Double the Awesomeness

It's been a busy week for my amazingly talented friends, so you get a double helping of excitement in this post:

First up is the book launch for Ally Condie's final book in the MATCHED trilogy: REACHED!

 

 My friend Stacey (who runs the My Pile Of Books blog) and I went to dinner first to celebrate my signing with Josh--yummy food and a wonderful friend = so much fun!

 Then we headed up to the launch party for Ally's final book! Ally is such a humble, kind, amazing person. It was so surreal to stand there in line, staring at the box set of all THREE of her books, and thinking about how far she's come since I first met her four and a half years ago, when I got to read MATCHED for the first time. It couldn't have happened to a better person. So happy for you Ally, hope you have a great time on tour! For an awesome recap of the night, check out Stacey's blog post HERE.

 They even brought the big bubble from BEA for us to get our pictures in, so here we are, trying to break free!

 Oh no! The Society took Stacey, now I'm all alone in the Uprising! If you don't already follow Ally, here's the link to her blog as well.

Okay, so that was awesomeness part the first. Ready for the second??




Feast your eyes on this:

My friend Jenn Johansson's book cover got revealed today! Isn't it totally creeptastic?? Scary and yet beautiful (those eyes!) all at once. It's perfect! Congrats Jenn! To learn more about her book and to follow her (both of which you should do RIGHT NOW) go to her blog HERE.



And now, for anyone still reading this... a BONUS bit of awesomeness:

Yep, that's Michael Phelps. My hubby got to hang out and chat with him last week on a business trip. Rough life, huh? Yeah, I agree.


Any exciting awesomeness going on for you or your friends this week?

Ally's book launch for MATCHED!!

I've had this post kind of planned out since last year, when Ally told me about her book deal. I can't believe it's already been a year, and her book is now out! Here are my thoughts then and now:

I am so lucky to be friends with Ally. She is one of the nicest, most generous, kind people I know. Even though she's already published with Deseret Book, Shadow Mountain and soon will be nationally (I KNEW IT!), she never makes me feel inferior for not being published yet. In fact, she makes me feel like I am an equal with her, and sometimes even more knowledgeable. (Which was only true pretty much when it comes to querying agents, because let's face it, I have TONS experience when it comes to that. Ha!). I just knew MATCHED was going to get snatched up, and I was right. I love this book so much, and am so excited for Ally. She deserves this, and I just want to tell every person I know about her book!

Ally and me at Bombay House (her fave), celebrating when she signed with her agent, just over a year ago. We were kind of funny- she took me to dinner when she got her agent, to thank me for helping her so much. Then when I got my agent in the spring, I took her to Benihana (my fave), to thank her for helping me so much! You'd think it'd be the other way around, but we're silly like that.

She has worked so hard, and never given up, despite some truly difficult obstacles on her path to publication. She's written some amazing books for DB and SM, but I know MATCHED is going to be something beyond her wildest dreams. I am so, so happy for my friend, and can't wait to see what happens next.

Now, here we are, a year later, and boy was I right! MATCHED is pretty much the most talked about book of 2010, and her launch party was a HUGE success. Since I couldn't find my usb to download the pics I took, my friend (and book blogger: My Pile of Books) Stacey let me use some of her pics instead.

Stacey and I at lunch at Mazza's

The gang at Mazza's! The Utah author community is so fabulous, I am very lucky to live here.

Ally is so funny, I love listening to her speak. She always has the crowd laughing and is very open about her journey. Someday I hope to be like her. :)

Ally signing MY book! This was such a huge moment, owning my own copy of MATCHED, and having her sign it! (That unfortunately got rushed--I waited to get in line, so that I'd have time to talk to her without a lot of people behind me, but instead, they let her talk to all the people ahead of us and then told her she had to rush through the end of the line. Bummer. That's okay though, I'm glad I got to talk to her for a minute at least.)

Stacey, me and Ally (Yes, I'm gigantaur. I'm even crouching down a little bit.)

Ally is such a lovely person, and even though she's way busier now than she was a year ago, I'm still grateful to call her my friend. This kind of success couldn't have happened to a better person. I'm so, so happy for you, Ally! I hope you had a wonderful time celebrating the release of your book!

Just in case you hadn't heard...

So, I decided to wait a day. Yep, I'm unique like that. Go against the flow. Ha ha.

What did I wait for?


In case anyone out there somehow hasn't heard that MATCHED is now available IN STORES!!!

That means you should get off your chair, grab your keys (and wallet), and rush to your nearest book store and buy it. Now! I'm serious! I'll wait....


Seriously though, I am so excited for you Ally, and want to wish you a fabulous debut week! All your hard work and dreaming and hard work and effort and wait, you guessed it--more hard work--has paid off. Woohoo! (Ahem, excuse my sudden bursts of yelling and jumping up and down.)

I would post a picture of my copy of it, but my computer is being a spaz. Ah, well, such is technology.

Now, what else can I write about to top the release of the most talked about book of 2010? Um, yeah, nothing. So, yep. That's all folks. Congrats again Ally!

Books VS. Movies

A lot of books are being optioned for movies recently. Two are books written by a couple of my friends: MATCHED by Ally Condie, and THE DARK DIVINE by Bree Despain. I am SO excited for them both! Both of them could end up as movies, or neither, or one and not the other. That's just how it goes when a book gets optioned. I could blog about what that means, but that's a post for another day. What I'm thinking about today are how amazing some movies based on books end up being, while others... not so much.

So, what are you thoughts on it? What are your favorite examples of books that have been made into movies? I'd rather we keep this positive, since we all know not every book that gets made into a movie gets done well. The ones that do though? Wow, they are awesome. LOTR was a fabulous example, IMO - especially if you watch the extended versions.

Wanna know what movie I'm dying to see? The last two Harry Potter ones. Just the previews have made me get teary-eyed. DEATHLY HALLOWS is one of my all time favorite books, and if they do it justice, it will be incredible. If they do a bad job I may just have to go all IRON MAN on their butts or something, though. Because me alone, not so scary, but me in one of those super cool suits with all the weapons and flying stuff and all that? Yeah, that would be a little bit more intimidating. And no, I'm not watching IRON MAN 2 right now... I'm blogging. And that might be on in the background. But that has no relevance to my thought process. Except that it is a good movie.

How about you? What adaptations are you looking forward to?

Friday Five

(I'm actually writing this on Thursday night, but hey, it's almost Friday)

1. Waiting is hard. At any stage, or in any process. Waiting for a critique to come back, waiting for an agent to respond, waiting to go on submission, waiting for an editor to get back to you, waiting for your book to come out, waiting for royalty statements. And in non-writing related subjects, waiting to get medical test results, waiting at an ER, waiting for a baby to be born, waiting for your child to sleep through the night... oh, you get the idea. Good thing I'm such a patient person. Ha ha. Ha.

2. Wanna know a great way to make your day insanely unproductive? Spend half of it in an ER and get sent home looking like a lab rat or science experiment gone seriously wrong. Nothing too horrible (I hope) but I've got some stuff going on with my heart. You know what I don't need right now? More health problems. So, I've decided to tell my heart to get its act in gear, and shape up. I've got enough going on without it messing up too. Are you listening heart? No more! Beat normally! I do all this stuff called exercise for a reason - to keep you healthy. Or, at least, that's one reason. So start behaving!

3. It's hard to get dressed with tons of wires strapped/taped/glued to your body. Just sayin'.

4. No, I am not looking for pity, I just have this stuff on the brain right now, since I just spent the last seven hours dealing with it. On the bright side, I didn't get admitted. Yay for small victories.

5. I love reading. It can distract me from just about anything. Even the horrible stabbing, burning pain of potassium being dripped straight into your blood through a (very badly done) I.V. Also, reading can help you pass hours and hours of time while waiting. (see #1)

Um, in other nonrelated thoughts that are probably more interesting to you than the rest of these, I am so excited for my friend Ally Condie who just announced her amazing book MATCHED has had the film rights bought by Disney! (In a bidding war, how exciting is that??) I'm thrilled for you Ally! Can't wait to see Cassia and Ky and Xander on the big screen.
Also - Elana Johnson just revealed her GORGEOUS cover! Go check it out now (as if you haven't already).

Your thoughts are bound to be more interesting than mine this week, so lay it on me. What are your thoughts today?

Utah authors gone wild! (otherwise known as Writing for Charity)

I had the opportunity to go to the Writing for Charity Evening Extravaganza last Saturday night. Shannon Hale and a bunch of other local Utah authors have started this charity to raise money in order to buy and give books to underprivileged children. Children who may otherwise never own a book in their lives. This was my first year attending, and let me tell you--it was well worth it! Not only to help out the children, and having the chance to bid on some amazing gift baskets and prizes (my friend Stacey [who runs the book review blog mypileofbooks.blogspot.com] won a real "Bella's engagement ring" and I got a family meal deal to SmashBurger. Next year, I am bringing a checkbook and saving my pennies. They had some amazing prizes for auction that I really, really wish I had brought the money to bid on...). But if you need more incentive to come, you could have had the chance to see Utah authors gone wild. Completely crazy. Don't believe me? Then read on.

James Dashner and Shannon Hale (who is due with twins in a couple of months) were the co-MCs for the night. I think she first regretted asking him to help her when he pushed her out on stage and then continued pushing her all the way to the edge of the stage and nearly dumped her out of the wheelchair off of the stage. If that wasn't enough to make her question her choice in co-MC, I'm sure she really thought twice when he started auctioning off both of her placentas. Yes, you read that correctly. He used the word placenta multiple times in an auditorium filled with children and teens. Families galore. Oh, if only the inappropriate word usage ended there... (In all seriousness James did a great job with Shannon, and I'm sure she was thrilled with his MC-ing skills.)
Not to be outdone, Brandon Mull (New York Times bestselling author of FABLEHAVEN and the forthcoming BEYONDERS series) decided to relive his comedy skit troupe days. This particular skit was the best one IMO--a couple of the actors pretended to be different authors, "rewriting" JACK AND JILL WENT UP A HILL in their own styles. Brandon and the woman next to him acted out the different versions. They did the Shakespeare version, the Stephenie Meyer version which was awesome, the monster truck rally announcer version, and the picture is him just before he crashes to the ground, enacting the Edgar Allan Poe version. Which included this death scene where there was much flopping and thrashing on the ground. If only I'd known he had this kind of talent when I lived next door to him a few years ago. Our neighborhood/church parties would have been a whole lot more fun. Seriously, I was shocked (in a good way). He seemed so quiet and shy when I knew him back then. Just goes to show, you never know someone until you make them do improv comedy in front of an auditorium full of people.

The author panel was great. James got totally let off the hook for his placenta comments, because one of these innocent looking authors completely shot the placenta comment out of the water. Can you guess who? (From left to right this is James Dashner, Brandon Sanderson, Bree Despain, Sara Zarr, Ally Condie, Jessica Day George, Brandon Mull, and Shannon Hale.)


Did you guess one of these lovely ladies? Then you were wrong.
There, that's the guy. Yep, Brandon topped James easily. Just be warned that if you ask him to explain the difference between YA and MG you might get more than you bargained for. Mentions of "blushing crushes" versus "sexual attraction" (or something like that) may be tossed around quite a bit. (Which isn't a big deal, until you remember that young children were there. Lots of them.) But the best part was when he started talking about vaginal births. Yep, placenta wasn't good enough. Brandon knew the only way he could win was to bring up where the placenta comes out. (Okay, we have to cut him some slack, his wife did just have a baby a few weeks ago, so he's somewhat immune to those words right now.) Honestly, it was completely hilarious. And he definitely blushed a little bit.
Ally didn't do anything too wild or crazy. However, if you were to try and steal her favorite dessert ever (my brown sugar cookies) you better watch out. She'll go all ninja on you. Okay, not really. And my cookies probably aren't her most favorite dessert, but I know they're up there somewhere. Top ten?


(Side note: I just read the ARC of MATCHED. I wanted to see how different it would be from the pre-published mss I read a year ago. It is every bit as incredible as I remembered, only even more so--which I can hardly believe. Julie, her editor, just polished the diamond that was MATCHED until it is now so brilliant I can hardly stand to look at it directly. If this isn't on your TBR list yet, you'd better add it right now.)


The night ended in fist-fights, complete with knitted gloves.
It was touch and go for a while there, but luckily, the yarn was pretty soft, so no one sustained any life threatening injuries.




See? Who says Utah authors can't party? (Does anyone say that? I'm just guessing ...) Anyway, if this recap doesn't make you want to come next year and help the cause, I don't know what will.

Shout out for the Cover of MATCHED!!!

I HAD to post about this. My good friend Ally Condie's book MATCHED is coming out November 30 of this year (this book is a BIG deal, and I am just so excited for her!!! Trust me, it couldn't have happened to a better person!), and she just posted the cover of it on her website/blog. I don't know if I'm allowed to post it, so I will just post the link for you. Check it out. I'm serious. Click right here RIGHT NOW and look it at. Ogle it. Drool and sigh and be breathless over it, like I did.

It is AMAZING. Just like her book is. I'm so excited for you Ally! I can't wait to own this book!!

Okay. Go look at it. Now.

Why are you still reading this? Go! :-)