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Tucson Book Festival March 13-14

March 10, 2010

If any of you are in the area, I hope you’ll stop by and see me at the Tucson Book Festival so it looks like I have fans. (I like to pretend, often bribing near strangers into filling this role.)…

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Career Day

March 4, 2010

Yesterday my daughter told me her school was having a dress-in-the-career-you’re going-to-have day. She couldn’t decide whether to go as an artist, a crazy cat lady, or an editor. “What do editors wear?” she asked.“Bow ties,” I said.“What do the…

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Random.org has chosen the winner

March 3, 2010

I love the Random.org website because it boasts that it is truly random. As opposed to all those other things in life that are only pseudo-random. (Like, say, certain people’s editorial comments.) The first sentence on the site says: Perhaps…

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Another book give-away

February 24, 2010

Laura Lofgreen,one of my blogging friends, just did an interview with me that is up on her blog: http://mydeartrash.blogspot.com/2010/02/janette-rallison-young-adult-author.html I think all of my followers should read it, because I can actually be insightful and witty when given questions I…

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And the winners are . . .

February 23, 2010

After my husband read my rejection contest blog, he stared at the screen and said, “Wow, those stories are really depressing.” Exactly. Welcome to my life. And yet at the same time I think we all have the right to…

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Rejection Contest

February 15, 2010

My daughter worked at Putnam going through the slush pile a few summers back. She told people her official job title was: Dream Crusher. A lot of agents could also put this on their business cards. During my recent agent-quest,…

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The writer and self-esteem

February 8, 2010

Since My Double Life is coming out in three months, I’ve written a lot of emails to my editor, Tim, AKA the bow-tied one, about marketing stuff. (I want to hold some sort of celebrity look-alike contest, but more about…

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The oddities of Amazon . . .

January 31, 2010

I admit there are a lot of things to love about Amazon. It’s a great way to find all of those older books that your local book store doesn’t carry. But I’m not a big fan of all the used…

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In which Janette begs for romance–wait, will that title get me blocked in filters?

January 24, 2010

When I was a teenager I used to love to read romances. Seriously, I was a Harlequin addict. I thought men were supposed to be tall, dark, and brooding. Now I have stacks of YA books to read (have to…

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Manatees, Barbara and otherwise

January 22, 2010

Nicole, one of my intrepid fans, has asked me a couple of times to mention the plight of manatees in my blog. It isn’t really a writing-young-adult-fiction sort of topic, since I have never written or read a book about…

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do new writers need to worry about people "stealing" their book

Re: Stolen Ideas Posted by: “Clint Johnson” clintrj@q.com Thu Jan 21, 2010 10:40 am (PST) There’s an element of assumed brilliance in these fears that wears off when you realize how many talented people there are out there. (My assumptions…

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On the eve of the Newbery announcement . . .

January 14, 2010

This song is for me and all the other authors in the world. Just listen to the words and you’ll get what I’m humming to myself . . .