I am grinning like a freaking idiot because today the lineup for the TEEN AUTHOR CARNIVAL 2012 was announced and….I’M ON IT. OMGOMGOMGOMG. *breathes*

I’m hyperventilating because:

(a) Oh, hai. I’m going to be speaking on a panel in NYC at the Teen Author Carnival. Dream come true.

(b) I’ll get to see lots of my author and blogger friends, including lots of YA Rebels and former Rebels.

(c) HAVE YOU SEE THE LIST OF AUTHORS? *dies*

So if you are in NYC for BEA or just happen to be passing through, please come out! I’d love to meet you! The event is completely free!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the YAmazing Race! Your comments and excitement around IF I LIE floored me. I honestly can’t wait for you to all read this book.

And now to what you all want to know… The winners are:

Paige Schwartz – Pre-order of IF I LIE
Kassiah – Journal
Hillary! – Journal
Blake Haysel – Journal
Alicia Marie – Journal
Adriene R – Journal

I’m also going to include my brand new swag in those prize packs. Be on the lookout for an email from me. I also have all of the bookplate requests, and I’ll be mailing those out in the next couple of weeks. Thanks again for entering!

For a list of the YAmazing winners, go here.

My New Smile

99.9% of people have some physical trait they would love to change. For me, it has always been my teeth. My family didn’t have the money (or insurance) to get me braces as a kid, and I often felt like a human jack-o-lantern. Seriously, they were messed up. I think that was a big part of the reason that I was so shy growing up. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Eventually, at 19, I did get braces. I went through having seven teeth pulled, four front teeth and three impacted wisdom teeth. Without anesthesia, mind you, because we paid cash for everything and it would have cost another $1,000 to put me under. (These are the decisions you make when you are without money or insurance.) I still shudder when I remember having my teeth pulled.

At 21, I had my braces off, and it was like I had a new lease on life. I smiled more. I laughed more. I became a little more outgoing. Unfortunately, my retainer broke and (still poor and without insurance), I had to make the decision to buy college textbooks or a retainer. Of course, I chose books and my front tooth started to grow crooked again. I felt like everyone stared at it when I spoke. When I started to vlog for the Rebels, sometimes I would re-shoot footage if I thought it showed my mouth too closely.

Now, this may sound vain, and it is, but man this thing screwed with my confidence. For years now, I’ve had insurance and the money to take care of it, but the dentists recommended braces, and I couldn’t bring myself to get braces at my age (not that people shouldn’t, but that was my choice). This bothered me so much that I put off going to the dentist for far too long. Until last month when a friend told me about the amazing dentist she’d found. I decided it was past time to get over my anxiety and get to a solution. And this dentist found one. Four appointments later, I walked out of the office yesterday with a veneer and a near perfect smile.

Yesterday, I walked into my office and flashed smiles at everyone. Nobody seemed to notice anything different.

I finally announced, “hey, people. i had my smile fixed. SEE?”

And several people said, “what was wrong with your smile?”

To which I responded in shock, “the crooked. and the imperfection.”

And they said, “oh, i never noticed.”

And I walked away in bewilderment.

What I had perceived as this glaring imperfection had been all in my head. Sure, maybe someone had noticed the crooked tooth, but it didn’t matter to them. I’m not going to say that I regret having the work done because confidence is mostly about how you feel about yourself, and I felt like crap with my crooked tooth. Now, I’m full of smiles, and I love it.

BUT yesterday sparked some introspection. If I think back on my childhood or teen years, I can’t remember anyone making fun of my teeth. I remember one family member saying something, but that’s it. I formed my harsh judgments through simple observation of the world and my peers – “one of these things is not like the others.” My sister was the pretty one. By default, I was the ugly one. I remember thinking I could be pretty if only my teeth were straight. It makes me a wee bit sad realizing that I placed such pressure on myself and that I hated myself in that way for YEARS.

I wish I could have been kinder to myself. Why are we taught to tear ourselves down so harshly?

STORY OF A GIRL by Sara Zarr

When she is caught in the backseat of a car with her older brother’s best friend–Deanna Lambert’s teenage life is changed forever. Struggling to overcome the lasting repercussions and the stifling role of “school slut,” she longs to escape a life defined by her past. With subtle grace, complicated wisdom and striking emotion, Story of a Girl reminds us of our human capacity for resilience, epiphany and redemption.

****

At the tail end of 2009  I was going through a reading drought where I read a lot, but I couldn’t find anything I loved. I started a lot of books, but nothing grabbed me. The voices fell flat or the stakes were low or the characters were ones I couldn’t relate to. I’d just moved to San Francisco, and I was going through this intense period of loneliness because I hadn’t made friends here yet. One of my favorite things to do that first December was to drive down Highway 1, grab a hot cocoa from McDonalds (drive thrus are a novelty in SF), and head over to the shore to watch the sun set over Pacifica in a very startling, dramatic fashion. When I came across Story of a Girl at the library, I was excited to read it because it takes places in that sleepy coastal town.

The first thing that struck me was how real the characters felt. Deanna’s pain leaps off the pages at the reader. I ached for her as I read. First, she is taken advantage of by her older brother’s best friend. She is angry at the boy, but mostly she blames herself for it, though she was too young to even realize the position she’d been put in or the repercussions of it. Her father catches her and the boy together and that moment becomes the catalyst for the heartbreak she suffers over the next years. When the book opens, her father is so disillusioned that he’s checked out. He can hardly look at her while she feels this incredible yearning to be his little girl again. Her older brother is another family disappointment, as he lives at home with his girlfriend and their baby. This family is broken, but oh so authentic. They are working class and just struggling to get by. Dreams are a luxury.

Deanna’s friends, her parents, her brother, her brother’s girlfriend, and the boy who used her could have been people I knew. This girl’s story could have been mine if I’d taken another path, and that is the wonder of literature. That we get to see our lives play out in another way, even if it’s only on the page.

I cried buckets reading Story of a Girl. Not just a little sniffle, but actual crying with sound effects and snot. This story tugged at something in me and refilled that empty space in me that hadn’t loved a book in too long. Now I own a copy of it and I can’t visit Pacifica without imagining Deanna and her family there, and I have to believe that things have gotten better for them. At least I like to think so.

***

Check out the links below to see what the other Bookanistas are talking about!

THE TRUTH ABOUT FOREVER by Sarah Dessen

 a long, hot summer… 

That’s what Macy has to look forward to while her boyfriend, Jason, is away at Brain Camp. Days will be spent at a boring job in the library, evenings will be filled with vocabulary drills for the SATs, and spare time will be passed with her mother, the two of them sharing a silent grief at the traumatic loss of Macy’s father. 

But sometimes unexpected things can happen—things such as the catering job at Wish, with its fun-loving, chaotic crew. Or her sister’s project of renovating the neglected beach house, awakening long-buried memories. Things such as meeting Wes, a boy with a past, a taste for Truth-telling, and an amazing artistic talent, the kind of boy who could turn any girl’s world upside down. As Macy ventures out of her shell, she begins to wonder, Is it really better to be safe than sorry?

****

“There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.”

I read this book some time ago. It was published in 2004, but it was new to me in 2010 when I read it. I’d heard a lot about Sarah Dessen, and usually it was in reference to her books being sweet and light. So basically, I didn’t expect much when I picked up this book. What I discovered was that people underestimate Sarah Dessen because she makes a difficult story look easy.

In THE TRUTH ABOUT FOREVER, Dessen creates a whole cast of characters that surround Macy. Her real estate-selling mother, Caroline the older sister, Jason the ex, Wes, and the catering crew. These people all impact Macy in various ways. She’s grieving for her father and these people crash into her life and help her to find the desire to live again. So much of this book is about control. When people are grieving or scared, they feel like they’re spinning out without anything to hold on to. People try to regain control in different ways. I like that several of the characters are holding on to different things – for Caroline it’s the desire to move on by redoing the beach house, for the mother it’s pouring herself into her career, and for Macy it’s trying to be perfect – the perfect daughter and perfect girlfriend. All of this grieving is quiet and pushes them apart. Dessen does a wonderful job of skipping out on the melodrama and letting things take the course of time.

The romance is incredibly sweet, too. Wes and Macy both have significant others. They start out as friends, and their gradual realization of feelings is slow and natural. I loved all of their getting-to-know-each-other scenes. They are imperfect and mess up, but these two genuinely like each other. It’s not all sparks and attraction. This book isn’t just a romance. It’s a full-circle look at a girl’s life and none of the characters are alike – not an easy thing to do with a cast this big.

I think the biggest surprise for me in this book was the humor. Monica, with her timely one line answers, had me cracking up at the end. This is a book that goes on my shelf to be reread when I’m in the mood for quiet comfort and a laugh.

***

Check out the links below to see what the other Bookanistas are talking about!

Quinn’s done the unthinkable: she kissed a guy who is not Carey, her boyfriend. And she got caught. Being branded a cheater would be bad enough, but Quinn is deemed a traitor, and shunned by all of her friends. Because Carey’s not just any guy—he’s serving in Afghanistan and revered by everyone in their small, military town.

Quinn could clear her name, but that would mean revealing secrets that she’s vowed to keep—secrets that aren’t hers to share. And when Carey goes MIA, Quinn must decide how far she’ll go to protect her boyfriend…and her promise.

Publisher: Simon Pulse
Debuts: August 28, 2012
ISBN-10: 144245413X
ISBN-13: 978-1442454132

Buy the Book:
Amazon | Indiebound | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million

Add to Your Shelf:
Goodreads
The Reading Room

Being sent to live with her estranged father offers a clean start and she is eager to take it. Enter Asher Blackwell. Once a Protector of Healers, Asher sacrificed his senses to become immortal. Only by killing a Healer can a Protector recover their human senses. Falling in love is against the rules between these two enemies. Because Remy has the power to make Protectors human again, and when they find out, they’ll becoming for her—if Asher doesn’t kill her first.

This is Book One in the Touched trilogy.

Publisher: Kensington/KTeen
Debuts: November 27, 2012
ISBN-10: 0758273339
ISBN-13: 978-0758273338

Buy the Book:
Amazon | Indiebound| Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million| German Amazon

Add to Your Shelf:
Goodreads

Touched will also be released in the following languages:

Thienemann Verlag (German hardcover) – February 21, 2012
HHV Hamburg GmbH (German audio book) – February 23, 2012
Ullstein (German paperback)
Dogan Egmont (Turkish)

German Promotion:
Facebook Fan Page – Remy und Asher
Website – www.remy-und-asher.de
Lovelybooks.de Leserunde (Reading Round)

German Reviews

Publisher: Kensington/KTeen
Debuts: TBD

Buy the Book:
TBD | German Amazon

Add to Your Shelf:
Goodreads

Touched 2 will also be released in the following languages:

Thienemann Verlag (German hardcover) – October 29, 2012
HHV Hamburg GmbH (German audio book)
Ullstein (German paperback)