulking/wanting her back
The First One by Boys Like Girls
My Hands by David Archuleta
Something 'Bout Love by David Archuleta
Back to Me by The All-American Rejects

Songs about jerks
Face Down by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
Break Apart Her Heart by Good Charlotte
Stupid Boy by Keith Urban
Had Enough by Breaking Benjamin
He Ain't Worth Missing by Toby Keith
Gallery by Mario Vazquez

Miscellaneous
This I Promise You by N'Sync - Nick wants to show Anne that he'll be there for her no matter what
With Me by Sum 41 - Nick can't imagine not being with Anne
Poetically Pathetic by Amber Pacific - Nick tends to screw up when he's trying to tell Anne he's in love with her
Hourglass by Adam Lambert - When Nick and Anne really want to be together
For You To Notice by Dashboard Confessional - Nick wants Anne to notice him
Promise the Stars by We the Kings - Nick wants to show Anne she can be happy with him

EDIT: I realized I didn't mention how my birthday went! I'm copying and pasting from a status on my personal Facebook Page: "Today has been a great birthday! Yummy lunch with the fam. Free muffin/dinner at Panera. Found out I was going to a writers conference. Made a sign to put on my door: "Work out today, Karla w/ a K!" because I WILL lose some pounds by summer :). Wrote 2K so far in CMRH after not being able to write the past couple of days. Aaaand the best thing that happened today? Gotta keep that one to myself ;)"

So yeah! :)

I hope everyone's having a good day!

A shiny blog award!

2011-03-04T10:47:00.002-06:00

So... I'd gotten this blog award from fellow Karla with a K ages ago over at her blog, The Last Word. Ages ago = November 19. I kept forgetting to post about it though! Silly Karla!

So here it is in all its shininess!

So like any blog award, there are some rules that come with it. First, I've got to tell you ten things about myself.

1. My dad wanted to name me after the tennis player, Stephie Graph. I'm so happy my mama got the final say with Karla :)
2. My favorite color is pink! Such a girly-girl... I know! lol
3. To go along with #2, I like wearing black and pink together
4. I like reusing character names from novels I have that I know won't work out!
5. My favorite Filipino treat is a milk and sugar product called Pastillas. I don't get any unless someone comes from the Philippines bringing it! I haven't had it in a number of years and I'm so craving it! lol
6. I really like long hair on guys
7. I'm starting to be in love with Hello Kitty :D
8. I've always been a super picky eater
9. I'm turning 20 in 2 days!
10. I've only started building my reading bookshelf this past year!

And now I get to pass this blog award to some fellow bloggers! Since my birthday is on March 6, I'll choose 6 people! Vahini, Rachael, Amanda Johnson, Sam Ripley, Bee, and Michelle!

Random Ramblings

2011-02-26T14:03:00.003-06:00

Okay, so I haven't really done a random rambling in a long, long time. I don't even remember the last time I posted one! I'll have to dig into my blog archive or something! It isn't even Friday, but to hell with a set blog schedule lmao.

So I will ramble about just a few things. This is different from my previous random ramblings since I'm going to go into detail, so I'll keep it to three things since my birthday is in the third month of the year :D

1. I'm a bad reader. I used to LOVE to read growing up. But as I started to write novels, I stopped reading as much! That's BAD because it's so important to read to learn more about your genre or what's selling or whatever. My goal this year is to read 100 books, but I'll probably just reach half that amount. Still, that's 30 more books than I read in 2010! (I honestly think I only read 20 books... so bad!) I'm also keeping track on Goodreads and have a shiny new widget on here! 4 books so far, which I should be at 16 books if it's 2 books/week to finish on time! I need to get on that!

2. My celebrity crush has been Alex Pettyfer since I was like 14. He's an English actor who I first heard about as the guy playing Alex Rider from the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz. LOVED that series, so when I Googled Stormbreaker (the first book), found out there was going to be a movie, saw this cute-as-hell blond guy who's also just a year older than me was playing the MC, and FELL IN LOVE. And now he's in the Hollywood scene! Going to watch him in Beastly (Also a fantabulous book!) with my friends for my birthday. But let's just say *I* saw Alex first out of most American girls hehehe. Can I just say I'm SO jealous that Vanessa Hudgens gets to kiss him in Beastly? GAH! But yeah, thanks to him, I started to really fall for the long look hair on guys lol. Alex Pettyfer.... sigh... *fans self* LOL

3. I can't not ramble about my writing, too! So ever since I first got the idea for Call Me Robin Hood and started telling people about it, I've gotten lots of compliments. The old tagline I used to tell people was "Joe Parker takes girls from the jerks and gives a chance to the deserving." I had to change that, though, because it objectified the girls. So now it's "Nick Dupree (I changed the MC's name) exposes jerks to their girlfriends and gives nice guys a shot at love." Even just the phrase "match-making Robin Hood" has got people interested! Can you tell I'm super psyched about this idea? My plan is to finish the first draft within the next month and then revise, and then send to betas, and then revise some more, and then send to more betas, then revise again, then query agents! I have a good feeling I'll get requests based on an interesting plot. So *crosses fingers agents like it* :)

And that's all I have to ramble about. I hope you have a great rest of your weekend blog readers!

Ta ta!

I'm Back!

2011-02-21T08:30:00.000-06:00

Okay, so my original plan for disappearing was because I was working on a sooper sekrit project that isn't so sooper sekrit anymore (Call Me Robin Hood). Then, after sooper sekrit beta readers, I was going to submit it to the agent who's been waiting for me to submit to her, in sekrit, then if she were to offer me rep, I'd announce it and people would be like... WHOA!

But I'm bad at keeping secrets, which is why I'm back. Plus, it sure seemed like I'd be gone until June or July, which I can't abandon this blog for that long!

So yeah, I'm back to posting as regularly as I can. No more Teaser Tuesdays, though. I've decided that I'm not too comfortable sharing first draft stuff anymore.

I might just post 3 times a week - Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I have lots of writing to catch up with. Especially because I got a full request from an intern for an agent! She had read my query on the Query Letter Hell forum in AW. I'm so excited, that makes TWO different people who were interested in CMRH! I'm so excited to query agents with it now - I have a good feeling I'll get requests based on the plot! :D

So yeah, not much else to say!

Hope you all have a good day!

Hiatus

2011-02-11T18:31:00.000-06:00

Hey guys!

I'm going to take a little hiatus from this blog. I don't know how long it'll be and my reason has to be kept to myself for now. ;)

I hope you all don't miss me!

Love Square's Playlist

2011-01-17T09:59:00.001-06:00

So I figured I'd do something new and describe the songs I have on LS's playlist and why they fit. There are some songs that fit the same character or fit all of them or whatever. This is a random order.

1. Hero/Heroine - Boys Like Girls: This is Kyle's theme song. Well, one of them. There are a bunch of lines that fit him such as this - "I got a closet filled up to the brim with the ghost of my past and the skeletons." If you've read bits of Love Square or read my shiny new blurb in Love Square's very own page, you'll know that Kyle has had a trauma. Rosabelle aka Rose aka Lily (Kyle's special nickname for her) really is falling for Rose when, formally, he didn't want anything to do with love "I had my heart on lockdown but you turned me around." Perfect line that shows Kyle's feelings.

2. Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol: This is totally a song that fits all four characters. It's about just being with the one you love and forgetting about everything else - I take this to mean just focusing on the good things about a relationship and forgetting all the bad things. And especially with all the drama going on in my characters' junior year, this song is a nice one for them.

3. Bend and Not Break - Dashboard Confessional: Okay, so I couldn't figure out if this fit Chase or Kyle more. Originally, I chose it for Chase, but I realized it maybe fit Kyle more. The line "pushing everything that's good away" was the line that made me think about Kyle. Kyle is the one who keeps pushing Rose away after all. But, overall, I take the meaning as a guy sorta insecure in his dealings with a loved one, so that fits Chase.

4. Chasing Pavements - Adele: This is totally Jennie. The first time I heard it, I was like - so Jennie. She's in love with a guy (Chase) but doesn't know if she'll ever get him - "Should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements even though it leads nowhere." Adele has a beautiful voice, too.

5. I'll Never Love Again - Taio Cruz: Another song that fits Kyle. He pushed away Rose all those years ago, and he think he "was a full to think the grass was greener on the side." And since Rose is with Chase now, "not it hurts to know that he means that I can never love again." "I was stupid to think that any love could compare to the love that you gave to me from you" - when he has a thing with Jennie, he realizes that it's still Rose he thinks about.

6. Trainwreck - Demi Lovato: This song totally fits Rose's feelings about Kyle. Kyle is totally the opposite of her (at least hte way he is now - before, they were close to the same). "You're a trainwreck but I wouldn't love you if you changed" - Okay, so she wants him to change for the better (lose the alcohol/cigarettes) but I think, overall, she doesn't want his personality to change because she likes him just the way he is.

7. For You I Will - Teddy Geiger: LOL this is another song for Kyle :P Can you tell I love him a lot? This means he's trying to "muster every ounce of confidence [he] has" to get the girl: Rose.

8. Change Your Mind - The Killers: Chase's song for Jennie. Toward the end, when she's wary about him, he tries to show her how much he cares about her and whatnot and wants to change her mind.

9. I'd Lie - Taylor Swift. Another song for Rose's feelings for Kyle. Okay, it could even fit Jennie, too if you think about it. Even though Rose likes all these things about Kyle (and like the guy Taylor refers to in the song, Kyle says, "I'll never fall in love") if anyone asked if she loved him, she'd lie.

10. The Way I Loved You - Selena Gomez: Another song for Rose's feelings for Kyle. Haha Rose's song count now caught up to Kyle's lmao. So this song about a girl who has parted ways with a guy, she'll never love another guy the same way - "Even if I fall in love again with someone new, it'll never be the way I loved you." Rose realizes this toward the end of Love Square.

11. You Can - David Archuleta: Another song that fits the four teens overall. Sorta. It's about falling in love with someone new and "if anyone can make me fall in love - you can" so all four want their new loves to make them fall truly madly deeply.

12. I'll Be - Edwin McCain: Okay, this fits all four characters. Again. (I have a couple songs like this.). "I'll be the greatest fan of your life" totally something they all feel toward the one they love.

13. Another Heart Calls - The All-American Rejects: The title really fits Rose's and Chase's relationship. Plus, the singers in this song are having an argument, something Rose and Chase have been having more of lately. The lyrics fit Rose and Chase sometimes, but not all the time.

14. You and Me - Lifehouse: I'd say that this fits all four again, but I think it fits Chase the most with his feelings toward Jennie. "And it's you and me and all of the people, and I don't know why, I can't keep my eyes off of you." Yeah, totally Chase's feelings toward Jennie, the girl he's starting to really notice toward the beginning of the book.

15. Mercy - OneRepublic: I'd say this is Chase's song for Jennie again. He's broken over things not working out with Rose and Jennie is there for him - "How did you find me? How did you pick me up again?"

16. We'll Be a Dream - We The Kings featuring Demi Lovato: This is a really cute song for Kyle and Rose. "Do you remember the nights we stayed up just laughing, smiling for hours at anything." It just really reminds me of their past together growing up loving each other since they were four. :)

17. On the Way Down - Ryan Cabrera: Yet another song that fits all four of them. As soon as all of them are about to hit rock bottom, they have someone to help save them. :)

18. If I Can't Have You - Kelly Clarkson: This totally fits Jennie's feelings toward Chase. She doesn't want anyone else. She wants him. And the way that Kelly sings it, I feel like it's totally Jennie's attitude.

19. You Belong With Me - Taylor Swift: Okay, the song really doesn't fit LS, but it's still a fun one cuz I feel like Kyle and Jennie would be like "You Belong With Me" to Rose and Chase respectively :D

20. Chemicals Collide - Boys Like Girls: Kyle's and Rose's song for each other, I think. It fits Kyle more, however. Great song.

21. Hello Mr. Sun - Joe Brooks: Totally Jennie's and Chase's song. The parts where t he talk about the girl and guy - "Here's to the girl who holds her heart out for the world not worried if her song is out of key" "Here's to the boy who loves the girl and tells her so, couldn't give a damn what other people think." I think it really fits both Jennie's and Chase's attitudes.

22. Bubbly - Colbie Caillat: What can I say? All four of them just feel "bubbly" thanks to the one they love :)

23. Things Will Never Be the Same - Jonas Brothers: Rose's and Chase's break up song. That's all I have to say lol. Although they'll still be friends in the end unlike how it seems with this song.

24. Dirty Little Secret - The All-American Rejects: What can I say but all four of them have dirty little secrets? :D

And that's it! Sorry this post got extremely long haha

Blogoversary Contest Winners!

2011-01-13T13:08:00.000-06:00

Hey y'all! So I totally lagged on figuring out contest winners using a random number generator after I made an Excel sheet on how many entries people got and ordering them from first comment to last comment. Then, I was supposed to post the results yesterday, but I completely forgot!

Note: I added more books to choose from and one more winner. Here is the original contest post.

Sooo... without further ado... here are the winners!

Winner #1

YA Vampire Books!

Winner #2

Erica!

Winner #3

Susanne Winnacker!

I will be contacting the contest winners sometime later today!

Congrats to the winners!

2010 Reflections and 2011 Hopes and Dreams

2010-12-31T14:41:00.001-06:00

This is my third year working on some resolutions. I pretty much failed a bunch of my resolutions from 2010. Sucks, I know. Here's what my old resolutions were. (This is the old post from exactly a year ago.)

1. Lose weight from the surgery. Or at least get toned and fit :) (hopefully with my shiny new Wii!)

Okay, so I sorta gained weight in summer 2010 and then I lost that weight. I haven't gotten on a scale recently, but if I were to guess, I'd say I lost maybe just 2-3 pounds.

2. Read 100 books

Okay, so to be honest, I completely forgot I had this as a NYR. I hardly read this year. I'm guessing maybe just 20 books. I suck at the reading thing...

3. Land an agent! Hopefully it will be the one who's interested in CMRH ;)

Okay, I STILL HAVE NOT submitted anything to her. But if all goes well and I finish Love Square sometime soon, I'm going to be giving her an exclusive and maybe, just maybe, she'll fall in love with it and offer me representation? :D

4. Finish writing and polishing 5 novels! (CMRH will be included)

Wow, I do not know what was up with this CRAZY GOAL! I did not finish 5 novels, let alone a single one! So yeah, definitely an ambitious one...

5. ~~Finish~~ Survive my freshman year of college without any complications

I took Spring Quarter off from INTENSE stress my first two quarters at DePaul, so nope, I totally did not survive freshman year.

6. Find a boy who is NOT a jerk and fall madly, truly, deeply in love ;)

This did not happen. I wished it did, but sadly, it did not. Le sigh...

Now, here is a rundown of what happened in the year 2010 for Karla Calalang (in no particular order)

I turned 19
I trunked Call Me Robin Hood
I started sophomore year at DePaul University
I saw my half-sister after, I think, 12 or 13 years!
Tarot cards told me a particular guy was my soul mate and I'm still crossing my fingers something will happen between us in 2011 ;)
I wrote a kickass poem - probably the best one I'd ever written that my professor said, "Karla, you are a poet!" and other lovely comments :) (I had to add this one on here cuz I normally hate poetry haha)
Like I said earlier, I took a quarter off college due to intense stress and I'm pretty sure that's what started my weight gain - from sitting around doing hardly anything haha
I got my first F in a class. :( Oh well, I know to do better from now on! :D
I decided to double major - so now I'm doing Creative Writing and Psychology
I started revamping Love Square, my baby, for the 4th time and I'm so in love with it!
I kept going back and forth between novels the entire year. My indecisive mind sucks!
Oh and to go off the last two points, because I love Love Square so much, I've been working on it for nearly 2 months already (close to a record for not cheating on a WIP!)

Okay and to be honest, that's all I can think of for major things that happened in 2010. It just wasn't as eventful as 2009 lol

Those were the highlights, and now on to my 2011 resolutions that should be more realistic! (Some are the same from before).

1. Lose 10 pounds. A nice number that should be doable.

2. Finish writing/polishing Love Square and at least one other book (possibly Always With Me).

3. Read 100 books.

4. Land an agent! :D (Maybe the agent I mentioned above, yeah? ;) )

5. Meet a nice boy and fall madly deeply in love. Yeah, because I cannot be in love with love and NOT wish for a boyfriend :P

And all I have is 5 this year instead of 6 from the last two years.

Here's to hoping 2011 will be a great year!

Happy New Year's to all!

Hope Dream Inspire #3: Reality and Fiction

2010-12-30T08:00:00.012-06:00

A series where I post an inspirational writing quote and what it means to me.

So here is my next quote. I found it kind of amusing.

"The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense." -Tom Clancy

This is so, so true. You absolutely cannot make your reader confused by the end of your novel or even in a section. Yes, you can leave them wanting more so that they read on to find out more, but you never want to leave them questioning a whole lot of what you've written.

In Love Square, it's a mystery to why exactly Kyle's sister's death had affected him so much to the point he'd drink and smoke excessively and let his perfect grades dropped. Rose is also trying to find that out along with the reader. Yeah, you don't find out until close to the end, but I leave enough clues to let the reader try to piece it all together.

But yeah, just as long as you tie up questions or mysteries or whatever you brought up, you'll be good to go!

Tomorrow is the last day of my contest! Win some great YA paranormal books!

Also tomorrow, I'll post my 2010 Reflections and 2011 Hopes and Dreams.

I hope y'all have a wonderful day! :)

Ramblings of a Writer

2010-12-27T06:25:00.000-06:00

That was an old title I had for this blog before it became, "Creative Blossoms." But I'm not rambling about my blog or anything.

I am rambling about writing (obviously).

So I've come to realize a couple things about my writing.

I tell instead of show.
I write awesome dialogue.
I have too much dialogue versus narration (not a good balance).
For the most part, my characters' voices are good.
I don't describe things as much as I should.
My ideas tend to be original and creative.
I can never finish novels.
I feel close to my characters.
I revise/edit before I finish a first draft.
I love what I write.

What am I getting at here?

I have negatives about my writing and I have positives. All writers should. The thing with the negatives though is we try to get better. We try to improve. Writing is such a learning process. I know my writing has improved drastically since I first started writing when I was 14. My first book was major suckitude. And I really think my more current ones are really coming together. So YAY!

What about you? What are some of your positives and negatives of writing?

Why I write

2010-12-06T07:05:00.000-06:00

I write because...

...without it, I just might scream from losing my sanity

... it makes me happy and chipper and elated

... I love living in my characters' worlds

(Picture: Chicago/Chicago suburbs/Illinois in general are my main settings)

... I love my characters in general

... I'm in love with love (since I write romance)

... and lastly, It makes me,ME

(Picture: my shirt says, LOVE :) )

Hope Dream Inspire #3: Thankful for writing

2010-11-25T12:15:00.000-06:00

A series where I post an inspirational writing quote and what it means to me.

So I figured I'd post a quote that talked about why I was thankful for weriting. And this is it:

Sometimes I think I don’t want to write anymore; it’s too hard, it’s too painful, but I’m happiest when I’m locked up in that little room inventing characters and telling their stories. - Judy Blume

Yes, writing is basically my happy drug. I love to get lost in a world that I created and telling my characters' stories (if they comply of course).

I guess I am also thankful for the one person who first influenced me to enjoy fiction writing. And that person was my fifth grade teacher, Ms. Garrett. Of course, she's probably a Mrs. by now and she's somewhere in Michigan I think. But if all goes well and I publish a book, maybe one day she'll see it and how her name is in my acknowledgments page and contact me. *wishful thinking*

Thanks to her, I now have this big dream to be a published author and an ultimate dream of being a best-selling author.

Hmm, it seems that I hardly ever say stuff on Hope Dream Inspire blog posts, but I'd rather not ramble on and on about how I'm so thankful for writing since it's clear that I love it so much.

Happy Thanksgiving!

My one true love, Love Square

2010-11-22T09:17:00.000-06:00

Some of you have been following me since I first made this blog a writing blog and more of a permanent thing last September 2009. That was actually when I posted my first teaser of Love Square.

Love Square was my first serious romance novel after I used to be more of a sci-fi/fantasy type of girl while I was in high school. But when I first got the idea for Love Square from a dream on June 25 (yes, I remember the date and I described the dream and other things in this blog post, I totally fell in love.

This is the one where:

Kyle is afraid of love.
Rosabelle falls for Kyle but is dating Chase.
Chase is madly in love with Rose but is falling for Jeanette.
Jeanette is best friends with Rosabelle but is in love with Chase.

So yeah, that was the main romance conflict.

I started this on July 12 and worked on it for months until I realized it wasn't working. But that was okay, I'd fix it. I was so in love with it after all. People liked my teasers, and it would work out.

It didn't. After I never finished a first draft and started revamping it maybe two or three times, I ended up working on an SNI distraction (Call Me Robin Hood) in December of that year. That's when an agent messaged me on December 28 requesting CMRH. I totally did a happy dance and kept fist-pumping and whatnot haha.

But by February, I realized CMRH needed some work and I wanted to take a break from it. So I told the agent, and she let me email her some ideas I had so I can choose which one I wanted to work on.

She said that Love Square seemed to not have enough conflict past the relationship drama to stand out as a debut. That hurt a bit. It really was true, too. It was really lacking in the external conflict stuff.

So I busied myself working on other WIPs.

I haven't finished a first draft since last December.

I hope to change that.

With Love Square - a revamped version. I actually DO have external conflicts now. I unified some of the major plot points so that all of them would be involved. I am so, so excited about this novel. I am totally going to try to query this sometime early next year. Hoping by V-Day, but that's a little too soon so maybe by my birthday, March 6.

I always had this dream last year that Love Square would be my debut.

So I'm hoping and praying that happens.

That's all I have to say.

Hope you all are having a great day!

:)

Blogoversary Contest! Contest Closed!!

2010-11-19T00:03:00.077-06:00

ETA: Changes in BLUE!

Last week I realized that I've had this blog 2 years ago today! WOOT!

So why not celebrate and do a contest? YAY! I love contests :D

There will be 2 winners. Now, there will be THREE WINNERS! This is open internationally if The Book Depository ships to you. And those in the US will receive it from B&N.

Here's what's up for grabs! (MORE BOOKS UP FOR GRABS!)

1. A copy of Paranormalcy by Kiersten White
2. A copy of Evernight by Claudia Gray

3. A copy of Stargazer by Claudia Gray
4. A copy of Hourglass by Claudia Gray
5. A pre-order of Afterlife by Claudia Gray

6. A copy of Firelight by Sophie Jordan
7. A copy of Personal Demons by Lisa Desrochers

8. A pre-order of Original Sin by Lisa Desrochers
9. A copy of Nightshade by Andrea Cremer
10. A copy of Last Sacrifice by Richelle Mead

Winner #1 gets to choose THREE of these books.
Winner #2 gets to choose TWO.
Winner #2 gets to choose ONE.

So here's how to enter and get more entries!

Commenting automatically gives you 1 point.
New follower: +2
Old follower: +3
Twitter follower: +3 (please give me your username)
Tweet about this contest: +2 (please link to it)
Blog about this contest: +5 (link again)
Put this contest on your blogroll: +3 (link to your blog)
Add up your points: +1

Also add in your email address when you comment!

Contest extended from December 10 to December 31)!

Please spread the news! :D

Just wanted to take a moment though to say some words about my dad. He passed away today 11 years ago. I miss him very much. He was a great father to me, and I miss him big bear hugs and his scent and just everything about him. I hope he's watching down at me from heaven and is so proud of his daughter's dreams to be a best-selling author.

RIP Vicente T. Molina Jr. 4/7/1934 to 11/19/1999. I will always remember you. <3

A Late Random Day: My new celebrity crush

2010-11-13T02:18:00.000-06:00

*swoons and sighs*

I first found out about this celebrity when I was trying to cast Lost Summer Love. The cast is as follows: Nicole Anderson as my MC, Melody Miranda; Tony Oller as Troy Johnson (changed his name), the guy she met during the summer and her baby's daddy; and Asher Book as Levi Addison, the guy who helps her try to find Troy who ends up becoming her love interest.

Soo back to Tony Oller. He's not as famous as say, Zac Efron, but he was in the Disney short show titled, As the Bell Rings, and now he's in a Teen Nick show called Gigantic.

And this video always makes me swoon and sigh:

Sigh....

To be honest, I think this is much better than the original. *heart melts*

Yeah, I don't have much else to say about Tony Oller haha except I'm so in LOVE! LOL

Peace out!

Hope Dream Inspire #2: Writing has no laws

2010-11-11T05:23:00.001-06:00

A series where I post an inspirational writing quote and what it means to me.

So I found a quote that I quite like and here it is:

"There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be."
- Doris Lessing

I quite like this quote because before, I'd keep asking if this was okay to do and that was okay to do. Things like not starting the novel with dialogue, not using adverbs, and so on.

Basically, these would all hinder my writing because I was so worried I was writing the "wrong way." When really, there is no wrong way to write. With all our writing, we're always learning and growing, which is so important for us as writers need to remember.

I don't know if I have much else to say about this quote, to be honest. I think this is suffice.

YAY for blog posts that take 5 minutes to write! haha

She said, WHAT?!

2010-11-10T15:57:00.001-06:00

Okay, so I figured I'd talk a little about dialogue. Realistic dialogue.

I feel quite qualified to do this since most of the time, my dialogue is ROCKIN' :D So let's define "realistic dialogue" first.

My simple definition is that your dialogue will be realistic if it follows through with your characters' personalities, the situation they're in, and their emotions at that moment. Example? Sure.

Tell me which is more realistic without knowing the context.

Every time we talked, I felt like I wanted to gag. Who was he to judge me when he didn't even know me? And yet here he was, already pissing me off before he had said a word. "Want anything?"

Every time we talked, I felt like I wanted to gag. Who was he to judge me when he didn't even know me? And yet here he was, already pissing me off before he had said a word. "What the hell do you want?"

So, obviously the second one seems more in tune to the girl's personality, situation, and emotions.

I don't know what else to say about dialogue to be honest. But I guess I'll ask this: Is dialogue one of your strong points or your weaknesses? If it's your strong point, why would you say that? If it's your weakness, what is usually wrong with it?

Oh! Now I know what to say!

Publish Post

The whole reason why I rock at dialogue is because for my whole life, I've been mostly a listener in group situations. Still talking to teens and young adults, I know the slang and whatnot. Mostly, the dialogue is really realistic, but sometimes it will get a bit awkward. I try to avoid the awkwardness of course, but sometimes it can't be helped in first drafts when I'm just trying to get words out.

Thoughts? Questions?

First drafts... oh boy

2010-11-08T04:33:00.000-06:00

Oh man. First drafts. What do I immediately think of?

OMG why does this suck so much? I need more descriptions. Why is there this WAY long bit of dialogue? AHHH all these typos! (Insert character name here) WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING?! I DO NOT WANT YOU TO DO THAT!

And it goes on and on.

I wanted to talk about why it has been so difficult for me to finish first drafts. And my plan to fix my disease or whatever you want to call it.

I have two reasons:

I am a perfectionist. Plus, I have depression, so I'll tend to feel like my writing sucks. Now, I am aware that first drafts DO suck. But I still don't know why I fall into a rut over its suckiness. It's just normal for me to be overly critical I guess. And because of that, it gets hard to focus back on writing and whatnot.
I have so many works in progress. If I get stuck on one, I will work on something else and then fall in love with writing that until I get stuck and the cycle goes on and on. This is probably worse than the first one. If I keep working on something else, how in the world am I supposed to finish a freaking novel?! Sigh...

What do I propose to do?

Three things:

Freaking write as much as I can in one month. Honestly, that was how I was able to finish Call Me Robin Hood last December. I don't think I ever edited. Okay, maybe a couple times, but I still finished it in 22 days. By flying through a novel, I'll hopefully not read what I've written so far and think that OH GOD THIS EFFING SUCKS!
If I have the part of me that wants to reread what I've written, I'll just make the text white.
But if I do end up reading old stuff and see how much it sucks... CHOCOLATE WILL BE MY BEST FRIEND. :D

So now I ask you all: any other suggestions you have for me and for anyone else who is going through the same problem?

A Lovely Type of Love Poem

2010-11-01T13:13:00.003-05:00

Hey, so I recently wrote a ghazal (a type of form poem) for my Reading Poetry class, and I thought I'd share it! It has to deal with my writing, so please enjoy!

A Lovely Type of Love Poem

by Karla Calalang

Falling in love is my favorite part of lovely love

The whirling and twirling and falling more deeply love

The first time you fall, you fall so hard

First loves are firstly and foremost a flirtingly love

Breathing in your scent, being in your tight embrace

Slow kisses and tender touches from the one you completely love

A comfy bed, your warm skin on mine

Soft cries from making love to the one you truly love

Racing heart, inability to breathe, electrified skin

God these feelings feel so good, which I incredibly love

He’s a celebrity and she writes about celebrity drama

He chases her then she chases him—their romantic drama I naturally love

A Love Square of dramatic proportions with two triangles within

Who will be with whom in end? Of course with the one they absolutely love

She writes Rules for Not Falling in Love but he wants her

Two conflicting goals so who wins? Clearly, love

They have dreams of each other, clues to where the other is

To Find Love is the dream—theirs is a longingly love

Despite how his borderline personality disorder brings disaster on their love

They keep chugging through—In Your Arms is the one I really love

Karla with a K writes YA romance novels

She’s so in love with obviously love

Hope Dream Inspire #1: Writing what you want

2010-10-28T13:50:00.004-05:00

A series where I post an inspirational writing quote and what it means to me.

So yes, I decided to start this because I'm one of those people that constantly need reassurance that I'm a decent writer. But what good is that if I don't just believe it myself? So I'm going to find quotes that will help me (and hopefully other writers, too) to keep on keeping it on.

"Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer." - Barbara Kingsolver

We hear this time and time again. Don't write for the reader or for publishers. Write what you want to write. Write because you love to. Write because it makes you happy, or complete, or whatever reason you are writer.

I decided to post this quote for my first Hope Dream Inspire post because it's a problem that I face. I do sometimes try to write for what publishers and agents might want. For instance, an agent who was interested in one of my former novels gave me advice that a novel regarding mental illnesses was really overdone and I should give make the voice dark, literary, and fabulous.

Me? I'm an uber commercial as a writer friend once told me. YA romance is my thing and that's commercial fiction. When I first attempted to write literary, it wasn't my best writing. Now, I know that literary writing is a grown talent, yet, I still attempted it because the agent told me it would be better to make it more dark and literary. But I'm sort of impatient, so I wanted to be great at writing literary now rather than later.

When I continued to struggle with literary, I gave up, asking the agent if a non-literary novel about mental illness will work with publishers. And she said that I should write what I feel comfortable with.

This was all recently, like over a month ago, I think. But yes, I'm really trying to write what I want to write because I love to do it.And now this quote will definitely a reminder for that :)

So what are your thoughts on this quote?

Blog Makeover

2010-10-22T06:34:00.003-05:00

Sorry for the double post. I don't really like doing that... but I thought I'd share my plan for Creative Blossoms.

Lately, I've been posting just teasers every week. This blog is becoming so sad :(

I have a new 5-day schedule I hope I can follow every week. I'm giving myself 3 vacation days every month. I just want this blog to be something so much more (and I'd love more followers!), because it feels lonely a lot of the time.

So... the plan:

Mondays: Tidbits about my novels and writing
Tuesdays: Teasers of course :D
Wednesdays: Writing Wednesday (post something about general writing)
Thursdays: starting a new series for myself called, "Thoughtful Thursday" where I post an inspirational quote or photo and what it means to me.
Fridays: Random Day where I post about anything lol

So there ya have it. My new plan for this blog!

YAY!

Contest over at DREAMCATCHER'S LAIR

2010-10-22T04:42:00.000-05:00

Head on over to Bee's blog because she has an amazing contest!

3 winners!

Here's what's up for grabs!

1) A set of signed copies of Taken By Storm and Sing Me To Sleep by Angela Morrison.

2) A copy of Trisha Ashley's upcoming new book, Twelve Days Of Christmas.

3) The Language Of Flowers book. It's illustrated and very Victorian.

Plus a 4th winner gets signed bookmarks!

Go there. NOW!

What inspired In Your Arms?

2010-10-18T16:14:00.000-05:00

This novel started out with a dream.

Basically, I dreamt about this guy who had tan skin and dark brown curly hair who kept looking at me from across the room, and one day, he gave me chocolates with words associated with love in pieces of paper in the box, too. The next day, I found out he had done the same thing for another girl. Yeah, I was pissed. And I had a class with her AND him in it. (This was still in high school apparently.) So she's sitting in class looking all smug. After all this guy was SO hot, like I just wanted to run my hair through that gorgeous head of curls. And he comes into the room, and goes up the girl, named Jenna. And he practically dumps a whole bag of gummi bears on her and throws some at her. And I'm like, what the hell? And so he goes up to me and is all like, "Hey, wanna be my girlfriend?" I'm like, "ummm, I really don't know." He says, "I chose you! Just give me a chance?" And so I gave him a chance. And thus begins a beautiful relationship.

It took me WEEKS maybe even a month for me to figure out a storyline for this scene idea. All I knew was that the guy was going to be a jerk AND a sweetheart. One day, I came up with a fantasy idea where the guy's dad was a magic-user and he married someone who didn't use magic, and so he lost his powers, and their son had two personalities - a sweetheart and jerk. And his LI was the only one who brought out his sweet side. Turns out, the girl's biological parents were magic-users, and she's adopted now. So the guy and the girl go on an adventure to find this magical place so she can learn how to use her powers to turn him into a completely sweet guy without the jerk qualities.

But then, I think a couple days later, I thought about multiple personality disorder, now called dissociative disorder, and found my way to Wikipedia and on Wiki, I found borderline personality disorder, and it just clicked with me.

So I figured that Joe could be both sweet and a jerk with this mental illness. Maira would be the girl he fell for and who fell for him before she found out about his illness, and who she decided to stick with and help out.

If some of you remember IYA from teasers before, you might remember that Joe has tan skin and curly hair. Totally weird considering I came up with Joe Parker for a novel I wrote last December (Call Me Robin Hood, which is forever trunked). I decided to put Joe Parker and Maira Kita, his LI from CMRH, into IYA. Little did I know, my subconscious probably wanted that considering the guy in my dream had tan skin and curly hair! SO ODD! Also, if you've read my first teaser from Maira's POV, you will remember a scene where Joe gave chocolates to Maira with little pieces of papers that had words associated with love.

And basically, I think because of the whole dream with a guy with tan skin and curly hair, that Joe and Maira were meant to be in IYA. And because of that, I really think this novel is THE ONE I'm going to query.

There ya go! That's my story about IYA :)

Hope you enjoyed it! :D

One Lovely Blog Award :)

2010-09-11T18:22:00.001-05:00

So I got another award from the lovely, Marieke! Thanks so much!

Here is its loveliness:

Isn't it perdy? :D

So there are some rules I need to follow that go along with the One Lovely Blog Award. Here they are!

Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.
Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered.
Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

I've given out a lot of awards in the past, but for a while now, I've been thinking a lot of one lovely person. Because of how lovely she is, I want to give this out to just her. She's super special to me. And who is that person?

RACE MERCALDO!

Here is what makes her awesome and lovely and insert a ton of positive qualities here:

We can talk about whatever on Yahoo Messenger - writing, boys, food, problems, etc.
I was the one who helped her get Natalie Fischer as her agent and Race has been so awesome for pushing me to finish a novel so I can finally submit to Natalie (who is my dream agent after her awesomeness after she first requested Call Me Robin Hood last December!).
She is a great writer, and I LOVE the novel she has on submission, The Virginity Thief!
She helps me with whatever.

And the list goes on!

So thanks to Race for being the most super awesomesauce person ever. *huggles*

Saying "Adios" to your WIP

2010-09-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

Have you ever started writing a novel, fell in love with it, but something drastic was wrong with it?

That's been me. With a couple WIPs in the beginning of my writing career - when I had been in high school and written mainly SF/Fantasy novels and I realized after high school that romance was more of my calling.

But I wanted to talk about CMRH, my most recent baby, or my sheep, that I have to trunk forever.

For those of you unfamiliar with CMRH, this is its old query I had written a while ago:

After seventeen-year-old Joe Parker throws the end-of-the-summer party at his house, he’s hoping that he’ll get the chance to ask Maira, his long-time crush, to become his girlfriend. But she turns up with her boyfriend, who later cheats on her that night.

Joe is fed up with the jerks getting all the girls. He's struck by a brilliant idea to be like Robin Hood by fixing Statton High’s dating scene. He’ll expose jerks to their girlfriends and match each broken-hearted girl with a nice guy he entrusts to treat her right whenever she’s ready. Seems like a brilliant plan—until Maira falls for him.

With Joe’s decision to suggest himself to Maira, he can’t help but lie to her about what he’s been up to so she won’t think he manipulated her into dating him. On top of that, the Robin Hood idea is getting to his head. If he’s not careful, he’ll mess up during his missions. And worse: he’ll push away those he loves, like Maira, and turn into a jerk—the very type of guy he despises the most.

One problem with CMRH was that Joe wasn't letting the girls choose their own boyfriends. I had fixed that though. I changed it so that the girls would be able to choose their own new nice guys - and Joe would leave a bunch of papers lying around in the halls of Statton High that lists what makes bad boyfriend and a good one.

But another thing popped up - a privacy issue. Joe was looking into the couple's private lives and then catching the boyfriend doing something extremely jerky. Also, as some people on TWFT have told me, teens don't take well to being told what to do, and someone telling them that their decisions are wrong is definitely kind of icky.

Plus, he's not letting the girls make their own mistakes.

Basically, he was kind of like God.

And it's not salvageable.

I even cried a little. I had spent eight months working on it. I believed in it so, so much especially because an agent had shown interest in it while I was writing my first draft last December. I loved Joe and hated him (but I'd always love him in the end).

I was really close to it, but I've moved on. I have been working on Podd for nearly 2 months straight already (3 months total), and Joe and Maira and some other secondary characters from CMRH have found a new home in In Your Arms aka IYA. And they like it there. (I have a teaser coming up tomorrow from it!)

So if this has happened to you, how did you feel/deal with it? Did you just move on to another idea you had?

The key thing to remember is that writing is never a waste of time. When you're writing, you're always growing and learning from it.

For instance, if it weren't for my first draft of CMRH lacking stakes, I would have never started making sure I always had stakes for the rest of my novels before I started.

Which kind of reminds me that I don't have stakes for a newer SNI I started writing. I will have to go and fix that! (Sorry for the tangent :D)

Another thing I'd like to say is that I'm doing a September Writing Month to finish the last 50K of Podd. I'm doing what I did for CMRH's first draft and tracking my progress on the right side bar. Hopefully I'm able to finish it in one month like I did for CMRH!

Happy writing all! And have a good day!

Hey! Hey! You! You! I don't like your girlfriend!

2010-09-03T22:47:00.003-05:00

Don't you hate it when you have a pesky SNI that wants your undivided attention and wants you and your current WIP to break up?

Well, as a writer whose had one too many SNI distractions, I won't write about that.

Why open my blog post like that if I'm not talking about that? Well, it's somewhat related.

I want to talk about conflict. (And SNI distractions CAN be considered a conflict.) Specifically, the conflict in your WIP.

I believe that conflict is what drives your novel, what makes it interesting.

Definition of conflict in regards to novel writing (my own): the obstacles that your main character(s) face throughout the course of your novel that stop him or her from reaching his or her goal.

I know I like to write romance because I like romantic tension between a boy and a girl specifically. With a romance between two people, there are SO many things that can go wrong - break-ups, arguments, having to keep a secret or else you'll lose the person you care about, cheating, lust, and so on. But if it's not romantic conflict, it could be conflict between your MC and his or her parents, a fight,

The middle part of your novel should be full of conflict. Otherwise, there won't be anything for the reader to continue. If your characters are doing nothing but sitting on a couch watching TV and goofing off that's not conflict. BUT, if your characters are sitting on a couch watching TV and goofing off and THEN the police bust down the door - you have conflict.

The thing about all the obstacles you add in the novel is that it's important to make it relate to the overall plot of your novel. Yes, you can have subplots, but those also need to tie into your main plot. Okay, so your MC is trying to save the world. At one point, he's trying to figure out what kind of pizza to order because he can't focus on saving the world while hungry, but people are already in danger, then I'd be thinking, WTH? BUT, if your MC is trying to figure out what kind of pizza to order because he wants to know what sort of topping the villain likes to lure him into a trap, then that's related.*

Don't forget though - each conflict you bring up in your novel has to have a resolution (and one that makes sense for it). You certainly can't leave your readers hanging. Say your MC is trying to win over the girl of his dreams.He used to be somewhat of a bad boy - a big flirt, and the girl isn't budging, it's like she has a huge wall up after her breakup from the summer. ** At one point, they go to a party and they dance. They get really into bumping and grinding and whatnot. Your MC kisses the girl. She runs away. He feels rejected, and ends up having sex with another girl that night. Why would he DO that? That will only mess up his chances ith the girl he wants to win over! BUT, if he has sex with another girl because he gets so completely wasted, he thinks the brunette girl he slept with was the girl he likes and then when the girl catches him with this other girl, she's like "OMG! I can't believe you're such a pig!" And then - Okay, this is more dramatic than I planned to write the example haha.***

So what should you take from this post?

Add lots and lots of conflict to make your book interesting. To make it make an impact on the reader. There are so many different elements in your book that can make it memorable - and if the conflicts that happen in it make readers go, "ZOMG! What just happened? I need to finish this like right now!" you've got a good book!

*This example is really out there. I promise you that I am SANE.
** This is actually one of my novel ideas. Can you guess which one (if you're familiar with most of my stories)?
*** Okay, I made up this particular part of the novel mentioned in **

What inspired Always With Me?

2010-08-18T00:25:00.000-05:00

Since this is my main WIP (has been for the past 3 weeks already - YAY! I'm on a roll! ;) ), I thought I'd share what exactly inspired it. (And hopefully I'm back to regular blogging - I want to go for at least 2-3 a week!)

Perfectly Odd was a title idea I came up with first before any plot. I figured that there would be a popular guy who liked a weird girl. But there needed to be a reason he'd be with a weird girl. That's when I thought that maybe she saved him from suicide, and they grew closer. Then she became his guardian angel to add a paranormal twist to it.

This is the blurb I wrote when I first came up with the idea.

Boy is always seen with Girl. But everyone else thinks it's odd. Boy is super popular and every girl wants him, but he seems to like Girl even though she's weird. No one knows this, but he once tried to commit suicide by trying to hang himself. Suddenly, Girl appeared to him as an angel. Boy tries to fight his personal demons by himself with Girl to help him along the way. But when Boy starts to fall for her, the only way they can be together is if he finds a way to have a near-death experience in which she saves him without him trying to commit suicide.

Apparently, I came up with the idea last Christmas as I was wrapping my first draft of CMRH.

I didn't start this idea until February 11. I had forgotten the original title (I didn't write it down where I typed up the blurb, but someone on Absolute Write's Teens Writing for Teens forum reminded me that it was Perfectly Odd (Thanks Mae!). I didn't get very far - I ended up focusing on Call Me Robin Hood revisions by February 15 and had plans to start querying it by March-April, which failed. (Side note: I didn't announce yet on the blog the reason why I'm trunking CMRH forever. I will get around to a blog post about trunking novels forever and mention what happened with CMRH). It wasn't until this summer, I believe, that I started up Podd again.

And I started up Podd again because I came up with an idea for it - the reason my MC, Tom, would be depressed was because his girlfriend committed suicide by jumping off a bridge and he had actually held onto her hand - so kinda like trauma. Then his guardian angel, Jewel, would be his girlfriend reincarnated as that. I named the angel Jewel previously, and I named the girlfriend Juliet to keep it similar - but I didn't realize I had a song called, "Check Yes Juliet" by We The Kings on my soundtrack which fits her name! haha

I think in July, I came up with a huge dramatic ending for it, and I asked a select few people's thoughts. And they liked it! But it was with Amanda Johnson's suggested to add a second POV for the ending to make sense that it would work. We tried to figure out how that would work with my plot. Should I do the guardian angel's POV and have her flash back to her life when she was depressed? Then I came up with doing Juliet's POV, the girlfriend, and having two completely different timelines.(Thanks Amanda for the brilliant idea!)

And so that's how Always With Me aka Podd came to be!

I feel like I didn't make this post interesting lol. But it looks like people have been enjoying my Podd teasers on here and Friday Night Writes/Midday Writes snips on AW, so all is good! I've even had a couple of real-life friends say it was their fave WIP of mine. YAY!

Not much else to say on here except I'm currently at 14K words out of 65-70K I'm shooting for. Really hoping to finish the first draft within a month so wish me luck!

Queries, Pitches, Synopses, Oh My!

2010-08-12T10:55:00.002-05:00

Okay, so I am in no way qualified to write this post, but I will attempt to.

Queries. Oh God. THE HORROR! If you are a writer who likes writing queries, you are officially my biggest hero. When I first get an idea, I like to write a blurb, which can sometimes work as a query. But queries need to be succinct and to the point. You need to include motivation, stakes, and conflict. Not to mention the title, word count, genre, and bio. Oh! And don't forget: You need to add tons and tons of voice to it to really make it stand out!

I've heard this time and time again. Summarize your book in ONE line and expand on that for your query. Remember, make it around 200 words. The less words you're able to hook an agent in, the better. Speaking of hooks, you need a KILLER first sentence. I know some writers will include the title/word count/genre in the very beginning, but for me, I like including it after the pitch.Also, there's that pesky author bio that people often leave out if they don't have any writing credentials or degrees or specialties that are helpful for the agents to know that you really know your stuff about the theme or topic of the novel.

Here's something that I always get mixed thoughts on and wanted to include. Say you have more than one main character. I've heard from some to just write the query in one character's POV, and I've also heard of writing a bit about each character in separate paragraphs, and in the last paragraph, write about the plot. I've learned that it really doesn't matter which way you go. As long as you craft the best query you could possibly get, you're good to go. And if the way you chose to query doesn't work out, I'd suggest trying the other one just to see if it's that. If that doesn't work either, just work on your query a bit more and get it critiqued.

Standard query format:

Dear Agent:

[Hook and pitch (2-3 paragraphs around 200 words)]

[TITLE (I capitalized it because it needs to be in caps)/Word Count/Genre]

[Author Bio]

Sincerely,

Name
Address
Phone number
Email

Querying is hard. But pitches that are under 100 words? Please kill me now!

I just attempted to write three of them for Always With Me, Limelight, and Rules for Not Falling in Love (found on the right sidebar and also on my website which is linked on the sidebar). It took a lot of tweaking to make them fit. All of them were EXACTLY 100 words lol. It took me about 2-3 hours (I wasn't really checking). And the thing with pitches is that you STILL need motivation, stakes, conflict. To be honest, I didn't bother over making my hook decent or anything even though it's better if you do.

What's my advice to get your pitch under 100 words? List your motivation, stakes, and conflict. Once you have those three things down, expand it just a tad bit, and shorten if it gets too long, and tinker with it if it doesn't sound good to you, and do whatever to make it the best pitch it can ever be.

Another thing to think about regarding pitches. I love this phrase when I learned it in ACT Prep: Don't say it twice; be concise! I loved it because it rhymed, but anyway, not the point. The easiest way to shorten something is to cut out words that make it repetitive or use different phrasing to cut down the word count. For instance, I had, "Robbie will do whatever it takes to win her heart" and changed it to "Robbie will do anything to win her heart." Yeah, it cut down 2 words, but even cutting out 1 word matters! And if you find unnecessary details, cut those two! For instance, I lost a couple words because I took out the fact that Dylan was an ex-reality TV star and dropped some words at the end, too. I changed "Dylan is an ex-reality TV with an actor-dad and a singer-mom but he does neither of those things" to "Dylan has an actor-dad and a singer-mom but does neither." It's clear that "neither" describes acting and singing. So here I dropped SIX words!

So remember: DON'T SAY IT TWICE! BE CONCISE! It'll really help you into dropping the unnecessary words and leaving you with a pitch that's 100 words or under!

Synopses. GAG! A lot of writers I know hate, hate, hate these things. Describing the whole novel in 1-2 pages? The hardest thing ever! I find these so much harder than queries. I *think* it's because I have all this room to explain everything, so I think oh I can add all this stuff, but half of those things are unnecessary and it ends up being more than the suggested word count!

So what do you do with synopses? Think about it as your query. Use that as your guide to choose the plot points that are absolutely necessary to include. You don't want extra details just because you think it's cool. Another thing to remember is that unlike queries, you don't need to have a unique voice. Synopses aremostly all about telling, so it's really unneeded. You need to make sure you give away your ending even if you don't want to give it away. But the point of a synopsis is to write about the WHOLE novel. Make sure that you capitalize all character names the FIRST time they are introduced (so after that you're free to stop using caps) and just include the MAJOR characters like the main character(s) of course, a love interest (or two, or MORE!), and anyone else that makes a huge impact on the story. Also, don't forget that you need to add in a header with your last name, TITLE (in caps again), and page number justified to the right and on the first page, include your contact info. And if you're stuck on what to include, just remember you need characters, theme, plot, setting.

Aaaand I'm pretty much done lecturing. Once again, I am so not qualified to write this post, but I hope you got something out of it!

When things just don't go your way....

2010-07-29T15:38:00.001-05:00

I'm sure everyone knows how it feels to be down in the dumps. Maybe you're a writer and you say to yourself, "My writing sucks" or you're having a bad day just like regular non-writerly folk. But I'm going to focus on "writerly dumps" in this blog post and hopefully help fix your negative thinking!

"My writing sucks."

I know I hear a lot of that on the Teens Writing for Teens (TWFT) and Old People Writing for Teens (OPWFT) threads on AW. I hear it a lot from myself, too. As writers, we are so critical of our own work. It's normal. It'll pass. You just have to stick it out and know that you're doing your very best. It's important to believe in yourself and your writing. You can do anything if you just believe.

"I can never finish this."

I know I say that. A lot. It's been really difficult for me to finish stuff sometimes. I either lose interest, change my WIP, start to hate it... and the list goes on and on. The important thing to remember is never give up. You WILL finish your WIP even if it takes you years. And when you finally get an agent, it'll all be worth it in the end. Quitting is for losers (except, of course, if you quit smoking or any other bad habit hehe).

"What if I never get an agent?"

Selling your work to agents is A LOT of hard work. But you can't get an agent if you don't try to query them.
Yes, the publishing biz is big and scary, but have no fear. You've worked on that novel endlessly and your hard work WILL pay off. Just give it time. Searching for agents could take a really long time. But actively find the best agents for your work. You'll get there in the end.

I keep nodding off while I'm writing this post. And I already took a nap. *yawns* I think that's pretty much three of the main big things us writers go through. Oh yeah, writers block is another thing. But we all have different ways of dealing with that.

To be quite honest, I don't really deal with writer's block. Well, I deal with it by switching WIPs. But if I decide that I just want to focus on a single novel, I just let me mind rest. Maybe the block is just my mind saying it needs a break, after all. But when I do get really stuck and can't write a thing for a while, that's when you should try to get in the swing of things. I would suggest working on something else for a bit, focusing on a different writing media that could jumpstart your creativity, interviewing your characters, talking to your characters, planning your novel further, maybe skipping to a different scene, and so on. But the block will pass. You'll get into the swing of things eventually. We always do. Just keep trying and see where you go from there.

If you have any other ideas on negative things writers focus on, please say so in the comments.
Also, add in anything uplifting you'd like to add! Oh - and feel free to tell your story of how you dealt with any negativity you felt in your writing process!

WOOT! I'm finally blogging besides Teaser Tuesdays! We'll see how long that lasts! haha

And I hope this post isn't complete crap like I think it is. (Bad Karla for being negative! LOL)

Manuscripts: They're like your baby, like a dating relationship, what next? I have an idea!

2010-07-10T13:16:00.001-05:00

For me, I usually think of manuscripts as like a boyfriend since I tend to cheat on my main ones with SNIs. Also, now I'm two-timing between Limelight and Always With Me.

But as I got to thinking about it, I started to think of manuscripts as sheep. I bet you're laughing right now. What? A sheep? Are you kidding me?

No, actually, I'm not.

I think of manuscripts as sheep because of these main reasons.

When you first start out your manuscript, it's born as a cute little lamb. It's so adorable and soft and you just want to pet it all the time. Then it starts to grow. You plump up your manuscript with words, and these words are like sheep's wool.

You can:

... let your sheep's wool grow fluffier and fluffier with writing lengthy descriptions and when you finish writing, now your sheep is so fluffy, when you start to revise, you have to cut just enough to keep the manuscript coherent.

... keep your sheep with barely any wool because you like to write bare scenes and expand in the second draft.

... keep your sheep's wool at a decent length because you're either revising as you go or you try to write just enough words.

You can also consider the overall look of your sheep's wool like when you're editing and revising and trying to perfect it as much as you can so it looks clean. Otherwise your sheep/manuscript will look like a mess if you try to edit too fast for your ability or if you don't work on it enough.

So yes, I went with sheep as manuscripts when you think of over-describing, under-describing and making it look as clean as you can in the end result!

Winners to my 100 Followers Contest aka Contest of Awesome!

2010-07-05T00:38:00.003-05:00

And so with the help of a random number generator, I now have contest winners!

Winner of 2 novels of choice through The Book Depository and a choice of a banner and/or book cover design by me is...

Angie!

And winner of 1 novel of cohice through The Book Depository and a choice of a banner or book cover design by me is...

Erica Henry!

Please email me your novel and book cover (and)/or banner choices to me! Email found to the right!

Here are the details for the book cover/banner design that I posted in my initial contest post.

For the cover, make sure you send me a picture that is at least 432 x 648 pixels which is 6 by 9 inches. Although if you have a picture that falls short of it, I can tell you if its salvageable. For the banner, tell me who to Google as your character cast or send me pictures that you want me to use. I'd prefer to Google them because I might need to find angles that I think would look good for the banner. I will do up to four characters on the banner only if that many is necessary - please don't make me do extra work. Also, I'll work with you to figure out the colors of the book cover(s) (and)/or banner(s).

Thanks to those who entered my contest! I will promise more in the future! :D

A new blog award!

2010-07-04T12:20:00.002-05:00

Hey guys! I got this award like two or three weeks ago, and never posted about it! A big thanks to Angie, Bri, and Caitlin Darrell!!

So there are some rules for this particular award that I need to follow. And here they are...

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave the award
2. Share seven things about yourself
3. Pass on to fifteen bloggers

Okay, so seven things about myself:

I was born in the Philippines and moved to the States when I was 2 years old. My parents did not talk Tagalog to me while growing up so I hardly know the language. I do understand it enough to know when people are talking about me hehe. I am just totally Americanized with the slang and everything. Although someone once told me I had a funny American slang. Maybe it has a bit of Tagalog accent to it? Haha whatever.
I am SO forgetful and I am just 19. I think I've been forgetful ever since I was about thirteen. And I honestly think it has to either do with the medicine I'm on for depression or the actual depression. And I think I did mention the depression before, but I have something to say about that in number 3!
I am a much stronger person because of what I dealt with for the past 6 years (depression). I've been to 7 psychiatric hospitals through the course of 4.5 years ever sine I was first diagnosed. 5 of which were within the first 6 months of being diagnosed. Initially, I thought I would never get better. But here I am now - alive and well. Yes, I do have my moments. In college, I had a tough time so I took the last quarter off. But I now have a sense of what I'm doing at school, and hopefully I won't run into problems - or that many at least.
My dad had the most impact on my growing up. He passed away when I was 8, but I do believe it's him that first inspired me to follow my dreams no matter what. He grew up with eleven brothers and sisters in the Philippines. An actor there actually paid for his post-secondary education and he became a successful businessman in the PI (Philippine Islands). He didn't work when we lived in the States and his first family sent him money from his account every month, and so he took care of me mostly. I always wanted to be like him - intelligent and successful. And I think I am walking on that path right now! I know he's still in my heart and I believe he's very proud of me.

(Okay, I'm going to cheat because I think I over-described the seven things about me, and I don't want to bore you all with too much detail so the next three are going to be just straight facts.)
I am sadly an impulsive shopper lol. I swear, someone has to be with me whenever I shop otherwise I buy things I don't need.
My favorite store is PacSun.
My favorite colors are pink and blue :D

Now I need to pass this on to 15 bloggers!

Leasie
Vero
Annie
Sarah
Jill
Jamie
Leah
Sandy
Vee
Glen
Kristin O.
M.J.
Krista
Heather
Rachele
Amna

Okay, so that was 16. But who cares?! :D

Dreams

2010-07-02T14:43:00.001-05:00

No, I'm not talking about the images you see in your head when you're asleep at night, dozing off during the day, daydreaming, etc. I'm talking about hopes, aspirations, goals.

From The Free Dictionary:

dream

1. A series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.

2. A daydream; a reverie.

3. A state of abstraction; a trance.

4. A wild fancy or hope.

5. A condition or achievement that is longed for; an aspiration: a dream of owning their own business.

6. One that is exceptionally gratifying, excellent, or beautiful: Our new car runs like a dream.

The bolded part is what I wanted to discuss.

What are your big-time dreams?

My first dream related to writing is simple: to be published. My big-time dream that stems from that is to be world-renowned.

I'm sure a bunch of us writers want the same thing.

My latest motto in life is , "Dream Big." Why should you dream big? Because if you set your mind to the biggest possible hope you have in life, you'll push yourself even more to reach it. And even if you don't reach that huge dream, at least you can say you tried. You did your absolute best. And that's what counts the most.

I can't stress enough how important it is to follow your dreams no matter what. You'll overcome your writer's block if you just believe you can. Every obstacle that comes your way is a test to your ability to persevere through all the difficult times.

So as your writing the next big breakout novel, remember to keep your dreams in sight.

Author Interview: Simone Elkeles

2010-06-30T00:21:00.002-05:00

I'm back to blogging more regularly! Sorry for the lack of posts the past two weeks! I know I had last week's teaser and the teaser the week before that for my only blog posts! I promise I have some awesome posts coming up!

I haven't had an interview for a while, but here we have Simone Elkeles! I decided to interview her after reading her very amazing, Perfect Chemistry!

Q: What inspired you to be a writer?

I didn’t like to read as a teen. I didn’t like English class, either. I fell in love with reading as an adult, when it wasn’t “assigned reading” from a class or teacher. I fell in love with reading so much, ideas for books started running through my head so I decided to start writing a book. (I have a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Psychology and a master’s degree in Industrial Relations – both of which don’t have anything to do with writing a book.) Seriously one day I sat down and just started writing.

Q: What is your writing process like? What was your publishing process like?
Q: How often do you write? Do you have a writing schedule?

I need peace and quiet, which is hard to get with two kids and two dogs (and one husband) so I rent an office space to get away. I write when my kids are in school and when they’re asleep. I really have no habits or routines, but my goal is to one day be organized.

It took me five years to get published. I started writing in 2000 and sold my first book in 2005 (it wasn’t released until 2006, but I signed the contract in 2005). It took me five years to get an agent, but she sold my book within two months.

Q: What inspired Perfect Chemistry and its main characters?

I base Perfect Chemistry off of Highland Park High School, which is near my house. It’s a high school that mirrors Fairfield. I wanted to explore what might happen when a boy and girl from different sides of town and a different socioeconomic status fall hard for each other.

Q: Which one of your characters are you most like?

All of my characters are completely fictional, but I would say I share the most experiences with Amy. My father is Israeli and I went to Israel when I was a teen. I even participated in a boot camp, just like Amy does in How to Ruin Your Boyfriend's Reputation! I also met my future husband while I was there. . .

Q: What are your thoughts on sex and language in young adult books?

I try to write the way my characters would really talk and act. I don't clean it up (or dirty it up for that matter). If Alex from Perfect Chemistry smashed his finger, he wouldn't say, "Oh golly gee." So, that's not what I write. I think the reason my books are so popular with teens is because they don't feel like they're reading an adults opinion of how they should speak and behave.

Q: What's your secret for getting into boys' heads writing from a woman's point of view?

I love bad boys. They’re my weakness. Find me a hot and sexy bad boy and I melt. I think it’s my “female gene” that makes me want to fix those bad boys. If I can fix a bad boy, I can fix anything! (females are natural people-fixers, in my opinion) What were my inspirations for Alex or Carlos? They really are a mixture of a bunch of boys I know or did know throughout my life… I’m totally sarcastic and “get” guys like that. And just like behind a good man you’ll find a good woman, behind most bad boys you’ll find a good heart. (Not all bad boys are redeemable in real life, but I write fiction and my bad boys are ‘curable!’)

Q: What's your best piece of writing advice?

Finish the book! The reason more people are not published authors is because they never finish the book they started. Persevere through your writer's block and FINISH THE BOOK!

Q: If you were still a teen, which one of your male characters/love interests in any of your novels would you date?

I have to say that I have a crush on Alex Fuentes. I wouldn’t be able to write a young adult romance without also falling in love with my hero…hopefully if I fall in love with them, my readers will also fall in love with them. When we were casting for my book trailer for Rules of Attraction, I wanted to really find “my Alex.” When Alexander F. Rodriguez agreed to be Alex Fuentes and he walked on set the day of the shoot, I melted. I took tons of pictures of him and Giancarlo (the gorgeous actor who played Carlos Fuentes) that day. They were my heroes come to life…who wouldn’t have a crush on the heroes they created? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhEx0kaUlrU

Contest of Awesome!

2010-06-13T18:16:00.012-05:00

I have 100 followers! WOOT! So excited because now I can throw a contest!

I decided against the gift card and went for books instead. Because I LOVE books!

This contest is open internationally.

What is up for grabs:

First place gets:
Two novels of choice from The Book Depository
One book cover and one banner designed by me (or two of the same thing)

Second place gets:
One novel of choice from The Book Depository
One book cover OR one banner designed by me

I know I'm an amateur at photo editing, but I'm getting better ;) ) Examples on the Facebook fan page under Profile Pictures found here. For the cover, make sure you send me a picture that is at least 432 x 648 pixels which is 6 by 9 inches. Although if you have a picture that falls short of it, I can tell you if its salvageable. For the banner, tell me who to Google as your character cast or send me pictures that you want me to use. I'd prefer to Google them because I might need to find angles that I think would look good for the banner. I will do up to four characters on the banner only if that many is necessary - please don't make me do extra work. Also, I'll work with you to figure out the colors of the book cover(s) and/or banner(s).

So here are the rules:

One comment = 1 entry

You can get extra entries. And I decided to be totally unique about this. Instead of getting them by tweets/blog entries/blog sidebar. You have to answer these questions. Every correct answer is one extra entry. These questions will have you looking through my previous blog entries. You can search with the search bar to the right, use my blog labels, or if you really want to, read all my posts (haha just kidding - I have over 130). Some of these are honestly really easy. Yes it's my version of a scavenger hunt.You don't have to answer each question, but I'll give you two extra special entries if you get them all correct.*

The questions:

What is your favorite title out of all my titles and why?
What is the title of Kyle's song to Rosabelle in Love Square?
How many Call Me Robin Hood teasers did I post?
How many pictures had at least one instance of the word, love, in my "My Love for Words" post?
What was the title of the post I had my "exciting news" and what was my news?**
"What inspired" Limelight?**
This is not a question, but is a fun one: Try to spell out my last name phonetically (+ 2 if it's correct) ;) Edit: I switched it so you can spell it out with how it sounds. And I decided to give you all a clue as to how the a's are pronounced. What country colonized the Philippines for 300 years? You're free to say, the a's sound like ___ but you need to get the stressed syllable right and that's TRICKY because it's different than said country's pronunciation rules! And as a side note, these are the pronunciations I hear the most: CALL-ah-long and CAL (like Sal) - uh - Lang (like Tang) and they're both wrong :D

Comments will be moderated :D

This contest will end on July 4 at 11:59 CST!

Good luck!

* Please have fun with it and don't stress over it!
** Quotes are used as clues with what to search!

Epic contest!

2010-06-10T15:41:00.000-05:00

Tessa Gratton at Guts of a Writer has an amazing giveaway for an ARC of Linger with the first line of Forever written in the back! AHHH! You bet I'm entering this one! This of course, is the bestselling series of the Wolves of Mercy Falls.

All you have to do is post a picture like the following from her site, linked below! You bet I chose the Robin Hood one because I am writing about a matchmaking Robin Hood! hehehe

I hope I win! AHHHH! I would die! LOL

Visit her at tessagratton.com!

The woes of having an indecisive mind...

2010-06-09T15:05:00.000-05:00

As some of you may already know, I've mentioned quite a number of times how indecisive I can get. I remember when I was in NYC during spring break, we bought stuff at a street vendor. I had a hard time deciding what color I should get.. and then when I chose the gray one and we started walking away, I realized I wanted the magenta one. And even then, I told the guy, I don't know what I want! And he's like, Do you want me to decide for you? And I'm like, no, I want the magenta one. I walked away. When I got to my hotel room, I was like ... EEEE I should have gotten the blue splatter print hoodie!

*dies*

This unfortunately carries onto my novel writing. If you notice on one of the sidebars to the right, I have16 ideas. I've been called Queen of SNIs, especially because I can come up with some pretty kickass ideas. :D But, the thing about all these ideas and an indecisive mind is that... I'm ALWAYS changing my WIP. *headdesk* At this rate, it might take me YEARS to finish every single one of my novels at the same time LOL.

Now, what do I propose as my solution to this unhealthy problem?

Speed write. I need to figure out a good time to write for a whole day and do nothing but write. ONE NOVEL of course. If I get really into it that day, I'll be very inclined to work on it when I can do another whole day to write. The goal is to try to reach 10-15K a day. That way, I could honestly finish it in at least 5 days.

I wonder who else has this problem. I hope I'm not alone hehe. I certainly feel alone as a constant-WIP-changer lol. But maybe there are others like me out there. :D Please come say hi! :P

So yeah, I'm hoping that tomorrow I'm going to have a speed write session for CMRH (the novel that I want to query - at this particular moment haha - yesterday it was Limelight. :D ) Okay, I shouldn't have added the parenthetical comment. I NEED CMRH to be my chosen novel to query. I loves it so much. <3's Joe. :D

Anyways, I didn't want to ramble about this for too long. So I'm out peeps!

I hope you all are doing chipper! :D

Romance novels and male readers

2010-06-05T09:18:00.003-05:00

I think it's quite rare to find a guy reading a romance novel. I once saw a guy reading Twilight at Barnes and Noble a year or so ago. I found that so odd at first. That was before I turned into a young adult romance writer. And once I transitioned to writing full-out romances, I actually did wonder if any of them would attract male interest.

Let's take Call Me Robin Hood for example. A single, male-POV romance. I think Joe comes across as a really sympathetic character who wants to do the right thing--expose jerks so they're girlfriends will break up with them and match each girl with a nice guy. Do I think guys would read it? Maybe. Maybe the nice guys would appreciate a seemingly nice, sympathetic character--even when he starts to turn into a jerk himself, people will understand WHY it happens. Not to mention the epic way Joe redeems himself at the end. :D

I honestly have no idea why I'm writing this post now. I guess I just hope I can find male readers who would read (and enjoy) my books. I have one other single male POV romance, and a number of double perspective with both a guy(s)/girl(s) narrators. So maybe they'd be interested in reading. Who knows?

Haha it's also my lame dream to have maybe a future boyfriend read my novels and quote my male characters who are trying to be sweet to their love interests. Sigh... that would be SO adorable and romantic.

I end this blog post with a hope that male readers could appreciate a good romance :)

Why good girls love bad boys...

2010-05-27T12:50:00.001-05:00

This is purely opinion.

This post isn't going to be about MY experience with a bad boy as a good girl. Although I'd just about love to talk about how I broke up with him through text. I think I said something rude first and ended with this exactly, "u can call me a b***h but you cant call me ur girlfriend." (I didn't have the asterisks btw) His "lover" (someone I totally suspected before, but didn't realize it actually was going on) proceeded to Facebook message me some facts that I won't explain. They were pretty harsh.

Anyways, on to the topic of this post.

This is apparently one of my themes that are found in at least a couple of my romance novels. The twist is that the majority of them involve the bad boys disguised as good guys. Is it weird that I just realized that right now? LOL

So why DO good girls fall for bad boys? I instantly remember the song, "Good Girls Go Bad" by Cobra Starship even though it has nothing to do with this post lol.

I'd say it's a couple things. The thrill of danger. The mystery. The challenge. The intrigue.

The thrill of danger - Bad boys can be known to be heartbreakers. But good girls like him anyway. The sense of knowing that the heartbreak might come eventually, but she still wants to go along for the ride. Ever heard of this song? Break Your Heart by Taio Cruz. Loving how it's like a warning to girls out there regarding bad boys. It's kind of catchy too. :D Good beat. Okay, let's get back on track. ;) (Note: If you know me in real life or if I talk to you on IM, you'll know I get easily distracted.)

The mystery - These bad boy types tend to have some sort of mysterious quality to them, whether it be his past, his brooding tendencies (I immediately think of Edward from Twilight and Patch from Hush, Hush), the question over why he just has that amazing ability to just pull a girl in without even trying. From reading both those novels, the girl main character was trying to learn more about him because he was shrouded in mystery. That brings me to the next bit.

The challenge - A girl may be just looking to chase after him.Going back to Break Your Heart by Taio Cruz, he sings, "I'm not easy to please." So it's clear that is is a challenge to win over the guy. I know I felt that I was the one to tame my ex. He stopped smoking because of me. Well, actually, he was still the bad-boy type smoking or not. Yeah, I've had moments of tears to be honest, but I stuck with him. Why? I wanted to make the relationship work no matter how challenging it was.

And lastly, the intrigue - I think girls are so attracted to the bad-boy type because they seem to be the ones with the strong, confident, "I don't give a shit" vibe that chicks just dig. Some good guys, who tend to be sweeter and quieter type, tend to lack that, so they're not as noticeable to girls (may be going on a limb with that). Ah, let me tell you about my favorite bad-boy in a young adult romance. I actually reviewed Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti a while back. I'm too lazy to dig it up. I must finish this blog post. He seemed like the perfect bad-boy. Travis Becker had a motorcycle, he offered the thrill of danger that the main character, Ruby McQueen loved. But the catch? He had a bad habit of *spoiler alert* Stealing things even though his family was was pretty well off. He even got Ruby to give him the key to her employers' office where they kept the money and she ended up losing her job. I honestly fell in love with him before that moment, and when I realized what his bad habit was, I was like, "NOOO NOT TRAVIS! I LOVE TRAVIS!" *dies* But yeah his bad-boy ways (without the stealing) was very, very attractive to Ruby and me because with a quiet girl like Ruby (and like me too, which is why I loved her as a main character), he was just so appealing because he got her to break out of her shell. (My ex wasn't really able to do that with me though lol - I will always remain a quiet girl hehe.) So yeah, Travis was very intriguing as a character, in my opinion. GO READ HONEY, BABY, SWEETHEART NOW! :D

I end this post with a good luck wish to the good guys who are just looking for somebody to love. Don't give up. If you have a matchmaking Robin Hood that'd match you up with a broken-hearted girl who just broke up with their bad-boy boyfriend, then you'll be a lucky, lucky man. Haha I do love my reference to my novel, Call Me Robin Hood ;). But if you're not that lucky, I'd say the following besides "Don't give up": As Joe Parker in CMRH says, "Girls are beautiful emotional train wrecks," so I say, be there for your girl. Remember her birthday, your anniversary, special days like Valentine's day, call her back when you miss her calls, call her just to say hi, treat her with lots of respect, just don't be TOO giving, because that's boring, and that's where an exciting bad-boy might sweep her up. Also, I'm single and looking for a good guy. LOL I promise you that I'm only kidding. ;)

Hope you enjoyed my rambling for the day :D

Another Kickass contest!

2010-05-16T15:36:00.003-05:00

Check out Kathy Brady's contest on her blog! There will be first, second, and third prizes for an Amazon gift card!

http://kathybradey.blogspot.com/2010/05/hooray-my-first-ever-contest.html

Blog Award! YAY!

2010-05-14T09:28:00.001-05:00

I got this award from the lovely Amanda! WOOT! For this one, you're supposed to tell some things that make you happy.

1. Writing - It's my major thing. I used to call it my happy drug
2. Friends and Family - I love them so much. They really know how to make me smile.
3. Reading - I love getting lost in a world rather than my own
4. Music - Can't live without it!
5. School - Oddly lol. I like learning new things
6. My phone - hehehe I don't know what to explain here :D
7. The word "dream" - It's so soothing to think about my dreams for my future
8. Smiling - Did you know sometimes the act of expressing emotion makes you feel the emotion?

I can't think of anything else lol.

I'm tagging 3 kickass people and 1 kickass group.

Kathy Brady - This girl has an amazing writing talent! I love Ice Carousel and Believe!

GotYA - Their posts are so amazing!

Caitlin O'Connell - She's a lovely, lovely gal. And I LOVE her historical fiction novels!

Krista Ashe - I love her! And hope she gets a book deal soon! I wanna read Don't Hate the Player SO badly!

And that's it! YAY!

I write to live and live to write

2010-05-14T01:00:00.000-05:00

I came up with the line I just used for my title I think three years ago.

What does writing mean to me?

I answer this in a poem:

Writing

Writing is the beat of my heart

The thrumming and the drumming

The whirling and the twirling of the baton

As the marching band marches on

Writing is the night

That lulls me to sleep

Rocking me like a tiny baby

The lullaby is the words

That pour forth onto the blank page

The beautiful words that waft through the air

Sung on the night's dark wings

Soft, sweet, serene

Writing is the day
The rising sun saying hello
The light shining into my soul
Pushing me to write
Inspiring, motivating, fulfillment

Writing is love
The soft caress and gentle kiss
Of words coming together
Of words making beautiful sentences
That turn into paragraphs and scenes
Full of wonder and excitement

Writing is my passion
I write to live
And live to write

So yeah, that was kind of lame, but that's how I feel about writing, my one true love. :)

Karla has been a bad, bad blogger

2010-05-13T19:06:00.000-05:00

Hey y'all!

This is just a post to say that I'm trying to concoct some brilliant blog posts in the near future and try to post more often than I am now.

It looks like the next post I have will be next week's Teaser Tuesday if I don't come up with something creative for the rest of this weekend and Monday.

I want to make Creative Blossoms a lot more interesting than it already is.

Stay tuned to awesomeness!

Check out this contest, peeps!

2010-05-13T17:34:00.000-05:00

One of my best writer friend gals is holding a blog contest on her blog. The more followers she gets, the better the prize package is! Enter to win, now until next Wednesday!

http://thecreare.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-massive-giveaway.html

Build My Dream Man

2010-05-03T10:19:00.004-05:00

Remilda tagged me in the Build Your Dream Man meme. I won't be as detailed as Remilda was.But this is way awesome!

The Gutter Girls' rules are: We all have our favorite book boyfriends and now you have the chance to create one just for yourself and your fantasies! How do you play? Fill out the quiz below, post a picture of a sexy man and tag five (5) other book addicts to do the same.

1. Hair color and style: I love chocolate brown hair. I also love the long, windswept look on guys. *heart melts*

2. Eye color and facial features: Green. I have an obsession with green eyes. Or just anything that isn't dark brown like mine. Dimples are cute. It'd be cool if they were uneven like mine. And he has to have nice eyebrows. But it has to be natural, he can't get them done or anything lol

3. Height and body type: Just someone taller than me. And also he has to have a really nice body--muscular, a six-pack would be nice, strong arms so he can carry me and do the heavy lifting around the house. He has to just be super fit.

4. Visible age: Early 20's since I'm nearing that age myself.

5. Human or other: Human. Definitely human. Although a werewolf boyfriend would be pretty sexy. Definitely no vampires though.

6. Paranormal skills: Hmmm.... The ability to run super fast, and even speed across water. I would like him to get me souvenirs from across the world within minutes.

7. Habitat: The city. I LOVE the city

8. Interests: Singing. I want my man to serenade me. Writing poetry. I want my man to write me love poems (*cougIamaromanticmyselfsoI'ddothesameforhimcough*). Reading. I want to share my favorite books with him and the other way around.

9. Special skills: Cooking (because i can't). And also making me the happiest girl (woman?) ever.

And a picture of my sexy man:

Tim Urban from this season of American Idol. :)

*dies*

The five people I tag are.... Emilia, Kristin Otts, Rachael, Meagan and Race

What inspired me to be a writer?

2010-04-30T06:42:00.002-05:00

What inspired me to be a writer?

When I was four I wanted to be a vet. This was because I had a Veterinarian Barbie complete with pets. I don't remember what else I wanted to be until fifth grade, when I was determined to be a scientist. I was compiling a list of different scientists with the aid of Frankie, a then friend, soon to be crush in sixth grade. Science was my thing starting in fifth grade thanks to my lovely teacher, Ms. Garrett. She was (and still is) my fave teacher of all time.

Well, soon enough, we had an assignment to write a short story. It had to be a modern retelling of a fairy tale. Some of you might remember this when I posted an essay I wrote for my freshman comp class in my first quarter at DePaul. She read my short story, titled, "A Modern Cinderella," in front of the whole class. Since then, I knew I had some sort of talent.

I didn't become serious about writing until freshman year of high school. I started my first serious novel then. The Subtle Truth, about a boy who has to save the world. It was a science fiction novel. Well, that novel will never see the light of day ever. It was horrible. I've had some other SF/fantasy projects since then, but they weren't "me."

Soon enough, I realized romance was my calling. I am just so in love with love. Ask anyone :D

So yes, I consider myself a late bloomer when it comes to writing when I started to fall in love with it at ten. Hmm... I don't know what else to write in this post lol so I'm off!

Author Interview: Deb Caletti

2010-04-29T00:00:00.002-05:00

Because Deb was swamped with emails from bloggers wanting to do interviews, I had to get a document from the publisher instead. They also sent me a free review copy of Six Rules of Maybe! So awesome!

Here is the Q&A they sent me!

Q: Your main character, Scarlet, is deeply involved with everyone around her--her mother, her sister, her brother-in-law, and her neighbors. She says, “I thought it had worked for me, looking after everyone else. But it didn’t. Not anymore.” In your opinion, what is it about being a young adult that causes them to put others before their own wants and needs?

A: I think it isn’t so much a “young adult” thing as a human being one. Some of us just come with the “giver” gene, or else we develop it for a million complicated reasons. Scarlet, like most of us, starts this behavior waaay early. She’s the one who always gets paired up with the bad kid, and she’s the one who walks the sick girl to the office when no one else wants to. Sometimes it’s all about being kindhearted, but it can also spill over into being unassertive about what’s right for us. It’s an important balance--how much of our life is “other” and how much of our life is “self.” Often, too, the folks who are mostly takers are magnetically drawn to givers (huh, no wonder, right?). Givers don’t think too much about this until they are resentful and exhausted, as Scarlet finally becomes in SIX RULES.

Q: Scarlet discovers what she believes are The Five Rules of Maybe. It isn’t until later that she realizes there are actually Six Rules of Maybe. The sixth rule catches her off guard: “Most importantly, know when you’ve reached an end. Quit, give up, do it with courage. Giving up is not failing – it’s the chance to begin again.” Why is this an important rule or lesson?

A: I think giving up is a hugely important lesson, and an overlooked one. We’re so into the rah rah ideas that YOU CAN DO ANYTHING! YOU CAN BE ANYONE! That we forget that it’s often not true. Sometimes we can’t. I don’t think that’s bad news. Not at all. I think it’s important news. I worry that lately we’ve forgotten how critical it is to see ourselves realistically. Quitting, moving forward, being resilient about failure--those are all things that haven’t gotten much air time lately. And yet, this is perhaps the most important rule of all. It’s the way we can ride out the bumps without crashing.

Q: A common theme of self-discovery develops for all of the characters as they consider what they really want for their future. Did you draw upon any of your own experiences to create these realistic journeys?

A: Self-discovery, finding “home”, dealing with being a mostly good-hearted but flawed person in a complicated world--yep, those are all repeating themes in my work. And, yes, absolutely--I draw on my experiences for all of my books. I have never stolen an old lady from a rest home (like in Honey), or been given an enormous sum of money from a stranger (like in Indigo). But I HAVE lost faith in love and have felt my world turn upside down and have had to rethink and rethink my future. Writing is always my therapy, the attempt to work out particular events and questions I’m trying to understand. (Too bad no one actually gave me that fat sum of money, though. )

Q: Why do you write for young adults?

A: Becoming a YA author was actually a lucky accident. The first book that I published, The Queen of Everything, was written as an adult book. I thought it was an adult book, anyway. When it was picked up by Simon & Schuster for the young adult market, I found myself here. This is the route for many YA writers, but I think most of us will agree that it is a happy and fortunate detour. I found myself in a great place, with these readers I love for their honesty and true passion for books. Fate plucked me up, I’m sure, and set me down where I belonged. What’s cool, too, is that because I didn’t (and still don’t) know how to write a “young adult book” (whatever that is), I have an audience that varies in age from 11 to 91. I hope my readers can also feel that I don’t treat them as “teens” (a word that too often is used in some weird kind of quotation marks), but just as the fine people and kindred book lovers that they are to me.

Q: What were some of your favorite books growing up?

A: I was as much a book addict then as I am now. I think I’ve spent a great deal of my life so far lugging huge, unwieldy stacks of books home from the library. How to even choose favorites, you know? I loved Ramona the Pest. I loved Little Bear. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The Incredible Journey. The Chronicles of Narnia. Okay, I’ll stop there.

Q: Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

A: Always. Since I was about seven years old. Except for that brief period of time when I wanted to be Nancy Drew.

Contact: Taryn Rosada 212-698-7185

taryn.rosada@simonandschuster.com

This interview is provided by Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing and can be reprinted for publication either in full or excerpted as individual questions and answers, as long as they are reprinted in their entirety.

Review: Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

2010-04-28T03:29:00.001-05:00

Here is my next review! One of my favorite contemporary romance reads! Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti.

Paperback blurb: It is summer in the Northwest Town of Nine Mile Falls, and sixteen-year-old Ruby McQueen, ordinarily dubbed The Quiet Girl, finds herself hangout with gorgeous, rich, thrill-seeking Travis Becker. But Ruby is in over her head and starts risking more and more when she's with him.

In an effort to keep Ruby occupied, Ruby's mother, Ann, drags Ruby to the weekly book club she runs. When it is discovered that one of the group's own members is the subject of a tragic love story they are reading, Ann and Ruby spearhead a reunion between the long-ago lovers. But for Ruby, this missions turns out to be much more than a road trip....

First Line: The first thing I learned about Travis Becker was that he parked his motorcycle on the front lawn.

My thoughts:

Wow. This book is just . . . wow. Everything about it was so heartfelt and gut-wrenching, and I just loved every single moment of the book. Definitely a page-turner. And sometimes I'd get so ahead of myself, that I'd skip paragraphs to find out what happens next. And when I read books that make me do that, I know it's good. Way brilliant.

The main character, Ruby, is so relatable. Almost everyone goes through a first love, and with a guy as hot as Travis, who wouldn’t be happy? But Travis isn’t exactly a good guy. I won’t spoil it, but when I found out what he does, I was just so in shock. How could he? And I was so happy when he got what he deserved....

The Casserole Queens (what the book members are called) were one of my fave parts. They are a really fun(ny) group. They made up for my disappointment in Travis.

Of course, the best part was the road trip. That’s the section of the book I skipped the most paragraphs and had to double back hehe. It was just a really exciting part. And I especially loved the excitement from them having to kidnap the old lady they are trying to match with her

long-ago lover.”

I’m not sure I have any negative comments on it. Maybe I was turned off by Ruby and her sweaty armpits. I thought, whatever happened to deodorant? I guess I also wished there were clues for Travis’s horrible, horrible ways, and it just wasn’t BOOM! in your face.

Then there was that one line I was so glad Ruby told to Travis. Boo ya! She officially rocks for that line. Totally reminds me of an epic line I told my ex-boyfriend. I forgot what the exact line was, but it was a breakup line. Through text. Hehe.

Anyways, I took out all my ratings from earlier reviews and figured just my thoughts would be enough.

You should definitely pick up this book. It’s a GREAT read :)

Why I write about love....

2010-04-26T05:58:00.001-05:00

I write about love because it means so much to me

Because I love how sometimes you just wonder if that special someone feels the same way as you do, "He loves me" and "He loves me not"

I dream....

....about a love so true....

....that lasts

Because what's shared between a boy and a girl (or girls, or boys)

....is something so special

....is something so unique

....is something so beautiful

Because love is full of rainbows....

....and kisses....

....and happiness

And even through the pain, hurt, and sadness....

....love trimphs

And that my friends, is why I write about....

Hope you enjoyed!

What inspired Limelight?

2010-04-23T17:34:00.002-05:00

. . . Limelight?

Okay, I still don't have a blurb for Limelight. That's been the case fro my newer SNIs. But this novel already reached 7500 words I think.

So, what inspired LL?

The Bachelor.

You know, the show where there's a guy whom 25 women try to win over his heart? I was watching 20/20 episode titled, Inside the Bachelor: Stories Behind the Rose. One girl said something like, "This doesn't happen in real life." This was because on a two-girl date with the bachelor, the girl who I quote and and he rejected was left alone on top of a helicopter base. Does that really happen?

So I was trying to figure out an idea after that. I wanted there to be a guy who wanted to take a girl on all these elaborate dates, but she'd refuse each time.

That's when I realized the guy should be an ex-reality TV star. The girl became someone who blogged about celebrities and so her followers wanted her first Celebrity feature to be the guy. Dylan Summers and Leigh Madison. This novel also includes a bitchy actress, a cheating ex-boyfriend, and a drama-filled summer.

And Limelight also features various writing mediums like snippets of articles and blog posts and short notes, etc. It's different, and hopefully my future agent will like it! :D

Random Blog Post

2010-04-22T22:22:00.001-05:00

This is just because I haven't written a blog post in over a week. Sorry for my lack of Teaser Tuesday-ing this week. Got busyyyy

Anyways, the random thing about this blog post is that it's one of my random rambling posts. I haven't had one of these things in MONTHS. Because I'm 19, I'll do 19 random facts!

I once learned from a friend that eating cheese before you sleep gives you weird dreams. I thinik this is true. VERY true. Who dreams about being wrapped in Egyptian cotton sheets naked in the bathroom? (sorry if this is TMI hehe)
When I was a baby in the Philippines, my family's two rottweilers were jealous whenever my mom carried me. Ace and Big Foot were their names.
"Talaga" translates to, "are you for real" from Tagalog (Filipino language). Okay, that's what I say it translates into. Muahaha
I forgot how to play the piano :(
There are a bajillion pictures of me displayed in my house. (Okay, maybe not, but there's a lot :D )
I tend to lose my jump drive a lot (and my novels are saved only on that [I need to start backing them up]) but I'm always lucky in finding it. Once, I searched a whole green field looking for it. It shined in the sunlight :)
My favorite color is PINK
I want my future baby girl to look like me when I was a baby.
I have an obsession with green eyes. It was difficult for me to settle with clear blue for Kyle. He originally had green eyes in The Subtle Truth, my SF novel where I first came up with the name Kyle Brewer.
Kyle Brewer, Chase Santiago, and Jeanette Labelle are all names from The Subtle Truth. Amy Nicholson was Kyle's love interest in The Subtle Truth. But Rosabelle Monroe fits the role of the girl who likes Kyle and has Chase as a boyfriend in Love Square.
My first romance idea was To Find Love and it's a novel about dreams that I came up with from a dream. I can't remember the dream I had though :(
Twelve is the end of things. 2012, 12 Days of Christmas, December is the 12th month. Yeah, don't ask me how this came to me just now lol. It is also the beginning of every hour and every day :)
Thirteen is how old I was when I first started becoming depressed.
I accidentally left my dad's Valentine's Day present for me (five years old) in my school cubby hole and my teacher thought I was giving it to her. She gave me a thank you note and everything. But I missed my cute white teddy bear holding a heart that says, "I love you" whenever you squeeze it. My dad woke me up by constantly squeezing it that morning.
I'm going to end right now because I can't think of anything else lol

Hope you enjoyed tonight's random rambling!

What inspired Lost Summer Love?

2010-04-10T01:04:00.003-05:00

I forgot to post this yesterday. It's still half past 12 a.m. on a Saturday so let's count it as a Friday lol

This week is: What inspired Lost Summer Love?

The reason why I chose this novel is because (thanks to the help of some awesome teen writers) it has now been added to my 3 novels in 5 months goal! The other two novels are Call Me Robin Hood (obviously) and Love Square :)

So . . . you know how sometimes songs can inspire an idea? That's what happened for LSL.

And the song is Taylor Swift's "Tim McGraw."

It was the opening verse that did it for me. And listening to the rest of the song pondering this idea of a summer romance...

You said the way my blue eyes shined,
Put those Georgia stars to shame that night
I said: "That's a lie"
Just a boy in a Chevy truck,
That had a tendency of gettin' stuck,
On backroads at night
An' I was right there beside him all summer long
An' then the time we woke up to find that summer'd gone

In Taylor Swift's song, she hadn't seen the boy for three summers, and had a letter she never gave him. But then she leaves it on his doorstep.

Here's a summary of Lost Summer Love:

Melody Miranda didn't expect anything special on her trip to the Bahamas with her family. But then she meets Troy Di Mercurio--a band-boy hottie from Chicago. He serenades her. He buys her flowers. They have a summer romance, that ultimately has to end. But they vow to keep their romance alive. Troy dropped his phone in the pool and needs a new cell, so the night before his flight, they exchange numbers and addresses. Or at least, that's what Melody did. When she unfolds the piece of paper he slipped in her hand and kissed her goodbye, she doesn't find an address or a home number. Instead, there are lyrics to a song titled, "A Beautiful Melody" written by Troy especially for her. Then she notices something Troy left behind. It's a notebook full of song lyrics. And sadly, the piece of paper with her number and address. She rushes to the airport to see if she can find him. But she has a fear of loneliness, and in this crowded airport, she's unable to find him. So despite her parents' wishes, she takes a semester off college to live with her aunt and uncle in Chicago and uses the notebook of lyrics to find him. Someone, somewhere in Chicago has to have heard his band play. But that fear of being engulfed in a world so much bigger than her comes back, and she doesn't know if she's able to continue searching for him.

So yes, I'm hoping to finish this novel by the end of the summer! I am actually taking a summer school class for five weeks. 2 days/week, 3 hours/day which so does not take away from my writing time :)

I am most likely going to work on LSL before finishing Love Square which has been sitting for months and months at 47K lol. I'll let it marinate a few more months until the NEED to write it comes along, which it will because I can't seem to stay away from Kyle Brewer for too long lol.

So yes! Stay tuned for upcoming teasers on Call Me Robin Hood and Lost Summer Love!

EDIT: I just realized I'm writing a book about a summer romance (mostly) in the summer! :D

*hopes that will bring me my own romance-filled summer* ;)

Interview: Susane Colasanti

2010-04-08T14:24:00.000-05:00

I have Susane Colasanti, author of When It Happens, Take Me There, Waiting for you, and upcoming book which will be released on May 4, Something Like Fate.

Q: What is the most challenging part of writing? Easiest? Most fun?

Good writing requires good choices. What I probably find most challenging while writing a new book is deciding which choices are the best. There tends to be at least one point in the story where I can see a few possible paths to take, all of which look good to me. Which relates to another challenge: deleting scenes (or even whole chapters) that are difficult to part with. While revising, there are inevitably parts of the story that need to be cut. The bad parts are easy to delete. Then there are parts that are good, but they’re just not right for that particular book. I have a file of cut parts from past revisions that can maybe be used in another book somehow. The easiest stage for me is going over copyedits. Although it’s an extremely tedious job, I’m a detail-oriented person and love when I finally get to polish my manuscript. I always have a fun time integrating random, weird things from my own life that have spoken to me in mysterious ways. Or taking annoying experiences we all can relate to and making them look hilarious. There’s a scene in Take Me There where this dude is ordering a very complicated drink at Starbucks, all yelling into his cell phone and just being generally obnoxious. We’ve all encountered That Guy.

Q: I love to write young adult romance as well. What about romance (writing, reading, and/or in general) do you love the most?

You know, it’s funny. I had no idea I was writing teen romance until people started classifying it that way. It makes sense that my books are associated with the romance genre since the main plots all focus on a boy-girl relationship. All of my books are about soul mates. Soul mates are fascinating! I love taking the concept of two people who are destined to be together, who have this instant connection they can’t explain, and convincing readers that they have to be together. If readers can feel even a fraction of the passion that my characters feel, that’s awesome.

Q: I actually have a number of novels involving male POV, and my secret to getting it right is being a good listener when I’m around guys. Your male POV is very believable. What’s your own secret?

We have the same technique! I did a lot of spying on boys when I was a teacher. Not even spying – just listening very carefully to the way they talk and how their speech patterns are different than girls’. To write realistic dialogue, it must be influenced by dialogue heard in real life. All of my books contain lots of dialogue. When I’m writing a new book, I write the kind of story that I would have liked to read as a teen (which actually hasn’t changed, except that I also read more adult novels now because I am apparently a grownup). I love listening to conversations – inflections, word choices, slang, everything. I’ve absorbed a decent amount of boy conversation, which makes writing realistic boy dialogue much easier.

Q: I almost died when I found out Sara from When It Happens liked Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain. In a previous interview, you said a lot of your own philosophy factored into When It Happens. What are some other things from your own life that inspire different aspects of your novels?

I’m very into green living, a concept I’ve been wanting to incorporate into one of my books for a while. Something Like Fate was the perfect opportunity to do this. The main character, Lani, is president of One World, her school’s environmental club, and is all about healthy lifestyle choices. I’m hoping that my readers will be inspired to make healthier, more sustainable choices as well. Also, I believe in karma. If you are someone who puts positive energy out into this world, good things will come back to you. Karma is a concept that can be found to some extent in each of my books.

Q: It is so clear in previous interviews I’ve read that Sara is the character you identify with the most. But to switch things up on you ... if in some alternative universe you were a guy, who would be the male character you’d identify with the most?

Ooh, interesting question! I’d have to say a cross between Tobey Beller from When It Happens and Danny Trager from Take Me There. Tobey is sensitive, introspective, quirky, and listens to The Cure when he’s depressed. That pretty much describes how I was in high school. While I’m not a political activist like Danny, he’s vocal about what he believes in and is trying to make a difference in this world. I try to make a difference with every book I write, to hopefully help my readers feel less alone. And I’m very opinionated. If I believe in something strongly, you’ll definitely know.

Q: In previous interviews, you said you didn’t know if you were “allowed” to write a book based on college characters when asked if you could write a sequel to When It Happens. What are your thoughts on the “New Adult” genre that has been getting some interest from St. Martin’s Press?

The whole concept of “teen for adult” books is evolving. More adults are reading teen novels, which I think is the result of greater exposure and selection. The YA market is expanding in so many creative ways. Some novels that are now shelved in the teen section used to be classified as adult, like Girl by Blake Nelson and Forever by Judy Blume. It feels like the time is right for a new crossover genre to grow. When I was a teen, I would have loved to read about characters in college or in their early 20s. Not many books out there are about these early adult years. So I think that writing a book with college characters would be a welcome concept at this point (although I still haven’t decided about a When It Happens sequel!).

Q: What is your favorite moment from high school and is it included in any of your current published works?

Graduation day. That was the day I was free. That was the day I looked forward to for so long. I clearly remember walking across that stage, going down those steps, and knowing that my ties to high school could be completely over. When It Happens has a graduation scene that was not unlike my own experience.

Q: What authors did you look up to when in high school?

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton was the only book I read in my entire junior high/high school experience that I loved. It inspired me to write my own book that would hopefully help others the way The Outsiders helped me. I still have that original copy from 7th grade, sitting on my shelf next to a newer edition of the book (published by Viking), which sits next to my own books (also published by Viking). Cool, right? Stephen King was also popular with me. Even though some of those books scared me so badly I had nightmares, I could not stop reading. One of my high school English teachers argued that his books were trash, but I was like, “Really? Then give me something good to read.” Which of course he couldn’t do because everything I had to read for English was a total snore. The authors that I loved were ones I discovered in libraries and bookstores. I looked up to them because they inspired me to dream about a better life. When life got unbearable (which it did a lot back then), I could always count on picking up their books again and again and feeling comforted.

Q: What is your best piece of writing advice for aspiring writers?

Read. Then read some more. The more you read, the better your writing will become. You should write about what makes you feel alive. If you feel passionate about what you’re writing, you will be compelled to keep going.

Q: If you were still a teen, which one of your male characters/love interests in any of your novels would you date?

Tobey Beller from When It Happens will always have a special place in my heart. It seems like an author’s first book is usually the most autobiographical one. The first book is what you pour all of the emotions and experiences from your whole life into. Tobey was inspired by a real boy in my life. I want my readers to know that boys like Tobey actually do exist!

Check out Susane elsewhere on the internet!

Website: http://www.susanecolasanti.com

Blog: http://windowlight.livejournal.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/susanecolasanti

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/susanecolasanti

Twitter: http://twitter.com/susanecolasanti

Thanks to Susane for a wonderful interview!

The Point of No Return

2010-04-05T14:18:00.001-05:00

The Point of No Return. No, I'm not talking about the action point of no return in a novel where there is NO turning back for your main character(s). I'm talking about the point of no return in your actual novel writing PROCESS.

At what point of writing a novel do you know you're going to (try to) finish this baby up if it's the last thing you do before you die?

For me, I have to fall in love with my character(s)/their story. I have to love them so much, I can't stop writing. This can happen in as little as a couple hundred words (maybe not) or as much as five thousand words. But usually, I've noticed this happen to me as soon as I do set up the actual "point of no return" for the novel. And this usually happens almost immediately--probably 2-3Kish words into the novel.

So my lovelies, when do you see yourself so emotionally (maybe even physically) invested in a WIP so much that you feel ill (just kidding)?

Comments and thoughts are welcome!

Check out this awesome contest!

2010-03-27T11:21:00.000-05:00

Tahereh is throwing an awesome contest on her blog. Linky here!

Top prize if a $100 Amazon gift card!

The rules is to write a rhyming query!

I've got mine done, now it's your turn!

In Celebration of my 100th Post...

2010-03-27T09:28:00.001-05:00

I am finally going to talk about Kyle Brewer and Rosabelle Monroe! And why they are my fave couple I ever wrote!

(By the way, this is my 100th post! WOOT! lol)

First things first. Rosabelle is the kind of girl I wish I were. Perfect grades, gorgeous looks, popular, etc. I guess in a way, I had to model her after me (but since I'm boring, I made her even more extraordinary), since I was the girl in my dreams (duh--that's usually the case) that sparked Love Square's story. So yes.

Second, Kyle is the bad boy I fell in love with because of my ex. But Kyle's a golden boy at heart (unlike my ex). As some Love Square readers know . . . Kyle used to be a good kid. Intelligent, sweet, (insert good qualities here), until something happened when he was 13, and he fell into a spell of smoking, drinking, and bad grades. And he pushed Rosabelle away. (I've said so many times in previous blog posts that they grew up "in love" with each other since preschool).

So now that you know a little bit about the inspirations of both characters and whatnot, the question is . . . what is it about their relationship that I absolutely love?

The moment Kyle figures out he is falling for her, he tries to push her away. And the reason? He's no good for her. He's a bad kid; she's a good girl. They don't match, right? And thinking that she deserves so much better than him and worrying about her well-being if she were to be with him is so sweet.
Another thing though. But no, he can't keep away from her. She's the girl he loved growing up and he already hurt her once, why would he do it again? *swoons*
When Rosabelle first realizes she's starting to fall for Kyle all over again (or maybe she just hasn't lost her feelings for him.... [; ) she doesn't ignore her feelings. She wasn't afraid to kiss him on Homecoming night. Not only once. But twice. And Rosabelle is one of those girls who is afraid to break out of the safety of her shell. Not to mention it counts as going behind Chase's back.
When Chase and Rosabelle officially go on a break, Rosabelle runs to Kyle. Kyle is hesitant of course, still fighting over whether it's the right thing to let her fall for him and for him to fall for her, but guess what? He accepts her.
Kyle uses a line in Romeo and Juliet. "What's in a name? That which we call a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet?" This of course, makes sense, because since preschool, he's called her Lily. As stated in previous blog posts, it's a cute little story where he hands her a lily, Rosabelle says her name isn't Lily, and Kyle says he'll call her Lily because she's still pretty like the flower. Cuteness!!!
Kyle and Lily part ways right after they have this really way awesome moment where they know they're falling for each other hard. They kiss/make out/feel the passion burning within them. But then it all falls apart. They both know it's wrong since she has a boyfriend. But on the day before winter break, Kyle says something that sort of breaks her heart. "You have a boyfriend who loves you. I'm just a friend that cares about you." And guess who's the one who starts up their relationship again? Yup, it's Kyle. He feels super bad about what he said to her, and lots more kissing/making out/almost sleeping together, but once again, Rosabelle has a boyfriend, so they refrain from that.
Kyle does something super extraordinary for Rosabelle (but I can't say because it's the climax)
Rosabelle helps Kyle out when he get in a tough position.
Maybe some of you have read Kyle's song. But he writes it and plays it for her. :)
And the end is super, super sweet.

Of course, there are more stuff that happens, but these are the major stuff. :)

So yes! This is why I LOVE Kyle and Rosabelle :)

Author Interview: Alex Flinn

2010-03-24T21:43:00.001-05:00

I have my first author interview ever! Alex Flinn! I've read only one of her books, Beastly, but I'm planning read her first novel, Breathing Underwater, sometime within the next two weeks or so! A review of Beastly found here. Without further ado, here's the interview!

Q: What sparked the idea for Beastly and its characters?

I often get ideas for books from things I wonder about. I was really curious about the beast. What happened to his family? Why was he alone in a castle in the woods? Also, why does Beauty's father let her go live with the Beast? So, that was what inspired me to write the book.

K: I get ideas like that as well!

Q: What was the biggest struggle for you in the writing process with your first published novel, Breathing Underwater?

Getting the viewpoint right. I started writing it about the girl.

Q: What is your favorite part of writing?

When it's going well, it's a lot of fun.

K: I most certainly agree!

Q: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Write what you want to write, not what you think will sell. I mean, it's probably better if you don't write about your cats, but if you write something that doesn't have your heart in it, because you think other people will like it (e.g., think, "There are a lot of vampire novels out; I should write a vampire novel too," even though you've had no previous interest in vampires, for example), it will show. It's better if you're genuinely excited about your subject matter.

Q: If you were still a teen, which one of your male characters/love interests in any of your novels would you date?

Michael in Nothing to Lose. He's a great guy.

K: I'll have to read that!

A big thanks to Alex Flinn for being able to answer some questions! YAY! :)

Also, stay tuned for tomorrow's blog post in celebration of my 100th post about something very special!

What inspired Love Square?

2010-03-19T05:41:00.005-05:00

Yup! So I'm starting a new thing every Friday with what sorts of things inspired different story ideas, characters, scenes, etc.

Hopefully this will show my readers a sense of how crazy my imagination is! LOL

On to the blog post!

Love Square was based on a dream. Yes, very Stephanie Meyer-esque. I dreamt of a boy (who shall remain nameless because I don't even know why I dreamed of him) who kept chasing after me, but I didn't like him because he was a bad boy--smoking and drinking and stalker-ish for that matter! Well, soon enough, I finally let him talk to me, and he's just a golden boy at heart! So I start falling for him and he changes into a good boy for me.

I wake up.

I go on my computer.

I start typing about a character, Kyle Brewer (whose name I recycled from my first attempt at a novel that will never see the light of day), who's a bad boy. This is my original (well with edits) paragraph about him:

Kyle Brewer is a “lost cause” says everyone in his school. His own parents believe the same thing. As a junior in Wolfe High School, he gets straight D’s, smokes during his off-campus lunch periods, gets detentions because of tardy slips to every class every day, talking back to the teacher, and other things when he’s not sleeping in class. He also hangs out with the druggies, even though he’s never done drugs. He’s never been in a relationship because his greatest fear is falling in love.

Then I start typing about the girl. Rosabelle Monroe had been a Kristina Nicholson before. I changed her name because Kyle and Kristina was too cute. I came up with Rosabelle and changed her last name because Monroe fit better. And this is the paragraph I wrote about Rosabelle:

Kristina Nicolson, better known as Nina, is fascinated by Kyle, wondering why he doesn’t do drugs if he hangs out with all those people. Nina is the exact opposite of Kyle. She’s class president and president of the Choral Department, even though she’s just a junior. People admire her for her beauty and charisma. But she’s tired of being the goody-good.

So I had my two characters and I knew it'd be a double perspective. But then I thought, what if Kristina had a boyfriend?

Chase was born.

Chase Santiago is Nina’s boyfriend of one year. He’s the basketball star at their school. Even as a jock with somewhat good grades, mostly B’s with a few A’s, Nina fell for him for his romantic ways. Such as the day he asked her to be his homecoming date and the way he asked her to be his girlfriend during homecoming. He thinks Nina is the one.

And I couldn't make it a love triangle. That's too common. So I added a second girl and created a love square.

Jennie Labelle, short for Jeanette, is the school’s favorite TV broadcaster. She’s funny and outgoing, and she dreams about being in movies or owning her own talk show. She’s best friends with Nina, but secretly wants Chase to be her boyfriend. She’s not as pretty as Nina, but she hopes one day Chase will see that Nina is not the one for him.

Different facts changed around of course. I never said Rosabelle was prettier than Jeanette, and Kyle doesn't even go off-campus to smoke and I don't show him getting tardy slips, but maybe I will add it in.

So yes, that's what inspired me to write Love Square!

Random Fact: Love Square used to be called The Love Square, until a beta kept calling it Love Square without the "The" and I fell in love with it. :)

I also promised to write about my favorite couple: Kyle and Rosabelle in this blog post, but I'll save that for another post. Sorry for the procrastination with that! :P

Thanks for reading!

EDIT: Silly me didn't read each individual character's paragraph. So I completely forgot I switched Chase from playing basketball to soccer. Woops. :D

Review: Perfect Chemistry

2010-03-05T12:41:00.003-06:00

Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles

Book Blurb

At Fairfield High Scxhool, on the outskirts of Chicago, everyone knows that south siders and north siders aren't exactly compatible elements. So when head cheerleader Brittany Eles and gang member Alex Fuentes are forced to be lab partners in chemistry class, the results are bound to be explosive. But neither teen is prepared for the most surprising chemical reaction of all--love. Can they break through the stereotypes and misconceptions that threaten to keep them apart?

First Line: Everyone knows I'm perfect.

My Opinion

Perfect Chemistry is by far one of my favorite contemporary romance reads. The plot was fantastic. Bad Boy/Good Girl pairs are my fave. Just look at Kyle Brewer and Rosabelle Monroe in my novel, Love Square.

Brittany Ellis is seen to be perfect by practically everyone. But her life isn't as perfect as everyone thinks. Her sister has cerebral palsy, her mom is overly anxious, and her dad is never around. Then there's the fact that her boyfriend, Colin, is sex hungry and she doesn't want to quite yet.

Alex Fuentes' life is far from perfect. His father passed away due to gang-related stuff. He's looking out for his brother who's interested in joining the Latino Bloods, and avoiding getting into too much trouble at school.

Then Brittany nearly runs over Alex on his motorcycle. Drama entails. And THEN they find out they're partners for chemistry class. Lots more drama to follow.

My fave parts of this novel are when Brittany and Alex have this "war" sort of thing. Where one say, hide each other's keys or Brittany putting pink streamers on his bike. Those were such cute little pranks and I loved how they always got back with each other.

And as soon as things start heating up between them, I'm all for it. And the kiss scenes are so sexy. I love a good kiss scene.

Of course, everything will eventually take a sudden turn for the worst. When two people are opposites, things don't exactly line up, do they? The ending was really great. And the epilogue was super sweet. All in all, a fantabulous read. Absobloominglutely luverly.

Perfect Chemistry was "perfect" in my book. Dialogue is great. Pacing is great. Everything about this book, I seriously loved. I have nothing bad to say about it. Honestly, perfect. So damn perfect.

There will be a sequel titled Rules of Attraction.

Also, check out the Perfect Chemistry book trailer.

The Lovely Kristin Otts' vlog about the Five Stages of Novel Writing

2010-03-03T04:24:00.000-06:00

Because she is super, super awesome, I have decided to post her vlog here, too! I am trying to spread the Kristin awesomeness and also wanting to keep track of this video because it's way awesome. Without further ado, here's the vid!

Here is the link to her awesome blog too!

Even MORE blog awards!

2010-02-28T01:55:00.001-06:00

I got two more blog awards! For the first one, I got nominated THREE times!! Once by Mikey and again by M.J. and again by Caitlin! I'm so excited! I feel special! hehe

Now I'm supposed to say what 10 things brighten my day. Here goes!

Edit: I realized I stopped at 8 and didn't do 10 so I added the last two :D

Writing. For sure, for sure writing. This has been my ultimate happy drug. Without it, I don't know where I would be.
My Momma and Daddy. I sure miss my dad, (I mentioned him in a blog post yesterday) but I still got my mom and I love her.
My friends. I love them they really know what to say to make me smile.
AW peeps especially the OPWFT/TWFT posters! Seriously, I don't know what I'd do without all your support and awesomeness!
Chocolate. Yup, 'nuff said ;)
Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Because I'm so lame and it keeps me connected with people when I'm stuck in my room being lame lol
Reading books. I love to read. Any type of genre really. But I have been reading more romance since I am a romance writer.
Remembering my dreams. And especially my dream to become a published author. Seriously, what writer wouldn't want that? And hopefully it WILL happen one day :)
Music. Because it helps set up my moods and some lyrics are just so beautiful I can't help but smile.
Myself. Because there's nothing like cheering yourself up when you're feeling low and even if other things trigger your happiness, it's still you who made it happen.

I will pass the Creative Writer Award to the people I am passing the Sunshine Award to! Coming up next!

And I also got this award!

The rules of this award are as follows:

1. Put the logo within your post or on your sidebar.

2. Share the love and pass the award to 12 other bloggers.

3. Link the nominees inside of your post.

4. Comment on the nominees' blogs to let them know you've just given them props. :)

5. Give a shout-out to the person who nominated, and post a link to his/her blog as well.

1. Will do!

5. Thanks to Caitlin! WOOT!

2&3.

4. Will do!

Emilia - Because she is the nicest chica ever! I love talking to her on FB chat too. I love you girl!

Mikey - Because he is just made of awesome! And he's really sweet!

Meagan - Because her book blog is AMAZING and she's an AMAZING person in general!

Inkspatters - Because she is a great literary writer and she's the nicest gal ever! And she is in love with Call Me Robin Hood!

Jaco - Because he is MY BIGGEST CALL ME ROBIN HOOD FAN EVER! He even did a fan-boy squeal once hehe. And he's the sweetest ever and I just love him.

Kristin - Because I LOVE City of Shadows and her vlog about the 5 Stages of Novel Writing

Chanelle - Because she helped me come up with the news takes for CMRH!

Linda - Because she's my fave revising buddy!

Bailey - Because she is SUPER nice. And I love her and Blue Abyss. She's a really lovely gal :)

Maddi - Because she asked me for an interview and I was the first one on her blog!

Sumayyah - Because she started an amazing crit group and she helped me with my hw hehe And she also interviewed me!

Amna - Because she reminded me of the importance of internal conflicts and subplots to help make CMRH better!

YAY for blog awards!

TTFN!

Because it's 3 AM and I'm still awake and I'm bored

2010-02-27T03:41:00.001-06:00

Here's to another blog post full of Karla's ramblings. But this one isn't as random as my previous random ramblings. I have a clear set of rambles to share--about my past birthdays since I'm turning 19 on March 6! WOOT!

This will just be the highlights. If I don't include a year, then I'd forgotten it because I was too young.. And some of these are facts that happened on "the year I turned (insert number between one and eighteen here)". I'm going to try to reach 19, but I doubt I can lol

I was born on March 6 in a hospital in Metro Manila, Philippines. My birth was a C-Section. My mom had woken up to a flat belly hehe
I hated the clown in my second birthday party. And I know this because we kept a video of it. Which is not missplaced... Must find soon!
The year I turned 2, we moved to the States!
My fifth birthday party involved a Barbie theme and guys came, too. I remember standing in the storm door area and greeting my guests. But I only remember standing there lol. The only present I remember receiving was this cool Pocahontas gear with things such as a clear armband with her tattoo on it and other things I also can't remember hehe.
In my sixth birthday video, I flash my underwear. It was on accident! hehe
At my sixth birthday party, workers removed the whole living room window to move in a new couch. Yeah, the window was huge and wide. And because it was early March, it was freeeezing!
Also at my sixth birthday party, my dad bought a huge balloon that sang the happy birthday tune, and my friends and I were trying to pop it. I don't remember if we actually did lol
My eighth birthday party was at The Enchanted Castle which is a kickass indoor amusement place in Illinois full of lots of fun like an indoor miniature golf, laser tag, bumper cars, thousands of games, thousands of prizes. IT IS JUST AWESOME! The awesomeness carried on to my twelfth birthday party, also held there even though it's mainly for little kids haha. Did I mention they have karaoke sing-a-longs for birthday packages? I sang a Spice Girls song with my friends for my eighth! It was lots of fun! There's a video they gave us, but I don't think it works...
I don't remember my ninth birthday. All I remember is thinking, this is my first birthday without Daddy.... RIP Vicente Molina Jr. April 7, 1934 - November 19, 1999. Since last November, he's been out of my life for a decade already.
But there was a birth on my ninth birthday for my nephew, Dillon! He's a millennium baby so I always know how old he is! He's turning 10 when I'm turning 19! xD
The year I turned twelve, I moved to Skokie, a suburb of Chicago. And we actually settled here! I went to seven different elementary schools during ten years of primary school education. Yup, I moved A TON.
My tenth birthday I invited every girl in my fourth grade class. We went to a bowling alley. My friend, Priscilla, came and her mom said my grandmother is so cute! I will never forget that! xD
My fourteenth and sixteenth birthday parties involved the Weber Center full of lots of ice-skating! Then walking to my house a couple blocks away and eating food/playing games/watching movies! My sixteenth was much better.
My eleventh, thirteenth, fifteenth, and seventeenth birthdays involved restaurants and movie theaters with my closest friends! My bffl Ashley had been in all of these. We've been best friends since fourth grade!
My eighteenth and last birthday was with an amazing group of friends where we got stuffed eating at Flat Top Grill (it's in Love Square!! But with a completely made-up surburb of Chicago lol) with unlimited bowls of make-your-own stirfry.

Okay, so I only made it to 15 LOL. Whatever. But this post got way too long anyway :P

And that's a wrap for this early morning's rambling!

Ta ta for now!

When HW becomes a distraction to writing--oh! Wait . . . the other way around....

2010-02-22T07:17:00.008-06:00

<rant>

Teen writers know what I'm talking about for sure.

In my head I'm all like . . . college? I don't need to go to college to be a writer!

FAIL!

Yes, I do. I need something to fall back onto if all else fails.

And here's when I run into a bit of a problem.

Writing. Is. So. Much. More. Fun/Interesting/Awesome. Than. Schoolwork.

So I write. INSTEAD of do my HW. This is BAD when it hurts your grade. And it definitely hurt for a class or two. *coughCalcismyenemycough*

This quarter, I promised myself I wouldn't make the same mistakes of writing too much rather than doing my HW. This is the 8th week of classes out of 10 (plus a finals week), and let me just tell you. That promise? Broken. Shattered. Ripped apart into a million tiny pieces that you can't even see.

</rant>

Yeah. I need to set my priorities. I don't want to fail a class.

So . . . I devised a plan to focus more on my HW.

It's obvious why I diss my schoolwork. I'm just not interested in it. It's not exciting enough to even match the exciting worlds of my characters.

The plan?

(Warning: ultimate lame one but it's been working for me thus far)

This involves lots of imagination and creativity.

I pretend I'm a character in a novel overcoming obstacles (HW). I know it's difficult for me to get started on any piece of schoolwork. (Unless it's reading, but those I hardly do either). So far I really only picture myself as one of my characters--Kyle Brewer from Love Square. Because he's a horrible, horrible student mainly. But also . . . I know he has the potential to succeed. And the most important reason is I love him the most out of all my characters hehe. But I picture myself in his shoes, pretending I'd prefer to smoke a cigarette or drink lots and lots of Corona instead of do my HW.

Then I picture myself opening that can of beer or lighting up a cigarette. Suddenly, Rosabelle appears. "Kyle (Karla) what are you doing to yourself?" And if you've read Love Square, some of you may know she asked him that question when he first started losing himself in smoking/drinking/horrible grades. And Kyle made the mistake to choose a cigarette over her. So . . . in the present moment, Kyle's guilty conscience tells him to put out that cigarette or dump his can of beer. And he remembers how he used to be a good student--even competing with Rosabelle for the best grades--so he does his HW. After all, he wants to impress Rosabelle to show her that he isn't such a bad kid. (Okay, I think I'm done spoiling Love Square hehe).

And voila! Now I've taken an interest in my HW because 1) I want to please Rosabelle; 2) This crazy scenario is just uber fun; and 3) I know once I finish this piece of HW (and others too) I know I'll be able to write!

WOOT!

So yeah, just thought I'd share this technique with you all!

I suppose if you're not a writer or if you don't have a character that works well, you can come up with a random situation. Or think of a book that you've read with a good character. It just so happens that Kyle was a brilliant character hehe

Blog Awards? What?

2010-02-21T01:43:00.001-06:00

Here are the procedures connected with the Kreativ Blogger Award:
1. You must thank the person who has given you the award.

2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.

3. Link the person who has nominated you for the award.

4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.

5. Nominate 7 other Kreativ Bloggers.

6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.

7. Leave a comment on which of the blogs to let them know they have been nominated.

1. & 3. So I got this lovely Kreativ Blogger Award from Chanelle, AGES AGO! I just never did anything about it LOL Thanks Chanelle!

2. Isn't it prettiful?

4. I swear, nothing is really interesting about me LOL

I'm in love with love -- I write love poems, letters, novels, texts. You name it. I am a hopeless romantic, but my friend said there's nothing hopeless about being a romantic.
I didn't know it when I was 10, but my fifth grade teacher was my first influence in my dream to become an author.
I like Christmas more than my birthday. (This is a new thing.)
I like to make my own version of a Starbuck's Frappucino and load it up with whipped cream hehe
I still have no clue whatsoever how my male POV is actually decent LOL
I have a very vivid imagination, so different scenes play out in my head as a sort of movie. This is way cool and usually that image will stick with me for a very long time. Maybe I'll forget the dialogue if I don't write it right away, but still. Movies playing in my head is just awesome.
I am in love with animal print.
My inspiration comes from the most random sources sometimes. Ahem, one SNI (now ditched, although I may come back to it if I find a better plot) stemmed from a creepy guy on a train who kept checking me out and gave me a note that I was cute and had a nice voice (even though I was sick and my voice sounded like crap). He also gave me his email. By the way, I threw that note out.

5. & 6.

Parametric: I cannot begin to explain how super helpful this gal is! Awesome. Way awesome. And that's why I came up with the nickname, the "all-knowing Para." She knows a whole bunch of info about the publishing industry, writing synopses, queries. I love you, Para!

Debra: She has been super, super helpful when I've been stuck with Call Me Robin Hood or anything, really. I love our conversations on Yahoo messenger. I wouldn't know where the heck CMRH would be without her.

Nikita: Not a novel-writer, but one of my best friends. And she writes amazing poetry. I am just blown away by her poems. They are awesome like whoa!

Jennifer: Another super helpful person when it comes to my own writing. I love brainstorming with this gal. She is way insightful. Super duper awesome for sure!

Bee: Wow. She. Is. Amazing! I love how in love with CMRH she is hehe. It makes me smile and feel all warm and giddy inside. She's so amazing and I just love her

Inkspatters: Another super, super helpful gal! Her crit for CMRH's first 50 pages was way awesome. She's an amazing beta. I definitely want her as a beta for life!

Race: I love her! I can't get enough of our Yahoo messenger conversations. I don't know what I would do if I never met her. I know my life would be lacking for sure! Yay for her being so awesome!

7. Will do!

Now it's time to choose the peeps I love with the ILYCYAYB award! With this I have to choose five people I love. And I definitely will have to nominate those seven peeps up there! I know that's sorta cheating, but I love them all! I can't choose!

All This Time - A Song by Kyle Brewer from Love Square

2010-02-17T00:00:00.006-06:00

I posted this on my Facebook notes awhile back. Maybe last summer. This has been unedited since I wrote it. It's perfect just the way it is. So basically, Kyle and Rosabelle grew up liking each other since they were four. He was way into music (both of them really) and kept a notebook with songs written about her but never sang them to her while strumming away on his guitar. But he got rid of that after his fallout with smoking, drinking, and terrible grades when they were thirteen. (Spoiler alert: His brother found his notebook in the trash and kept it for him. Gotta love older bros who care about their younger siblings). So . . . this is a song he wrote to her and it's his second to last chapter where he sings and plays it for Rosabelle. And obviously it won't be in the novel, so on my blog it shall be :)

All This Time

Do you remember way back then

When we were kids playing in the sand

How you got sand in your eyes

And I hugged you so you wouldn’t cry

And how about that sleepover at your place

You were afraid of monsters

So I told you I’d be your knight

I’d protect my princess tonight

I thought I was in love when I was four

With a girl like you as cute as can be

Your eyes like sapphire

And your smile spreading like fire

Into my soul, into my heart

Years have gone by

And we grew apart

But deep inside my lonely heart

All this time I longed for you

Yeah, yeah

(chorus)

I can’t help from feeling the way I do

Seein’ my heart only beats for you

I don’t see myself with any girl

Besides you because you are my world

Without you I am not me

Without you I wouldn’t be free

And now I know

Now that my true feelings show

That you were always the one

All this time

Do you remember way back then

When we played tag just me and you

And when we pushed each other on the swings

And how I gave you a ring pop as a wedding ring

I kept secretly wanting to give you a kiss

Not on your cheek but on your rosy lips

But I chickened out last minute

I sort of wish I never did

I thought I was in love when I was four

With a girl like you as cute as can be

Your eyes like sapphire

And your smile spreading like fire

Into my soul, into my heart

Years have gone by

And we grew apart

But deep inside my lonely heart

All this time I longed for you

Yeah, yeah

(chorus)

All this time, yeah

All this time, I wanted you to be mine

So a lot of twifties know that I've been writing poetry in my character's POVs. Some of my RL friends, too. All of them have been Love Square characters minus Jeanette--haven't gotten around to hers yet. I plan on posting them AFTER I finish Love Square because they're kinda spoilerish. So yeah, I probably won't finish until May or June lol but I just wanted to tease y'all. :)

Win an ARC of Linger by Maggie Stiefvater!

2010-02-15T03:14:00.000-06:00

In Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other. Now, in Linger, they must fight to be together. For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being. For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past . . . and figuring out a way to survive into the future. Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack. And Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.

At turns harrowing and euphoric, Linger is a spellbinding love story that explores both sides of love -- the light and the dark, the warm and the cold -- in a way you will never forget.

Comes out in stores everywhere July 20th. Pre-order here.

Enter to win an advanced review copies of LINGER, Sisters Red, The Dead-Tossed Waves, and The Replacement on Maggie's blog.

Valentine's Day is here!

2010-02-14T13:51:00.002-06:00

I've been wondering and wondering what the hell I'd blog about for today. And then it hit me. I'm a romance writer; I write about LOVE. So why don't I share some of my favorite romantic scenes from a couple of my novels? And I won't tell you which novels they're from! Yes, I know, I'm such a tease!

Kiss scene!

He kissed me against the door, his kiss sending a warm feeling throughout my body. I slid my right hand under his jacket and shirt, moving it over his heart. Then I took his right hand and placed it over my own heart.

I pulled away from our kiss briefly. “Do you feel that?”

“Yeah. Our hearts are synchronized,” he said, planting his soft lips on mine again.

I remembered something and pulled away again. I ran my hands through his hair. “Isn’t it your birthday today?”

“Yeah, and this is the best birthday present ever,” he whispered into my ear.

Awww, gotta love ____ and ____. ;)

And here's another but 'tis an almost kiss scene :)

I am chasing her through a field of tall grass, the blades reaching above my elbows. The afternoon sun is behind us. The white ribbon in her ponytail unties and her hair flows with the wind behind her. The ribbon catches onto the grass, and I pick it up.

“Run, run, as fast as you can! You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!” she shouts, looking back at me with a mischievous smile.

“You can run, but you can’t hide!” I reply. I can’t help but smile at her teasing.

“Oh yeah? Try me!” She giggles and crouches so I can’t see her.

I take a few more strides and find her sitting in the grass. She is wearing a pale yellow sundress. A white daisy is behind her left ear.

“Looks like you’ve found me,” she says, laughing and smiling.

“You got that right,” I say, taking a seat facing her. I hold up the white ribbon in my hand. “I think you lost this.”

“Oh, thanks for finding it.” She reaches for it, but instead, I hold her hand.

“I’ll give it to you if you kiss me,” I tease, tapping my index finger on my lips.

“All right, fine.”Her lips curl into a tiny smile.

We move closer to each other, looking into each other’s eyes first, both of us scared to initiate the kiss. I bring my face closer to hers and lift her chin up. Her hands are in my golden hair and mine are around her waist. Our lips linger an inch away....

Yet another one!

We were walking along a beach in the afternoon, holding hands. The sound of the lapping waves and the cries of the seagulls were relaxing. I carried two towels underneath my arm and she carried a white tote with pink Hawaiian flowers on her shoulder. She wore a see-through white loose dress over her striped pink and white bikini. I wore a white T-shirt with my school name on it and white and blue swim trunks.

She chose a nice, cozy spot near the water, so I laid out both our towels on the sand there. She took off her dress, and I took off my shirt. Then I chased her, once again, into the water, her giggles almost lost within the sound of the waves. I caught her waist deep into the water, wrapping her in my arms. I kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, her cheek, and then her full lips.

“___, ___,” I said in a sing-song way. “I love having you in my arms, dear.”

“And I love being in your arms,” she said, smiling with a wide grin.

We started splashing each other, but I didn’t mind the saltiness of the ocean in my mouth, just as long as I was with my sweetheart. As soon as we got tired, and as soon as the sun started getting lower in the sky, we went over to sit on our towels.

I sat leaning on my arms and my legs sprawled out. ___ lay on her stomach leaning on her elbows, and she curled her dripping hair around her finger. Then I lay on my side, my cheek resting on my hand. She moved closer to me so that I could smell the sea in her hair. Then she, too, lay on her side, and we kissed. She rolled on top of me and then we started snogging. When we stopped, we stared into each other’s eyes, and all I could think about was how beautiful she was.

And one last one. Maybe some of you will recognize it as my "Kissing Day" post. But I just HAD to post it again, because I just LOVE this couple :)

It was all automatic. I didn’t realize what I was doing. Next thing I knew, my hands were all in his wavy hair, and his hands gripped my waist. Our lips locked. All while he was caressing my sides, I felt my stomach doing gymnastic moves. Every upward stroke of his hands had my brain signaling my stomach to do even more elaborate flips and tricks. My heart was on overdrive, beating so fast and so hard I thought I would die. I couldn’t even begin explaining the emotions that whirled in my brain, all sorts of neurotransmitters in the synapse between my neurons.

Wow, was I really thinking about psychology right now?

When ____ pulled me even closer to him, the kiss deepened. With doing this behind ____’s back, a sense of danger crept in the back of my mind. But because of that, I felt an even greater thrill and excitement in kissing ____. ____’s kisses were soft and sensual while ____’s were rough and powerful. But I didn’t want to think about ____ right now. Right now, it was just _____ and I. Together. Our bodies leaned against each other, so perfectly aligned.

My feelings for ____ seemed like crashing waves against the shore. The sound and the view was so calming, but the waves could take me out far into the ocean if I stepped too close. The sound of his voice was warm and inviting, and yes, he was good-looking, but I wasn’t ready to lose myself in ____. I pulled away from our kiss, knowing this was just wrong.

Review: Beastly

2010-02-13T12:39:00.007-06:00

Yup, so I've decided to start reviewing books on here! As sad as I am to say this, there will be a lack of Teaser Tuesdays for the next few weeks. It's not because I'm not writing. It's more so I can just take a break. In the mean time, you'll get to hear my thoughts on some books and read some author interviews (yup I'm starting to interview authors, too)!

My first review is Beastly by Alex Flinn. I should have her author interview posted up within the next week or so as soon as I hear back from her!

Without further ado, here is my review! (I hope it isn't super bad since it's my first and I'm experimenting)

Book Description

I am a beast. A beast. Not quite wolf or bear, gorilla or dog, but a horrible new creature who walks upright – a creature with fangs and claws and hair springing from every pore. I am a monster.

You think I’m talking fairy tales? No way. The place is New York City. The time is now. It’s no deformity, no disease. And I’ll stay this way forever – ruined – unless I can break the spell.

Yes, the spell, the one the witch in my English class cast on me. Why did she turn me into a beast who hides by day and prowls by night? I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you how I used to be Kyle Kingsbury, the guy you wished you were, with money, perfect looks, and a perfect life. And then, I’ll tell you how I became perfectly beastly.

First line: I could feel everyone looking at me, but I was used to it.

My Opinion

I always appreciate a good male POV romance when I see one. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is the only one I've read so far. This excludes double perspective novels with both a girl and guy POV. The male POV in Beastly was so spot on. I always admire women such as Alex Flinn who write amazing male POV. I definitely know what it takes to do that. (Even though it's sort of effortless for me lol)

Kyle Kingsbury. He is so unlikable in the beginning. Definitely a humongo jerk. He is so into his gorgeous looks, that he is so mean, that sometimes I just wanted to slap him. But because this IS a romance, pretty soon, you know he'll super sweet, right? Yes, right. Soon, he turned into such a lovable character. And when this happened, lots of "awww" moments, swooning moments, and just generally wishing I could be the female love interest.

The "witch" puts a spell on him because he is ugly on the inside. So, she turns him into a beast so now he's ugly inside AND out. And the only way to break the spell is if he finds someone to love him and if he loves her, too. Everything has to be sealed with a kiss, and he has two years.

That brings me to Linda Owens: the love interest. When Kyle was still a jerk, in a way he called her "ugly." But yes, she isn't exactly gorgeous, more like a Plain Jane. She's intelligent, a bookworm, and a "nerdy girl" as Kyle called her once again, when he was still a jerk. She is a likable character, too. You really feel for her when Kyle sort of "traps" her in his castle. But when she starts opening up to Adrian (which he wants to be called instead of Kyle), I just kept on waiting for the moment everything would fall into place and they would fall for each other.

The writing style was great. As Kyles slowly turns into a better person, you notice that his narrative and dialogue changes as well. A sweet boy replaces the jerk inside him. That was great about this book. Because characters should change throughout the course of the book. And Kyle's change was very believable.

Nothing really bothered me about this actually. Sure the pacing was a bit slow after the witch stuff, and Linda only comes in halfway through the book (I swear I wished it was sooner than that) but the writing, the romance, the plot all trumped the negatives.

Flinn did a wonderful job with this modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast AND in the beast's POV, which was nice. I would definitely read her other modern retelling, A Kiss in Time, which is a novel about Sleeping Beauty.

EDIT: I forgot to include that this book is going to be a movie! It comes out this July! It stars my fave English actor, Alex Pettyfer, as Kyle! It also stars Vanessa Hudgens as Linda, which doesn't make sense since Linda has red hair and Vanessa is too pretty. But oh well. I'm betting they just want her fans to watch it. BTW, I know there are going to be fangirling American teen girls for Alex Pettyfer, and I just wanted to say... I saw him FIRST! Lol JK JK (But srsly, I knew him since I was 14 and I'm almost 19 :P )

Here is a trailer

Beastly Teaser Trailer

Trailer Park Movies | MySpace Video

I am so excited for it! WOOT!

Love Square cover art!

2010-02-07T23:48:00.002-06:00

Yeah, I made this yesterday morning when I woke up at 4 AM, couldn't fall back asleep.

For those on Facebook (Facebook automatically imports my blog posts) you'll recognize it as my profile pic and some of you on AW saw it on TWFT and now it's my avvie.

Took me forever to find the right pics.

Top left: Rosabelle Monroe (Rachel Bilson)

Top right: Chase Santiago (Stephen Colletti)

Bottom Left: Kyle Brewer (Justin Gaston)

Bottom Right: Jeanette Labelle (Blake Lively)

Rachel/Justin aren't my ideal Rosabelle/Kyle, but they're the closest I could get. Not to mention all these peeps are now too old to play in a Love Square movie :D

I hope to make something for CALL ME ROBIN HOOD really soon :D

If I were to meet my characters.... (Male Version)

2010-01-21T22:11:00.003-06:00

What would happen if you were to meet your characters in real life?

I'm going to go through the main characters of all 5 of my WIPs. But today's post only covers the males. It's because I have so many characters. 5 boys/5 girls. And I'm going to go in depth with these answers.

Call Me Robin Hood.

Joe Parker. Dang, if I were to meet him, I'd probably never want to leave his side. He's a cocky kid who's also sweet and has good intentions. A nice jerk, so I've heard. Not to mention he is way, way cute for a smart guy. Good looks and intelligence are a plus for me. Totally swoon-worthy. And the Robin Hood thing? Definitely an amazing thing he's doing. Like I said, I'd never want to leave his side. His voice has been so clear in my head for a month and a half now, and I think it'd be great talking to him. We could have intelligent conversations about anything and he'd be so chill and awesome and cool and I wouldn't stop checking him out.... LOL He is definitely one of my all-time fave male MC's that I've written. *~~wants to marry Joe Parker~~ <3's Joe Parker* :D

Love Square.

Kyle Brewer. He is the one character I will always love. (I thought Joe replaced him, but no, Kyle is still in my heart.) I had this idea to write a mini screenplay for a show called "Keys to Her Heart" in which 4 of my male characters fought for my love. Yeah, pretty much a failure on that because I was so biased toward Kyle lol. There's something about bad boys that I absolutely love. Even though Kyle is more of a bad-boy wannabe, I can't help but love him. He can be the sweetest guy ever (even when he's not a good friend to Rosabelle, deep inside, he knows he cares about her and he keeps saying not being friends is in her best interest). Kyle is 6'5" which is like a whole foot taller than me. How awesome would that be to date a guy that tall? I'd probably have to wear heels all the time lol. But yeah, his smexy long auburn hair and clear blue eyes = love. Not to mention, there's a guy who goes to my school who looks EXACTLY like him--wears the same clothes and smokes! It's so CRAZY!! Anyways, going back to Kyle, if I were to meet him, I'd always be jumping to see if I could reach his height lol even though I'm fully aware I will never be able to. But yeah, I have this obsession with long hair on a guy, so I'd run my hands through his hair and gaze into those clear blue eyes. *swoons*

Chase Santiago. Okay, so maybe I do love Kyle more than Chase in Love Square. But Chase is STILL a great guy. Okay, maybe he doesn't do the smartest things and he's a fighter, but like Joe, Chase has THE BEST intentions for his bad actions. Even though he is aggressive toward boys he sees as competition, I wouldn't mind a guy who'd be willing to fight for me and risk his physical well-being for me. That is sweet in a way, right? Because he loves you so much and is so afraid to lose you. But if I were to meet Chase, I'd run into his arms and cuddle in his machoness. Note: I coined the term macho cuddly. ;D And Chase would be THE PERFECT macho cuddly guy. Gotta love a big and strong hunk of love! Another great thing is that he can be my personal body guard. Once again, gotta love a macho cuddly man like himself .

Rules NOT to Fall in Love

Robbie Bailey. Robbie Bailey . . . *swoons* He's trying to make Maddy fall in love with him when she's trying to avoid love altogether and write "rules not to fall in love" that she plans on sticking to. So obviously there's a conflict. In a way, it's like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Gotta love Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey! Robbie is totally smexy. He's a male seductress. He would do anything to win a girl's heart. And if it were me in Maddy's place, I'd say, "Screw these rules!" and make out with him. He doesn't have thin lips like most guys do either. *has always kissed thin lips* *wonders if it is any different* LOL I'n just saying, I would definitely LOVE to kiss this blonde-haired turquoise-eyed hottie :D But while he's not being a male seductress, he likes to write poems! And stories! And is an artistic type of guy! He wants to be the next biggest Hollywood star! I'd love to date a guy who every girl falls in love with who's on the big screen. Move over Maddy, Karla's here!

To Find Love

Ethan Oliver. So yeah. I pretty much saved THE BEST for last ;) Okay, so maybe I'm more in love with Kyle and Joe BUT... let me explain.....To Find Love was my first romance story idea ever. I got this idea in the middle of junior year. But I focused more on my science fiction/fantasy novels. It was only 18 months later did I realize romance was my thang! Wow . . . Ethan . .. what oh what can I say about my first male from a romance novel? He is UBER romantic. He's got smexy golden hair and bright blue eyes that I just love. He's an Oxford student and is an intelligent fellow like Joe. (Is it weird that I just realized my most intelligent boys get the half-Asian girls? I'm mostly Asian with 3/8 Spanish (Spain) blood!) LOL I think that's my subconscious telling me I like smexy intelligent boys? :D So yes, Ethan is romantic and somewhat shy and the sweetest boy ever. <3333And if I were to meet him, I probably would never stop looking into those blue eyes of his and the way his blonde eyelashes shimmer when he blinks. I'd love the way he flips his long golden locks out of his eyes. Not to mention he's English and I LOVE their accents. *sighs and swoons*

So yes, that's the end of that!

I hope you enjoyed my random rambling for today!

My Love for Words

2010-01-16T05:46:00.005-06:00

Words. Oh how I love you.

Oh how you somehow appear before my eyes on a blank document.

Click, clack, clickety, clack.

Clackety, click, clack, click.

My fingers pound against letters.

Click. Clack. Click.

Caps Lock L-O-V-E.

LOVE.

Love. Love. Love.

And I am like the Cookie Monster.

But I eat words.

Om Nom Nom

But words are like cookies.

Their delicious sentences flavorful on my tongue.

Oh. But that's talking, right?

Still.

Om Nom Nom.

Even when I write you by hand it's absobloominglutely luverly.

You're the reason I keep my sanity

The reason I get those novels written down

Words.

Karla is . . .

The end!

2009 Reflections and 2010 Hopes and Dreams

2009-12-31T00:45:00.011-06:00

Edit: Changed my 2nd 2010 resolution. I feel this one is much better than the old one :)

This is my New Year's Resolution post for 2009. I'll reflect on my old resolutions, go over some 2009 highlights, and then end with new resolutions!

1. Gain more weight. I'm not super skinny that I need to gain weight, but I have a future surgery to worry about, and I could lose some weight if anything.... so lots of protein for me :)

This is where I ran into a problem. I did gain weight . . . but after surgery, I didn't lose weight. And I gained even more weight from lack of activity and moving around. So yes, my resolution was fulfilled, but I sort of regret it :(

2. Use DBT methods as much as I can. I just want to be as happy as I can be this year. AND I have a feeling it shall be very good :)

I can honestly say I tried my best. I hit a really hard patch during my first quarter of college, and I have to be honest: I almost took away everything I had going for me. Yes, I was happy for the majority of the year, but it's just those difficult moments that I don't want to deal with that get of me. I'm so glad I've been able to keep strong and I can't thank my best friend, Ashley, enough for keeping me sane on a very, very intense night.

3. Live LIFE to the FULLEST. Throughout my life, I feel like I haven't really experienced my life as much as I'd like. I want to be able to just do what I want to do with no regrets at all. Which brings me to....

4. NO regrets. This is related to #3. I really should just combine them but whatever.

For 3 and 4, I pretty much failed those. I can't seem to not have all these doubts and regrets. It's a part of who I am I guess . . . but I will say that I did have those moments where everything was just so clear for me--no doubts, no regrets, just happiness. I need more of those moments. For sure.

5. Find a new love but for now stay independent. Self-explanatory. :)

In the beginning of the year, my ex and I had been broken up, but we got back together. Our relationship was really rocky after that, and by May, I was tired of being ignored, not getting texts or calls back, so I ended things. Two days before prom. Then I went to prom with a good friend of mine, and that night was one of those moments as previously discussed. I haven't found a new love since then, but for seven months, I've stayed independent. I'm not really a big fan of not having my own love while all my characters have theirs haha, but I sometimes being single can be great fun. :)

6. Think more positively. This is really important for me since I have depression. If I'm able to just accept myself for me, then I can pretty much do #s 2 - 4. :)

Yeah, this is the same as my breakdown of #2. By the way, DBT = Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. When I first started learning it and applying it to my life, it's been really helpful to me.

Here's a rundown of 2009 in the life of Karla Calalang (in no particular chronological order)

I turned 18!
I broke up with a jerk
I graduated from high school :)
I sang a solo at graduation from "In My Life" by the Beatles
I went to a fantastic prom
I had scoliosis surgery and from that "grew" over an inch :D
I had an amazing 3 months off of school
I started my freshman year at DePaul University.
I procrastinated BIG TIME in college
I almost went to a night club ;)
I moved on from Science Fiction/Fantasy and moved on to Romance
I had 15 shiny new romance ideas within 6 months :)
I finished a novel in 22 days after it had been nearly 3 years from completing a whole novel! (YAY for Call Me Robin Hood!)
I went to a DePaul Blue Demons men's bball game and caught a T-shirt!
I saw my Dad's side of the family after it had been over a year (probably 3 years for the majority of them)
I crushed on a college guy who turned out to be a jerk. (OK there were two of them lol)
I decided to be a Creative Writing major
I started to become an avid reader again!
I started posting regularly on TWFT and OPWFT on AW and met some GREAT writers!
Somehow, my strong points in writing became dialogue and character :D
And ... drum roll please... the news that I think is THE BIGGEST of 2009 ... an agent finds interest in Call Me Robin Hood and would like to consider it for representation! YAY!!

Those were the highlights and now here are my new 2010 New Year's Resolution. (some will be the same). I will do 6 again because it's my fave number :)

1. Lose weight from the surgery. Or at least get toned and fit :) (hopefully with my shiny new Wii!)

2. Read 100 books

3. Land an agent! Hopefully it will be the one who's interested in CMRH ;)

4. Finish writing and polishing 5 novels! (CMRH will be included)

5. ~~Finish~~ Survive my freshman year of college without any complications

6. Find a boy who is NOT a jerk and fall madly, truly, deeply in love ;)

So yes! I'm expecting a lot of epicness for 2010! Woot in under 24 hours it'll be a new year! YAY!!!

Creative Blossoms

Never Have I Ever

My reading goal for this year

2011 Reflections and 2012 Hopes and Dreams

Being happy with your writing

When you really want your hard work to pay off

Writing by hand

Ressurecting this blog

I love plot breakthroughs!

Sorry I haven't been around...but I've got an announcement!

"Why can't I finish a damn novel?!" A Theory

Hope Dream Inspire #4:

Writing male POV as a female

What inspired Call Me Robin Hood?

A Writer's First Influence

Here comes the sun!

The Beginning of my interest in YA Romance

Call Me Robin Hood's Playlist

A shiny blog award!

Random Ramblings

I'm Back!

Hiatus

Love Square's Playlist

Blogoversary Contest Winners!

2010 Reflections and 2011 Hopes and Dreams

Hope Dream Inspire #3: Reality and Fiction

Ramblings of a Writer

Why I write

Hope Dream Inspire #3: Thankful for writing

My one true love, Love Square

Blogoversary Contest! *Contest Closed!!*

A Late Random Day: My new celebrity crush

Hope Dream Inspire #2: Writing has no laws

She said, WHAT?!

First drafts... oh boy

A Lovely Type of Love Poem

Hope Dream Inspire #1: Writing what you want

Blog Makeover

Contest over at DREAMCATCHER'S LAIR

What inspired In Your Arms?

One Lovely Blog Award :)

Saying "Adios" to your WIP

Hey! Hey! You! You! I don't like your girlfriend!

What inspired Always With Me?

Queries, Pitches, Synopses, Oh My!

When things just don't go your way....

Manuscripts: They're like your baby, like a dating relationship, what next? I have an idea!

Winners to my 100 Followers Contest aka Contest of Awesome!

A new blog award!

Dreams

Author Interview: Simone Elkeles

Contest of Awesome!

Epic contest!

The woes of having an indecisive mind...

Romance novels and male readers

Why good girls love bad boys...

Another Kickass contest!

Blog Award! YAY!

I write to live and live to write

Karla has been a bad, bad blogger

Check out this contest, peeps!

Build My Dream Man

What inspired me to be a writer?

Author Interview: Deb Caletti

Review: Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

Why I write about love....

What inspired Limelight?

Random Blog Post

What inspired Lost Summer Love?

Interview: Susane Colasanti

The Point of No Return

Check out this awesome contest!

In Celebration of my 100th Post...

Author Interview: Alex Flinn

What inspired Love Square?

Review: Perfect Chemistry

The Lovely Kristin Otts' vlog about the Five Stages of Novel Writing

Even MORE blog awards!

Because it's 3 AM and I'm still awake and I'm bored

When HW becomes a distraction to writing--oh! Wait . . . the other way around....

Blogoversary Contest! Contest Closed!!