December, Baby... And a Juicy Confession.

Oh! Hey!

It's been precisely one month since I last set foot in the Blogosphere: a month which managed to feel simultaneously lightning-fast and neverending. How was your November? I've missed you.

For those of you who NaNoWriMo'd it up this month, how did you fare? Did you finish, and did you have fun? Here comes my juicy confession...

About two weeks into November, as I was plugging along on my truly terrible story, I came unexpectedly to a crossroads. As many of you know, I had been planning to host a Harry Potter Party the night before Deathly Hallows premiered on November 18. But in my mental preparations for said party, I somehow managed to overlook the fact that I have abysmal time-management skills, and that the party would fall right Smack Dab in the middle of NaNoWriMo.

Well.

The party was fast approaching when I came to the crossroads. I had done very little to prepare for the Potter revelries, and my novel was--as I mentioned--supremely awful and failing to hold me in its thrall. So one morning as I was scowling at my computer and wishing I were writing something else, I looked desperately away from the screen in search of inspiration... and my eyes fell on my calendar.

As you may have deduced, it was not inspiration I found there. It was a fact that caused me to jump up from my chair and seize my hair by the roots. I had, I realized, exactly five days before people began to show up at my apartment dressed as witches and wizards, ready for what I'd assured them would be a truly awesome Harry Potter Party. And I had done virtually nothing to prepare for it.

So here was the crossroads: Awesome Harry Potter Party or Completed Miserable NaNo Novel?

The fact that I was suffering from a severe case of Potter Mania did nothing to aid the case for my NaNo book, I'm afraid. And so, gritting my teeth against the shame and horror of losing this year's NaNoWriMo, I nodded firmly at the Harry in my head and closed my Word Document with an ominous, echoing CLICK.

The result? A truly spectacular Harry Potter Party, and a truly unfinished NaNoWriMo novel. Epic success, and epic failure in one. But let's not dwell on the failure. Instead, I'll show you some pictures from the Potter Party.

My sister-in-law, Kelsey, as Hermione Granger.
(Who, incidentally, participated in and WON her very first NaNoWriMo ever. First novel for this History major. I couldn't be more proud.)

My roommate, Emily, and myself: Nymphadora Tonks and Ginny Weasely respectively.

My brother, Jordan, or, Draco Malfoy.

My friend and co-worker Desirea: Bellatrix Lestrange.

Of course, it is rather strange that Draco and Hermione would be married...

Dueling club.

Those of us who snagged Imax tickets. My friend Katie and her fiance, Norris, were

Professor McGonagall and Bill Weasely.

Overall, it was a wonderful, nerdy success, made even better by the facts that a.) the movie was FABULOUS, and b.) my pals and I made the Tulsa news. So geeky and so awesome, don't you think?

Here's the link to our interview. Celebrities, I know.

Tell me about your November! I'll be wading my way back into your blogs, but I want to hear it from you all the same. NaNo adventures? Harry Potter fun? Thanksgiving wonders? Happy December. It's lovely to be back.

Teenage Three Things Thursday

Today's Three Things Thursday is a great one for those of us who write YA and Teen lit.  The theme is: Three Things About Your Teenage Years.

(Go see Amie at i AM alive to join the fun.)

I was a pretty dorky teenager.  I mean, I'm a pretty dorky 24 year-old, but my teenage years were full of me bumbling around trying to figure out a.) who I was, and b.) who I wanted to be.  So.  Here are my three things.

1.  I was obsessed--and I mean OBSESSED--with The Lord of the Rings.  The first movie got me hooked, and soon I was reading and re-reading the books, blaring the soundtracks nonstop, writing fanfiction (yeah, I did), doing Tolkien-themed English projects with gusto, scrap-booking, and even occasionally dressing up like an elf.  IN HIGH SCHOOL.  Like I said, huge dork.  The Return of the King film came out right around my birthday, and my best friend and I made shirts to go to the midnight showing.  I cried so hard at the end--no, WEPT so hard--that my little rocking movie chair was swinging like a carnival ride, and made it difficult for the poor souls behind me to exit the theater.

2. I played softball from elementary school up until my junior year of high school, which really throws people for a loop if they didn't know me at that time.  (I don't strike most people as being terribly athletic.)  But I was a pitcher, which worked well because I have these long, skinny arms which can be used as a kind of trebuchet or windmill, giving me all kinds of leverage.  By the time I quit playing, I was throwing that ball at sixty miles per hour.  Pretty good for an un-athletic clumsy girl.

3.  More pertinently, sixteen was the age I first started writing in earnest.  I remember sitting with my best friend in one of our new (old, junky) cars, telling her about all the stories I had in my head, and how I would play them out like movies as I was falling asleep at night, and daydream about them in class. 

Instead of calling me crazy, she looked at me and said, "Why don't you write them down?"

I think I laughed.  Me?  Write books?  Of course, I'd done that in elementary school, but that was different.  This would be trying to write a real book.  Well, I tried it.  I wrote in notebooks until I could afford a laptop, and then transcribed and edited all the way up through my freshman year of college.  That book, naturally, will never see the light of day, but it was my tricycle.  It was what taught me to write, and showed me how much I loved it.    

What about you?  What things stand out to you from your teenage years?  How did they shape the person you are now?

Don't Hunt Horcruxes and Drive

Dear Reader: If you are considering listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on audiobook in your car, I must warn you... you should probably not. Especially if you're driving within a city. Let me explain.

If you do, you run a higher risk of getting into accidents. For one thing, your mind tends to be on Voldemort, and what could be more distracting than that high, cold voice? For another thing, your vision is almost always obscured by a thick sheen of tears--if not a veritable waterfall of them. Third, you have to mop yourself up every time you want to get out and go talk to humans (which renders any eye-makeup pointless), and not everyone has a box of Kleenex in their passenger seat. And last of all, if you have to stop at any intersections, you end up getting a lot of curious and worried looks from other drivers, because you look like this:

So, kids? Don't hunt Horcruxes and drive. Be smart. Hunt them in the safety and cry-proof security of your own home. And don't forget to vote: Potter for President.