UPCOMING INTERVIEW: Lauren Myracle - New York Times bestselling author of Internet Girls trilogy—ttyl, ttfn, and l8r, g8r

Lauren Myracle is a graduate of the Vermont College MFA program writing for children and young adults. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling Internet Girls trilogy—ttyl, ttfn (Ta-Ta for Now), and l8r, g8r (Later Gator) which was the first novel ever to be written entirely in instant messages.

For computer-savvy YA readers, the title TTLY focuses on instant messaging; "TTYL" is e-mail shorthand for "Talk to you later." In the novel tenth graders Angela, Zoe, and Maddie keep up with one another's adolescent ups and downs via IM's, and the novel is composed entirely of keyboarding dialogue, complete with typesetting characters such as smiley faces and other e-mail shorthand.

Ms. Myracle has written many novels: horror novels Bliss and Rhymes with Witches, and the coming-of-age trilogy, Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen.

Ms. Myracle considers writing for young people to be her life’s work, and with over a million copies of her books in print, she feels amazingly lucky to be able to reach such a large audience. Her realistic portrayal of the issues middle school and high school students deal with, however, brings Lauren negative attention as well as positive.

Her first novel, Kissing Kate, was selected an ALA Best Books for Young Adults for the year 2004. It was named by Booklist as one of the "Top Ten Youth Romances" of the year, as well as one of the "Top Ten Books by New Writers". Her middle-grade novel, Eleven, came out 2004, along with Twelve, which came out in 2007. Myracle published The Fashion Disaster that Changed My Life in 2005. Thirteen was released in March 2008.

Her novel Rhymes with Witches, was nominated for Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association. Bliss, which came out in 2008, is its prequel.

Ms Myracle has a book written entitled How to Be Bad with author E. Lockhart and Sarah Mlynowski. She also teamed up with four other favorite teen authors Stephanie Myers “Twilight”, Meg Cabot “Princess Diaries”, Kim Harrison & Michelle Jaffe) produce a book “Prom Nights From Hell” which is about proms gone supernaturally, horribly wrong. While regular girls are so concerned about shoes matching with their purse, the girls in these stories are worried about crossbows and vampires, zombie dates who've been dead for weeks, and a devil in a red dress who causes chaos by snapping high heels and breaking up couples.

Her latest novel ‘Luv Ya Bunches’ book one is about four elementary school girls who have little in common, but bond over the fact that they’re all named after flowers. Luv Ya Bunches is the first installment of a four-book series is now available in bookstores and one line. ‘Luv Ya Bunches: Violet in Bloom’ book two in the series will be out later this year.

Lauren Myracle was born on May 15, 1969 in Brevard, North Carolina, and grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. She earned her BA in English and Psychology from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked for some time as a middle-school teacher in the US and Japan. She later earned an MA in English from Colorado State University and a graduate of the Vermont College MFA program in writing for children and young adults.

She currently resides in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her husband and their children. Most of Ms. Myracle's novels take place in Atlanta, Georgia.

To learn more about Lauren Myracle, please visit her website

To purchase her books, please visit AMAZON and Barnes & Noble

Time out

Have taken the last week off from writing projects.  It's been a sociable time this Easter break, but has also given me a chance to catch up on a couple of jobs.  Mainly, the building of another set of bookshelves - before we have an avalanche of stacked books - and developing my new website.

I've been tinkering away with the new website for months and don't bother linking to the existing site any more because it looks way too clunky.  The new one has involved learning Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver and improving my poor understanding of Photoshop.  Anyway, the last week has given me a chance to hunker over the PC, develop some serious neck strain and bring out the inner nerd in me.  Yesterday, I got very excited at discovering how to create an animated button in Flash.  Whoopy-doo!

It'll still be a few weeks (at least) before I complete the site, I reckon, because I want to get it just right, but I'll have my own geeky launch and a party in digital wonderland when I do.

Painting (as in painting and decorating) isn't a job I enjoy.  I get bored.  And hate the smell of oil-based paints.  Whenever I can't put this off any longer, I find that I listen to the same 2 or 3 albums over and over again as I brush away (drips running down my arm), and that eventually they become associated in my head with a particular wall colour or room or, in this case, a set of bookshelves. Have put on a couple of coats of a stinky tint called 'Bounding Main' and have ended up listening to a good deal of Regina Spektor (Begin to Hope), Sarah Blasko (As Day Follows Night) and Charlie Parr (1922).  Lovely stuff.  Here's a sample.

Jaunting with The Stars My Destination

I don't often read Sci-fi, but Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination was recommended to me last year (by someone who doesn't often read Sci-fi) and so I tracked a copy down.  Again, for one reason or another, I ended up ordering it from a second-hand bookshop in America, and was delighted I did because it has a wonderful smell to it.

The moment I removed the first layer of packaging, a rich aroma of pipe tobacco wafted out.  And with each layer that I peeled off, the smell got stronger.  It's not that I smoke, but there's something about the smell that reminds me of my grandad and all the tins of Old Flake and Golden Virginia in which he stored nails, screws, bolts, rivets, washers and so on when he was alive.  Every now and then I pick up The Stars My Destination and sniff it, and I travel back through time to his work-shed and I watch him at his band saw or at his lathe.  Sometimes the smell transports me across the Pacific to the bookshop I bought it from.  I imagine the owner sitting at a counter with a pipe in his mouth, surrounded by eccentrically stacked books, or the house of the original owner surrounded by a fug of smoke.

That aside, it is a lovely read.  One of those books I was keen to return to each day.  (Thank goodness, as I've had a couple of duds recently that didn't even make the page 40 mark.)  First published in 1956, it doesn't feel dated in any sense, which perhaps indicates that it will endure for a good time to come.  I hope so.

'In this pulse-quickening novel, Alfred Bester imagines a future in which people "jaunte" a thousand miles with a single thought, where the rich barricade themselves in labyrinths and protect themselves with radioactive hit men - and where an inarticulate outcast is the most valuable and dangerous man alive.'

Gully Foyle is a wonderful character and his quest for vengeance is a compelling story.

In other news, I put the finishing touches to the final edit of The Grease Monkey's Tale today.  Phew!  Off to the printers before long, I imagine.  This certainly isn't Sci-fi.  And quite different to The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore.  More of a Romance-Thriller this time.

Have been listening to Leonard Cohen recently.  Enough to transport me back to undergraduate days at Kingston Polytechnic: staying up through the night, drinking and smoking too much (but never a pipe), walking along the banks of the Thames at sunrise, not having to go to work in the day... and thought I'd track down a 1970's version of Suzanne on YouTube for a little more nostalgia.