Archive for the 'Road Trip Wednesday' Category

January 19, 2011 | A Royale Pain,Book One,Draven Atreides,Draven Atreides, Teenage Informant Series,Road Trip Wednesday

Road Trip Wednesday is a “Blog Carnival”, where YA Highway‘s contributors post a weekly writing or reading-related question and answer it in on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s unique take on the topic.

You’re more than welcome to participate! Just answer the question on your own blog, and leave a link to it in their comments.

Topic #54:Give a blurb for your favorite book or one of your own!?

Here’s the back-of-the-book blurb for Book 1 in the DA series: A Royale Pain

A day at the spa can be a “royale” pain.

Sixteen-year-old Draven Atreides has just started a new gig as an FBI informant. Her To Do list includes: adjust to new life, make new friends, and try not to tell said new friends about her secret job.

A French chemist is peddling his “specially formulated” products to high class spas and his latest target is celeb favorite, The Royale Treatment Day Spa. Unfortunately, his products cause some nasty side effects and the results are so not pretty. Just when Draven’s first assignment seems to be heading south, she receives unwanted assistance in the form of Rader Deschanel. What does he want with Draven? Will she be able to solve her first official case without blowing her cover?

I recently decided to turn this novel series into a comic book series and I’m not sure if comic books have blurbs. But this would’ve been the one to go on the back of the book.

Technorati Tags: YA Highway

January 12, 2011 | A Royale Pain,Book One,Draven Atreides,Draven Atreides, Teenage Informant Series,Road Trip Wednesday

Road Trip Wednesday is a “Blog Carnival”, where YA Highway‘s contributors post a weekly writing or reading-related question and answer it in on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s unique take on the topic.

You’re more than welcome to participate! Just answer the question on your own blog, and leave a link to it in their comments.

Topic #53:What is your favorite line from your WIP (or from a book you read recently)?

I haven’t done this in such a long time it’s nice to get back in the game. I don’t have just one favorite line from my WIPs. I have several:

~ I’m meeting two undercover FBI agents in Central Park today.

~ Yes, it’s true. She doesn’t laugh, she giggles. If she were a doll, she’d be Tickle Me Elmo’s kid sister.

~ Their physical prettiness just kind of, you know, slaps you upside the head.

~ Out of the whole school, small as it is, he ends up with her? She’s an embarrassment to the female species.

~ Someone needs to slap this guy with a Stupidity Citation.

~ “My Mercury must be in retrograde this week to get a break like this.”

~ “If you say destiny, or even Fate, I’m so going to spew.”

~ O…kay. Who pissed in his Cheerios?

The list goes on and on. These lines come from Book One in the DA series. Draven has a great sense of humor, doesn’t she? You can also check out her inner thoughts in the Fiction Project posts below.

Technorati Tags: YA Highway

December 22, 2010 | Draven Atreides,Draven Atreides, Teenage Informant Series,Road Trip Wednesday

Road Trip Wednesday is a “Blog Carnival”, where YA Highway‘s contributors post a weekly writing or reading-related question and answer it in on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s unique take on the topic.

You’re more than welcome to participate! Just answer the question on your own blog, and leave a link to it in their comments.

Topic #52:What would you give your favorite characters for Christmas, and why?

My favorite character is from the series I’m working on, Draven Atreides, Teenage Informant. For Christmas, I’d get Draven some kind of new gadget, like the Night Vision Infrared Stealth Binoculars from the International Spy Museum Store. She may only be an informant, but she feels the need to have all these little gadgets to assist her with her assignments.

On a personal level, I want to give her the gift of family. She’s a little cynical about the whole family unit thing and I’d like her to realize that all families aren’t the traditional Mom-Dad-Sibling. Families can be made up of people who care about you: like best friends…and your handler.

Technorati Tags: YA Highway, Night Vision Infrared Stealth Binoculars, International Spy Museum Store

December 15, 2010 | Road Trip Wednesday,The 4-1-1 on Me

Road Trip Wednesday is a “Blog Carnival”, where YA Highway‘s contributors post a weekly writing or reading-related question and answer it in on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s unique take on the topic.

You’re more than welcome to participate! Just answer the question on your own blog, and leave a link to it in their comments.

Topic #51:What do you want Santa to bring you this year?

We’re moving into a new place next month and we’re looking at it as “a new beginning” type of thing. I’ve even found a local feng shui consultant to well, feng shui our place.. We plan on selling what we can up until we move, then we’ll either leave it or give it to Goodwill.

So, in honor of the new place and a new beginning, I would love for Santa to give me a $5,000 IKEA shopping spree. Our Wish List is around $1500 right now, trying to figure out what we want now and what to get after we move in. It’s been so long since we’ve done the Rental Thing, we’re not used to move-in costs and pet deposits. We decided that IKEA was the cheapest way to go when it comes to furniture. Babendude’s good and putting stuff together. It’s funny, but we’ve been to this place more times in a month than we’ve ever gone before. And it’s always been more than an hr. Utter craziness.

Technorati Tags: YA Highway, feng shui, Goodwill., IKEA

November 17, 2010 | Road Trip Wednesday

Road Trip Wednesday is a “Blog Carnival”, where YA Highway‘s contributors post a weekly writing or reading-related question and answer it in on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s unique take on the topic.

You’re more than welcome to participate! Just answer the question on your own blog, and leave a link to it in their comments.

Topic #50:What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?

Okay, so, Ken is my best guy friend.

We’ve known each other for over 20 yrs and we first met when my Dad got transferred to Reno, NV back in the early 70’s. We’d moved into a brown house on Warren Way. I’d taken my Big Wheel out for a trial run and ended up meeting Ken, tooling around on his bike. We became instant friends, practically inseparable. However, that friendship was tested one day when I did something really stupid.

I had a neighbor that lived two doors down from us. Laura and I were the same and she had an asshole older brother named Roger that was my older sister’s age. But I digress.

I dumped a water can full of, well, water, in the front seat of her parent’s Datsun. The garage door was open, the driver side window was down, so I just did it. I don’t remember why I did it. I don’t remember if someone—or something—had pissed me off, if I was bored, lonely or what. No one dared me to do it, it was just pure impulse.

For which I blamed Ken when they found out.

I know! I was such a bad friend! And Laura’s mother believed me because Ken and his older brother, Chip, were known as the troublemakers in the neighborhood. It didn’t seem too farfetched that he would do something like that.

I felt guilty about it, though, and fessed up. I told my Mom and we walked down to Ken’s house so that I could apologize to him in person. But the damage had already been done. His stepfather had given him what-for.

He didn’t talk to me for a week.

It was the longest week of my life. I missed him terribly but he finally forgave me.

I felt so, so bad and I’m sure he felt betrayed. Seriously, what person would do that to their best bud? I think I just lost my mind for a moment.

It wasn’t funny at the time, but now, years later, we can look back on it and laugh. He stood up with me when I got married 4 yrs ago and it was great having him here. There was a lot of Remember When’s going on. Out of all the friends I’d made during the best childhood of my entire life, Ken stuck. We moved back to AZ where I started the 6th grade (and, incidentally, where I had my first encounter with racism). You don’t expect guys to write letters, but Ken did. We also sent each other birthday cards. For the longest time, I kept everything he ever sent me in a shoe box. And then they disappeared. Thrown away by accident or just got lost in the various moves. From Reno to California to Montana and now back in Reno (his travels, not mine. Since we moved back, I’ve never left the state), we’ve kept in touch. Mostly by phone.

Friendship like that you just can’t buy, you know?

Technorati Tags: YA Highway