annajarzab

All Unquiet Things is a mystery; I think we all know that. But for me the mystery is sort of a subplot in comparison to the emotional journeys the characters take in the story, and from the reviews I’ve read (i.e. all of them, because I’m incorrigible), it seems like readers are really happy with the way in which the characters are developed, grow and learn throughout the novel. So that’s great.

AUT might pose as a mystery, but what it’s really about is grief. It’s about what happens to us when we lose a person, and how we battle feelings of guilt and remorse, anger and the deep, unrelenting sadness that comes with that sort of finality. Neily and Audrey have surface reasons for investigating Carly’s murder, but the truth is that neither one of them (Neily most obviously, but Audrey, too, in a much subtler way, I think, because she’s much more restrained emotionally) can let go of Carly. There’s a sense that if they can keep getting to know her and spending time with her (via memories, and also the things that they are learning about her life outside of them), they can keep her alive in some way that is meaningful and fulfilling. This is an illusion, but it’s a true illusion–their investigation brings them to a place where they can not only get her a piece of justice, but also where they can square their memories of her with the truth of her (insofar as anyone can ever get to the “truth” of anyone else) and put her to rest in their minds and hearts.

There’s a part in the book where Neily and his friend Harvey talk about what we can reasonably expect from people, and what the point of loving them is. There’s a sense–at least, I hope there is–that having people in your life who you care about so profoundly that when they are gone, really gone, it leaves a hole in your heart so big you think it might be possible for you to fall into it and never emerge is a huge gift, the greatest one there is in the human experience. There’s a reason why all of the kids in the book are wealthy; it’s not because I was hoping to provide a sordid peek into the lives of the truly privileged, although that’s a side effect of what I was really trying to accomplish–this isn’t Gossip Girl, and I’m not saying that in a dismissive way, but it’s true. You’re not supposed to aspire to these kids’ lives. The point of making them so wealthy is to contrast possession and privilege as a result of having a lot of money with the real riches life can provide for us, if we’re open to them, and that there’s no heirarchy in love except that which we create by being to a greater or lesser degree deserving of love and giving it freely to others.

But when you talk about love, you always have to at least think about loss. Loss, and the terrible pain that can come with it, is the price we pay for caring about other people. This is not to give the impression that AUT is a cautionary tale when it comes to talking about that stuff; I meant the journeys Audrey and Neily take to reinforce the idea that love is totally fucking worth it, in spite of the way it can shred us, because it’s the only thing that can redeem us in the end. Does their discovery of Carly’s murder fix anything? Absolutely not. They don’t miss her any less, and I don’t think they ever will. What it gives them is a sense of peace that comes from the fulfillment of their last act of love for her–this dangerous, foolish, reckless mission they undertake despite the physical and emotional risks it poses.

My grandmother died last week. In spite of the fact that she was sick, it was wildly unexpected and totally devastating to me and my entire family. My grandmother helped to raise me, she cooked for me, she counseled me, she disciplined me, she tried several dozen times to teach me Polish (her first language), though naught but the occasional vocabulary word and a vague idea of how to pronounce things actually stuck. She opened her house to me when I needed a place to live the summer after graduating from the University of Chicago, and it was in her basement that I finished AUT and started the book formerly known as MB, which I’m working on now. She was a complete inspiration–independent and opinionated, she had a very strong sense of right and wrong and she expected a lot of people. She appreciated hard work and best efforts, despised laziness and complaint. She went to church every day until she got sick; she taught me to pray the rosary. She was pretty much my hero. It’s impossible to believe that she’s not alive any more. That was the refrain at the wake–”I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it.” I thought she’d live to 90, possibly 100. This was, is, and will continue to be a complete shock to me, and I don’t know when I’ll get used to the idea.

In the last week, I’ve wished (when I’ve even occasioned to think about it) that AUT hadn’t been published yet, that I could revise it one more time using my evolving understanding of what it means to grieve in order to talk more intelligently on the subject, but it’s too late now.

Although, I did write a scene in which Carly and Audrey lose their grandmother. Audrey says on the subject, when Carly’s father comes into her room to tell them both that Mams (their fathers’ mother) has died:

I remember Carly’s expression of utter disblief. Se seemed stunned to find out that one major loss didn’t immunize her against others.

Carly didn’t speak very much at the funeral, but she did say one thing that’s followed me ever since.

“How many people are we going to lose before the universe decides we’ve had enough?” Carly asked me. I didn’t answer, but if I had known what was coming I would have said, “All of them.” Horrible, but true.

I remember writing that passage in a state of complete obliviousness. When writing about Carly losing her mother, and the way in which that affected her, I thought a lot about what it would be like to lose my own mother, especially at such a young age, which was a hard place in my mind to go, but go there I did, for the sake of the story. But I didn’t even say, “What if Grandma Helena died? How would I feel?” when I was writing that passage above. I’d already lost a grandmother (my grandfathers have both been deceased since I was a very small child, and I have no true memories of them, only what I’ve cobbled together from pictures and other people’s stories), and since that event had a lot to do with why I even went back to AUT in the first place I guess I might have been thinking about that, but honestly I don’t remember it. I certainly never thought I’d lose my other grandmother. It seems completely delusional to think someone might live forever, but aside from a few moments of panic as a child, I was never afraid of that inevitability.

There are other things I remember from writing that scene. I remember how sad Carly’s question is, how resigned–she’s not expecting an answer from Audrey, she knows that the answer Audrey wants to give in retrospect is the truth. And I also remember thinking how that there is a glimpse of the old Carly, the pre-Miranda’s-death Carly–she’s not just asking on her behalf, she doesn’t say “How many people am I going to lose before the universe decides I’ve had enough?” She says we. She means Audrey, too, and Carly’s father, at least. At most, she’s asking about the world. She recognizes the cosmic unfairness of what death does to the living, of what it means to have someone that you love ripped from your life. But Carly’s mistake is that she focuses on the price, not on the gift. It’s hard not to, when the wound is fresh. But time does heal all, except Carly doesn’t get enough time.

Lord, this is morbid. I’m sorry. It’s hard to talk about the heavier parts of living and feeling and writing without getting all maudlin and dark on everybody, and I hope that if you’re truly bummed by this post you’ve stopped reading by now. But as hard as this past week has been for me, I’ve also been realizing how well AUT has prepared me for what I’m going through now. What I’ve written in there is a very honest portrayal of what I think this growing up, getting hurt, learning to love, learning to lose process is all about, and what it gives us. I take comfort in a lot of the things I wrote in AUT, because I really believe them, and I haven’t stopped believing them.

When I originally decided to sit down and write this post, I wasn’t intending to give writing advice, but it’s pushing its way to the surface anyway. If you’re a writer–published, not published, just starting out, whatever–please, please, please, take advantage of the writing process to really sift through what you think and feel about the world. It might prepare you better for things you never even imagined.

Guess what I got today? You’ll never guess, so I’ll tell you: my author copies! Tons and tons of copies of All Unquiet Things for me to do with what I like. Of course, some of those are reserved for VIPs, like the adviser who helped me turn AUT into the book you can read today (Nic Pizzolatto, he’s brilliant, read his book of short stories, Between Here and the Yellow Sea, and then preorder his novel, Galveston, which comes out in June), and others, but some of them are for you guys! Because you know I love you.

I’ve been working hard at my day job and on my second book at night, so I can’t make this too complicated or else my brain will explode and then you’ll get no more books from me. Because of that, if you just leave a comment here on this post you’ll be entered to win. One entry per commenter (not per comment), but if you’d like to leave a few that’s great, too. I’ll run this contest for two weeks, so it will end at midnight on February 9th. Go forth and comment!

Two other, sort of business-y things: would you like me to set up a spoiler thread for people to discuss what happened in the book? I’d be happy to do that, I just didn’t know if people would use it or not, but if you think you’ll use it I will totally make one and we can chat openly about the book with the knowledge that we’ve all read it (or don’t mind being spoiled; some people don’t, I don’t mind at all). That’d certainly be something to comment on, if you’ve read it (or if you haven’t, whatever).

The other thing is that, in tandem with the spoiler thread idea, my wonderful web guy and friend, Eric, is going to create a special piece of hidden content (NOTE IF YOU’RE NEW: There’s some hidden content on the site, and you won’t know what it is until you find it, and I won’t tell you how to find it but it’s sort of easy, just give it the old college try) exclusively for people who have read All Unquiet Things. I’ll let you know when that’s up so you don’t have to go fishing around the site every day looking for it and coming up empty, but it’s coming, just FYI.

This is my first contest for AUT, but it won’t be the last, so if you don’t win this time around, rest assured that you will get another try later. Also, you can enter a contest to win AUT at Teen Reads, and at the Frenetic Reader. So much AUT in the world right now! Go forth and enter. (If you’re giving away a copy of AUT and I haven’t posted about it and you would like me to, email me a reminder and I’d be happy to do it.)

Also, if you were wondering how my dentist appointment went today, I have no cavities! I win this round, teeth.

I’m a pretty hard person to impress, literarily speaking. I’m intensely critical of everything I read, which I realize is often to my own detriment and no one else’s. I’m really good at destroying my own enjoyment of the act of reading by being insanely hard on most books, demanding perfection and shaking my head disapprovingly when it isn’t delivered. I spend about 90% of my reading hours being smugly judgmental towards whatever book it is that’s being forced to endure my jaded eye, and I go into most books expecting them to be bad. I know! This is a horrible thing to do. There’s a whole other blog post in here somewhere about how I need to read but don’t love to read most of the time, which is sad and a reason to pause and think about what exactly such a thing is accomplishing, but that post is not this post.

This post is about the few times a year I really get swept off my feet by a book. It happens! And actually, now that I’m looking over my Good Reads (Goodreads? GoodReads? I never know how to write that) list from last year, it happens relatively often. Last year it happened with many titles, including Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers. Courtney is a favorite of mine. She’s a new author like me, although she has one more book out than I do, she’s smart, she’s funny, she’s got a sense of humor about her own work and the business of being a writer, she loves Twilight while simultaneously laughing at it, which is how I feel about Twilight…sometimes I feel like Courtney and I were built to be best friends, if it weren’t for the pesky “growing up in different countries” thing (CS is a Canadian, but let’s not hold that against her–I KID I KID).

On January 11, I went up and down the Upper West Side looking for my book. I KNOW, the pub date was January 12. But sometimes bookstores put titles out early–Kim had found it at a store in Long Island on January 10–so I had to try. I struck out at all three of the stores I checked (all of whom put out their copies the next day), so at the last one, to boost my spirits, I bought Courtney’s new book, Some Girls Are, and gobbled it up in two days, then promptly loaned it to a friend so I will not be fact checking this review against the finished copy. Sorry in advance.

Some Girls Are is narrated by the very cool, very pissed off Regina Afton. Why is Regina so pissed off? Well, she’s been properly expelled from the coolest clique in school, and let me tell you that “mean girls” doesn’t even begin to describe this posse. They’re the world’s most awful humans, and Regina used to be one of them. Regina was terrible, too–there are no free passes in Courtney Summers books. You don’t get to be a martyr just because you’re a victim. That’s why I love Courtney’s books. She insists that even her narrators–especially her narrators, the people you’re supposed to relate to and love–own up to and suffer the consequences of their own actions. It’s some of the most honest work being done in the YA world. Courtney is brutal to her characters, something I really believe in. She forces them to look in the most revealing mirror and get a good look at their true selves before she lets them be redeemed.

Regina really gets it from all sides. She is the victim of an assault that is then twisted by a devious rival into an act of betrayal, which incurs the wrath of Regina’s ex-best friend, Anna (it’s okay Courtney I know it’s totally a coincidence that the evil girl’s name is Anna and I’m not even mad at you!), who unleashes a rain of terror (see what I did there?) upon Regina’s head. Rotting meat stuffed in the locker, physical violence, emotional tyranny…it’s all part of the torture Regina is expected to endure because she purportedly hurt her best friend. Not only is Regina going through that hell, but she’s also coming face-to-face with the horrible things she actually did do, including spreading rumors about a wonderfully sweet boy, turning him into a social outcast and exposing him to ridicule, and helping to drive a former friend to suicide (failed, thankfully). These people–Michael, whom Regina falls in love with, and Liz, whom she struggles to make things up to with little success–stand as monuments to Regina’s horrible legacy, which may or may not be part of the person she still is.

What’s beautiful about Regina and Michael’s love story is that its greatest obstacles are not counterfeited by authorial machination (for the most part), but are absolutely and believably intrinsic to the characters, which is where all actually relationship obstacles come from! Here’s the thing about paranormal romances (and I understand this is an aside, but please go with it): they often come with some sort of problem attached–Edward and Bella can’t be together because he’s a monster whose basest instinct is to rip out her throat and drink her blood like she’s a Big Gulp, etc.–that has nothing to do with the characters themselves, only their circumstances, which they’re not responsible for, so the characters can be unassailable, just victims in all of this. They love each other, purely and entirely, they just can’t be together because it’s forbidden. But, fun as paranormal romances are, that’s their most devious lie. The obstacles are all external, but actual romantic obstacles are mostly internal, but to bring them out into the open is to make the characters, who you’re supposed to like, culpable in their own suffering and each other’s, which is a brave thing to do. More realistic, but less cinematic.

So what makes a true romance great is the presentation of two people who want to be together but aren’t willing to give up some of their own prejudices, resentments, conflicting desires, ambitions, etc, to make it happen, or don’t know if they’re capable of doing so (HELLO Pride & Prejudice). That’s Regina and Michael in a nutshell. He likes her and is attracted to her, but every time he gets close to her he remembers what she did to him and it sends him reeling. She likes him and is attracted to him, but she thinks he’s never going to be able to forgive her, and as much as she wants to there’s a little bit of her former mean girl she might not be able to shake. And Regina’s not walking away from her former life because she wants to–she’s being forced away from it, and he knows that. How can he trust her? How can she trust herself? She certainly never has before. Now that is the stuff of great romance, if your characters decide that they want to be with the other person more than they want whatever it is that’s conflicting with it. If Michael can’t forgive Regina, that’s understandable, but he has to do that in order to be with her–if he can do it, then that’s the most romantic thing I can possibly imagine.

Anyway, this book is simply one of the best books I’ve ever read. I love it more than I love Cracked Up to Be, which I loved A LOT. It’s just right up my alley, Courtney’s stuff. She and I are concerned with the same things: the pain and suffering it takes to figure out who you are in the world and what kind of person you want to spend your life being, and how that’s reflected in how we treat others, and how we learn and grow from our mistakes, or don’t, and how grief be not proud and how people be not perfect, not even close, but how we can love them anyway, in their imperfection, profoundly more in fact because perfect people are dull and nonexistant.

I hate having to wrap up reviews because I always want to leave on a high note, but I can never think of anything cool to say, so it’s mostly like, “Um, yeah, so buy this book and read it because it’s awesome.” Which is stupid, but a sort of Anna Jarzab stupid that I’ve decided to accept.

So, buy this book and read it because it’s awesome. I’m out like trout.

Okay, so yesterday I alluded to an important writing thing that ocurred over the weekend of ALA, but divulged nothing more. I wasn’t being a tease, I was just growing a little weary with that post, so I decided to save it for later.

It’s later.

Now, this discussion might be a little vague because I’m trying not to reveal much about the plot of my second book. There are a couple of things I can tell you, though:

1. It’s another teen mystery
2. It has a male narrator
3. It takes place in California
4. It’s about an eighteen-year-old boy’s disappearance, which may or may not involve foul play, and his friends’ attempts to search for him

So there’s that. As some of you probably know, it used to be called Murder Burger, but RH’s legal department said that, for various reasons, it emphatically cannot be named that, so we’re at square one with the title. And actually, this thing that happened with the book all started with the news that the title had been nixed. I’d actually been worried about that from the very beginning, and finally brought it up to my editor, who promised she’d ask legal, who told her that under no circumstances was I allowed to name the book that because such a place actually exists (although my version of it was and is entirely fictional) and we’re not in the business of getting sued, which I totally understand. I don’t want to get sued, either.

But the book such as it was (and I was struggling a lot with the book such as it was, because there were obviously problems with it that I could recognize but not think how to fix in a really effective way) didn’t seem to lend itself to a new title. It seems like a petty thing to care about in the face of looming revisions great and small, but the title is the most succinct expression of a book and is therefore important. And I couldn’t think of a single thing to name the book other than MB, which really frustrated me. Revisions were also frustrating. I’d only been working on them a few days, but I knew that if I continued the way I was doing things and turned a new draft in to my editor, she would see that not enough had changed to really take the book to the next level, which was the whole thrust of this round of revision.

So, what to do? Well, I was on my way to work the Friday before ALA and I was getting out of the subway station when suddenly I had a thought: what if I took the events of the very end and moved them to the middle? That sounds crazy because you don’t know what happens at the end, but it was a major brainstorm for me. I was excited about it because it meant that the actual mechanics of the mystery plot–what things get figured out at which time, what people are involved in those revelations, the heartbeats of the story–could stay intact, it was only the perspective that would change. All of a sudden you’d be seeing things in an entirely new way. Over the next two days, I became convinced that this was the game change I needed. I wasn’t going to get any more depth out of my current book, and I needed to flip the script. This was a way to add the depth we were trying to achieve. I was certain of it.

Thankfully, both my agent and editor agree, and even though it means rewriting the second half of the book, I felt a great release of pressure when I cut 150 pages from the manuscript with the press of a button and set forth down this new path. It’s a dramatic change, but one that I think will work out very well, and of course with Joanna and Francoise patiently coaching me through it, I think the book will be great in the end, something to really be proud of instead of a joke repository, which I’m afraid MB ended up being to an extent (although I think there’s a lot of great stuff in this book, don’t get me wrong).

This writing thing, you guys–it’s like the labyrinth in, well, Labyrinth. You know how it’s always changing and it’s never the same maze twice and some meddling worm can send you down the wrong path and you try to figure out which door guard is lying but you’re too dumb and this metaphor is getting both extended and absurd, is it not? Anyway, you know what I mean. People always say that each book teaches you how to write itself, and itself only, and they’re totally right. I guess the other little seed of knowledge I’ve gained from this is that nothing you write is unassailable–I mean, yes, there’s the “kill your darlings” writing advice, which is both cliche and true as many cliches are, but there’s also the sense of being trapped by what you’ve already done. It’s just as hard to write a bad novel, or a mediocre one, as it is to write a good novel, and once you’ve finished you can’t stand the thought of pressing DELETE and watching those days and nights spent not with your friends or family, not watching 30 Rock, not sleeping, go swirling down the drain. That word count means time and sacrifices, and it’s hard to say goodbye to all that and start over.

But I’m telling you that it’s also worth it. At least I think it is. Hell, I know it is, because I spent three years writing the first verison of AUT just to throw it out and start over, and it was still another four years before I saw it on the shelves. So I get it. But I also think that this kind of work, the part of our job that requires destruction, is just as important as the part that requires creation. It’s a leap of faith that in turning your back on something you thought you loved you’re in fact turning your face towards something even better. And it’s kind of invigorating, at least it is for me. Wish me luck!

Still working on the title, though…

Hi folks! Some of you might be wondering where on God’s green goodness I’ve been in the past few weeks, because it certainly hasn’t been at my desk, blogging. I assure you that there is a good reason for this: I haven’t had Internet in my apartment in over a month, because I moved, and our new apartment didn’t have a cable hookup so we had to have one installed, which is harder than one might imagine and anyway, long story short, the guy from Time Warner came today and after a snafu or two with the modem, we are in business!

So I’m back in black, as they say. As you might imagine, the last few weeks have been quite the whirlwind. First, All Unquiet Things was officially delivered to the world on January 12th. My lovely friends have been sending me pictures of it in bookstores. Let me share a few with you:

My beautiful cousin Emma

My beautiful sister Fish

The thing that’s interesting about that last photo (if you can’t see it, it’s in the bottom left hand corner) is that I went to that store on a whim yesterday after buying tickets to see Up in the Air (more on that in a later post, probably). I was afraid it’d be sold out but I’m too cheap to pay the Fandango surcharge (and like I said, no Internet at the homestead until today). I had some time on my hands, so I went to the theater early, bought the tickets (it wasn’t sold out, but seeing Golden Globe/Oscar award-winning/nominated films in New York can be tricky sometimes on weekend nights and I wanted to be sure), and headed over to this store (which shall remain nameless! No favoritism here) just to check to see if they had AUT, because, you know, NEUROTIC WRITER TYPE.

Anyway, I couldn’t find it anywhere–not under J in the Teen section, not in the New for Teens section, nowhere. I was a little frustrated, because of the aforementioned capitalized phrase, and I asked a store associate for some assistance. She told me they had it: it was just in the New Fiction section. The New adult Fiction section. And there it is, posing as a book for adults. Crossover! What an exciting word. I hope adults (and not just adults who read YA) will pick AUT up and read it, just as I hope teens will. I think it’s a great book for both age groups, and they’re pretty fluid anyway.

Other things have happened, too. I had my bookseller/librarian dinner that Random House so very graciously arranged, which was wonderful. Then I had my birthday, which was also wonderful–I truly have the best friends in the world. On Saturday, those same amazing friends threw me a book party. I can’t even tell you how cool it was. I saw people I haven’t seen since college–since high school. And there were even some surprises–people I didn’t even know lived in New York came to wish me luck, and it was so great to see them.

My best friends took the book cover image and blew it up poster sized, then taped it to the wall for everybody to “blurb”. Some people wrote sweet things, some people wrote funny things, some people wrote mock-insulting things (my favorites, inspired by MD’s hilarious “blurbs” from a couple of months ago). I’m going to frame it and hang it on my wall over my dresser–I’ll take a picture when I do so you can see it in all its glory. Oh, and there was also this:

When I got to the party and saw the poster, I was so blown away, but then Nikki said, “Oh you just wait. There’s another surprise.” I guessed pretty quickly it was a cake, and then was alarmed, because I know that picture cakes cost A FORTUNE, several hundred dollars at least. But oh no, no no. Nikki made one herself. And look at how magnificent it is. Better than anything Ace of Cakes could’ve churned out, that’s for damn sure. That’s a Vanessa Hudgens doll posing as dead Carly, if you were curious.

The next day, I headed off to ALA to attend the “It’s a First!” cocktail reception. I got to take the train, because ALA was in Boston. I’d never taken a train like that (I’ve taken the subway and, like Metra and New Jersey transit and stuff, but never Amtrak) and it was so great. Joanna said called it “romantic”, and that’s exactly what it was. It was sort of a gloomy day, so these photos don’t seem too cool, but when we rounded the bend somewhere in Queens and caught sight of Manhattan, my nose was glued to the window.

There were four debut RH authors at the reception, so I wanted to read everybody’s books before I got there. I almost succeeded! A for effort. I’d read Jame Richards’ Three Rivers Rising (a novel in verse about the Jamestown Flood; Jame is one of my fellow Tenners) a while ago, and I finished Swati Avasthi’s Split on the train. Let me prove it to you:

Okay, I realize that is just a picture and doesn’t prove that I finished it, but I did. It’s a great book about a teen boy running from an abusive household, and at some parts it was just so terribly sad and gruesome that I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t, because it was so compelling. I liked how brutally honest it was about abuse and what it can do to the people affected by it, how it can change them and trap them and push them away and pull them back in. The relationships between Jace and his brother Christian were so true, I was very impressed by that. Also, Swati is just a doll; it turned out that she was reading AUT, too, at the same time. Coincidence!

This entry is getting so long, so I’m just going to give you a little rundown of what I did at ALA, with a few iPhone pics to illustrate, and then sign off till next time.

When I got to Boston, I took this picture:

I took that on the walk from my hotel to the convention center, because I was in Boston for less than twenty-four hours and most of those were nighttime/early morning hours. My cabbie was horrified by this and made me promise to return someday. I assured him I would, because Boston’s been on my long-time to-visit list for a while and now that things have calmed a little maybe my friends and I will make a road trip out of it soon.

I went to the convention for a few hours and mostly hung around the RH and Penguin booths. Here are some pictures of that:

Okay, yeah, I had to take a picture of my own book. SO SUE ME! Wait, don’t. All the ARCs, of my book and everyone else’s at every house, was yoinked on Friday, so I got next to nothing, but c’est la vie. Must not be greedy!

Some Penguin-y books as well.

What did people do before iPhones? Oh, carry around actual cameras, you say? How boring.

Then I left the convention and went back to my hotel to ready myself for the reception and meet my editor. The reception was great, as events with librarians always are. I got to meet some awesome new people–librarians are so friendly and love to chat about books, and there’s nothing I’d rather chat about, honestly–and see some awesome people I already know, mostly RH people. My audio editor and producer were there, and it was great to see them. It was also really nice to spend so much quality time with my editor and publisher. I’m really lucky in that because I live in New York, I get many more opportunities to see and talk to my editor than writers who don’t live in New York do. It’s a great thing she’s such a smart, interesting person–I love talking books and publishing with her.

Because I was feeling sick, after dinner with my editor and publisher I went upstairs to sleep. Okay, I watched the Golden Globes, then I slept. I woke up very early in the morning to follow the ALA awards Twitter feed, then went back to sleep. Then I met my editor to get on the train and we went back to New York, where I collapsed from illness and fatigue.

One other interesting, writing relating thing happened at ALA, and I’m going to blog about it, but not now. Now is the time to put this post to bed so that I don’t break everyone’s Google Readers by making it any longer. I’m going to go program our DVR to tape 30 Rock now! Cheers all.

So, it’s my birthday.

That’s right! I was published when I was twenty-five, and then I immediately turned twenty-six. Couldn’t've planned it better myself.

Last night was wonderful. Random House threw me and AUT a dinner at Irving Mill, which is a restaurant I’ve never been to but which was delightful. My publicist picked it because she said it looked like a California wine cellar, and it totally did. The atmosphere was gorgeous and the food was delicious. I met so many wonderful people from RH, not to mention booksellers and librarians. They were all so excited about AUT, which is awesome, because I am excited about it.

I feel really blessed to have so many people behind me, encouraging and supporting and working on behalf of my book. I said that over and over again last night, because it’s so true, and true of so very many people. I’m so grateful, more than I can adequately express. I think I said this a few times last night, that it still feels like a story I’m telling myself in my dorm room at Santa Clara; I can’t believe that the book is in stores and that strangers might actually read it. The concept is just too much for me.

And yet, it’s true. I have proof! Best birthday present EVER.

Aaaaand now I have the Barenaked Ladies song in my head.

The last time you heard from our intrepid heroine (me, duh), she was trapped in Newark International Airport, rueing the day she first sacrificed convenience for price in choosing a flight to Chicago for Christmas. Then came radio silence all through the holidays. I really tried to use my long break to relax and sleep in and spend time with my family and friends I haven’t seen in a while. I did a good job at that, but as soon as I got back to New York (and trekked home from Newark–NEVER AGAIN!) I hit the ground running, because my friend Brigitte from my good old University of Chicago days was in town with her husband, so I saw them on both Sunday and Monday night.

Any illusions that I might have given my poor, addled mind a rest over break were completely dashed on Tuesday, when I wrote my friend Nikki an email inviting her to my house for “kiesh.” YES THAT IS RIGHT. I didn’t even notice my painfully egregious spelling error until I got an email from my friend Cambria later that night saying, “Still making quiche? What time should I come over?” And I was like, “OMG ‘QUICHE’!” I think that’s the worst spelling error I’ve made in my entire life. It’s like I had never seen the word “quiche” written out before. I was mortified when I realized my mistake–like I said, HOURS LATER.

The quiche was delicious, though, despite the fact that I put too much filling in the pie crust so it spilled out a little from the sides and then rose like a souffle in the oven. Considering I didn’t measure anything and just threw some stuff in it, I think it was a success! It had broccoli, onion and Swiss cheese in it, if you care.

Anyway, on to business. So, now that it’s Thursday, we’re less than a week away from the publication of All Unquiet Things. Surreal doesn’t begin to cover it. I’ve spent the bulk of my free time the past few days answering interview questions and posting on Random Buzzers, which you should totally check out if you’re not a part of it yet. My forum is here, but there are a couple of interesting activities posted here that I can’t wait to check out. I thought the AUT playlist was just a link to the playlist I created, so I didn’t even look at it before, but now I see that it’s a section for other people to post their playlists, which is far more interesting to me.

In other news, I came across this article John Green wrote for School Library Journal the other day and found it entirely fascinating. It’s all about the future of reading, and what it means if books become practically free to produce (i.e. entirely digital) and thus publishers cease to exist and there’s no quality control (or just plain control at any rate; people have their own opinions about whether or not quality has anything to do with it–I’m not one of them, but I’ve heard that a lot, that publishers are just pandering to the lowest common denominator, etc. etc.) and the world of literature falls into anarchy (not democracy, which is different). Basically, libraries rule the world is his argument.

Anyway, I’m not going to advance my own opinions because I don’t really believe that the book world will ever become entirely digital in the way John predicts (okay, I guess that’s an opinion, but whatever), but I will say that last night, for some reason, I got into this discussion about The Future of Reading with three people–two strangers I met at a bar, and my cab driver on the way home. The strangers differed on this issue; one said to hell with publishers, let schools be the gatekeepers (which is not a very good solution, if only because not everyone is in school at any given time, but he’s forgiven because he’s an educator); the other was a big believer in libraries, and also argued in favor of publishers.

Better still, the conversation I had with my cab driver. He was extremely chatty, which I normally do not like, because when I’m in a car, or really on any form of transportation, I like to be silent and stare out the window and sometimes fall asleep. I don’t want to be beholden to a conversation with a stranger. But this cabbie was nice, and he asked me what I did, so I told him, and then he asked me if I thought books would go the way of the dodo, and for a moment I was like, “Deja vu!” but then I said that no, I didn’t think that, I think digital and physical books will find a balance someday and neither will become completely dominant. Then he said, “Oh, that’s good, because books are just so charming.” He was completely sincere, and I fell a little bit in love with him. I never would’ve said that books are charming, but they are! QED, books will never die. (Not at all logically sound, I know, but whatever. I never claimed to be a master of debate!)

Hello from Newark International Airport. I’m never flying out of here again. It’s not even that I don’t like Newark in and of itself, or that I’m prejudiced against New Jersey–it’s that Newark is THE WORST NY metro area airport to get to, BAR NONE. Let me give you a little snapshot of the day.

(I’m going to preface this by saying that, while I felt very prepared for this travel experience, I apparently was not and now realize that. Whoops. Live, learn, never fly out of Newark again–that’s my motto!)

(Let me also preface this by saying that I’m posting this blog because I paid $8 for Internet access. Normally I would not do this on principal, because I believe every airport should provide free wifi for everyone as long as they insist on sucking so much, but my flight isn’t taking off for approximately 3.5 hours and $8 is actually less money than I paid for the terrible chicken caesar wrap I’m eating for dinner, so I think it’s justifiable under the circumstances. Happy Christmas, Jarzab. You deserve it.)

Anyway, my flight to Chicago was originally supposed to leave at 7 PM. Okay, says I to myself. It takes 1 hour and 15 minutes to get to Newark using public transportation. I’ve done it before (coming home from the airport, not going there–VERY IMPORTANT DISTINCTION), it wasn’t hard at all. So I’ll leave the house at 4 PM. Wait, on second thought, I’ll leave at 3:45. Give myself a buffer (YEAH RIGHT).

First, I got on the subway. My bag weighs 49.9 lbs (right under the limit! booyah, who’s a packing genius?), and I had to lug it down two flights of subway stairs. Awesome. Then the station agent yelled at me when I didn’t know to push the turnstile before I went through the special access door. Okay, I never do that, so whatever, sir–it’s Christmas, stop yelling. Then I get on the train, which goes to 59th St and then…stops. Like, doesn’t move or plan to move for an unspecified amount of time. So I drag my bag down another two flights of subway stairs and cram onto an A train, which takes me to Penn Station.

EXCEPT that I don’t know how to find the NJ Transit from the A, C, E trains, only from the 1, 2, 3 trains. You’d think all you’d need to do would be to read the signs–you’d be wrong. So I wander around for a while looking crazy, then buy a ticket to Trenton because my iPhone told me to. This was stupid. I look up at the schedule and get so confused–some trains go to Secaucus Junction, some go to Newark. Even though it is the day before Christmas Eve, only a few trains go to Newark. Great. The next one is at 5:05. Super, duper great. I leave Penn Station and decide to take a cab.

Not a good idea. Can’t get a cab for my life, and even if I was able to find one, it would definitely not take me to Newark and would cost me about $70. Forget it. I decide to walk to the Penn Station entrance near the 1, 2, 3 trains that I’m familiar with and find the NJ Transit center that I’m familiar with. I do that, same thing: 5:05 PM train to South Amboy goes to Newark Airport. Okay, I decide to get on it. It’s 5:00.

I cram on the train and am literally standing in the aisle with my giant suitcase, which I can’t even lift onto the rack. I’m afraid I’m going to get yelled at by the conductor, not only because I don’t have a ticket but because my huge, 49.9 lb suitcase is totally blocking the aisle and he can’t get through. Thankfully, an entire huge family gets off at Secaucus Junction and me and my suitcase get our own bench. Across from us sit three boys from Minnesota (actually, I think only two are from Minnesota–the other was from New Jersey). They were really friendly and helpful and sweet and probably too young for me so whatever, but it was nice to be helped instead of jostled around and cut in line and sniped at. It’s almost six by the time we reach Newark International and my flight leaves at 7. Awesome.

I get on the Air Train and realize that my terminal (A) is the last terminal on the route. Just keeps getting better! Also, the Air Train is ridiculously slow considering the distances it travels between each stop and also how many stops there are (like four). Finally I get there. The one mercy was that there was a relatively short line at check in and at security. When I got through security, I saw it–my flight to Chicago is delayed till 10:30.

So here I am, blogging about my travel travails on $8 Internet, double- and triple-checking the flight status board to make sure this isn’t one of those nightmares where I’m in the wrong terminal and going to miss my flight except for real this time. So far, it looks like I’m in the right place and it’s not yet the right time. So I sit. And read my woefully neglected Google Reader. Maybe I’ll watch the season finale of Glee–are you allowed to do that on rented Internet? I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out.

I meant to post about this a while ago, but I forgot, because I forget everything these days, because I’ve left my already pretty terrible memory somewhere in the great wilds of NYC and have yet to locate it. Ugh. Whatever, so you know that All Unquiet Things is going to be an audio book with the same release as the physical book (January 12), because I told you that a while ago. BUT, what I discovered is that the audio cover is just a little bit different than the physical book cover, in the coolest way ever (besides saying that it has an interview with the author, which it does, by the by)–it has the full picture of Carly on the front.

The full picture, as you can probably imagine, is even more arresting than the half picture. I never actually got to see any of the photo proofs for the AUT cover, so when it popped up in my Google alerts the other day (on Amazon UK of all things, is this book being published in the UK?) it was quite a surprise to me, too. Behold:

Some people ask me if I’ve met the people who read the audio book, and the answer is no, but I’m assuming that Mike Chamberlain and Allyson Ryan are really cool cats. Everyone involved in the Listening Library production of All Unquiet Things has been wonderful.

There’s also an audio sample that you can listen to on Random House’s website. I don’t know how big of an excerpt they’ve put up because I’m a baby and can’t listen to it for more than a few seconds without cringing and asking myself, “Why again did you publish these silly scribblings of yours?” But that’s just a reflection of my own weirdness, the recording is quite fabulous and worth listening to. I feel like most of my blog posts for the next month or so are going to end with me thanking various people for their hard work, which I understand might be a trifle boring, but they do work hard and I am thankful, so I’m doing it anyway. Thank you Rebecca and Dan and Mike and Allyson and everyone else at Listening Library that made this happen. You are awesome, obvs.

Geddit? “Come Sail Away”/”Come trailer way”? You get it.

Anyway! You might’ve already heard about this on Twitter, but my publicist sent me the finished All Unquiet Things book trailer and I wanted to share it with you.

I really like it. I think it’s so unique, and trust me when I say that, because I have seen a lot of book trailers. I think the concept is clever and well executed, and I’m very impressed with the outcome and all the work my publicist and the videographer did to bring AUT alive.

It was interesting, though, because watching the trailer brought to the surface this tiny insecurity that I thought I’d gotten over when I first started editing AUT back in the day. When I was just writing for the fun of it, I used to get really embarrassed when talking about what I was working on, because I didn’t think anyone was taking me seriously and I sounded like I was a four-year-old talking about the inner life of her imaginary friend.

Then when people actually started taking me seriously, it was so strange to me, and I thought I’d gotten over it, but apparently not. As cool as it is to see my story made into a trailer, it’s also a little uncomfortable, because in my heart of hearts AUT is still just a story I’m telling myself. So it’s like someone’s out there reading my mind instead of just, you know, reading my book or whatever.

So there’s your “writers are neurotic” anecdote of the day. Enjoy the trailer and let me know what you think! Props must go out to my publicist, RHCB, and the person who created the video (whoever you are) Christopher–thanks everyone!

I can’t believe this, but I signed on to Wordpress for the first time in weeks (yikes, I’m not doing a good job keeping up with the blogging, am I?) to blog about a very specific thing and I’ve totally forgotten what that is. So instead of a thoughtful, collected post about an interesting topic, you’re going to get a brain dump.

I guess the first thing on my mind is my second book. I wrote it the summer before I got my deal for AUT (so that’s summer 2008), finishing it in August. I sent Joanna the first three pages, which is a prologue, and she included it in our submissions to editors in early September 2008. My editor bought two books from me, with the understanding that MB, of which she’d only read three pages, would be book 2.

Fast forward to this past summer. I revised the book myself, then Joanna had a look at it and she gave me an editorial letter, which I used to revise a second time. Then we sent it on to my editor. I’m due to get revisions back next week, and I’m nervous. I spent a long time writing AUT, and I revised it many, many times for many, many people. Joanna and I did two rounds of revisions, and then Danielle (Egan-Miller, the president of Browne & Miller, Joanna’s agency) looked it over and sent me notes, which I used to revise a third time. I revised twice with my editor, and then went through a round of copy edits and two rounds of pages (where the book was laid out in exactly the format it has in the ARC and finished book)–and I just remembered what I came here to blog about, stay tuned for that. It wasn’t a particularly long process for publishing, but it was a considerable amount of work and time and consideration. In each round of revision, I cut and added, and I think the book ended up being rather robust and meaningful, as well as exciting.

If you utter the words “book 2″ to debut authors, you’re going to get a bunch of wincing and grimacing. It’s so hard to follow up something you’ve spent a long time crafting with something you haven’t spent a long time crafting, simply because your publishing schedule encourages publishing every year or year and a half, sometimes more. It’s not that the second book in its first draft is any worse than your first book in its first draft, it’s just that you have less time to turn it into something good and publishable. That’s where I am right now. My second book was written in months, where AUT took years. My second book has been revised twice, and AUT was revised five times that. It was hard to show it to my editor, who bought it basically sight unseen, but I did it anyway, and now comes the hard part–realizing that it’s not in as good of shape as AUT was when it left my hands, coming to terms with that, and doing what needs to be done to make it just as good–or better!–of a book as AUT was, in way less time.

I get now why there are a few authors out there whose second books are a long time coming. I thought that because I wrote my second book before I sold my first, I was safe from the sophomore slump, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that I’m not. I’m trying not to freak out about it. I’m trying to trust in my ability to do exactly what I did with AUT–take the skeleton of my first draft and carefully prune it where necessary, and add to it where necessary. I write bare bones first drafts. The introspection and explanation and deep characterization everything that goes into giving a book a story, not just a plot, comes later for me. I like to get all the action and dialogue down before I go for the meat of the thing. It’s just my process. But since I’ve only really done it successfully once, it’s hard to trust that process.

As I reach the end of CH (I’m quite literally down to the last fifty pages), I realize just how messy of a draft it is. I mean, it’s absolutely insane. And the part of me that’s into organization and planning is stressed out by what a sloppy chaotic disaster of a manuscript it is. MB is obviously better, but maybe not very much so. But there’s another part of me, and I hope it’s a bigger part, that knows that the revisions process is so much more than fixing problems–it’s an opportunity to get to know better a narrative geography that you’ve mapped, but not yet explored. I think the next six months are going to be a lot of work, but MB will be better for it, and I’m glad, because I love MB, and I want my editor to love it, and I want readers to love it. If getting to that place is going to be hard and long and arduous, so be it–I’ve got time, and I’ve got endurance.

So, back to why I originally came here to post. My editor passed this along to me today. It’s an AUT chapter sampler! Okay, so it’s the same chapter I have on the site here, BUT this one is from the interior of the actual book, so it has the full design layout of the book that you’ll see in stores come January. It’s gorgeous. Go look at it!

Because when it rains, it pours, I’m headed over to The A-Team blog (it still exists! I promise I’ll post more! Moving kind of took the wind out of my sails) to talk about reviews (which you can always find here), because I’ve been getting some as of late. Join me?

OH. MY. GOD. YOU. GUYS.

Packing is so awful! I walk into our living room and just marvel at how we were able to get so much stuff to “fit” (I use the word loosely here, because we had stuff shoved in every crevice) in our teeny, tiny apartment. It’s absurd how much stuff we had hidden away in little nooks and crannies. My roommate and I were discovering all kinds of stuff–an adorable set of juice glasses I’d completely forgotten I had, knives we’d never used (which will be displaced by the set of knives my mom sent me a while ago that are currently living at work, which I realize makes me look like a serial killer, but whatevs), a pizza cutter…the list goes on and on.

The problem with our old place (this is the part where I talk about living in New York, which I feel like is only of interest to people who live in New York, so you can skip this if you don’t care) is that it had about zero amounts of storage. That doesn’t really seem to make any sense because I’m telling you we totally forgot about things we had, but it’s because everything was shoved into the few small cabinets we had, and we never had any cooking space (most of this discovery happened in the kitchen), so we had no desire to cook, hence the not using anything we had (I swear to God, I have pots and pans I used to use in Chicago that I absolutely have not  used since I moved to New York, because my roommate and I have just used one frying pan and one sauce pan to cook our food for two years), because there wasn’t any room to do anything with it.

This is all about to change. Our new apartment has an actual kitchen–small, but actual. It has cabinets for our things and some more counter space and is going to be a joy to spend time in. We keep marveling over this. We’re like, “We’re going to have dinner parties!” every five seconds. But I know my roommate and I, and we need to plan that stuff immediately upon moving in, or it won’t happen. We’re quite inert when we’re settled.

But anyway. What is it about packing that makes your belongings start multiplying like the loaves and fishes? Every time I think I’m done packing, I see something else I need to pack. It’s ridiculous. I’m so tired. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a week because my room is a shambles (also, after several weeks of not having heat and freezing at night, it’s a frickin’ sauna in here).

I can’t wait for all of this to be over and to be in our new place. I know I’ll shed some tears over leaving our own place–not because I love it (I do NOT), but because we spent two years there. Eesha and I are, in so many ways, totally different people than we were when we moved in. We’ve both gone through some heartbreak, and my life has completely changed because of AUT, and we’re very good friends now, whereas when we moved in to the apartment we barely knew each other. We’ll never be those girls again. We’ll never move to New York for the first time again. It’s the end of an era.

But because my default is to always believe that my life will be the same forever as it is at the moment (obviously a fallacy, but it’s just my mental default), I’m always looking backwards, not forwards, and I forget that the end of an era is always the beginning of a new era. Last night when I called him for Thanksgiving, I gave my dad this whole speech about how this upcoming year is going to be my year. This is the year things are going to go well for me, I just know it. I’m not usually the type of person to make grandiose pronouncements like that, but I’ve been tired and stressed out for a long time now, I’ve worked very hard for a long time without a break, and I’m ready to create some positive change. I’m looking forward to 2010. Not just because of AUT, although of course because of AUT, but also because I’m excited about the possibilities of the unknown.

I know how lucky I am. I have managed to make a real, honest to God life for myself in New York, which, aside from all the cliches, is actually very hard. I need to sit back and enjoy it. I need to let it wash over me and be grateful. I need to relax. That’s what I’m focused on for 2010. I believe in 2010.

But right now, it’s 2009, and I need to go to bed before I fall over and start snoozing on the floor like a Sim. Because the movers are coming at 9 AM. Oh boy.

Just in case you’re interested, Briana from The Book Pixie just posted an interview with me on her site. Just your everyday Jarzab ridiculousness, with plenty of run-on sentences, in case you’re into that sort of thing.

NCTE is an annual conference for English teachers, proper name National Conference for Teachers of English, and this year it was held in Philadelphia. I didn’t go, but thanks to some friends on the inside I got to see some pictures, including a picture of AUT at the Random House booth! Observe.

There’s my little darling! (I’ve been feeling very fuzzy and maternal about AUT lately, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.) Doesn’t it look like it’s about to topple off the table? Because it’s EDGY–GEDDIT? You get it.

Actually, it looks like Cyn Balog’s Sleepless is about to knock it off the table. Rude, Cyn. Rude. By the by, have you read Cyn’s first Delacorte book, Fairy Tale? I’m not big on the fairies, but I have to say that I really liked Fairy Tale. I thought it was funny and didn’t take itself at all seriously, which made it a perfect read for me. I found the characters sympathetic and likeable and I was really rooting for main character, Morgan. Anyway, I feel like I don’t talk about books I read that I like enough. YA books, I mean.

Let’s detour on that point for a second. I’ve read a lot of YA this year, probably more than I’ve ever read in one year in my life. Some recent faves have been The Secret Year by Jennifer Hubbard (if you like All Unquiet Things, you’ll like The Secret Year; Colt and Neily are brothers in spirit), One Lonely Degree by C.K. Kelly Martin (I read that a while back and might’ve mentioned loving it, but if not, I LOVED IT), and my friend Alex’s Brightly Woven (but you knew that).

Nina LaCour’s Hold Still was beautiful (you can watch Nina’s Borders live Point of View event here–that’s actually a link to all of the archived POV events, including ones with John Green, Jay Asher, Gayle Forman, Amy Efaw, and Laurie Halse Anderson), Amy Efaw’s After was haunting and great, Beautiful Creatures was TO DIE FOR (I had withdrawal for days after finishing it, like I missed it–LIKE A PERSON), Lauren Oliver’s Before I Fall was very well done, pitch perfect, and I’ve recently gotten completely sucked (ha! geddit! sucked! like a vampire sucks blood…you get it) into the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead, Blood Promise easily being my favorite. If you hate Twilight because you think Bella’s boring and agentless, you’re going to love Rose from VA–that girl can kick some ass.

So there are some book recommendations for you. I can also say with the utmost confidence that The Naughty List by Suzanne Young is just lovely, really funny and bright, with such an original voice. Sorry some of these books are not yet released, but buy them as soon as you can, hm?

That’s really all I have for you, unless you care that we can get the keys to our new apartment tomorrow! And move in this weekend! Which is an awful big relief for me. Now we just have to schedule movers and do the damn thing, and then done. Which is good, because AUT comes out in less than two months now, plus Christmas (I’ll be going to Chicago for ten days–thank you, Corporation I Work For, for being so generous with the holiday time off!), plus MB revisions, which should be coming any day now–I’ll just be happy to get moving off my plate. I can’t wait to settle in to my new sweet digs.

Oh yeah, guess what? I’m totally not going to finish CH by the end of November! Like you ever believed I would.

There are many reasons for this. The first is that I, um, decided to add a new character, who I basically ganked from a book I started writing a while ago (it was my fake NaNo book last year! Fake meaning I did not work on it during NaNo but fronted like I might) that I’ve pretty much decided not to bother with. I’m…not so sure this is going to work, but I’m trying it. But now I have to go put him in the first 200 pages, because I really can’t finish the book without at least giving him a through line to the end. I just can’t work that way, it’s weird.

This decision seemed totally brilliant when I made it, but now I don’t know. We’ll see. I don’t experiment a whole lot with my books–I call ‘em like I see ‘em and don’t get fancy with the risks and such. So this is something new and different for me! I don’t know about CH, you guys. I’m very attached to it and I think parts of it are good, and I think that if I work on it it will get very, very good. BUT there’s a whole lot going on and I don’t know how hospitable the market would be to this kind of book. It’s contemporary, but it’s less high concept than AUT and MB and now the new character’s kind of putting a spin on everything…I just don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see. I like it, though. I’m happy with it, even though it’s a hot mess right now. It’s got all the right elements, I just need to wrangle them into shape. Which is the fun of it, obvs.

I’m also progressing on the CH-related short story I started a few weeks back, working title TGITW. Or TGIF, if you grew up in the nineties. Or Thank God It’s Thursday if you’re Shannel.

So anyway, yeah, it’s going pretty well. I think it’s good. As good as a not-yet-finished short story in first draft by someone who rarely writes short stories can possibly be, which is not very. But I like it, and it’s helping me work through some things, both character-related and also personal, maybe. Whatever. The point is, work is being done Chez Jarzab, even though I have packed most of my stuff in boxes and am very nervous that we don’t have keys to the apartment we plan to move into THIS WEEKEND. Which is not that big of a deal, but we don’t know when or how we are going to get these keys, which isn’t great.

OMG guys I haven’t told you about the apartment. Suffice it to say that it is great, and we signed the lease so technically it is ours from Dec 1 onward, but that doesn’t mean all will go smoothly! This is Manhattan, baby. If you’re not flying by the seat of your pants, you’re not living.

I’ll give you the full tour of the new apartment (with photos! taken on my iPhone! so not of great quality! deal with it) when I can actually, um, go in it because I have keys. We can all discover if the apartment has a dishwasher together! (I can’t remember.) But it does have a WASHER/DRYER IN THE APARTMENT (everyone who lives in New York who reads this blog just cursed me out and then swooned), of that I am SURE.

Let’s cross our fingers and hope that I get to move in on Saturday like I planned. I said cross your fingers! Thank you.

Okay, so on Friday night I saw New Moon, and, you guys? It was awesome.

It’s been getting a lot of horrible reviews, but it’s really hard to tell (j/k! it’s not really hard to tell! it’s totally obvious) if the movie is actually bad or if movie reviewers are by nature inclined to pan and hate the Twilight franchise and all it stands for because its target audience is young females and LORD KNOWS they can’t stand to see us making choices that reflect buying power. Keep the ladies in their places! Only men should be able to determine if a movie makes millions and millions of dollars at the box office simply by blowing up everything in a seven mile radius (ahem Transformers)! Because honestly, the over-the-top melodramatic romance of Twilight is the lady version of blowing stuff up.

My only concern about the film was that there was going to be too much Jacob. LOL this movie is all about Jacob, I know that, but I’m staunchly anti-Jacob, or at least I used to be. Okay, I’m still anti-book-Jacob–Jacob in the book is a total whiny brat of a tool who manipulates Bella and attacks her with his mouth. I’m also anti the way that Bella tolerates all of that shizz from him, but let’s not put Baby in a corner just yet or whatever. I have a point!

But here’s where it gets tricky: Taylor Lautner(’s chest) made me like Jacob a lot. I finally understood why maybe she might pick him, except of course I knew she wouldn’t (SPOILER!) pick him, because if there’s anything Stephenie Meyer does right in that book, it’s make a contract with the reader (I, the undersigned, Stephenie Meyer, do solemnly swear to make sure that Edward and Bella end up together as vampires at the end of this series) and stick with it! I believe in making a contract with the reader and not veering off in crazy directions when it makes no sense and presenting an unbelievable choice as a legitimate “twist”/solution.

So yeah, Team Edward 4 Lyfe or whatever, but also I get the Jacob thing now, although I still hate him in the books and always will. They were right to stick with Lautner, even though I know he went through many months of unhealthy body building to get them to hire him back, and I cringed for the first half of the movie every time he came on screen because of that awful wig they had him in. He was very likeable and believable as Jacob, and I actually believed the words that were coming out of his mouth. He might be the best actor of the three of them? Although you know I heart my RPATTZ so I don’t even know what I’m saying, crazy talk, obviously. By the way, they played the trailer for RPATTZ’s new movie (March 2010 baby!), Remember Me, before New Moon (of course they did) and it looks super great.

My favorite part of the trailer (aside from RPATTZ) is that his character reminds me somewhat of Neily, who I love. Which is funny, because I always thought RPATTZ would be a more appropriate portrayal of another character in the book, but whatever. Since Remember Me is as close to an All Unquiet Things movie as I think we’ll ever get, I’ll take it!

Secret shame: I now have two RPATTZ posters in my office. It’s okay, I work in children’s publishing–it’s allowed if you have it up ironically. Whenever people comment on it (because they do) I always tell them that he’s watching over me while I work because he loves me and he just wants me to be safe. TWILOLZ!! Gets a laff every time (I don’t think it’s ever gotten a laugh, actually).

So anyway, I thought the stuff between Bella and Jacob in New Moon was sexy and funny. The movie was a lot of fun, actually. A lot of people are using the word “joyless” to describe the relationships the series presents, and while that’s in a lot of ways true, I thought there was plenty of fun here. Lots of smiles between Bella and Jacob, he jokes around with her, even Bella says a minorly funny thing at the end of the movie when Edward’s trying to convince his family not to let Bella become a vampire and she gives him a breathy “Shut…UP” which is way more amusing in the delivery than it is on the page.

I did miss Edward. I do heart him–his hang ups about being soulless and damned are very sad to me, and one of the most interesting things about him. I can’t imagine how depressed he is or must have been for those 90 or so years he’s lived as a vampire. To believe, to truly and steadfastly believe, that there is nothing beautiful or special or good about you, must be such a hard burden to bear, a crushing weight. And if Bella lifts that weight for Edward, then good for him. And also, I get why he left her. People laugh at the whole, “I’m dangerous and I can’t protect you” thing, but he’s right–he IS dangerous and he CAN’T protect her, OBVIOUSLY. Jacob, too. They’re both dangerous creatures who could kill her as soon as look at her, and they’re often getting tangled up in a bunch of nasty supernatural business that she has no defense against. They should both leave her the hell alone, if they really want her to be safe. But they can’t because love or whatever, so fine. But at least he had to try, and that’s commendable.

Also, one final thing, because I’ve been thinking about this a lot. People say that Edward is a perv because he’s an old man lusting after a teenaged girl, even though he looks like a teenaged boy. And while that is not an incorrect theory, per se, I don’t find it all that problematic. While I would agree if it was, say, Carlisle who was dating Bella, because he’s an actual mature man, and was when he was turned into a vampire, I think Edward is probably pretty stunted as a result of all his spiritual and emotional hangups and his general antisocial behavior. He leads this lonely, passionless life, experiences nothing, feels nothing, like a depressed Peter Pan.

Strangely, I’ve never heard the “ew pervert” argument about Jesse, the immortal boy from Tuck Everlasting who falls in love with Winnie, even though he’s a hundred years old by that point and she’s like fifteen or something. Because Jesse’s a boy, not a man. He’s just been a boy a lot longer than most boys are. In that book, Mr. Tuck explains to Winnie how, when time ceases to matter, it ceases to exist. Immortal beings (such as they are) are outside of time and not subject to its rules or the things it brings a normal human–maturity, wisdom, knowledge, age. So Jesse and Edward are not, inside, the equivalents of 100 year old men. They are boys who have stepped outside of time. I think that’s different. And also amazingly interesting.

And now for the coda: how great were those Volturi, AMIRITE? Creepy and pitch-perfectly insane, just like in the book. Except Jane, who was just creepy and awesome. Dakota Fanning FTW! She stole the movie.

Why do I feel as though every blog post has to have some punny or referency title, insofar as that’s possible? “Light me up!”?? Why, Jarzab, why?

Anyway, look what I got in an email yesterday from my editor!

That’s a photo of the cover of All Unquiet Things made into a light box for the Random House booth at the Frankfurt Book Fair last month. Cool, right? (They were setting up when this photo was taken, which is why there are no books on the shelves.) It was so cool of RH to do this, and thanks must go out to sub rights for taking the picture–and my editor for sending it to me.

How’s the book going, you ask? Fine. I’m over 200 pages now, which is what we call progress. I’m also doing something which feels stupid to me now because it’s distracting me from the actual writing of this novel, but will feel smart to me six months from now when I’m revising–I’m writing a short story from the perspective of another character that takes elements of the novel-in-progress and explores them in greater depth than would be natural for the novel-in-progress (this is CH, by the way) given the narrative structure and point of view from which it’s told.

Reasons why this is stupid:

• I’m busy.
• I can only write one thing at a time, so every minute spent writing TGITW (which is the abbreviated title of the short story) is a minute not spent writing CH.
• I’ve imposed a deadline of November 30 on myself w/r/t CH because I will probably get my MB editorial letter this month and because MB was rougher when it went to my editor than AUT was, and it took many months to get AUT to the place where it is now, it will probably take many more months to get MB to the finish line, and I don’t want to leave CH almost-done until February or whatever. No wounded soldiers!
• November 30th is not very far away and there are other things that will probably suck up my time, including but not limited to AUT promotion (such as it is/will be), apartment hunting and moving, Thanksgiving, and my job. I guess that’s a longer way of saying the first thing.

Reasons why this is smart:

• The whole point of writing TGITW is to allow me to have a conversation with a character in CH that I’m still, for some reason, not entirely capable of understanding at this point in the process of writing the novel. I’m hoping that this will change when I’m done with TGITW. I know that TGITW is basically a more sophisticated (in intent, perhaps not in execution) version of the character manifestos which made AUT’s characters so real (in my opinion). So I know from experience that this type of writing is going to help me get into the mind of my character, and I will be grateful to myself later when I am on more solid footing with her.
• Extra content for the website! Except, not for, like, ever. This book isn’t even contracted yet, and TGITW would be total spoiler territory, so it’ll be a while. But still! The me of three years from now will thank the me of today.

In a semi-related note, I think it’s about time I started rolling out some more hidden content. It’s been a while since the last time we added a doll to the site. I’ve got a couple of things up my sleeve, so be sure to check back over the next few months. I’ve also got this ridiculous plan where I will post the character manifesto for the killer in AUT, but it will be password protected, so I’ve got to talk to Eric about how we’re going to do that. It probably won’t go up until the book’s been out for a while, though. Still, I think it’s a pretty cool idea.

So I’m watching Ugly Betty again (and thus commences another television-themed blog post). I know, I know, that show went downhill once they made Henry get Charlie pregnant and move back to Tuscon and then move back to New York and then mess with Betty’s feelings for a season and a half and THEN, rudeness of all rudeness, try to pass off that Gio person as a reasonable rival for Betty’s affections. As if.

Anyway, I stopped watching. Except I caught maybe one episode last season, when Betty had just started to date Matt, the rich guy. And I don’t remember caring much about the episode but I do remember thinking “I miss Henry but that dude is CUTE”. I don’t know what made me watch the season premier on Hulu a few weekends ago, but I did, and I am TO-TA-LLY HOOKED, you guys! Mark and Amanda! How did I forget how much I loved them?!

But Matt, oh, my dear, sweet Matt. Apparently, he and Betty broke up at the end of last season because Betty kissed Henry (who was in town visiting from Tuscon with his new girlfriend, also known as Hazel from Gossip Girl with blonde hair and a spray tan) and Matt saw and Matt’s heart went kersplat! all over the sidewalk but because he’s totally not over it, not even a little bit, he got a job as Betty’s new boss at Mode and is now being a complete jerk all over the place and barely doing his job because he’s too busy trying to get Betty to feel at least some of the pain he’s feeling. Mission accomplished!

I feel him, I really do. He’s so in love with Betty and all he wants is to be back together with her, but he’s so angry at her and she’s playing it so cool that he can’t get there. He’s just hurting himself, you know, because the meaner he is to her, the longer he keeps taking it out on her professionally, the less chance there is for them to get back together. But I also get Betty’s position–he’s being such a dick to her! She regrets kissing Henry and even though the show isn’t so great about telling us what Betty feels for Matt (way to make her less sympathetic, show), I SUSPECT she’s still in love with him.

In the middle of watching one of the latest episodes on Hulu, I went into the kitchen to get some iced tea and asked my roommate, “Have you ever watched Ugly Betty?” And she’s like, “I’m watching it right now!” Which is why we live together, by the way. So I launched into my opinionz about Matt, and said, “Betty needs to stick up for herself and he needs to shape up or I’m going to get off the Matt train.”

(Which is what we say about boys each other likes when they’re in our good graces: “I’m totally on the so-and-so-train.” Not even clever! But still true.)

Anyway, is it wrong that I love everyone on that show except Betty? She’s all, wah wah, my boss/ex is being mean to me, and no one likes me at work, which, NO ONE EVER LIKED YOU AT MODE, BETTY. Also, you’re not very good at your job. I mean, come on. After many, many seasons and many, many opportunities to “discover” that Mode and fashion “aren’t superficial”, she’s still hungering after the meatier stories. WELL OKAY THEN. Quit. Ugh.

I have no sympathy for Betty. She is a grand idiot. First of all, when Matt asked her at the end of last season if she still loved Henry, she was all, “Well, there’s a part of me that always will.” NO! That is not the answer! The answer is, “No, Matt, I love you.” I’m single and I know this! It’s not rocket surgery. I resent having to live vicariously through her in order to enjoy the rest of the show, but I’ll do it, for Matt. And Marc and Amanda and Hilda and Justin and sometimes Daniel.

Matt’s totally my new fake boyfriend.

You remember how I was telling you all that I’m writing a book about two estrange sisters, that I’m calling CH, not because that has anything to do with the title, which is constantly changing although I think I might’ve settled on something, but because those are the initials of the sisters? Well, that’s going pretty well, actually. I’m 190 pages into the zero draft–you know, the version of the book that’s so crappy you can’t show it to anyone because you’ll die of embarrassment if anyone finds out just how bad a writer you actually are?

Sunshine and roses today on the Jarzab blog, you guys!

Anyway, it’s going really well. I know! You thought I was going to complain. Writing this book has been an interesting experience for me–continues to be, really, since I’m not done with it, or even close. It’s been interesting because it’s been difficult to immerse myself to the level that I’ve found myself immersed in other books in the past–even GR, which I’ve been writing on and off this year as well, is much more alive in my head than CH has been. The characters in CH–C and H, mostly–have been hard to get to know.

I’m writing this book without an outline. That’s a little different for me. I’m writing GR with an outline, because it needs one, but I can only get so far on the outline without doing some serious research/puzzle creating, and I don’t have time right now, which is why all my writing energy is devoted to CH. But writing CH without an outline was purposeful, because I knew that I wasn’t going to really acquaint myself with my characters any other way. I had to let them lead the way because I didn’t know them well enough to guide them. I’m still trying to get to know especially H, because she’s difficult to penetrate, but I think more will come in the first draft.

Which leads to the point of this post–I’m over halfway done with CH! Which is cause for celebration. I always assume my books are going to be around 300 pages, because that’s been the truth so far with AUT and MB. They’re usually a little bit shorter than 300 and then expand in the revisions process, because I tend to focus on advancing action and character through dialogue, and then Joanna and my editor are like, “How about some introspection here? And here? And here?” So stuff gets added, which is funny because I feel like most writers have to cut in revisions, and I always have to beef things up a bit.

Of course, this is where all the hard work comes in. I’ve been setting my characters up for a major emotional rollercoaster, and now I’m about to plunge them straight down into it. There’s a lot going on in this section, so it’s important to keep it taught and well-paced. I very much adhere to the Kurt Vonnegut quote: “Every sentence must do one of two things–reveal character or advance the action.” Although, while true about sentences, it’s absolutely true about scenes. I try to never have a scene in my books that doesn’t do one of those two things, because I just think readers have more important things to do than listen to a character wax poetical for five pages.

(That’s not to say I always succeed; there’s two pages in MB that will almost certainly get cut in the revisions process with my editor, because my narrator makes this long, drawn-out, fairly specious comparison between falling in love and living in New York that makes sense to, like, only people who live in New York, which is not many of my readers. I love it, and I’ll fight tooth and nail to keep it in because I think it’s an interesting way to talk about how people relate to each other, but, you know, we’ll see.)

This is entirely unrelated to all the stuff I’ve just written, but I found this cute fake Polaroid picture on my friend Shannel’s blog and I wanted to post it (this is Shannel and I with our friend Carmen at her wedding). Look, it’s the ubiquitous blue dress!

I put up a new post at The A Team about recording an interview for the audio book of All Unquiet Things. It was such a fun, cool experience, and I hope I wasn’t too much of a spaz (scratch that, I know I was, but hopefully in the most amusing way possible). The Random House audio people are the best. It went really well, and I am psyched.