FBF Winner, and Presenting the First Page of My New Book (Feel Free to Disregard)

1. Free Book Friday Winner:

Keersten

Choose your top three books from the picture and email me your address. (Email in sidebar).

2. Team Tamale Deadline
Tonight is the deadline for Team Tamale. And I can tell you all, I'm finished with my book! Now there's a huge difference between typing The End, and having a draft that's actually readable by someone else.

Right now, it's about at the reading level for hamsters. By December, I'm hoping to take it to the next level. Bats.

3. SCBWI Conference

Anyone in the Salt Lake area writing for children out there? Young Adult, Middle Grade, Picture Book? The SCBWI Utah conference is this Saturday. I'll be there. I also happen to know Bree Despain will be speaking at some point.

And SCBWI Queen Sydney Salter brings in editors, agents and authors who shed skin cells on the whole publishing industry. (You thought I was going to say "shed light", didn't you? I was going to, but I didn't want to be cliche.)

If you do want to go, make sure you email Sydney Salter asap and work it out with her that you want to pay at the door. Tell her I sent you, and she'll jack up the price an extra 10%. Her email's in the sidebar.

4. I vow to Up My Blog Quality, so Up Yours.

Y'all know I've been a little light in brain cells lately with this whole Chimi-Challenge '09. But now that it's over, at least my part of it is, I promise my blog quality will resume it's normal, lackluster sweaty sheen. I just snorted over that last sentence. Heh heh. It doesn't even make snense.

I bet right now, y'all are wishing for a guest blogger. Well, too bad! My blog's not cool enough to attract guest bloggers.

So, as a final salute to mediocrity, I will present the first page of my new book. Feel free to skip to the end of this post without reading. I will not be offended.

Whoa. Stage fright. Hubby just told me, "Maybe you don't want to share your first page. Maybe you want to wait until you've revised a few times."

To which I reply, "Did General Custer hesitate on his way to Little Big Horn? I think not."

So, like a mobster who brings a knife to a gunfight, I present my first page. As for comments, ummm... if you have to choose between being nice, and being honest, choose nice. (btw, it's a Young Adult novel, about a teenage girl who's been gone for a long time, but gets a chance to go back to her high school)

CHAPTER ONE

It’s too soon.

But, really, I’d been gone for one hundred years. Everything about my old life would be too soon. Especially high school.

The halls of Jackson High looked the same, and I reminded myself that above ground – far above the Underneath - only a few months had passed during my absence.

Senior year. A waste of time, in one respect, considering I would never graduate. But I needed be here to glimpse, for a moment, the life I had before. The year I should’ve had. To see Jack one last time. To stockpile memories that would nourish me for the next century. I could do this without hurting him again.

I glanced down at my schedule. First period English Literature. As I checked the room numbers at the tops of the doors, curious whispers floated along the hall behind me. Hanging in the air above my head. Blended together, belonging to no single voice.

Isn’t that Nicole Beckett?
She looks awful… Is she using?
Has to be… She was with the band. What else would do that to person?
Poor Jack. Does he know she’s back? Does he know she’s strung out?

When I found the right room, I clutched my books into my chest, lowered my head, and walked through the door.

Someone -- probably the teacher -- called from near the front of the classroom. “Miss Beckett? Is it?”

Hearing my own last name did strange things to my heart. Made it beat a little faster. A little harder. It’d been so long since I had a last name. For a hundred years, Cole only called me by my first name.
***

Okay, thanks for humoring me. Now to just get up the courage to press "publish post". How's y'all's week going? Pressing "Publish Post" in 3.... 2.... 1