Keep Sweet-er

Okay, clearly it is not as easy to find the time to blog as one thinks it will be. Who are these people who have time to do blog posts every few hours....or twitter about ongoing events? At any rate, I continue to battle to find the time to write. Life maintenance takes up so much time and energy that by the end of the day, my brain is like a poached egg and all I want to do is watch those true crime shows on TLC or my personal favorite, Hoarders: Buried Alive. I love that show, really. Just the piles and piles of stuff that people live beneath.

Keep Sweet is moving along nicely, getting excellent reviews and building a little buzz. And, the big news is that it has been optioned by ABC Family for development as a series. Which would give us as viewers, a chance to see the fall out from an FLDS upbringing every week  on our television sets. The development process is its own can of worms but so far, so good. I continue to do the outreach for it which really could be a full time job on top of my other careers. If I could clone me, I could do it, with three or four Michele's sitting around the house on computers. My new plan is to get up at 5am to write before the day starts. Several successful female novelists have done that, to get their work done before the family insanity starts each day. Of course, it is women writers who follow that plan because they have to write the books, cook the breakfast, make the beds, etc. I am not a morning person at all, I find it an affront to rise before the sun is up but I will have to try it because there is just no time otherwise. perhaps it will be peaceful, once I get past the knitted brow, bleary eyed grouch that I meet in the bathroom mirror, the one saying "What the hell am I doing up at this hour?"If you early risers who get the worms have any advice, please weigh in. 

Why We Write

Well, the school year is winding down and I am busy setting up visits for the Fall to L.A. area high schools to talk about Keep Sweet and writing and reading and all that great education stuff. Publishing a book is such a huge amount of work, the actual writing of it and then the marketing and promotion....an endless push that could easily be an eight hour work day, seven days a week. So many books out there, so many titles, so many authors....and so much new media that entices us away from the solitary, slowness of reading. I am finishing Crazy Busy, a great book for these technological times, the 24/7 information age. I feel like my brain is on high speed overload every day, all day and I am not alone, I know. Finding the time and space to actually write is so hard. It requires shifting gears, shifting your mind into a whole other zone and creating the space to make up stories, people, happenings, events, conflicts.  And the maintenance of life intrudes so completely on that process that I often find myself in these post Keep Sweet release days, just zoned out at the end of a day of contacting bloggers and teachers and bookstores and all the rest. Yet, if I don't write, I mean really write as in storytelling, I feel my anxiety rise and I can't take the edge off my nerves. I was at a book festival once and on a panel of writers. One of the audience members asked each of us why we wrote and most said for a paycheck, to meet a deadline, some made very funny quips. I answered honestly that I wrote to calm my anxiety and keep my equilibrium, to feel confident and empowered in an overwhelming world. I'd love to hear from other writers what their reasons are.....for sitting in front of a blank page or screen every day? let me know!

End of school year lament!

End of school year lament!

Upcoming appearance LA Times Festival o' Books!

I'm going to be signing books at the L.A Times Festival of Books on April 25th, 12-1pm at the Simon and Schuster booth. Pretty exciting, I've been invite as an author twice before and the first time my former publisher didn't get the books there in time...so I didn't have much to do that time. I did see a lot of graphic novels that I wanted to buy and had to stop myself from going nuts with. We're pushing for some good LA press and other coverage and I'm recording a cool reading of the prologue of Keep Sweet for my site and I'll add it to this blog as well. Lots to do, never enough time....a writer's life....sigh. 

Also, be sure to check out the you tube video for Keep Sweet at

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo3PKn0j8Pc.  

MDG

Keeping Sweet...or How to Be A Stepford Wife

Hey all you YA readers and adult readers and senior readers and canine readers....(huh?)

I'm convinced my dogs can read in their own special way. At any rate, my new book, Keep Sweet, is out from Simon and Schuster and getting great reviews and attention...so thanks to all the bloggers and book groups and such who have supported it! I started a discussion on my the KS facebook page...but no one knows it's there yet so no one joined in....but I'll continue here....

I want to know what young people think about groups like the FLDS, the kind of community that the main character of Keep Sweet lives in. Some say it is about religious freedom or parental rights...but they are mostly adults. What do you all think? POst some replies and let's get talking!

MDG