First, let’s meet Marty:

Marty would rather spend recess catching frogs in the pond than playing dress-up with the other girls in third grade. So when her teacher casts Marty as the princess in the class play, Marty’s absolutely, positively sure that there’s been a huge mistake! But after a special lesson in the art of improvisation, Marty comes up with her own plan to improve the play. Why use a stuffed-animal frog onstage when a live one would be so much better?

In the end, Marty’s one-of-a-kind performance makes for an unforgettable show. Maybe Marty can live happily ever after, after all!

I loved Kate’s THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z and SUGAR & ICE, so MARTY MCGUIRE is going to the top of my list.

In celebration of Marty’s debut, Kate asks: “So… isn’t that at the heart of third grade? Improvising? Trying out new things (and winging it when something unexpected happens)?” In response, she’s encouraging us to dust off the archives and share a third grade memory of our own.

I’m sure I had a right colorful time of it (and Mom probably has the pictures to prove it), but only one event stands out in my mind as quintessential third grade moment…

Monster Cookie Malfunction

Eight years old. Feathered bangs. Future bride of Michael Jackson. Yep, it was the eighties, and I was ready to take on the world. Or at least the classroom. My teacher, Mr. Vuich (pronounced vyoo-itch), had a full beard but a gentle manner and an endless collection of pink ties, pink shirts, and yes, even pink pants. You could call him a trailblazer and you wouldn’t be wrong. I thought he was super old, like fifty, but he was probably only marginally old, like thirty.

Mr. Vuich was always planning clever little non-lame school activities for us which, as a creative person-in-training, I totally appreciated. One morning during Halloween season (yeah, it’s a whole season when you’re that age), Mr. V. surprised us with a new twist on the craft closet:

“Class, today we’re going to make…” he said, pausing for dramatic effect, at least that’s how I remember it, so, wait for it, “…monster cookies! Yeah!”

Yeah is right. Monster cookies? Yeah, yeah, hella-yeah!

Our wily brood spent the entire morning making sugar cookie cutouts in the likeness of our favorite scary monsters. And of course by scary I mean deformed, but you know, we were only eight. We put them on trays and then picked out our planned decorations from the sugary buffet before us. There was frosting — white, pink, yellow, and blue, but I swiped some additional red and blue food coloring to hand-tint my own special shade of screaming purple. There were black and red licorice ropes for hair, M&Ms and gum drops for eyes, candy corn which nobody liked but made the best pointy noses, and raisins which no one touched because Brian Sours (real name) told us they were dead flies with the wings pulled off, which unleashed a slew of “Hey Brian Sours, can we use your face as a scary monster mold?” jokes.

All in all, it was a great idea. Score one for Mr. V.!

He loaded trays of our raw cookies on an AV cart and shipped them to some mysterious place for baking — probably the school cafeteria which was filthy and smelled like Spaghettios — and then sent us out to the playground with another class for fifteen to eighteen minutes.

Sadly, during those precious few minutes, all of our monstrous hopes and dreams were dashed on the sad rocks of reality.

We returned from the playground, rosy cheeked and eager to decorate or creations. But as we filed into our seats, we noticed the classroom did not smell of fresh baked monster.

Mr. Vuich perched his pink-panted little bottom on his desk and sighed.

“I have good news and bad news,” he said. “The bad news is… our monster cookies burnt.”

Nearly thirty years later, I haven’t forgotten those four little words, the utter defeat in his voice, the guilt in his eyes, the despair on his shoulders like a yoke. The class gave a collective gasp. Mr. Vuich slumped further. And then he rose, crossing to the back of the room where a row of Super Duper (real name) grocery bags glistened on a windowsill in the high afternoon sun. Well, they more likely just stood there not doing anything because they were still brown paper back then, which doesn’t glisten. But in my mind they glisten.

“The good news is that we can improvise.” Mr. V. fanned his arms out over the stash, a smile finding its way home to his face. “I picked up some graham crackers and marshmallows, and even though we can’t cook them, we can still decorate and eat them. Yeah!”

Yeah is right. Yeah, yeah, hella-yeah! We spent the rest of the afternoon decorating and eating. Trading and eating some more. And laughing, because monster grahams? Win!

I still remember my square-headed, purple-faced monster grahams. And I still remember Mr. Vuich and how he saved the day with a little improvisation and quick thinking. That was probably one of the best lessons he ever taught us. So Mr. Vuich, if you’re still out there, I hope you know that I never forgot that. And I hope you’re still rockin’ those pink pants.

And readers? I hope you’ll check out more third grade antics, improvisation, and of course, charm in Kate’s new release, MARTY MCGUIRE! If you have your own third grade story to share, head on over to Kate’s blog for more details on how you can enter to win a signed copy of her latest book.

By the way, does anyone else want a monster graham now? I totally want to make them…

So, we all have a secret mental cache of those sad songs from high school, right? The ones that we can hear now, five, ten, or *cough* almost twenty *cough* years later and be right back in that moment, that raw craziness, as though no time has passed. I’m talking about the ballads and sad songs that got us through the breakups, sang us to sleep as we sobbed over an unrequited love, and reminded us that yeah, sometimes you’ve just gotta cry it out. I don’t know what it is about songs and smells that can trigger memory so powerfully, but man. Whenever I hear the opening chords to some of these, my heart squeezes up and I’m lying in my bed in my teen room, pouring my heart into my journal, listening over and over and looking for someone to tell me things are gonna be all right. Music is poetry and understanding, and it got me through a lot.

So here’s my list, for your late 80s/early 90s retro enjoyment, and at the end, please share yours!

When I See You Smile, by Bad English (aka Bad Hair)

I Remember You, by Skid Row

Love Hurts, by Nazareth

It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, by Boyz II Men

Good Feeling, by the Violent Femmes

One, by U2

Without You, by Motley Crue

I’ll Be There For You, by Bon Jovi

Pictures of You, by The Cure

There it is, the video diary of many a sad and lonely night. *sniffle*

Now it’s your turn. Post yours in the comments or do a post with videos and link back.

Reading Event Details:
Michael Henry at Talking Leaves Books
Thursday, May 13, 7:00 PM
3158 Main Street
Buffalo, NY, 14214

Now, for the whole long story…

Why Twenty Boy Summer Fans Should Show a Little Love for the Lighthouse Poet

Mike Henry is the reason I write young adult books.

I mean, yeah, I know was born to do it and everything, but if it wasn’t for Mike, I don’t know that I would’ve found my way to the YA section in time to figure that out. Judy Blume aside, most of the books I read as a teen were the stuff of nightmares: V.C. Andrews, Mary Higgins Clark, Stephen King, Robin Cook, and the few adult romance novels I could sneak from the library into my room in a doubled-up Super Duper grocery bag. I’d spent my entire young life reading and writing everything but YA, hiding behind marketing communications jobs that skirted the edge of writing without forcing me to bare my creative soul in public. It was never enough, though.

Here’s the part where the movie voice-over kicks in…

In a world where artists are afraid to bare their creative souls in public, a formerly closeted writer pulls off a death-defying stunt to get her work noticed, and in facing her very public humiliation, discovers the path to her literary dreams…

It was 2003. We’d just moved from New York City to Denver and, in keeping with the new beginnings theme, I’d promised myself I’d sign up for a writers workshop. I Googled “Denver writing groups” and stumbled onto an excerpt about growing up in Buffalo. The author was a Buffalo area native who’d relocated out west and co-founded Lighthouse Writers Workshop, an independent creative writing program in Denver. Well, you all know how I am about signs, right? Right. So I signed up immediately for Mike’s next class: a memoir and personal essay workshop. I was 27 years old.

This is the part where the VH-1 voice-over kicks in…

But then things turned tragic for the band…

I was the youngest person in the class and, in my own opinion, had no business writing a memoir. I’d never done a critique workshop before. Never reviewed anyone’s writing and never willingly put my own out there for public response. All of the writers in that room were so talented, especially Mike, and he’d kick off each class with a 15-minute freewrite during which group members produced better stuff than I could cull from two decades of poems and journals. I lost a lot of weight that semester—I was totally on the nerve diet.

On the day of my critique, I thought I might pass out. Maybe I did, and I just hallucinated the whole thing. Writers weren’t allowed to talk during their own critique, so I just had to sit there and take whatever came. Was I immature? Did I lack style and substance? Was I a no-talent hack? I held my breath and prepared for the attack. But the writers in my class—the ones I’d spent the first half of the semester alternately admiring and feeling unnecessarily intimidated by—were so supportive, encouraging, and amazing. They liked my stuff. They actually liked my stuff!

When I left class that night, I was overjoyed. My smile was fixed; my head was in cloud central. I guess that’s how it happened, just as I waved goodnight to Mike Henry in the parking lot. Well, I was waving. Turns out Mike’s gestures loosely translated as, “Dude! You’re about to hit that telephone pole! STOP!” And here I thought his semi-jumping, two-handed flailing was just a little extra encouragement for the ride home: “See you next time, you shining, literary superstar!”

Ugh. I dented and scratched up my car, and I nearly died (of embarrassment, anyway), all because someone whose writing I’d admired had complimented mine. Ah, the things we do for art!

After class the following week, Mike pulled me aside to discuss one of my pieces—an essay I’d written recounting some trouble my BFF and I got into when we were fifteen involving some makeup and two power-trippy store security guards. He said the essay had a great teen voice and asked if I’d ever considered writing for young adults. Nope. I hadn’t really considered anything at that point—I just knew that I loved writing, had to write, would write anything. Mike told me that Lighthouse had a YA novel class with Jenny Itell starting up soon; he encouraged me to check it out. So I did. Four times in a row.

Looking back on the night of the telephone pole incident, I like to think that Mike saw a lot of unrefined potential in me. A wayward writer with a natural talent and passion on the page—someone who just needed a little guidance to find her true artistic footing. Maybe he just saw me as a liability and wanted me out of his class. Whatever his motives, Mike set me on the path to YA literature—something I’d never before considered. In the Lighthouse YA class, I read Laurie Halse Anderson, Deb Caletti, Sarah Dessen. I wrote and revised. I read and critiqued. I practiced. Under Jenny’s guidance, I wrote Twenty Boy Summer, and I found my voice—my right place on the bookshelves.

And the rest, says the movie voice-over, is literary history.

It’s been seven years since the telephone pole incident and my first class at Lighthouse, and almost three since I last saw Mike. And now he’s coming to Buffalo, and I won’t miss it (or drive into it. Maybe I should walk, just to be safe)!

I can’t wait for Mike to share his latest collection of poetry, No Stranger Than My Own, at our hometown indie next Thursday. If you’re in the area, please join me at Talking Leaves Main Street to show your support for this talented writer and artist. See you there!

I’m back from my little unplanned blog/social network/online communication hiatus (unplanned hiatus sounds better than procrastination, forgetfulness, laziness, and too-busy-eating-holiday-chocolate-ness which is closer to the truth of it) and ready to make a whole bunch of promises (which may or may not hold up) about being a better blogger this year.

But instead of documenting all my lofty and unlikely resolutions, I’d rather use my slightly overdue 2010 inaugural post to thank all of you for giving me such an amazing, unforgettable year. You’ve welcomed me and Twenty Boy Summer into the world with love, encouragement, and unending enthusiasm, and I couldn’t have asked for a more spectacular debut.

Though I sold Twenty Boy Summer in late 2007, seeing it on the shelves in the summer of 2009 is what made it real. What made me understand that yes, I really did get to achieve this dream. Deep down, I know that what brought it to fruition wasn’t magic—it was hard work and perseverance and dedication (and a bit of neurotic desperation, if you really want to know). But walking into my local book stores and seeing something I created sitting on the shelves alongside the works of authors I’d admired for years—well, it sure felt like magic to me.

I will never forget that day or any of the days and weeks that followed. I will never forget decorating cupcakes to match my book cover and eating them with friends and family until my tongue turned blue at my launch party. I will never forget meeting some of my favorite “veteran” YA authors at ALA, NCTE, and ALAN. I will never forget the camaraderie I found among fellow authors in the 2009 Debutantes community. I will never forget the support I received from my home town media, schools, bookstores, and librarians. I will never forget the dedication and hard work of my agent and the entire team at Little, Brown. I will never forget all of the reader emails and blog comments and waking up on my launch day to find this surprise video making the rounds (and yeah, I still get all choked up when I watch it):

Okay. On second thought, I guess it really was magic. All of these moments, all of these events, all of you made 2009 truly magical for me. And for that, I thank you.

I’ve no better way to show my gratitude than to keep writing, to keep pushing myself creatively, to keep telling stories and sharing them with you. So that’s what I intend to do. In 2010, I’m looking forward to the paperback release of Twenty Boy Summer in May, followed by the hardcover release of my second YA novel, Fixing Delilah Hannaford, in the fall (for now, check out an excerpt online). I’m also working on a few new projects, which promise to be… well… nerve-wracking, as usual! I can’t make any reliable promises about this blog, but I can promise that as long as you keep reading, I’ll keep writing. Books. Blogs. Napkin poetry. However I can get the words out to tell those stories.

Happy new year, friends and loved ones, librarians and booksellers, bloggers and teachers, readers of all genres. Here’s to an incredible, exciting, peaceful, happy, successful, magical, dreamy, fabulous, prosperous, healthy, and just plain ol’ good 2010.

It started quite accidentally, way back in the eighties…

Read the whole tale at Reading is Bliss, complete with photographic evidence and a contest to win a hardcover copy of Twenty Boy Summer!

For my friend, Amybeth:

I’ve known Amybeth for about twenty years. She was hands down the coolest girl at summer camp, and she’s still pretty much the coolest lady I know. It was an honor and a joy to photograph her wedding. So here’s one of my favorite shots from the day — totally accidental. I’d lowered my camera to adjust a setting when I noticed the groom dropping the bride for a dip, so I quick hit the shutter button and hoped for the best. I just love the expressions on their faces!

For my friend, Steve:

Steve is literally “the boy next door” — my old childhood pal. My family lived in the house on the left side of his house for a few years, then we moved to the house on the right. I was excited to celebrate his wedding with our families — we’ve all known each other more than 30 years! Anyway, during the cake cutting, apparently someone (*cough* the GROOM *cough*) didn’t get the memo about the no-smashing-cake-in-the-face thing. His bride was not happy. In fact, some of us began to wonder whether Steve might end sleeping on the couch at the honeymoon suite! But when repeated apologies proved ineffective, he just grabbed her and shut her up with a big fat smooch. Again, one of my favorites from the day!

Congratulations to all, and best wishes for a lifetime of happiness and love!

Speaking of families and love… I’m wrapping up the final revisions on Fixing Delilah Hannaford, my second book, due out next fall from Little, Brown. I’ll be sharing more about it soon, but for now… it’s a story about families, about mothers and daughters, the secrets we carry, the things that tear us apart as well as unite us, and of course, love. Stay tuned for more details next week!

For now, happy fall and lots of hot tea, wedding cake, fuzzy slippers, and love to you all!

Years later, after college, I entered a somewhat tumultuous time in my life. I was unhappy, but beyond the obvious things that keep people up at night, I couldn’t quite figure out the root issue. I just knew that there was something else — something I hadn’t yet explored enough to identify, to name, to face, and to work through.

And then… it hit me. I had let all the creativity leak out of my life.

After nearly a decade of keeping a journal, I had completely stopped writing. Wasn’t reading much. My job was of the automatonish, soul-sucking nature, and my commute stole hours from my day. I was in a bad relationship. Money was problematic. And I just didn’t know what to do about any of it. I felt trapped, alone, afraid, and utterly blank… though I never admitted it to my friends or family.

During those years, I made several trips to a friend’s house in the woods outside of Woodstock, NY. I remember it being mostly in the fall, when the air was crisp as an apple and the sun bright. The dried leaves and sticks crunched under our feet. There were animals about the property — horses and emu and others — and at night, their breath turned white like steam from a kettle. I could smell the wood of stove fires and inside, the air was infused with incense and music and the cooking of fresh things. In the town of Woodstock itself, there was more incense. In the book store and gift store and other unique little shops and outdoor booths. The sky was sapphire blue and the trees were on fire with autumn’s reds and oranges and during those weekends, those brief respites from life in the city, I’d unwind and let the universe speak to me. Somehow, I came at first to hope, and then finally to believe, that whatever was holding me back, I’d hunt it down and break it. I didn’t know how or when, but change was coming. I was on the edge of something new and frightening and amazing and quite possibly great. And amidst all those thoughts, there was always the sweet smokiness of burning incense and all of the faraway pictures it drew in my mind.

Eventually, I did break it, that thing holding me back, and a lot of stuff happened after that — really awesome stuff. It was ten years ago.

My friend no longer has that place in the woods, but I guess I no longer need it — not in the same way. Still, the smell of incense takes me there, right back to Woodstock and the way I felt when I breathed in the chilly air and prepared for something new.

Now, incense reminds me of the potential for great things, and how each of us lives always on the precipice of possibility. I burn it when I write at home to find that feeling again, even subconsciously — the feeling that something different and frightening and amazing is right around the corner, waiting to be discovered and explored through creativity. I just picked up a few new packs from a candle maker at the Elmwood Art Festival in my neighborhood last weekend. I don’t have little brothers in my house anymore. I can burn it whenever I want.

What about you? Do you have any special rituals or objects that bring out your creativity or inspire you to do something great?

But red?

Stop by The Word Ninjas for the answer!

1. When I was your age… followed by something really corny or inappropriate that further accentuates my old age.
2. We didn’t have cell phones (when I was your age). We had to keep a spare quarter in our shoe in case there was an emergency and we had to use a pay phone!
3. (When I was your age) We didn’t have email or IM. We wrote notes, folded into fancy shapes.
4. Why would you wear that? Aren’t you cold?
5. You call this poppy crap music?
6. When I graduated high school, you weren’t even a good idea yet.
7. You’re young! Enjoy it while it lasts! It’s all downhill from here! Or some variation on the youth/downhill theme…
8. I wish I could eat like that and stay skinny.
9. I have nail polish / underwear / concert ticket stubs older than you.
10. Um, yes, I am the author of that book. (Okay, I kind of like saying that one!)

And to round out tonight’s theme, I’d like to send a heartfelt note of thanks to my dear OLD friend Amy DWP.

It takes a special kind of friend to notice, point out, and call special attention to each and every one of someone’s gray hairs, and tonight, you did that for me. They (and I) felt quite honored!

Especially considering that when I was your age, we didn’t have gray hair. We had Sun-In! And Aqua Net! Check out the lift on those bangs!

Well now you’ve got me all nostalgic, so…

Top 10 Things That Were Cool When I Was Your Age

1. Rolling, safety pinning, or some other creative method for tapering the cuffs one’s jeans. Anything that didn’t cut off ankle circulation was considered bell-bottomed and therefore banned. Boot cut? We would have ostracized you!
2. Big, immovable, indestructible bangs of steel (um, see photo above).
3. Walkmans. That’s right. We didn’t have iPods when I was your age. If we wanted new music, we had to save up $8.99 to buy a cassette tape at the mall.
4. Making mix tapes, either by dubbing cassettes (for those of us lucky enough to have a double cassette deck) or by holding the recorder right up to the stereo.
5. Sissy tests, in which you let someone scratch the back of your hand rapidly and repeatedly until you pulled away. The longer you could stand it, the less of a sissy you were. If you didn’t have bleeding gashes on your hands, you were a loser. I made my own to avoid the test (some call it sissy, I call it genius) and told my parents an elaborate tale about slipping on the parallel bars in gym. That should have been a dead giveaway, considering I never did anything strenuous in gym, especially anything that had the potential to mess up those bangs.
6. Writing out all of the lyrics to songs so we could sing along.
7. Getting super creative with writing notes to girlfriends, like in code, colors, or with a really cool fold that no one had ever seen before.
8. Going stag to dances in big groups of girls. We had to go stag. Getting too close to the guys was a bad idea — we could kill someone with those bangs of ours! (Well, okay, maybe going stag was just my personal fad, since I never had a steady [or presentable in public] boyfriend.)
9. Hair scrunchies, often more than one at a time.
10. Cootie catchers, aka fortune tellers, in which you write little clues on paper and fold it up into this little thingy and… well, check out the explanation here if you really want to know.

And now I want to know… for all the readers over 18, what was cool when YOU were a teen?