Things you don't want to do in DC in July: Hope on the Metro to go meet someone, only to find that the Metro's a/c isn't working. Feel vague sense of unease, but brush it aside. It is the summer, after all, and maybe they're trying to save on power costs!

Read for a while, and then notice that the Metro has stopped moving. Notice other people noticing. Eventually get static-filled mumbled announcement about "track problems."

Sit. Sweat. Sit some more. Completely miss meeting the person you are supposed to be seeing and--you guessed it--sit. And sweat.

Finally, end up paying about $10 for the privilege of parking your car in a lot and then sitting on a subway GOING NOWHERE.

And people say no one in DC knows how to have a good time!

However, all is not sweat and sitting! I got an email from my lovely editor at Harper yesterday letting me know that Stealing Heaven has been nominated for the American Library Asssociations’s Best Books for Young Adults! YAY!!!!!! It's a total surprise and real honor to be nominated, and my heartfelt thanks to whoever did so.

Finally, if you live in the DC area, I'll be doing a book signing tomorrow, Friday, August 1st from 9:30-11 PM during the Breaking Dawn party at the Barnes and Noble in Reston, Virginia.

P.S. The pictures that have already been sent in for the Picture This! contest have been FABULOUS. Keep them coming--I can't wait to see what your picture will be!

Picture This! contest

Own one or more of my novels? Then take a picture of it and you could win a prize!

Here's the deal:

Take a picture of your copy of Bloom, Perfect You, or Stealing Heaven. Be creative! Take a picture of Stealing Heaven buried in the sand at the beach, or Bloom hanging out with flowers! Take Perfect You shoe shopping, or have it meet a bottle of vitamins!

Send that picture to elizabethscottcontest@gmail.com

You can enter up to three times--once for each of my three books. And for those of you who own Stealing Heaven...all Stealing Heaven pictures will be entered twice, as it costs about twice as much as Bloom or Perfect You.

You have until August 29th to send in your photos, and then I'll pick the five most creative pictures. The five winners will have their photos posted on elizabethwrites.com and will each get not one, not two, but FIVE young adult novels of their choice. This contest is open to anyone and everyone, regardless of where you live (I will ship books overseas) or if you've won something from me before.

Random question for those of you who read this blog and are under 18: Do you like poetry? If you do, what poets do you like?

I ask because I had lunch with a friend the other day and afterward, I got to thinking about the time she and I were looking through one of those huge anthologies they make you read when you get to college and take your first literature course, and she got to talking about poetry she'd read in high school and I had to confess I'd never had to read any. I sure wish we had, but instead I had to read The Fountainhead AND Atlas Shrugged in order to graduate from high school.*

Also, I don't know what's made Morgan Freeman pop up in everything recently, but doesn't he have the best voice? His voice-overs for all those Olympic ads are actually making me interested in the Summer Olympics, which I like far less than the Winter Olympics, which have skiing. (And, all right, skiing crashes. I know! But there, I've admitted it. What can I say? I'm old enough to remember ABC's Wide World of Sports and the big old ski crash during the opening. It always made me feel better whenever I had to go skiing and ran into a tree. (And I always ran into a tree. Always.))**

Meg Cabot is always hilarious and awesome about everything, but I especially like this: "Usually when you find the right story, you love it so much, you want to finish it (well, sort of. 99% of writing is keeping your butt stuck in the chair while the rest of your friends are out having fun. Try to think of how good you’ll feel when you get paid for it write the words THE END. That always helps me)."

Jennifer Smith, author of The Comeback Season, is having a really unique contest that really runs with her book--the grand prize is tickets to a Chicago Cubs baseball game!



*Yes, for real. And yes, both of them.

**You can find logo shots and Jim McKay's voice over ("and the agony of defeat") on YouTube, but not the actual opening. Though you can read about the skiing clip that I've babbled over. What in the world did I do before the internet? What did any of us do????

Have you ever wondered how many blogs there are out there? I have. (Can you tell I have oodles of work to do? Next thing you know, I'll be announcing that I'm going to clean out closets*)

The answer seems to be that no one is really sure, but it's an awful lot. Possibly hundreds of millions. And if you go to blogger, they have a little thing where they list updated blogs and during the minute I counted, 36 blogs were updated, including one called Rural Postal Carrier News, which I had to check out, because well--if you've read my bio, you probably can guess why.

Anyway, let's see what else is going on.

Two discussions on writing advice: the worst you've ever been given, and the best

Two very interesting blog posts about the always popular subject of the difficulty of making a living as a writer-- here and here

Thoughts and opinions solicited on writing groups

Elizabeth Bear writes about how her latest book isn't showing up in bookstores because it's not under one of the major distributors' listings by either her name or its title--and I think she says it best "Yes, the life of a writer really is this perilous."

Scary stuff.

Two more things:

Congrats to last week's contest winners: Brittany, Liviania, Ashley, and Sarah!

I'll be doing a book signing at the Barnes and Noble in Reston, Virgina on August 1st from 10-11 PM during their Breaking Dawn Party--it's going to be a lot of fun, and I hope to see you there!


*This will never happen. Once I fill a closet so full of stuff I can't get the door open without things falling out, it stays shut. To date, there are two closets in the house that no one opens. Perhaps if I leave them alone long enough, everything inside will disappear? Oooh! Or better yet, turn into bookstore gift certficates! I could live with that.

I was lucky enough to see a screening of American Teen--a documentary that follows a group of high school students from Indiana through their senior year--a few days ago, and I *loved* it. Granted, I suppose that's a given since I write young adult novels, but I thought it was refreshingly nonjudgmental and very honest about what it's like to be a teen in America today, right down to the fact that sometimes parents can be astonishingly cruel when they're trying to be "helpful."

It was also totally fascinating to see who everyone in the theater identified with, and how they reacted when certain things happened--I swear there was actually hissing a few times, and some glad "awww"s at others

I loved reading all about your favorite ice cream flavors (especially like the unusual ones, like cotton candy!) but I have to admit, I was really surprised that chocolate wasn't mentioned more.

But then I live with someone who loves chocolate (you may remember me mentioning his freezer stash) and even he tends to go for ice cream flavors like cookie dough, so clearly I'm basing my assumption on the fact that if I could eat ice cream (or chocolate), that would be what I'd eat.

Which leads me to...congrats to Kayleigh, who won the summer six-pack of books!

This week, I desperately need to take a vacation, but can't. So, once again, in the interest of living vicariously, tell me about your favorite vacation (or favorite vacation spot) and you could win a free book! The books I'll be giving away this week are: A Little Friendly Advice by Siobhan Vivian, Breathe My Name by R.A. Nelson, The Comeback Season by Jennifer Smith, and When You Wish by Kristin Harmel.

I'll take comments here through Friday, July 18th, and then I'll draw four names at random and each of those four people will win a book! This contest, as usual is open to everyone (I will ship books overseas), though I do want to remind you that if you comment here, *please* make sure you leave me a way to email you if you win.

Okay, back to work for me, but before I go, here's a couple of interesting links:

A great interview with Nora Roberts where she talks about her writing process--I love her thoughts on first drafts!

And branching out from there, the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog asks writers to chime in about their own first draft process. I never get tired of reading about how other people write--other people are so creative when it comes to writing books!

I just realized that when I wrote about the winners of the STEALING HEAVEN contest the other day, I forgot to give the answers to the questions. Duh!

Anyway, here they are:

1. What's Greg's last name? Tollver

2. Where does the Donaldson family keep their silver, and what's on it? Pantry, and an eagle.

3. What's the first thing Dani does using her real name? This one was tricky, and I should have said using her *full* real name. She gets her driver's license, although I took all the answers that came in saying the first time she uses her real name is with Greg because she does tell him that her name is Danielle.

Those of you who didn't get a chance to enter, or didn't win, don't worry--I'm going to be running another little contest featuring my books in a few weeks, so stay tuned...

And, of course, you know I have links!

Justin Larbalestier writes about "the hard bits" of being a writer and how life as a full-time novelist isn't quite how she pictured it

From the "Did someone really do this? REALLY?" department--ten ways to blow a book deal

Maureen Johnson on muses -- The whole thing is brilliant, but I think my favorite part is this: But even the best books like to REPEATEDLY PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE while you are working on them. I believe the technical term for this is “work.”

Because it's so true! (At least for me, anyway) I love writing, but it's like any other job in that some days you can't wait to get to it and on others, you'd rather clean the sidewalk with a toothbrush.

Elizabeth Bear has lots of interesting things to say about change in her writing process

Melissa Walker writes about best friend breakups. I've written about one (Perfect You), and if you've ever had a close friendship end (and who hasn't?), this lovely essay will resonate with you.

This week, I'm going to do something a little different--I'm giving away six paperbacks that are perfect for summer reading--and one person will win ALL of them!

So, for a chance to win: Death by Bikini, I Heart Bikinis: What's Hot, Better Latte Than Never, Tourist Trap, The Best Girl, and The Boyfriend League, just leave a comment telling me what your favorite ice cream flavor is. (I can't eat it, so I have to live vicariously through you! :-) )

I'll be taking comments through midnight EST on Friday, July 11th, and then I'll pick one name at random and that person will win all SIX books!

Also, I want to say congrats to the winners of the STEALING HEAVEN contest! Morgan won the necklace, and the gift card winners are: Katy, Tanya, Maureen, Lacey, Sasha, Hannah, Beth, Cathy, Linda, Rachael, Jennifer, Emily, Catharine, Beth, Melissa, Tatiana, Elle, Nicole, Suzanne, and Mandy.

Congrats to last week's contest winners: Erin, Bria, Kaylee, and Kiss to Betray, and also to everyone who checked out what was posted yesterday over on the news page.

Also! The Prince William County Library has named me teen author of the month, which was a unexpected and truly lovely surprise--my thanks to all the librarians who work there, especially Blair and Debby!

I have some links to share, but before I get to them, I just want to thank everyone who has stopped by the site or written to me about Living Dead Girl, which is about a fifteen year old girl called Alice who was kidnapped when she was ten, and has spent the past five years living with her kidnapper. It's pretty intense and much darker than my current books. You can read more about it here, and it will be in stores in early September.

Now the promised links:

Over at the livejournal community Fangs, Fur, & Fey, writers are talking about stress.

This one is an older link, and one I've shared before, but she recently mentioned it in her blog and reminded me all over again of how interesting it is--Justine Larbalestier's fantastic How To Write A Novel