Monday Madness

Hi everyone! Happy President's Day!

My boys are home from school, it's cold out (well, cold for us here in Jacksonville. It's 32 degrees outside and the frost has made our grass crunchy.:D) and with clear skies, I can feel it's going to be a great day.

A quick post today, about tunes and Valentines and NIL and my morning epiphany.:)

Top five things on my mind this morning:

5. My first post over at All The Write Notes. I blogged about fresh new artist finds, featuring a British singer-songwriter Hannah Trigwell. I LOVE HER. Go check out the post. It's worth it, I promise, just to hear her voice.

4. Tomorrow is my first post over the The Valentines! I'm interviewing the awesome Anita Grace Howard, the authored of the epically cool novel, SPLINTERED. There will be goodness and giveaways, because Anita is that amazing.

3. I am freezing.

Which leads me to the revelation that...

2. I am a wimp. I should go running yet I can't bring myself to go out when it's still under 40 degrees, which is ridiculous.:)

1. NIL. I woke up thinking about it's cover. Or what it's cover might look like. I've had a million different ideas, and I can't wait to see what Henry Holt does with it, because they are AWESOME with covers.

I don't know when the cover reveal will be, but I'll let you know as soon as I do. :) In the meantime, I'm, going to start sharing my NIL playlist soon. Some songs are for Thad, and some are for Charley. And the songs, like the two characters, are very different, but hopefully equally awesome.:)

Happy day! What's on your mind today?

A Sweet Treat

Tomorrow is going to be full of AWESOME.

Why, you ask?

I know what you're thinking... It's Valentine's Day, the same day flowers inexplicably shoot up to 10x their usual price, chocolate is guzzled like water and people are suddenly overcome by the desire to write sappy haikus.

All true. (And I have homemade hearts and goofy stuff all over my house to prove it, which I totally love.:D) But the main reason I'm stoked for tomorrow is that The Valentines blog goes live!

Woohoo! It's a sweet site to find cool YA books debuting in 2014.  Fourteen cool YA authors Valentines with books dropping in 2014. You can find out their sweetest/goofiest/most memorable Valentine's Day memory, and enter to win heaps of our very favorite YA books.

Pop on over today if you have a minute. But definitely pop over tomorrow and in the days to come. We'll be talking books, interviewing authors and agents, engaging in shenanigans and possibly definitely embarrassing ourselves. :)

And it will be AWESOME.

So happy almost February 14th! And get ready to share the YA book love...

Friday Five Linkapalooza!

Happy Friday, y'all!

For today's Friday Five, I'm doing a quick blog-post-shout-out to my faves of the week.

5. On craft.

Killer post on how to add tension during revisions by talented (and sweet!) author Janice Hardy. This post is so awesome that I'm bookmarking it.

4. On books.

More interview goodness about YA debuts dropping in 2013 and more 2014 MG/YA book love to come! If you haven't checked out One Four Kid Lit yet, it's definitely worth a visit.

3. On music.

Who says music isn't educational?! A fun post by the cool music writer Jennifer Carney. On a related note, the All The Write Notes blog is up and running, and you still have time to enter and win a CD by The Rural Alberta Advantage. So pop over and enter; you've got time. :)

2. Just because it's hysterical and I don't want you to miss it. :)

Ok, so this post by the hilarious Tracey Neithercott had been up for a few weeks, but thanks to living in a cave full of NIL edits and tortilla chips, I didn't discover it until this week. :) And oh my land, IT'S HYSTERICAL. Tracey tells a story in YA book covers, and it's classic. YOU HAVE TO READ IT. And as a bonus, you might even discover a book to add to your TBR list. Tracey, you rock.

1. In which I leave Number One up to you.:)

Do you have a favorite post of the week? Let me know what I missed.:)

Until then, here's my favorite track of the week:

Mother Mother's Simply Simple. Enjoy! :)