See? Inspirational. And wotz more (yes, there's more) the lovely Jen Klein has some great recent posts.

My inspirely moment came when I read her 'Accidental Procrastination Post'  from April 24, 2012 http://bit.ly/Mo7J5M )

Of all her blog content, her amazalous content and bio, you may wonder why this particular post fired my enthusiasm up a notch. Firstly, she used the word 'procrastination' which always catches my eye, and second, she answered a list of momentously important questions about what really matters in life.

I just have to answer these questions myself - I can't help it. I have to. I can't resist when I know the answers. My apologies for hijacking my own blog snog, (though only small inconsequential apologies that I clearly don't mean.)

Here goes!

What's your ultimate caffeine source?

Easy. Tea, and occasionally coffee, but mostly tea. The crazy thing is, tea soothes me and helps me sleep. Go figure.

If you were stranded on an island, what book would you like to have with you?

You may think this is a hard question but not for me. It'd be 'The Complete Guide to Surviving on an Island'.

Your favorite music source?

Used to be my iPod Nano til it got stolen. Then my iPod Touch til it got stolen. Now I stick with CD and radio, though - thieves you'll be glad to hear this - I'm planning to get an MP3 in the near future.

Author you'd like to emulate?

Now the questions are getting tougher. Can I cheat and change the question to 'Authors'? Was that a yes? Thought so! I'd love, love, love to write like Bill Bryson tailored for MG readers, plot like Meghan Whalen Turner, develop characters like Gary Schmidt, create worlds like Jo Rowling, do action like Rick Riordan, laugh like Louise Rennison, be quirky like Lemony Snicket, be as talented as Scott Westerfeld - and look like Jen Klein (does that count?)

Favorite day of the week?

The one I'm in. Especially if I'm still breathing.

Favorite TV show?

Can I cheat and change the question to 'Shows'? ... Didn't think so, but since this is my blog, I'll cheat if I want to. I'm gonna say Backyardigans and Roly Poly Oly and SpongeBob SquarePants, but not necessarily in that order.

Movie you're planning to watch on the big-screen?

... and in 3D if poss: The Hobbit. BIG fan of Martin Freeman. Big, big fan of Peter Jackson's interpretation of Tolkein.

Actress/Actor you'd most like to meet?

It's a toss up between Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan - I'd like to snog with Martin Freeman

Author you'd love to have lunch with?

Louise Rennison. Lots of laughing=little eating.

Harry Potter or Hunger Games?

My deepest fantasy is go dwell in a novel of my choice - which is what happens (in a way) when I get immersed in a story. You guess which I'd rather read and which I'd rather experience ...

Phew.




 

I know you've all been waiting for this week's snog since I announced it would be a little different than my previous snogs - so here it is!

FIRST, I want to introduce you to my snogee's Teen novel (being released in October 2012) Samurai Awakening. It's the kind of cover that gives me goosebumps. I can't wait to read it!

And here's the blurb from Samurai Awakening's Facebook page: which you can like at http://www.facebook.com/jitsugensamurai

David Matthews is having a particularly bad day, after an especially bad month. His first weeks as an exchange student in Japan have left him homesick and misunderstood by nearly everyone around him, even his host family! Beaten down by a month of loneliness and bullies at school, a fateful invitation to the local Shinto shrine sends David on a path no foreigner has experienced before.

After awakening with a newfound ability to speak Japanese, David learns the members of the Matsumoto family are far more than just traditional sword smiths. They are the keepers of ancient secrets, and a task set upon them by the first Emperor- to train new Jitsugen Samurai, protectors of Japan.

When more strange things begin happening to David, he discovers his future is tied to a Japanese god within him, and that to be a Jitsugen Samurai holds consequences he may not survive. With his new family, friends, and a reluctant ally, David must fight against dangers far closer than any of them realize. As students disappear, David must overcome his past, and accept a new and uncertain future in time to stop the lurking darkness threatening Japan.


I had to snog Ben Martin's blog and that's when I found out Benjamin is a ver, ver
interesting guy. More Things Japanese http://morethingsjapanese.com/?tag=benjamin-martin isn't an author blog but Benjamin's entertaining and informative site about Japan - everything Japanese, with pictures! (I love pictures and Benjamin's a talented photographer among many things).

In Benjamin's words:  This is my fourth year in Japan.  After graduating college, I joined the JET Programme (Japanese Exchange and Teaching).  Its a program run by the Japanese government to bring native speakers from all over the world to teach English and a few other languages to students up to High School age.  I was placed on an island with a population of just 500 and lived there for three years.  It was an amazing experience, and prompted me to start writing.  I'm still in Okinawa, but moved to a slightly larger island (8,000 people) last year where I teach elementary and junior high at 8 schools.  My goal in writing it to help bridge cultural and linguistic gaps between East and West through fictional story-telling and my blog (Samurai Awakening is fiction but draws on a lot of my experiences working with junior high students in Japan).

You might want to check out Benjamin's publishers Tuttle Publishing too.

Now you know why I was excited to feature his blog - and I didn't even know I was interested in anything Japanese until I visited. I actually feel more informed and am happy for it. Shocking.

Bonus! Who'd'a thunk? The kind (and possibly slightly mad)
Jody Jensen Shaffer has posted an interview with yours truly on her blog Just Kidding ... I kid you not.

Here's the link if you fancy a looky http://jodyjensenshaffer.blogspot.ca/

What a nice (and possibly slightly mad) lady. Thanks, Jody!  
(your check's in the mail ... just kidding)

My 6th Blog Snog and it's a doozey! The lovely, lovely, Kami Kinard willingly (yes, willingly) submitted her blog for a snog and I am ver glad she did. Yessims.

Kami interviews brainy females every other Monday, and features quotable nerdy chicks on Fridays. Don't expect to see me there any time soon but DO visit. I spent a thoroughly enjoyable morning skiving there yesterday.

She's posted interviews recently with Joanna Cole, who wrote the Magic School Bus series, Maya Lin who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D. C., and Kelly Starling Lyons, author of the moving picture book, Ellen's Broom - and there will be more great posts about brillo nerdy chicks.


Kami has a website http://www.kamikinard.com where you can find out more about her and her newly released MG novel 'The Boy Project' which looks marvy - and if Publishers Weekly are to be believed (yessims indeedy) she's created

"...a highly credible middle-school universe of popular girls, dorky boys, unpredictable teachers, and volatile loyalties; she hits all the right notes as Kara learns that first opinions are rarely accurate and that the scientific method does not always apply to human beings.”

That's all the snogging for this week but I'll introduce you  to a slightly different snogee next week (those are my eyebrows waggling) who promises to be most fascinating. It'll prove (again) that I only snog quality blogs and that even I have a lot more to learn ... okay, that I especially have a lot more to learn.

Toodles!

Get your party hat on and bring out the noise makers!

As promised, I'm here with bells ringing to introduce you to the amazing Lisa Amoritz. She looks like someone well worth knowing, and she is. Yes indeedy. She's my bud. My head is swelling as I say it and there's a leak in my eye.

Today is the day she is doing a big reveal of the cover artwork & book trailer for her fabby YA novel BREAKING GLASS which will be released in June 2013 (as long as those Mayans are wrong about the world ending this year.)

It's truly something to be excited about! Here's a short blurby so you know what to anticipate:

BREAKING GLASS  by Lisa Amoritz
On the night seventeen-year-old Jeremy Glass winds up in the hospital with a broken leg and a blood alcohol level well above the legal limit, his secret crush, Susannah, disappears. When he begins receiving messages from her from beyond the grave, he's not sure whether they're real or if he's losing his grip on reality. Clue by clue, he gets closer to unraveling the mystery, and soon realizes he must discover the truth or become the next victim himself.

So hurry to Lisa's blog and, before you go, TAKE A LOOK AT THE COVER (below)! Tis a work of art from the most talented Lisa herself (yeah!) and her fabbity fab TRAILER on her blog mustn't be missed.

There is MUCH awesomeness to see!  http://lisa-amowitzya.blogspot.ca/

It's Thursday - are you ready? - it's time for a blog snog! Get out your horns and come toot with me ;)

I know I promised a snog with Lisa Amoritz next, but she has asked me to snog tomorrow to catch her book cover and trailer reveal for her forthcoming YA book, Breaking Glass ... so we get a double dose of snogging this week!

Today my girlish excitement knows no bounds because I'm snogging the adorable
Ellen Oh of http://elloecho.blogspot.ca/ 

It's hard to find a pic of Ellen because (I suspect) she's a little camera shy, but this awesome snap by Robin Shotola is on her blog - along with a link to the most talented Ms Robin's site (it really is worth a visit) - so I've shared it here.
Now you can see that Ellen is real.

What's bestest about Ellen, fondly known in the writing community as Ello, is that she's involved in The Enchanted Inkpot (check out her special interview with Stacy Whitman, Tu Books, and Kimberly Pauley  http://bit.ly/JjH1c3 ) Verla Kay's Blueboards, and a ton of other on-line writerly sites. If you hurry to her blog, Hello Ello, you'll catch her series on DIVERSITY - 'What Diversity Means to Me' - that she ran through April 2012.

My personal intro to Ellen's blog was through a series of posts she ran in 2011 about the kind of writerly advice you'd give your younger self (assuming you had a time machine and a waver for possible paradoxes and universal destruction) aptly titled, 'What's the BEST WRITERLY ADVICE You'd Give Your Younger Self'.

Harper Collins Childrens are releasing Ellen's first novel, Prophecy: The Dragon King Chronicles in 2013, and they couldn't have picked a better writer to publish.

Okay, that's me snogged-out for the day.

You're welcome back tomorrow to see what Lisa Amoritz has to knock your socks off. It's sure to be good.

My critique buddies are doing wildly exciting whootin-tootin things on their blogs so I HAVE to snog. When I tell you that I shuffle in homage behind these writers I'm not fibbing. You'll get to know who they are over the next few weeks. You've already met the amazing Heidi Ayarbe in my previous snog and today I`m snogging the sickeningly brilliant

Don't let her sweet demeanor fool you, the woman's a killer writer and has more ideas than should be legal. She wrote the creepyish, is-it-steampunk? novel for older MG, The Boneshaker, and now her next book which is a prequel, though I prefer to consider it a 'relative', as in, it's related - is The Broken Lands. It'll be released to our hungry hands on September 4, 2012, and can be pre-ordered at Amazon, and your nearest independent bookstore if you ask nicely.


  AND, my quintessential Kate has come up with the truly innovative and most exceptionally brilliant idea of self publishing extras about this intriguing world she's created. It's called The Kairos Mechanism.

The equally sickeningly talented
Lisa Amoritz http://lisa-amowitzya.blogspot.ca/ (next weeks' snog. It`s going to be a humdinger) has posted a piece by Kate that's a must-read.

Today it's April 10th, 2012, yes it is! (okay, I'm a little tardy due to minor crises and a limp - but humor me) and the worldwide premiere of Heidi Ayarbe's trailer for her new book, WANTED (being released in May, 2012).

What's more - Heidi is giving away a signed copy to a lucky blog-visitor. So, GO, go now to http://heidiayarbe.blogspot.ca/

CHECK OUT the most excellent TRAILER!
I have a link to youtube here: http://youtu.be/GnYCkqT09_0 

Here's what all the excitement is about:

A one-word text message: That's all Michal "Mike" Garcia needs to gather a crowd.

Mike is a seventeen-year-old bookie, and Sanctuary is where she takes bets for anyone at Carson High with enough cash. Her only rule: Never participate, never place a bet for herself.
Then Josh Ellison moves to town. He pushes Mike to live her life, to feel a rush of something -- play the game, he urges, stop being a spectator.
So Mike breaks her one rule. She places a bet, feels the rush.
And loses.
In an act of desperation, she and Josh -- who has a sordid past of his own -- concoct a plan: The pair will steal from Carson City's elite to pay back Mike's debt. Then they'll give the rest of their haul to those who need it most. How can burglary be wrong if they are making things right?
WANTED will thrust readers into the gritty underbelly of Carson City, where worth is determined by a score, power is derived from threat, and the greatest feat is surviving it all.

And make sure to scroll down to where Heidi is having another contest with the talented Lisa Amoritz http://lisa-amowitzya.blogspot.ca/ for a blog banner make-over as first prize, and Heidi's teen novel, COMPULSION (with swag) as second prize.

 
I'm a little late to the party but http://www.teenwritersbloc.com/ wasn't, and neither was Christine Johnson at http://www.christinejohnsonbooks.com/blog/ or Lisa Amoritz at http://lisa-amowitzya.blogspot.ca/  who are all worthy of a Blog Snog, yes indeedy.

Now I need to limp off and think up a tricky alias so I can enter the contest and win, mwahaha!

Whoot! It's time for my second Blog Snog, and this week I'm snogging with Chris Eboch and Jody Jensen Shaffer whose blogs are definitely snoggable.

Chris Eboch has an amazing blog full of succulent writerly advice - stuff you'll hoover up - like "Hooks", "Finding Ideas", "Advanced Plotting", "Characterization" as wells as frequent guest posts.

So, who is she? Obv a most talented author (check out her books, the "Haunted" series for 8-12yr olds which follows a brother and sister who travel with their parents’ ghost hunter TV show and try to help the ghosts. Ver cool. And her latest, "The Eyes of Pharaoh", a mystery set in ancient Egypt; as well as "The Well of Sacrifice", a Mayan drama used in many schools) AND Chris is a most excellent editor.

Chris Eboch: writing teacher, critiquer, and author of books for children and adults, posts articles on the craft of writing on Fridays, with occasional guests or industry topics on Wednesdays, shares her stuff at her fabby blog http://chriseboch.blogspot.ca/.

My second snogger is the (also) talented Jody Jensen Shaffer whose blog, "Just Kidding" is an excellent resource for parents and teachers looking for good non-fiction work. Jody's written so many books, poems and articles my head's spinning. The very best way to find out about them all is to give you her link http://jodyjensenshaffer.blogspot.ca/ and let you go oggle for yourself.

  These are her latest books, both covering social studies economics for third graders,    and Jody has FOUR biographies coming out in Fall 2012 about TAYLOR SWIFT (who's a bit of a poet herself. She won a national poetry  contest in 4th grade for her poem, “Monster In My Closet”): TAYLOR LAUTNER (whose dream role would be a Matt   Damon-like character in the Bourne series): LEA MICHELE (who 'on a whim' at 8yrs old  auditioned and won the role of "young Cosette" in the Broadway production of Les Miserables), and DWAYNE 'THE ROCK' JOHNSON (who was six feet tall and weighed 170 pounds at 13yrs old. Surprisingly, kids were actually brave enough to tease him about his size.)

Jody's other writerly accomplishments include TWO more biographies that are due out in the spring of 2013 and a picture book,  'US TIME', tentatively scheduled for release in 2014. Now I'm starting to feel sick ... some people are WAY too prolific and should slow down ;)

Next week I have more snogging to do - in fact, I shall be getting close and personal with a number of exceptional writers, illustrators and bloggers of interest over the next month. Can't wait! Several have offered GIVE-AWAYS which means FREE BOOKS, squeeeeal!

A quote I have from a fellow loon goes, "All who tooteth not their own horn, their horn shall go untooteth."

But it seems to me that it's unlikely anyone is going to listen to me tooting my own horn, not to mention that it'd produce violent earache and nausea, so I've taken it upon myself to toot horns for others.

I enjoy it and it's much easier on the ear (is that a nod of agreement I see?) AND, I hasten to add, it means you get to see other great writerly Blog content which you'd miss otherwise.

So let the Blog Snog begin!

First up is Jeff Carney at http://www.jeffcarney.net/blog/ which I guarantee you'll enjoy as well as find informative - just look at some of the topics of his posts: Grammar Myths 1, Thoughts on Naming Characters, and Fiction is a Series of Events.

Jeff teaches English at Snow College in Central Utah, and I quote from his impressively HUGE bio (how old are you, Jeff?)
...which is pretty good advice and most definitely essential for any writer to follow - and he looks like a fun kinda guy, doesn't he.

Next I shall Snog with Jody Jensen Shaffer and Chris Eboch ... and there's more - much, much more - snogging to come ... mwahaha!