August 6, 2008 • 18 Comments

I’m back……. I’m totally shattered…….. and I’m definitely going again!!!!

RWA was the most (cue American accent) awesome experience ever. It was so funny because while everyone was asking me to speak (they love the UK accent) all I wanted to do was listen to the American accent (it’s sooo cool).

Anyway…. highlights….. omg there were so many. So I think I’ll do it in pictures.

We got to hang out with some really cool authors:

Kelly Parra, Bethany Griffin, Ally Carter and Teri Brown

And some more:

(top) Marley Gibson, Me, Wendy Tolliver

(bottom) Simone Elkeles, Heather Davis, Dona Sarkar-Mishra, Tera Lynn Childs

More:

Amanda Ashby, Michelle Rowen, Megan Crane

Kiwi girls…. Petre, Giovanna, Nalini (Singh), Ellie, Zana, Iona, Amanda (front)

Me, Amanda and Laura (the best stalker in the world!!)

Me, Wendy Tolliver, Kay Cassidy (who won the Golden Heart…. very exciting)

Me at the Literacy signing

My good friends: Theresa Stevens (editor), Alexis Fleming (author), Me, Bobbie Cole (author).

Kiwi girls: Zana, Emily (Gee) double Rita finalist, Amanda, Iona

Amanda, Sarah (Golden Heart finalist), Tera Lynn Childs

So…………….. some of my photos…………………. and I must mention the ones who got away… for some reason I don’t have any photos of Alyson Noel (who is seriously a fabulous person), Maureen McGowan (another totally cool person), Cindy Procter-King (who I adored, fabulous sense of humour), Vanessa Barneveld (great girl… and tres chic), and Kristin Nelson (who’s great fun).

I’m already saving up for my next RWA conference. The workshops were amazing… especially the one by creativity coach Eric Maisel (I am sooo motivated now) and Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat (he’s an awesome presenter).

Another of the highlights was the literacy signing…. and I didn’t even need to bribe my friends to come and buy my book…..

I can’t recommend RWA enough, it was seriously the best conference ever!!

July 29, 2008 • 2 Comments

I’m thrilled to be touring Lara Zeises, aka Lola Douglas.

MORE CONFESSIONS OF A HOLLYWOOD STARLET – OUT IN PAPERBACK AS OF 2/28/08
Razorbill/Penguin Young Readers Group

Just when Morgan Carter was falling in love with the simple life she’d built in Fort Wayne, Indiana, her true identity as an infamous Hollywood starlet was exposed. Now Morgan has a choice to make: return to her glamorous movie star existence–or stick with the wholesome life, and the new love, she’s found in the Midwest.

In this sequel to True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet, Lola Douglas’s heartfelt prose and headstrong heroine return to delight readers.

1. What inspired the plot for your book?

MORE CONFESSIONS OF A HOLLYWOOD STARLET is my second installment in a series about Morgan Carter, who’s loosely based on a young Drew Barrymore (and not Lindsay Lohan, as most readers assume). At 16, Morgan OD’s outside of L.A.’s notorious viper room and almost dies. So her mother and agent ship her off to rehab for six months. When she emerges, she can’t get any work. So her agent cooks up this scheme in which Morgan will go live with a family friend in Indiana and attend high school undercover, then emerge a year later and write a tell-all novel that will re-launch her career. This is all in the first book, TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A HOLLYWOOD STARLET, which was adapted into a TV movie that premiers on Lifetime August 9th at 9 p.m.

So MORE CONFESSIONS picks up a month after Morgan’s been outed and has decided to stay in Indiana to finish out her school year. Only instead of constantly worrying about her secret identity getting exposed, now she’s faced with a whole new set of problems: the paparazzi stalking her on school grounds, her love interest feeling insecure now that he knows he’s involved with a famous actress, her mother pressuring her to lose weight and clean up her image, and an old co-star claiming to be involved with her because it makes for good press.

I’ve been a fan of Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries series since its inception, and I’d really wanted to try my hand at a diary format novel. So I tried to think of whose diary I’d want to read. Drew was the first person who popped into my mind. I chose Fort Wayne as the setting because I lived there for several months after college and it was a total culture shock. I thought, what better way to throw a teen starlet out of her element than to send her to a mostly land-locked state that’s a good three-hour drive from the nearest big city?

2. Why did you decide to write in this genre?

I kind of feel like YA decided on me and not the other way around. I actually went to grad school to learn how to write TV shows. Instead I ended up in this adolescent novel workshop and never looked back.

Sometimes when I’m giving presentations people ask me how I became an authentic teen writer, like did I eavesdrop on kids at the mall, or did I read a lot of teen magazines? And my answer is always the same: I didn’t really have to work at the teen part. That’s my voice, that’s my sensibility.

3. What is your writing process like?

Messy. I’m a plunger, not a plotter, though my new editor at Razorbill is trying to turn me into a plotter. She’s making me outline everything chapter by chapter and it feels completely foreign to me. It also takes away some of the mystery. Still, when I don’t outline I tend to have horribly messy first drafts. Then I end up rewriting seventy-five to ninety percent of the book on the second draft. I never do fewer than three drafts with editors, and that doesn’t include copyediting and galley proofs.

4. What are you working on now?

The next Lola book, actually. It’s tentatively titled FORGET YOU and was inspired, in part, but the Goldie Hawn ‘80s romp OVERBOARD. That’s about all I can say right now, except that it’s a totally fun project and I’m psyched to be banging out the first draft.

5. What do you do when you’re not writing?

I watch a lot of television. Probably too much television, honestly. I’m a sucker for competition-based reality TV shows, like PROJECT RUNWAY, TOP CHEF, and AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL. But I’m also passionate about quality scripted TV, like FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and THE OFFICE.

The other thing occupying most of my free time – these days, anyway – is wedding planning. I got engaged in early July, and even though we’re not getting married until February 2010, there’s already so much stuff to be done. It’s completely overwhelming.

6. Who do you like to read?

I love Sarah Dessen’s work. Not only is she an amazing writer, she’s one of the classiest people I know. She doesn’t get involved in the petty muckity-muck prevalent among a lot of YA authors. She just does her thing, and does it incredibly well.

I’m also a huge fan of fellow GCC’er E. Lockhart. When I read her latest solo project, THE DISREPUTABLE HISTORY OF FRANKIE LANDAU-BANKS, my first thought was, “My god, do I wish I’d written this myself.” She, like Sarah, inspires me to be a better writer.

BIO:

Lola Douglas is the author of True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet and its sequel More Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet. A TV movie adaptation of True Confessions starring multi-platinum recording artist Joanna “JoJo” Levesque and Golden Globe winner Valerie Bertinelli premieres on Lifetime August 9, 2008 at 9 p.m.

Lola also happens to be the alter ego of Lara Zeises, author of Bringing Up the Bones, an honor book for the 2001 Delacorte Press Prize Competition; Contents Under Pressure, winner of the 2006 Delaware Blue Hen Teen Book Award and a 2006 IRA Young Adult Choices selection; and Anyone But You. Lara holds an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College and lives in Delaware, where she grew up.

For all of the latest Lola updates, make sure to check out Lara’s LiveJournal at http://zeisgeist.livejournal.com.

July 24, 2008 • 9 Comments

So……………….. I’m back from my birthday celebration in Wellington….. five days of shopping, eating, movies, eating, having fun with the children, eating……. yes I did a lot of eating…..

And I have to tell you about this fab restaurant called Monsoon Poon. If you don’t already know, I’m lactose intolerant and can’t eat cows milk products. When I go into a restaurant I always have to ask the wait staff to find out from the chef what I can eat. I started to explain when the girl disappears and comes back with another menu, on which each dish is labelled whether it has dairy, gluten or nuts in it….. OMG!!!!!!! Why don’t all restaurants do this…. it would make my life much easier (I hate having to ask all the time!).

What else about the weekend…. oh yes….. I bought the most fab pair of ankle boots in the whole world…. I’ll be wearing them in San Fran so feel free to ask me to show you….. and a gorgeous black purse which was in the sale with nearly 60% off!!!!!!!

And of course i have to mention Mamma Mia. I haven’t laughed so much in ages. It truly was the most brilliant movie ever. I predict I’ll seeing it many more times. And I’m still singing all the songs to myself. Julie Walters totally stole the show…… though the scene at the end with all the cast (that’s all I’ll say) had me in total fits of laughter… especially Colin Firth…. he is just so funny.

Lastly……. 5 days til San Fran……………….

July 15, 2008 • 5 Comments

I saw this on Amanda’s blog and thought I’d have a go. The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. How do you do?

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

July 10, 2008 • 9 Comments

No, I’m not miserable (I don’t do the miseries)…. I’m blue with cold…………………… it’s freezing here………….. We do get blue skies eventually, it’s just first thing in the morning we have harsh frosts and very low temps. And it’s not just me (I do suffer from the cold more than most people). Even my partner is moaning about it.

The thing is, when we moved from the UK to NZ in 2001, in my naivety I thought it was going to be hot all year round…. I know, you’d think I’d have done some research on this, seeing as weather was a huge reason for moving overseas. Having said that I rarely wear a coat even in winter. We’re seriously thinking of moving to the Sunshine Coast in Australia, though, in a few years….. though I’m reliably informed I won’t be able to stand the heat in the summer months….. bring it on, that’s what I say.

Other news………… only 2 weeks and 5 days until San Fran…. and if you think I’m going to bore you senseless with my countdown, then you’re right……..  Clothes almost sorted. Going for a birthday weekend away next week and plan to get the remainder of my conference wardrobe… as well as celebrating my birthday… or should that be commiserating… it’s one of those birthdays you really don’t wish to discuss.

July 2, 2008 • 9 Comments

MySpace Glitters

Barrie Summy had the fabulous idea of having a July 4th recipe exchange. So…… I live in NZ and we don’t celebrate 4th July…. and I don’t cook….. not a lot of hope for me then. But, suddenly I remembered chocolate biscuit cake, which is what I make on special occasions (not very often because I love it so much I can hardly draw breath without popping a piece in my mouth).

So….. Happy 4th July to all of you in the USA…… and if you make Chcolate Biscuit Cake I promise you won’t be disappointed. Sorry, all measurements are in imperial and not metric. Hopefully you’ll understand what all the ingredients are:

Chocolate Biscuit Cake

8oz of digesstive biscuits - crumbled very finely (I use the end of a rolling pin)

2oz butter or margarine (I use dairy free spread, just as good)

2 tablespoons of golden syrup

4½ oz plain (dark) cooking chocolate

Half an orange

Melt syrup, chocolate and butter in a pan. Stir in the biscuit. Put mixture into a greased tin. Press down all over with the cut side of the orange.

Leave to set. Cut in squares.

YUM!!!