Our first event is a meet & greet so here's the lowdown on me.
I am an SCBWI member and the author of Pajama Girl, a digital picture book published by MeeGenius. The sequel, Pajama Girl Meets Blanket Boy will be released Sept. 14, 2012. An alphabet book is tentatively scheduled to release by the end of the year.
But I write more than picture books. I'm currently submitting my YA novel, Dream Girl, and hoping to land an agent or editor for that.
In my non-writing life, I am a wife, mother of two young children and I work outside the home part time as a Social Media Librarian. I also do freelance publicity for things that truly inspire me and I believe in. Among them, Spoken Word Greetings from England
and the debut MG novel Easter Ann Peters: Operation Cool. I'm very excited about both of those ventures so I hope you'll check them out too.
Our lovely blogfest host, Deana Barnhart has started us out with some get to know you questions so I'll get to those now.
Where do you write?
My life has been insanely busy lately and I find that I'm in the car a lot, between my half hour commute to work and the 20 minute commute to take my daughter to school, I consider the car as my thinking space. I try to think about my characters and stories while I'm driving so when I do get the time to sit down and write, I know exactly where I'm going and what I want to say.
When writing , do you listen to music or do you need complete silence?
I need music. Music helps me to access the specific mood and emotion I'm looking for in my work. I compile a playlist for my WIPs and listen to them in the car to help me get into the right mindset.
What was your inspiration for your latest manuscript and where did you find it?
My YA novel started its life when I had a bizarre dream in 2003. I jotted down the most interesting parts of the dream knowing they'd be great for a novel someday. 'Someday' came in 2005 when I read a novel by Michael Lawrence. I closed the book and thought, "Oh my gosh, that dream of mine, it needs to be a YA novel!" Until that point, I figured I'd write for adults. Everything snapped into place once I realized the book should be YA. Now I just need someone to publish it.
And that's all I'll bore you with for now. If you're here from GUTGAA, please leave a comment with your blog link so I can be sure to stop over and meet you too. This is going to be fun! (And if you're not from GUTGAA, I'm glad you're here too!)
