When he got to our house, he was scared of everything! The front door. The bathroom. The guy mowing the lawn outside. The chihauhau duo next door. Getting in the car. Getting out of the car. Plastic bags most of all. The woman we adopted him from had saved him from a kill shelter and thinks he was abused by his last owner. But he seems to get more and more energy the more love we give him. In the four days we’ve had him, he’s come out of his shell and has a very warm and funny personality.

Today I took him hiking in Runyon Canyon. It is amazing how many people want to talk to you when you have a puppy. He make a lot of dog friends. He bounded up to the summit of the park. He  tried to flirt with Kristin Cavallari’s Yorkie (he’s clearly adjusting to the Hollywood scene very well). Then he passed out in the car on the way home.

He likes to curl up under my desk while I’m writing, which is good, because I think we’ll both be spending a lot of time there. I am turning in the final (I HOPE!) draft of Torment to Random House on Monday, and very soon, it will be time to start working on the prequel!

On Friday, right before Valentines Day, “Daniel” hit Times Square to promote Fallen. People often ask me my favorite part of writing teen novels.  I’m not embarrassed at all to say that promo events like this are dangerously close to the top of the list? Look at this! It’s fantastic!

While Daniel was busy wooing the ladies of New York, I ventured back up to northern California for my first ever TV appearance. I used to watch Good Day Sacramento when I lived in Winters while I was in grad school, so it was a lot of fun (and very nervewracking) to be asked on as a guest. Here’s a shot of me prepping in the Green Room and a link to the clip on Good Day’s website. (It will load, eventually, on the right side of the page.)

I’ve been friends with my oldest, closest friend Megan since we were three. We met in pre-school, spent every waking second we were allowed to together as kids, tormented her little brother together, were tormented by my older brother together, and ran up enormous phone bills when we moved away from each other to go to college. We have the kind of friendship where I’m not really sure something big has happened to me until I’m able to pick up the phone and tell Megan.

I had to borrow all this snow gear. I was not prepared!

These days, we live across the country from each other, but this weekend, I had the best time going to visit her and her family in Virginia. It snowed a foot (which was a foot less than was predicted) and we pretty much hunkered down at her house outside of Charlottesville for the entire weekend. Bread was baked. Homemade applesauce simmered on the stove. Games of Bananagram were played. Long, snowy walks in the woods were taken. Her brother worked next door slaughtering a pig and making it into scrapple. Do not ask what scrapple is. You do not want to know. Basically: it was some good old country fun for this citified girl.

But the best part of the weekend were the long, rambling conversations that always make me feel like when I’m with Megan, I am home.

I know that I write love stories. I know that’s sort of “the point.” But: It’s so good to be reminded of how essential good friends are. In life, in stories, in everything we do. Because what good is being in love if you can’t gush about it to your best friend?

Megan was my original inspiration for Luce’s character (more in appearance than personality), but she’s a big inspiration for the relationships Luce has with her friends in Fallen (and later in Torment). We don’t get to see each other half as often as we’d like anymore, but she’s a huge part of who I am, and it was beautiful to see her life with her new family, her warm and giving husband, John, and the world’s smiliest baby, Oliver.

There's the car down at the bottom.

My husband launched his car off this cliff a half an hour before hour wedding. Some of you already know this little story, but for those of you who don’t: Relax! No one was in the car, no one was hurt (save an olive tree that was split in two), and our wedding was pret-ty perfect after that. As the Jewish side of the family was quick to point out: “What’s a wedding without a little broken glass?”

I bring this up now because the car we bought to replace the wrecked one is a stick shift. And I have never driven a stick shift. So the time has come for me to learn.

I take that back. When I was fifteen, a boy I had a crush on gave me a lesson driving his car in a parking lot. I don’t remember what kind of car it was (junky, red) or even how it happened that I got him to agree to teach me. But I was so fearless—popping the clutch, grinding the transmission—I didn’t even know how fearless I was. He was cringing in the passenger seat, then scowling, then yelling at me to get out of the car.  Never worked out between us, in case you were wondering.

Fast forward to this weekend, when Jason and I decide to go out to the desert (where it is flatter than hilly LA) for a couple of days so I could get comfortable driving a manual car. So there we are: out on the open road, entering the surreally beautiful Joshua Tree National Park.

Healing waters at our hotel in Desert Hot Springs

I take the wheel—and suddenly, I’m terrified.

Do I look nervous?

Why was it so much harder than I remembered when I was fifteen and didn’t even know how to drive at all? Maybe, I realized later, because I was fifteen and didn’t even know how to drive at all. This weekend, that fearlessness I felt at fifteen seemed impossible. Not when there were cars honking and flipping me off at four-way stops, not with all the false starts and shuddering shut-downs. Jason, it must be said, was patient as a little saint. I was the one growing more and more frustrated. Yes, there were some tears.

The trope about teaching old dogs new tricks kept springing to mind. But come on, I’m not that old. The premise of one of my favorite childhood movies, Defending Your Life, was starting to make sense in a whole new way. Is it possible that the older we get, the rarer—and more difficult—it becomes to pick up a truly new skill? Do we have too many excuses and too many reservations? If all that’s true, then what’s the quickest way around fear?

I was thinking about this when we left the desert yesterday (with Jason driving) to head to a reading and signing at the Borders in Long Beach. The passage I read was from the prologue of the novel where Luce is at her most fearless with Daniel.

It blew me away to see so many people turn out for the reading!

After my driving lesson, I wanted to focus to this brave opening moment in Fallen, and I realized I want to write more and more scenes like it in the books to come in the series. Maybe there’s even a bit of hope that some of this bold impulsiveness will rub off on my life off the page. It’s what’s so beautiful to me about teen stories. It’s why young adult writers get to focus on falling in love, and leave break-ups and baggage to adult books. Because vaulting oneself into something new and unknown—whether it’s driving a stick shift or falling in love—is much easier with a little bit of fearlessness.

The Fallen display at the ALA Midwinter conference in Boston. Sounds like it was a great weekend!

From my reading last night at the Borders in Mission Viejo. Thanks to Carlos and Rose at the store and to the great group who braved the apocalyptic storm to come out!

When I was ten months old, my mother made an appointment with our ear doctor because she thought I was deaf. Hearing the story told for the first time to my husband recently, I was impressed by my mom’s verve as she relayed the family lore. Her eyes lit up telling of the placid way I’d stare into space when she tried to reason with me, how often I ignored my name being called.

A half-hour doctor’s visit revealed perfectly sound hearing in both my ears, and left only one explanation: at less than a year old, I was already selectively hearing my mother. (This is when my dad chimes in: “smart kid.”)

When people invoke the term “selective memory” or when my mother refers to my lifelong “selective hearing,” they’re referring to a way of tuning out what, for whatever reason, we don’t want to retain. Those terms get a bad rap, but I’d like to make a case for selective reading—tuning out or tuning up certain moments in a narrative—as a key to reading fiction.

When readers and reviewers talk about the “worlds” within my novels, I often have a hard time taking credit for them. Descriptive passages are some of the most challenging for me to write. Scenes that exist in vivid, specific detail in my mind often have to be teased out of me by my editor and agent. I’d like to say this isn’t laziness, but a desire to leave enough to the imagination of my readers.

One of the things I love most about reading is sharing in the author’s effort to create the world of a story. The books I open again and again always require active participation on my end; they insist that I split the creative load fifty-fifty with the author.

For example, I know that the light across the bay at Daisy’s house is green, but Fitzgerald leaves it up to me to imagine Gatsby’s nightly posture as he stares at it, how dim his own great house is behind him, and the precise angle at which Nick watches him doing this. No one else will ever read Gatsby in just the same way I read it, no one will picture the characters in just the same way I do. To share in the invention of a world is to do something powerful. It allows for an important intimacy between a reader and a book.

I get a lot of questions from parents of teenagers asking whether Fallen, my book about the earthly affairs of fallen angels, is appropriate for their daughter. Yesofcourse, bellows my publisher’s voice inside of me, but the truth is, I have no idea. I don’t know who you are, what your kid is like or wants to be like, whether a love scene might strike you as too illicit and your daughter as too tepid—or vice versa.

The most honest answer I can give invokes selective reading. Being in control of half of the story allows us readers to make a sex scene just as racy or just as comfortable as we want. To make monsters or murderers only as terrifying as we want them to be. This imaginative freedom and control is what makes many of us prefer books to their movie versions. It’s what allows a story—one that might be worlds away from anything we’ll ever experience—not just to speak to us, but to fill in gaps in our own lives. It’s what causes the same reader to have vastly different experiences reading a book at eighteen and again at sixty-eight. And maybe what gives mothers and daughters opposite—yet equally satisfying—reading experiences when they crack open a paranormal teen romance.

Speaking of mothers and daughters, I’ve been listening to mine more and more. But I supposed in other areas, I haven’t changed so much from the stubborn kid tuning her out: today, when I crack open a book, I bring my own constantly changing expectations and desires. I read selectively to bring myself closest to the world inside that book, and to bring the book closest to my world beyond the page.

Here’s a pic from a book signing I did in LA with my friend Anna Carey, author of Sloane Sisters. It was a lot of fun, filled with cookies and enthusiasm–if you don’t count the one angry dude who walked into the store and barked at us because we didn’t know where the bird guides were. “You don’t work here? You’re just sitting in the middle of the store then?” Yes, sir.

Bird guides aside, my weekend was a relaxing mix of football watching, picture hanging (officially the last step in Moving Into a New Place), Mexican food eating at my new watering hole, El Compadre, and lots of Torment revising. I’m about halfway through the second draft and it’s hard to contain my excitement about this book. I hope it’s worth the wait until September!

My blog tour continues this week with a few added stops, on at Bitten by Books on Tuesday, and two more at SUVUDU and The Undeath Match (both on Thursday). And I have a reading and a signing in Mission Viejo on Tuesday night. Hope to see some SoCal-ers representing!

January 11^th Beatrice

January 12^th Through a Glass Darkly

January 13^th A Patchwork of Books

January 14^th The Reading Zone

January 15^th The Children’s Book Review

January 20^th TeenReads.com

January 21^st The Book Butterfly

January 26^th CynthiaLeitichSmith.com

I also have a few upcoming events in Southern California, so those of you who live nearby, please come out!

On Saturday, January 16th, I’ll be signing books at Chevaliers in Los Angeles from 1-3pm.

On Tuesday, January 19th, I’ll be reading from Fallen and signing books at the Borders in Mission Viejo at 7pm.

On Saturday, January 30th, I’ll be reading from Fallen and signing books at the Borders in Long Beach at 2pm.

When I was in Arkansas recently for the holidays, my publisher sent 300 copies of Fallen to my mother in law’s house for me to sign for the ALA mid-winter conference. It was a tough job, but at least I had a helper:

I wish my nephew David Franklin could come to all of my signings with me, but I understand he’s got other things on his plate.

That’s all for now. If you’re local, I hope you can make it to one of these upcoming bookstore events! If you’re reading this from afar, I hope you’ll join me on my blog tour.

Have a great weekend, everyone. Tonight I’m going to see a double feature of Crazy Heart (an overdue birthday present to Jason) and Youth in Revolt (because Michael Cera is the bomb). Living on the edge here!

My niece Jordan

then drove up to Arkansas to see this little cookie monster:

My nephew David Franklin

before we head to New Orleans for New Years Eve and then jet back home to L.A. Altogether, a pretty perfect holiday break! It’s been so cool to see copies of Fallen and The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove under some nearby Christmas trees. I hope everyone is enjoying the break, relaxing with family, and having some holiday cheer.

Now it’s time for me to give a shout-out to the three winners of my Natalie Hargrove giveaway contest!

*drumroll pls*

Congratulations to Avonlea, Elie, and Kristen!

Thanks everyone for entering and for sharing all of your brilliant suggestions for dog names. The jury is still out, but now we’re armed with lots of good ideas. Will keep you posted when we pick our pooch next month.

I also wanted to share this short video interview that I filmed while on tour in Savannah. Thanks to Random House for putting this together!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I can’t get enough of this Bridezilla song in the beautiful Fallen trailer from Australia.

I am home at my parents’ house for the holidays and last night, I did a reading and signing at Legacy Books in Plano, TX. It was great to promote Fallen and The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove in my home town, in front of so many friends and family members, and at such an amazing bookstore! 

Legacy Books feels more like a university library to me. Check out the fancy monitors behind me. Three stories, so many sections (even a big paranormal section), and a great YA selection. They also have a test kitchen for demonstrations when cookbook authors come to do events. Maybe in my next life I can come back as a cook book author. My reading followed on the heels of Sarah Palin’s deal there last week. I hear there was weeping at hers. No one wept at mine.

I have a nineteen month old neice who is calling my name (or something close enough to my name, La La), so I’m off to play with her. But I will close with the reminder that there are just eight more days left to enter the Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove giveaway contest!