I am back with another blog chain topic and this time Michelle is asking the questions:

What elements in your favorite genre make it your favorite? For instance, if your favorite genre is romance, what elements do you like in a romance story? A tortured hero? A spunky heroine? Steamy love scenes? Sweet romance? If your fave genre is sci-fi, what elements do you love the most (the characters, the science, the possibilities?), etc?

Young adult novels have become my favorite genre for one reason: VARIETY.

You can have romance, adventure, mystery, sci-fi, fantasy... You name it, YA has it.

But the thing that I like the very very best about this is the ability to mash up all these different sub-genres and make something that doesn't fit into just one of those categories, but straddles several of them.

This fits me, not just as a reader who likes to keep things fresh so I don't get into a reading rut, but even more so as a writer. It frees me up to not worry about how my story will fit within predefined parameters, and it lets me take my stories wherever I want them to go - no matter how crazy that place may seem.

ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE checks so many different genre boxes: horror, paranormal, mystery, romance - there's even a little poetry thrown in there. HarperTeen is marketing it as 'literary horror'. But at the end of the day, it still sits beneath the young adult umbrella... and that is a wonderful and diverse and exciting place to be right now.

If you've been paying attention then you probably already know that this is only the beginning of this blog chain. To keep following it, you'll want to check out Sandra's blog tomorrow. 

Goodreads Giveaway!

Harperteen is giving away 25 advanced reader copies of ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE through Goodreads!!!! It runs from March 11th-May 11th, 2013 and you can enter here. 

Last week I'd intended to mention and link to a post I wrote for the Lucky 13s blog on dealing with the realization that I had written a horror novel. It is slightly GIF-tastic, as I discovered how to create animated GIFS and got a little too excited about it. If you have a moment go and check it out!

Fiction Tropes

I am back with another blog chain post and this time around - I am choosing the topic. Sometimes it is difficult to come up with these topics, but luckily, I was inspired by a recent series of posts that Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books did on the Kirkus blog. 

As a reader and/or a writer what are some of your favorite fiction tropes? Are you sucker for secretly in love with best friend type stories, stories set in mysterious boarding school stories, stories that contain time travel, or something else entirely? As a writer how do you try to give the tropes you tackle in your own books a fresh spin?

There are several different tropes that get an insant "oooohhh" reaction from me. 

1. Girl Disguised as Boy Stories

I have some serious love for this trope that goes all the way back to the late eighties when I watched a TV show with my dad about the pony express called The Young Riders. My favorite part of this show was - as you may have guessed - one of the riders who was actually a girl disguised as a boy. 

Most recently my favorite use of this trope was in Disney's Mulan. I've read a few romances that have used this trope, but I would really love to read more! Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments.

I would also love to write a story utilizing this trope, but I haven't yet found the right one for it. Someday, though. Someday.

2.  Riches to Rags

I love a story where the main character goes from a life of luxury and uselessness to getting thrown into circumstances where they have to work hard and - as a result of this - grow as a character. 

Overboard (an amazing 80s movie with Goldie Hawn) is a perfect example of this trope. Another is Susan Elizabeth Phillip's Fancy Pants. 

I also enjoy the flipside of this - rags to riches - if it is done well. One recent wonderful example was another romance novel: Meredith Duran's A Lady's Lesson in Scandal. 

I actually have the beginnings of a romance novel that I wrote several years ago and keep meaning to come back to, that uses the riches to rags tropes with a Paris Hilton type character. 

3. Retellings

I missed the last blog chain when everyone discussed re-imagining classic stories, so this is also my chance to play a little catch up. 

Retellings are perhaps not exactly a trope, but maybe more of a genre. Or something. I don't really know, but for the sake of this blog post I am calling them a trope. And I am saying it's a trope that I have been loving lately.

In the last few months I've read Marissa Meyer's Cinder and Jodi Lynn Anderson's Tiger Lily, both of which blew me away. In Cinder I loved how the science fiction, futuristic story was so very different from the medieval story we grew up with and yet managed to retain all the key pieces of story to keep it feeling familiar. And Tiger Lily was just one of the best books I've read in a long time. It didn't update the Peter Pan story so much as show it from a totally different perspective and... I honestly can't do it justice with my lame descriptions, so my advice would be to just read it for yourselves.

I haven't yet tackled a retelling, but in ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE I sprinkled in bits of Pinocchio and in my next novel I worked in a bit of the Pied Piper.

4. Survival

When I was in my middle school years my older sister bought a book that I very quickly read, fell in love with, and claimed as my own. I re-read it several times before my sister sold it out from under me at a family garage sale. I am still kind of mad at her about that, because I cannot for the life of me remember the title of that book and I would love to hunt it down and reread it. But anyway, the book was about a sort of spoiled girl (see #2) who goes on a water rafting trip and clashes with one of the boys in charge, but then they fall in love when they get in an accident and have to survive for a few days in a cave together.

The survival trope, much like #1 and #2, is usually a fish out of water type story where a character is thrown into a situation that is totally not what they are used to or prepared for.

Some awesome examples of this trope can be found in Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It series and the blog chain's newest member - Demitria Lunetta's debut In The After. 

Both of these books make you wonder, "How would I survive in a post-apocalyptic world?"

This is another trope that I would love to play with in my own writing, but have not yet found the right opportunity to try it out.

Okay. So those are my favorite tropes. Keep following the chain to hear what everyone else has to say - starting with Sandra tomorrow.

This and That

I am blogging over at the Class of 2K13 blog today about my playlist for ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE.

The Lucky 13s have a great post up today, as well, featuring childhood pictures. There is one of me looking incredibly adorkable in my Catholic school sweatshirt and gigantic red glasses.

Balance

This weeks blog chain topic is brought to us by Lisa as a parting gift as she has left the blog chain. As much as I'll  miss LIsa, I am so happy to welcome Demitria to the blog chain and can't see her blog post this coming Friday! Now onto this chain's question...

The balancing act. How do you balance your writing time with everything else in your life--including, kids, job, book promotion?

GAH. What a really great and timely question. 

I am writing this post on a Sunday afternoon - the day before it will post. 

I am squeezing this in between cooking for a Superbowl party for my family and the time until my family will come over. 

Before being able to write this post I had to convince my son that although I would love his help while I was working on the computer - it really DIDN'T help to have him sitting on my lap and playing with the mouse as I typed. 

Now both children are being distracted by watching a show I downloaded onto my Ipod. It is only thirty minutes long - so I need to type fast. 

Tomorrow, I have work at my 9-5 job. 

I also have books to read and my next book to begin writing. 

One of these days I'll be getting a revision letter back from my editor for another book. 

OH! And I also need to do promotion for ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE that debuts in June. 

And then there are the two dogs who need to be fed and walked and brushed and...

And the house which constantly needs to be cleaned.

And laundry.

And putting food on the table every night. The kids like to eat breakfast and lunch too, so we have to think about that too. Thank goodness for cereal and good old peanut butter and jelly.

Let's also not forget about sleep. Because I like to sleep. A lot. And I really hate that achy, tired eyes, thumping head tiredness that comes with not getting enough of it.

Then there's exercise. You would think all this STUFF would burn calories, but since a lot of my stuff involves sitting on my butt in front of a computer - yeah, not so much. I have to admit that lately exercise have fallen way to the bottom of my list. I really need to do something about that. Tomorrow maybe. Or the day after that. 

So how do I balance it all? Ummmm... 

Well, what I do is... Errrrrr...

Okay, so to keep all the balls in the air, the thing to remember is... Huh.

The truth is - I don't balance everything. All the balls - not in the air. Some of them even roll under the couch and then sit there for a really long time. 

This is the best advice I have to give about balance and I do my best to follow it myself.

Do what you can when you can. Don't beat yourself up when something slips through the cracks. And don't ruin your nails trying to dig it back out. Some things slip through the cracks because they just aren't that important after all. And most importantly, occasionally let yourself be lazy and useless. Sit in your clothes that need to be washed, in the middle of your house that needs to be cleaned, next to the piles of work that need to be done, refuse to make eye contact with that dust-covered elliptical and just relax. 

Ha ha ha. No, I'm just kidding. You'd need a horse tranquilizer to relax under those circumstances. The best I can usually do is distract myself with TV. Lately I've been loving The New Girl and Happy Endings. But watch what makes you happy - even if it is Honey Boo Boo. 

And then when it's over - turn off the TV and get back to work.

That's all the wisdom I have for today, but this blog chain continues for the next two weeks. To keep following it, make sure you check out Sandra's blog tomorrow. 

New Year, New Projects

For the first blog chain of 2013 Katrina starts things out with this question:

Write about your next writing project. What is the genre? Is is one you've written before or is it a new venture? Do you have it all figured out or is it just a germ of an idea? What did you learn from your latest writing project that will make this one even better?

I have actually been doing a lot of thinking lately about my next writing project as I am currently finishing up the first draft of my follow-up book to ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE. I talked about this project a few months ago in my Next Big Thing post. 

However, since I have not even started writing my next next project and it is currently in the germ stage where the idea seems all perfectly beautiful and sparkly... well, I don't want to ruin the romance by talking about it. Soon enough, (usually around the 10K words mark) I will begin to feel differently, but right now my love is blind and I want to keep it that way.

So,  that's about all that I can say about that. I don't want to skip out on contributing to this round of the blog chain, though, so instead of talking about my project, I'd like to share this with you instead.

You're welcome. Or, if you have no idea who He-man or the band Four Non-Blondes are then I am really and truly sorry.

And to read about the upcoming projects that the rest of the blog chainers are contemplating - don't forget to keep following along. As usual, Sandra is up next.