In the acknowledgements... again!

(teasingly) chastised me in the comments of my last post because I was squeeing about finding my name on the acknowledgments page of THE MORGUE AND ME, but had not reacted similarly to my name being in the acknowledgments of PRADA & PREJUDICE. The reason for that is because I hadn't actually known about being mentioned in P&P when I made that post!

But now I have the evidence before me:

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Oh, and here's what my name looks like in John's book:

Two very different books with one thing in common: My name in the acknowledgments!

Well, okay. Maybe more than one thing. They are both YA debuts for June 2009, and I enjoyed both of them very much!

Seriously, I could so get used to this whole reading-published-novels-that-were-once- manuscripts-that-I-critiqued thing.

Keep bringing it on, y'all.

In the acknowlegements!

My eyes are dilated right now and I can't see much of anything.  Particularly not anything typed.  In fact, I stopped at the store after my eye appointment to pick up some cold medicine and food, but I couldn't read anything on the packages, so I became frustrated and left empty handed.  (I'll fix any typos here later.)

But!  I just wanted to tell you all, one of my crit partners from about a year and a half ago has a YA that came out from Viking this month.  His name is John C. Ford.  The book is THE MORGUE AND ME.  John mailed me a signed copy which I just pulled out of my mailbox.  After about a full minute of holding the book out in front of me at various lengths and angles, I spotted what appears to be my name on the acknowledgments page.  Yes, it is my name!

MY NAME IS IN THE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS!!!!!!!

How awesome is that?  I am so excited and so touched.  I cannot wait to dive in and read this book again.  It was a pleasure the first time.  I am looking forward to seeing how it's changed since the draft I read!

Now I just have to wait for my eyes to get back to normal so I can do that!

Title change required.

My title has to be changed.  Immediately! 

My agent told me this: 

Liesa was wondering about whether you’d be open to brainstorming new title ideas before listing the sale. She’s thinking that she’d love to see something that feels a little punchier. Her comparison was EXIT HERE—evocative, memorable, and brief. Her concern is that SCRATCHING AT THE 8-BALL could have too many meanings and might be too verbose.

So you see, my PubMarketplace announcement is being held hostage until I come up with something acceptable! 

I asked for clarification of whether "8-Ball" is out of the picture completely because of the drug reference, or if maybe something like "Behind the 8-Ball" could work since it's an idiom that means the same thing I was going for with "Sat8B." Although, I expect that the answer is going to be that I should stay away from 8-balls entirely. 

And there go of my visions of the awesomest awesome cover of all time!

Anyhow, if anyone has evocative, memorable, and brief title suggestions for me, I would LOVE to hear them! 

Making up slang.

It can be amusing to watch movies that were once filled with expletives, but that television station peeps have dubbed with everyday words. To me, the new words stick out way more than the originals. I suppose that it's because I don't have a problem with profanity most of the time. And I don't have children.

Some of the memorable dubs I've heard are these:

-- 12 MONKEYS. In a TV version, Brad Pitt consistently said, "TV!" in place of the eff word. It was very, very weird.

-- MALLRATS. In the original dialogue, Jason Lee said (in crude terms) that his girlfriend broke up with him because he passed gas while she was down near that area. In the censored version, the slang was changed to something even more appalling: "What can I say, I was feeling very relaxed, when I'm relaxed I throw up." CAN YOU IMAGINE?!!!!!

-- DIE HARD: WITH A VENGEANCE.   Samuel L. Jackson called Bruce Willis a "melon farmer." Which was so unexpected that my husband and I laughed for several minutes straight after we heard it. We've since adopted into our everyday conversations.

Several months ago, we came up with our own wacky slang while watching some television show. During commercials, the station's news anchors kept advertising with one- and two-liners about what you could expect to see if you "Tune in to KOMO 4 at eleven!"   The male anchor seemed especially smug about the prospect of telling us more deets about some gristly murder, so Dwayne yelled at the TV, "Why don't you just go KOMO 4 yourself?"

After I stopped laughing, I commented that "KOMO 4" would be great for movie dubbing because unlike "frick," "frak," and "fug," it is unrecognizable as any specific obscenity in the English language. 

Here's Neko (who is, by far, my most sarcastic cat) to demonstrate how she has incorporated "KOMO 4" as a slang term into her vocabulary:

Ah, Neko.  Isn't she just a ray of sunshine?

Using "KOMO 4" was awkward at first (three syllables!), but it has gradually made it's way into my heart and vocabulary. 

And now I've shared it with you all in the hopes that it will enrich your life the way it has mine!  xoxo

A dress quandry!

My youngest sister is getting married in Las Vegas in late-September, and we're all going! Seriously, a bunch of us in the family are piling on a plane together and staying at Mandalay Bay. I'm very excited about it! This will be my fourth trip to Vegas, but only my second time staying on the Strip. I've always wanted to stay at MB. Also, we haven't had a family vacation like this since, well, ever One thing, though, is that I have other trips scheduled this fall--my grandpa's 80th birthday in Arizona (early October) as well as a wedding in Baltimore I might attend (late October). It's going to be a little crazy. And expensive.

In order to save a tiny bit of money, I thought I might wear a dress that I already own to my sister's wedding.

(Yes, I'm on my knees. I needed something resembling full length and didn't want to bother with a tripod. My laundry hamper took the photo for me. Niña wanted to be involved, as you can see. And Angelus is in the background.)

Can I wear this one? Would that be allowed with it being white and all? Or do the flowers all over counteract the white on top?

Please let me know your thoughts. The wedding is ONLY fifteen weeks away! ;-)