The Travelers’ Market will be available in early July.

Book Signing  The Bookworm

Richland Parkway Sat. July 26^th  1-2 pm

Fantasy Map Workshop and Book Signing

at Barnes and Noble, Columbia Center Mall

Aug 16th, 2 pm 

Reserve your copies now!

School’s out and you finally have time to polish off that short story or poem. No excuses! And this contest is free for students 10-18. Click here for more information. Deadline August 15, 2008. Winners: no money, but you’ll be published!

Summer is conference season, and I’m getting ready for presentations at PNWA  in Seattle and at Willamette Writers in Portland. One of the topics I’ll be presenting with my good friend Renee Riva is Scene By Scene–Writing the YA Novel. All writers have to be ruthless in evaluting whether or not their scenes move the story forward. Here’s a quick way to evaluate a scene.

Every scene must have a reason.     

q       Identify the main event : ____________________________

q       How does the event move the scene forward?__________________________________________

1. Increases tension
2. Changes something
3. Reveals something
4. Sets up other events

  q       What do the characters want in the scene? (drive)

 q       What new info. do readers learn about the characters or events in this scene?

 q       How do the characters respond to the main event? Show rather than tell. 

 q       Does this scene set up your next scene by creating a new situation?

digression: a message that departs from the main subject

Our lives are full of them. At least my life is. So today, an aside, a story about my son, some spiders and Rita.

To start you must know Rita. She is an old grand dame of a car, a VW Quantum circa 1986. Her owner is my son, who  dislikes arachnids.She lives in Seattle outdoors; she is a street car. She weathers the rain, the fog, a little snow and the occasional bursts of Seattle sunshine. She longs to be a garage car. And to make it worse, she must now compete with public transportation for his attention. This is the story of Rita’s revenge.

On the day in question, my son and his friend were driving through one of those occasional bursts of seattle sun. Nothing beats Seattle sunshine–all was right with the world, until the spider.  A large spider crawled out of one of the defroster vents.  It was a pale white, almost transulcent spider, very fleshy. The friend, D, used a piece of the random detritus on the floor to squish it.  A minute later, another large pale spider began rapelling down from the rear-view mirror.  And that’s when they noticed a few more spiders crawling out of the vents.  My son felt something moving up his leg.

They pulled the car to the curb,  leapt out and dove onto a nearby patch of grass. They slapped at their clothes and rolled back and forth on some poor guy’s front lawn, in an effort to squash or at least dislodge the dozens of spiders which they were sure had to be crawling around inside their clothing. Rita’s engine purred. The frightened homeowner peered furtively through the blinds. My son wanted him to know that they were friendly, harmless, spider-infested people. He waved as he rolled and slapped.   

As soon as they got the car home, they tossed in a bug-bomb (yeah — the kind that says it’s made for a 3,000 square foot house) and locked Rita up and left her for a few days.   My husband pointed out that bug bombs are pretty toxic stuff, and he should probably drive Rita with the windows open for a few days.  Ever since then, any time I call Brennan on the phone and he’s driving somewhere, I can hear the roar of the wind. I suspect Rita is smiling.