Imaginary Friends

Today, I gave a presentation to all my coworkers. The weird thing is that I actually volunteered to do it. We have weekly lunch meetings, and once a quarter or so, an employee gives a presentation on a book they've read or something they've learned that might benefit everyone else. There were about thirty people listening. I had twenty minutes. The book I read was  Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking  by Susan Cain. (If I were ambitious or responsible or something, I'd put in footnotes with references to pages in the book. But since no one ever reads footnotes—heck, no one even reads my blog—I'll just put in an asterisk (*) where I use info from the book. If you really want the page number to one of them, just ask and I'll look it up for you.) This quiz is from Susan Cain's book. (Actually, the one in the book has twenty questions. I typed it up and handed it out for people to look at.) The more questions you answer as t

That's a reference to a post I wrote long, long ago called " Why YA? " At the time, I was working on what I thought was a YA novel. But the words Young Adult infer a range greater than the genre actually encompasses. Notice I called it a genre instead of a category. This is based in part on the sense I've gotten from reading blogs, reviews, articles and other flotsam on the internet. It's also based on responses I got from an #askagent question on Twitter. (Okay, so I only got three responses from agents, but two of them said genre. One said age group. The non-agent responses were evenly split.) The expectations for YA fiction have less to do with age group and more to do with the type of story you might expect to find in that corner of the bookstore. If it were strictly an age grouping, it would include a broad range of fully-fledged genres. Instead, it includes sub-genres that resemble their non-YA counterparts, but also have certain hallmarks qualifying the

...like an alien entity. So, I had a novel idea. (Meaning it was an idea for a novel, not a unique idea. Though it may be that, too. I don't know.) It was about a kid who pretends to be possessed by an alien intelligence as a way of overcoming the deficiencies in his own personality. It was going to be a good, straight book with no actual aliens or possessions, only nice normal things like middle school and social pressure and how hard it is to be an introvert. You know, what they've taken to calling contemporary because everything has to have some sort of genre label. Ahem. Did you notice I said was ? That's because no matter how I tried to put together a plot, I couldn't get excited about it. I mean, it's a great premise. A premise with promise, you might say. (But probably wouldn't.) Also, I actually did pretend be an alien when I was a kid. I have a journal entry to prove it. It only lasted a day, but you might say I have some personal experience w