My last guest blog for LITFEST Magazine

I've been blogging once a week this month for LITFEST Magazine.  My final entry went up today:  How Buffy Ended My Quarter-Life Crisis. Here are the others that were posted this month:

Glutton For Punishment (about being a vegetarian) How An Opening Band Stole the Show . . . and My Heart (about my first trip to NYC) Life Above the Basement (about living with a drummer)

It was a pretty fun gig, writing for a website that doesn't belong to me.  I mean, I was still writing about myself and my own opinions and such, of course.  But when I post on my own blog/website/Twitter/etc., there is definitely a different tone.   I tend to assume that the people who are reading my words at my own personal corners of the internet know me well (which actually isn't the case a lot of times, I'm sure).  For LITFEST, I'm pretty sure that NO ONE knew me, so I kept that in mind for every essay.

If you had a chance to check out the blogs, I hope you enjoyed them!  And I do believe they are still giving away a copy of Freefall if you email or leave a comment on one of the entries.  Good luck!

Sex talk at the Contemps today

I blogged at the Contemps today about sex education, abstinence, and the Pause Before You Play campaign.  Please join the discussion!

Blog: An Update Regarding My Nemeses List.

Remember this past summer when I wrote about My Nemeses and you learned a little bit about how I feel about abstinence-only education? 

Well, today I blogged about at the Contemps site about the same thing.  Except there is now updated information.  And a PSA starring Nemesis #1 herself (still hyperbole, of course) and some guy from Jersey Shore or whatever.  

Please check it out!  And join in on the discussion!  :-)

New interview and a chance for you to win Freefall

Nic at Irresistible Reads recently read and reviewed Freefall.  Happily for me, she really enjoyed it.  She wanted to know more, so we did an interview (her first author interview ever!). Nic is also running an international contest to win a copy of Freefall.  All you have to do to enter to win is fill out her form at the bottom of the interview before December 6, 2010.  Good luck!  :-)

Blog: I sort of . . . lost a year.

Last night, Dwayne had NPR on in the car and I heard someone mention that Obama has been in office for two years.  I was like, "WAIT JUST A SECOND!"

So, actually, his inauguration was January 20, 2009, which is a couple of months short of two years ago.  Still, it's closer to two years than it is to one.  I asked Dwayne how this happened.  How in the world I lost a year of my life.  Because to me, it really, truly feels like it's only coming up on the one-year anniversary.  He said, "Well.  You have been preoccupied with Freefall for all of Obama's presidency."

And, yes.  That is true.  My offer of representation was on January 6th, I accepted the offer on January 12th, Obama's inauguration was January 20th, and my book sold in May.  The truth is, aside from trips I've taken, I don't have many specific memories of May 2009 to October 2010.  Or maybe it's more like, the things I remember feel like they happened within a few months of each other instead of a year and a half. 

It's very strange.  The book has been out for about six weeks now, and I feel like I've slowly been coming out of this fog.  I still think about Freefall every day, but I think about other things (like my current manuscript) even more now.  And that's good news.  I suspect that I'll always look back on the year that I was age 32 as my missing year; I don't remember WHAT I was doing, but I was so insanely busy and stressed that I was clearly doing a lot of it. 

(I'm blaming the book because to think that this is what life is going to be like for me moving forward is too alarming to contemplate at this time!)