Last Chance to Party!

I can’t believe my party is almost over. What a fabulous week it’s been for me and I hope you all have enjoyed it, as well.

A couple of Tat things before we get started—


1. MY ANKLE!
2. Yes, it did hurt a lot.
3. My daughter loves it and my son said it made my hip factor go up by 90%
4. My husband wanted me to get a tramp stamp on my back. My children vehemently vetoed that.

Moving on…

The winner of I Heart You, You Haunt Me by Lisa Schroeder is The Compulsive Reader!
The winner of an Imogene book by Lisa Barham is Melissa Walker!

YAY! I will be in touch with you shortly!

Have you bought Read My Lips yet? A friend had to write and remind me early in the week that my book was what the party was all about and I should mention it every once in a while! You can buy it here, or read an excerpt here. Remember, my little girl wants to go to Cabo! (I just want to fix the flagstone patio in the front, but hey, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

And remember, today is the last day to enter for the grand prize, so be sure to comment! I will announce the winner of the fabulous box of Simon Pulse books tomorrow. EDIT: I am taking off for a cozy B&B with the hubby and then have a signing tomorrow. So the winner won't be announced till the afternoon.
I have some fabulous guest authors today and a really big surprise! What? You want the surprise first? Okay! Okay!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the supreme pleasure of being interviewed today by the one and only Scott Westerfeld, also known as Scott-la by his minions. And yes, he has minions.

Teri: Scott! Thanks so much for agreeing to interview me! I saw you were interviewed on TV a couple days ago. Congrats. I have to tell you though, that your hair… it was looking kinda … puffy. Can you comment on that before we get started?

Scott: (Clearing throat) Television is, as Marshall McLuhan famously said, a cool medium. And I'm afraid my hair is just too damn hot.

Teri: ????? Let’s just get right to the interview…

Scott: (Nodding sagely) Can you read lips?
Teri: Yes. And I read minds too. (laughing) No, actually I don’t. But if I did, I would use it for good and not evil. I think.

Scott: What were writerly challenges of creating the POV of a deaf person?
Teri: I wanted to really amp up the other senses, so I had to be aware of what was going on around my character all the time.

Scott: In your research on deafness, what did you learn that surprised you
most?
Teri: A lot of deaf people have residual hearing and thanks to technology, can hear some things with hearing aids. But when you see someone with hearing aids you just assume they hear what you hear. They don’t. I watched some movies that illustrated what a deaf person with hearing aids might hear and I was astonished at how different it is. I am just super impressed at how deaf people take that and put it together with body language and lips reading and communicate.

Scott: "Read My Lips" is about eavesdropping. Have you ever gotten in trouble
for spying on someone or divulging a confidence?
Teri: Actually, no. But I did use a gossip for my own ends once. My best friend and I had a spat that women sometimes do…I don’t even remember what it was about. But we hadn’t spoke for about four years or something. (Shaddup, sometimes women are like that!) Anyway, I was seriously ill and needed to tell her I would be going under the knife. But when I saw the local gossip, I used her to communicate with my friend. I told her about the illness and sure enough, my BFF called me that afternoon. I answered with uproarious laughter. So you see, gossip can be a useful method of communication!

Scott: Was there a secret sorority at your school?
Teri: No, but we had a bunch of cowboys/rednecks. Does that count?

Scott: Do you remember that scene in 2001 where Hal reads the astronaut's
lips, and then KILLS THEM? Just thought I'd mention it.
Teri: ?????


Thanks Scott for agreeing to interview me! Next up, a fabulous writer who is successful across all genres, the multi-talented author of Angel’s Choice and Secrets of My Suburban Life, Lauren Baratz Logsted!

Thanks Lauren!


Thanks for having me, Teri! I'm thrilled to be a part of your launch!"

Fiction, for both adults and teens, is loaded with characters who are fish out of water. Jay Gatsby? Fish out of water, even if he is a self-made millionaire. Boo Radley? Fish our of water, or I guess you could also say recluse in house. Even Harry Potter begins his journey as - you guessed it! - a fish out of water: first living with his awful relatives and then trying to get adjusted to wizardry and Hogwarts. There's a reason why the theme is so universal in fiction and that's because it's so universal in life. We have all had times when we've felt alienated, like we don't fit in. Even the quarterback of the football team has felt this way. He just doesn't show it the way the rest of us do, but believe me, he has felt it.

In my latest YA novel SECRETS OF MY SUBURBAN LIFE, Ren D'Arc is a fish out of water geographically, socially and culturally. After Ren's novelist mother dies, having been crushed to death by a stack of Harry Potter books, Ren's father decides to escape the painful memories by moving with Ren from New York City to Danbury, CT. There's just one problem (or one of many): neither of them know how to drive. And the process of learning to drive terrifies Ren, who's been transported all her life in trains, cabs and subways. So Ren resorts to what she knows: she steps outside her house and raises her hand to hail a cab. Unfortunately, Danbury, considered to be a small city, looks more like the suburbs in its residential neighborhoods. So there's Ren, on that grassy lawn, waiting for a cab to just happen on by. Do you think one ever will? Not a chance. So Ren begins using a taxi service where her rotation includes an African American named George, a Middle Eastern man named Mohammed and an American Amazon woman named Blue. Before long, these cabdrivers are as much Ren's posse and saviors as they are her form of transportation.

Please leave a comment below for a chance to win a signed copy of SECRETS OF MY SUBURBAN LIFE and feel free to visit me at www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com.

Happy Launch Day, Teri!

Thanks Lauren!

Next up (pausing for total fan girl gushing) We have the amazing fabulous, needs no introduction, author of a gazillion amazing books for teens, Kate Brian!

First of all, Teri, thank you so much for inviting me to la soiree de blog! I'm SO one of the cool kids now!

So I was thinking about this whole "fish-out-of-water" thing and trying to relate it to my own life when I suddenly realized that . . . OMG . . . I've NEVER been a true fish-out-of-water. I am a total Jersey girl. Grew up in Jersey, went to college in Jersey (go Rutgers!), lived in Hoboken after college, and still live in NJ today. Everywhere I went, there were a lot of other people like me. So what was I going to blog about? When have I ever been the odd girl out? And then, I remembered.
Los Angeles.

I traveled to LA a few years back to see if I wanted to move there and try to break into TV and film writing. I have never been so supremely uncomfortable in my entire life. Why? Well,
A) Everyone drives everywhere. I am a walker. One day I was strolling along a street full of shops and I was literally the only person on either sidewalk. (Talking point: why do they even have sidewalks in LA?) Were they filming one of those movies where everyone on earth is destroyed by some renegade comet and I was the only person left? No. I knew this because the outdoor café I walked by was packed with gorgeous people staring me down like I had some freakish communicable disease—just because I was walking! Totally weirded me out.
B) Every single person I met had written a screenplay. Or was writing a screenplay. Or wanted to produce so-and-so's screenplay. I know I'm a writer, so I should have fit in, but I occasionally like to talk about other things! No one there seemed to talk about anything else! At a party I finally met a girl who was an architect and I sucked to the poor chica all night long like she was the last source of oxygen on planet Earth.
C) I am not about image. On the streets of NYC I get an occasional appreciative glance. In LA all I got were grossed-out sneers. I felt like Shrek or something, just because I wasn't fully made up and carrying the latest bag. So not my scene.

So that was my big fish-out-of-water experience. I packed my bags, came home and stuck to novel writing. Good thing, too, because otherwise I may never have written Private—which is, of course, a fish-out-of-water story. See how it all comes full circle? J

Good luck with the book! I can't wait to read it!
xoxo
Kieran Scott (who writes Alloy Entertainment books under the pseudonym Kate Brian)


Thanks Kieran! (I call her Kieran cause her and I … we’re like that (crossing fingers) .

Wow! What a wonderful week you all have given me! I hope you enjoyed my party and I will see you all around once in a while. Drop me a line and tell me if you liked Read My Lips!

Hugs!