The Epic Mother Daughter Cross Country Road Trip: December

You know what I recommend?

Doing something you've wanted to do for years and years.

I've wanted to drive across the country since reading American Gods in college. I love traveling, but driving someplace is a lot less convenient and a lot more expensive than flying these days. But if you always wait for things to be convenient and cheap, you'll miss out on most of life's awesomeness.

Mom came with me, because she's full of awesome herself - and because she didn't want me driving all that way solo.

Anyway, here's our route:

I know. It's definitely not the shortest route. It's not even a straight line.

It took 12 days: 5 days before Christmas and 7 days after. (I left my car in Albuquerque for three weeks to spend the holidays with my family.)

Truth: there's something wonderful in taking it slow across the country. You see how the landscape changes, state-by-state. You see the cultural differences, the different ways of life, minute shifts you can't see when you fly overhead.

BOOK MATERIAL, people. I took notes in my brain - and also, pictures.

Sadly, I took no pictures of the South. I've lived there my whole life. I needed no pictures to remember it.

In fact, the most important stop I made before Christmas was in San Antonio, Texas - that's where my great grandmother lives. I freaked her out a little, because I didn't tell her I was coming. I just arrived on her doorstep, Christmas presents under my arm.

No pictures of this event. I'll give you a picture of my great-grandmother, though:

No idea how old she is here.

But isn't she preeeeetty?

Next stop, though?

New Mexico

Land of A Thousand Pictures

The Santa Fe area is probably my mom's favorite place in the world. We spent a lot of time there. Long enough for me to stop spelling it "Sante Fe."

Shelby Street was the first place we parked in Santa Fe!!

This is actually the front of a store called Pinkoyote. I found a great wallet there.

Also cool in Sante Fe: The Miraculous Staircase of Loretta Chapel.

Nobody knows how it stays standing. It has no supports.

That's probably why they don't let people climb it anymore.

The Bandelier National Monument

I have a thing for old stuff. I realized this when I was studying abroad in England: if it's more than five centuries old, I'll probably want to take a million pictures of it. Doesn't matter if it's a church, a fort, a tree, or an ancient road, I'm fascinated.

So, when I had a free day to myself in Santa Fe (Mom went home to spend her birthday with Dad), I took myself off to Bandelier National Monument. Basically, people have lived there for 11,000 years.

The mind literally reels. SO OLD. *happy sigh*

It was epically pretty, by the way.

Even on the drive up.

It was also quite lovely OUT of the car.

Doesn't it kind of look like a place where people have lived for thousands of years??

I mean, apart from the fact there are no houses.

Now, we get to the good stuff. I mean, the OLD stuff.

This was like the village town hall - spiritual AND practical.

Built somewhere between the twelfth and sixteenth century! OLD!! :-D

This was the living area.

You can see the whole structure better from up here!

I took a ton of pictures like this, by the way. Tree, stone, and sky.

There's obviously a Georgia O'Keefe influence involved.

I'm limiting myself to one in this post, so I don't bore you.

Anyway, so then, you walk up these steps.

And you see more apartments! With ladders!

And they have views!!

The apartments in the valley were occupied at the same time. I wonder if there was a reason some people lived in the cliffs and some on the valley floor. Like, were these penthouse apartments?

Not for the Acrophobic!

Or maybe the valley apartments were for the people who didn't like heights?

And then more apartments!

You can't see them on the cliff face, but there are markings up there.

Called Long House, because it was looong.

Each row of holes denotes a floor.

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi

Also, awesome. But not quite as old.

(Constructed in the late 19th century.)

Love the entrance.

And the inside's not too shabby either.

Stay tuned later this week - for pictures from the January portion of the Epic Mother Daughter Cross Country Road Trip!

Faves of 2010: The Year In Reading

First off,

HAPPY NEW YEAR'S EVE, EVERYONE!!!

But secondly, I have a confession: I made an Excel spreadsheet of all the books I read this year.

(I debated admitting it, you know. I don't want to seem totally weird - like a neat freak, who organizes obsessively. I didn't always make a list of the books I'd read. Definitely not when I was in school. Or even when I started working in the publishing industry. But sometime last year, I started listing what I read in the back of my journal. And this year, I up'ed the OCD-ness with Excel: noting the title, the author, the date I finished, the intended age group, whether or not it was part of a series, whether or not I'd read it before, whether I read the book for fun or for a specific project, and also, just for kicks, fiction or non-fiction.

See why I was hesitant to mention it? Now, the depths of my weirdness have been revealed. My good friend Angela would say that I did it because I am a Virgo. Sigh. I always thought Virgos were the most boring sign ever. This may prove it.)

But because of Excel, I have some stats to share with you:

In 2010, I read a total of 104 books. Muahahahahaha. (Yes, I proud of myself. I reached my 100 book goal). :-D

But another confession: Yes, I snuck in 29 books I'd read before. Many people can't stand to re-read books or re-watch movies. I am definitely not one of those people. I have lost count of how many times I've read certain favorites, such as Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted, Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel, and the Harry Potter series (both of which I did indeed read again this year).

I read 47 middle-grade books, well more than any other age group. Since it's my fav, I'm totally not shocked by this. I was surprised that the age group in second place was actually Adult books (37), and I actually read fewest books in the YA category (20).

But 17 books were nonfiction! FYI, that's ridiculously high for me.

Last but not least, I have some awards to give out. These are not necessarily the best of the year, because I'm really way too particular to judge that. But these are definitely, without further ado, my....

FAVORITE READS OF 2010

FAVORITE REREAD
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

You know when you read a book, and it's like taking a much-needed vacation with some of your favorite people? For me, this book was like taking that vacation again - with the added comfort of familiarity.

FAVORITE YA CONTEMPORARY
The DUFF, by Kody Keplinger

I know. I told you all about this book already here. But seriously, it's completely fantastic. The main character feels like someone you've known your whole life...and somebody you want to keep around for the rest of it too. :-)

FAVORITE NONFICTION
Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother & Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey, and France, by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor

No description necessary here, because the memoir's subtitle really says it all. :-P It's a very good book in its own right, but I love this one for entirely personal reasons: a) I was in a traveling mood when I bought it, and b) after I read it, I passed it onto my mother, who enjoyed it too.

FAVORITE ADULT FICTION
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson

This one came from my ex-roomie Angela - a birthday present. I put it off for months (we usually have very different tastes in books), but she kept asking if I'd read it yet. So, I did. Wonderful! Totally worth the first hundred or so pages of slow "good manners" Britishness.

"It reminds you that love really can conquer all," Angela told me when she handed it over, and the book also shows you how love can transform you and your entire life - even if you're a widower passing your retirement in a tiny, conservative English village.

Honorable Mentions: Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain and Carlos Ruis Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind

FAVORITE MIDDLE GRADE
A Tale Dark and Grimm, by Adam Gidwitz

Jo kindly gave it to me this galley, because she knew it was totally my cup of tea. And OMG, I loved it. It has old school fairy tales (which means blood, gore, and very brave kids), but the narrator's voice makes it fresh and new. Gidwitz brings the old stories to life so well goosebumps sprout on your arms - as only the best storytellers can do.

Honorable Mentions: Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me and Neil Gaiman's Coraline

FAVORITE YA FANTASY
Finnikin of the Rock, by Melina Marchetta

I left this one for last, because I don't know how to describe it...besides just saying, awesome, Awesome, AWESOME! That's generally what happens when I want to talk about any of Marchetta's novels: every page packs a punch, the plot carries a million different subplots, and her characters are so layered, so complex, and so real that the book hits you at your core.

I read this somewhere: a great book is the one that alters you and your perception of the book's subject forever. I can't think about a young monarch assuming a throne - one of my favorite fantasy plots, btw - without thinking of Finnikin of the Rock and all its themes.

Go read it.

Actually, go read them all. :-)

Okay, I think I'm gonna go be a geek, grab a book, and read until 2011 rolls in.

In case I don't get around to it tomorrow,

Happy New Year!!!

Percy, my dear character...

There will always be a place in my heart for the PERCY JACKSON series. It was one of the first series I really got into when I joined a middle grade team at a NY publishing house as an editorial assistant. Actually, I got so into it that I made one of my coworkers read it too, and later I caught her reading it in front of her computer one slow Friday afternoon. Then we ooooo'ed and awwww'ed and complained about having to waiting until The Last Olympian came out. Then it came out, and we ooooo'ed and awwww'ed again - and complained about how there weren't any more books in the PERCY JACKSON series and fretted over whether or not the Kane Chronicles and the new Camp Halfblood series could be as good.

Then I heard that the movie was happening.

(insert fan-girl squealing here)

Then my former coworkers went to the NYC premiere, and I was totally jealous.

Then my new agent invited me to go see it with her when I went to New York a few weeks later, and that made it lots better. :-D

The best part of the movie was watching it with Jo. Actually, I was very afraid that she would be one of those people who disliked talking during movies, or moviegoers being generally loud (once, I had a friend who wouldn't let me sit next to her during a Harry Potter movie opening night, because she said I laughed too loud - I was scarred. Obviously. Since I'm blogging about it now, five or six years later).

Luckily, Jo had no problem with us whispering back and forth about what was cut, who was funny, etc. After I ran to the bathroom, she even told me what I missed without me having to ask. (Is it wrong that this made me heart her forever?)

Other highlights include:

• Grover. This guy is funny! PERFECT comedic timing. I feel like he's been in something else, but I have no idea what. He's a few years older, and a lot more into girls than the Grover of the books, but when I left the theater, I was still giggling over things he said.
  
  
  
• Uma Thurman as Medusa. For some reason, I found this incredibly entertaining. It reminded me a lot of her work in My Super Ex-Girlfriend (which in my mind was a film with a great concept that was tragically executed). Uma does evil well, I must say.
  
  
  
• The special effects. In particular, the rooftop scene with lots of water spewing around (see above) got my wow rating. It made me want to have some sort of epic power on top of Manhattan (or at least to give my main character an epic power).
  

What I wanted from the movie that I didn't get:

• A more awesome Annabeth. LOVED Annabeth in the books. This one was snarky to the point of me thinking that she had PMS for the entire movie.
  
  
• More from the gods. They were big, they were bad, and I think they only got 10 minutes total of screen time. I wanted them to be funny (like Hermes in the books!) and hang out with their kids. I wanted COSTUMES.
  
  
• The Fates to get a shout-out. Who else thinks that Judi Dench would be an awesome Fate? She could have played all three, and I would have gone home singing the film's praises from Penn Station (NYC) to Big Sky (MT). Sigh.
  

All in all though, a very good film. It wasn't the books and didn't have the same level of characterization (or wit), but as my wise and illustrious agent said, "It's a completely different genre." I liked it immensely - much more than other films I've seen recently.

Too true.

Okay, in other news, soon I will alone again in a snowy cabin. My dad and sister are already gone. My mom leaves tomorrow, and my brother leaves on Sunday morning very early. I am sad to see them go, but the idea of being alone with my manuscripts and getting things knocked out is doing a good job of cheering me up/distracting me.

However, let me show you my younger brother, who is wonderfully funny, even when he doesn't mean to be:


Where is his left leg? Well, he stepped off his board into a bunch of fresh powder and thus sank hip deep in snow. Since this little brother happens to be 6'3" (or more), his leg is about three feet long. Which means the snow was really deep.

Obviously, I'm the sweetest big sister in the world - I laughed really hard, took a pic, and shared it on my blog. :-o

(Okay, okay - if my little sister (who reads this blog) thinks this is unkind, she will tell me and I will delete this part of the post. And no one will know except those lucky early readers...)

Sigh.

I know. I have not been blogging. I have been doing other things, such as:

(Note: none of these are essentially more important than blogging, but this is what going on.)

1. Watching New Moon for the second night in a row. Yesterday, my brother and sister really wanted to watch it, but during the ending, my mom had to answer a phone call and thus missed the last 20 minutes. So, we watched it again tonight. Somehow, she fell asleep in her chair. Actually, I'm the only one still awake. Possibly because I was inputing my revision changes into the digital version of my ms. I will say that watching it makes me want to read something with steamy paranormal romance, ie. probably not middle grade.
   
   
2. Hanging out with my family. My brother, my father, my mother, and my sister all came up for spring break. It was fantastic. Right now, we're two down and two to go. I will be sad to see them go, so I'm trying to get as much quality time in as possible. (Quality time = my nineteen-year-old stripping off his shirt and drawing a circular tattoo on his arm and quoting the most ridiculous of Jacob Black's lines from the aforementioned movie until my sister laughed so hard that she almost fell down the stairs. Oh, college-age siblings.)
   
   
3. Driving back and forth from the airport. It takes over an hour and a half to go each way, and to get back to work/school at a reasonable hour, my father and sister's flights took off at 7-something on Tuesday and 8-something today respectively. This means early wake-up times. (Technically, I didn't have to go with them to the airport, but I wanted to see them off.) This means that you go into that weird sleep-deprived daze. For example, I was asleep when we got pulled over for going 14 miles of the speed limit this morning at 7:15AM, and the lights confused me like whoa. It still seems like something that happened in a dream rather than reality. Especially since he let us off with a warning. (I was NOT driving, btw. The most responsible driver in the house was, and I will leave you to guess who that was.)
   
   
4. Revising. Technically, I'm revising the revisions right now. It's epic. It's not going badly. Just slowly. The slow part bothers me, but it would be more bothersome if it wasn't going at all. Of course, I'm still on the top half of the novel, which is more problematic, because I'm adding more to it - and shuffling the new scenes around a lot. (Reminds me of shuffling a deck of cards - have I mentioned this yet?)
   
   
5. Figured out how to reply to comments on Blogger. You start a whole new comment. I kept thinking that I could reply to each comment individually, but no, that's a livejournal thing.
   
   
6. Making a huge mess of the kitchen table. I swear all those papers aren't mine. No, for serious. That's not even my laptop. (Okay, that is my printer.)
   
   
   
7. Spending epic amounts of time on iTunes. Actually, this just happened today, but it was such an epic amount of time that it gets its own spot on the list. I mean, I was on it for hours, organizing my playlists (ie. deleting the ancient ones that I haven't listened to since August) and creating new ones. Specifically, creating new ones for the manuscript I'm working on. I mean, I had a few rough ones before, but they just got me through the first (and second) drafts. Now, I actually have thirteen separate ones for different sections, and a ton of Regina Spektor for some odd reason.
   
   
   
   
8. Feeling guilty about not blogging. Sadly, I will have to break my 15-blogs-a-month New Year's resolution. :'-( I mean, I guess I could pull out all the stops and blog twice a day for the next few days and totally make it, but I feel my revisions need me more than my blog. And so I'm amending my New Year's resolution again: 15 posts on a normal month, but 10+ if I do lots of traveling that month. But hey! it took me all the way until late March for me to break this resolution which is much better than what happens with most of my resolutions. Hmm.

Whew. I am sooooo sleepy (have been awake since 5:30AM). I think I shall go crawl in bed...

<3!

Adventures in Car Trouble (Part I)

On Sunday, it never stopped snowing. The weather proved to be pretty tough on the car. We had a bunch of problems.

Snow Plow

On the way to the airport, a snowplow crept so far into our lane that it ran us off the road, throwing us into a skid. Luckily, my mom is a fantastic driver. She corrected the slide, and we continued on our merry way.

Sludge

Then, parked at the airport, as Mom and I were saying our goodbyes, we discovered that there was so much sludge caked around the tires that there was only about an inch between the muddy snow and the rubber. The tires couldn't turn properly. Mom (already a little worried about snow plows coming too close) made me promise not to drive back up the mountain until it was off. She suggested a car wash.

Unfortunately, a car wash with an outside temperature of sixteen could have its own share of problems. For instance, water getting in the doorframe and freezing the lock shut. (I had an awful vision of parking in front of our cabin with the overwhelming need to use the bathroom and not being able to get out.) That would be unhelpful.

So, I went after an ice pick. When I couldn't find one, I improvised. I bought a $0.99 screwdriver at Target and some icemelt salt at Target. Then I chipped away at the muddy snow caked around the tire. Picture a girl in a purple puffy down jacket kneeling down at each tire, digging holes in the muddy slush, and cheering every time a chunk fell onto the Target parking lot. (I was so proud of my success that I called my dad to brag.)

The windshield

The salt they put on the roads has this habit of dissolving, and creating an awful sort of mud that can be easily sprayed on your windshield. A little white car cut me off on the way to the highway and covered my windshield. I had to park at the first turnout and break out the Windex so that I could see.

The incline

It's not a big hill. I'm talking about twelve feet with a gradient of maybe 20. I've never once had trouble before. No one I know has ever had trouble before (that I know of anyway).

But I went up this hill three times. The car would go up a little, stop, spin its wheels until the snow gave way to ice underneath, and then slide backwards. Annoyed and anxious to be inside, I decided to wait until the snow plows came by and parked the car on the wrong side of the road.


Unfortunately, I was in a kind of distracted mood, and I lost track of the keys.

Locking the keys in the car

I dug through my purse, my pockets, and all the bags I brought in with me. Not there. I surmised that I must have locked the keys in the car. I went looking through the house for another key. Not there. Sadly, my family only has one key to that car.

The other set was with a management service that would not be open till morning. I contacted them, and then I trudged back through the snow to put a note on the windshield.


Then, I waited until morning - when someone could drop the key by.