I was a reserved and lonely only child until they came into my life. I didn’t even know what I was missing until they were there, trying to push me in the water. It wasn’t always the smoothest situation, which is often the case in blended families, but my teenager-hood would have been a whole lot more dull and solitary (albeit less damp) without them around.

This is part of the reason why I dedicated Faking Faith to my stepsisters. In the story, Dylan Mahoney is a very lonely girl. She’s messed up her friendships, she took a bad gamble on a jerk guy, and she feels completely alone and disconnected from the world. Dylan desperately needs connection and support, and she finds it in the most unexpected place – the blog of Abigail, a girl whose life is completely unlike her own.

There are bad decisions and bumblings (and a scandalous incident with Abigail’s cute older brother) but in the end, what redeems Dylan – and what can redeem all of us, I believe – is how she reaches to connect with other people again. People who see her, just as she is, and love her anyway. She heals and grows and thrives by learning to once more be open and vulnerable.

Won’t you help keep Dylan from feeling lonely anymore, and bring her home to your bookshelves?

It was a very casual retreat — no planned team-building or trust exercises, no organized activities, just conversation around a roaring fire (Thanks, Erin!), some good food, and lots of Diet Coke.

I recall when the idea for a retreat first came up, it was part of a conversation on Twitter wondering if they made the clients of an agency feel like a clique, and I have to say that, having been part of a successful retreat now, I think it’s about bonding, sure, but not to exclusion of others, as a clique would be. In addition, my authors couldn’t be more excited now to support each other, and that’s the best benefit to come out of the weekend.

I’m already looking forward to planning the next one, for 2012! Where will it be? And will YOU be there? Maybe!

The Whole Gang, from left: Julia Karr, Kate Testerman, Erin Danehy, Ellen Booraem, Rebecca Petruck, Sara Beitia, Kiki Hamilton, Carrie Harris, Kater Cheek, Amy Spalding, and Josie Bloss

When 17-year-old Dylan Mahoney naively engages in “sexting,” she becomes an Internet phenomenon and a social pariah. Isolated from her friends and family, she retreats into the blogosphere, where she happens upon an online community of home-schooled teenage girls who write about their conservative Christian faith and document the blissful domesticity of their lives. Against her better judgment, she joins this community under false pretenses and develops a special friendship with a blogger named Abigail. The extraordinary set of events that ensue are at once outlandish and absolutely believable, thanks to Bloss’s compelling, down-to-earth prose. Conservative Christian characters who could easily be caricatured are multi-dimensional and complicated, and the lessons Dylan learns through her experiences with them are equally nuanced. Bloss somehow manages utter frankness and great generosity in her portrayal not only of Christian separatists, but also of typical modern families such as Dylan’s. Rather than promoting or demonizing any lifestyle, the novel illustrates how profoundly teenagers who seem to have nothing in common can connect and support each other, even as they choose very different paths.

Hooray! This is a truly exceptional novel, and I’m thrilled that PW picked up on the careful nuances of it.

There’s also more news for The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson! Another fun fan trailer, plus a great review from the Horn Book (UPDATE: It’s their Online Review of the Week!):

Upon arriving in London from Louisiana for the school year, high-school senior Rory is told that someone “pulled a Jack the Ripper” the night before. She assumes the phrase is some quaint British colloquialism she has yet to learn, not an actual reference to a gruesome murder committed on the same date—August 31—and in the same location. The smart, breezy, self-deprecating narration and textured boarding school atmosphere provide easy entrance to this increasingly eerie murder mystery in which the only sure thing is the schedule—Jack’s. On September 8, the anniversary of the Ripper’s second strike, police find another body near Wexford, Rory’s school. Johnson raises the stakes even further after Rory has a near-death experience, starts seeing people her classmates don’t, and falls in with a ragtag undercover group investigating the possibility that the murders have a paranormal explanation. Suspenseful and utterly absorbing, this first book in the Shades of London series will leave readers glad that Johnson, like her copycat killer, plans to return to the scene of the crime.

And that’s not all! We just learned this morning that Bad Taste in Boys by Carrie Harris has been nominated and is in consideration for the Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers 2012 list! Woot!

What’s going on in your lives? Any good news to share? Let’s celebrate in the comments!

But what about since then? A search of my query mailbox shows 2,130 queries received and responded to since July, with another hundred or so that went right to my spam folder. I requested 41 partials, which is a better average than the first half of the year, but does include material from a conference, as well as just emails. And I asked for three full manuscripts.

So who did I say yes to? Well, I signed Erin Danehy in July, with a YA urban fantasy. And I may have more news to share next week, on something I’ve been asking for all year. We’ll see.

But roughly, you’re looking at .04% odds. And… wow. That’s tough. It’s stark, seeing those numbers. But you know what? I’m still looking. Ok, not right now — any queries received after midnight tonight will be deleted unread. But I have no doubt that next spring, when I reopen to queries, I will be starving for something great to read, and I have no doubt you guys can bring it.

What other stats can I share that may be of interest? I closed new domestic deals for Josie Bloss, Matthew Cody, Trish Doller, Stephanie Perkins, and Ransom Riggs, plus several more that I’m excited to officially announce soon. I finalized foreign deals for rights in Chinese (both simplified and complex characters), Croatian, Germany, Hungarian, Indonesian, Portuguese (in Brazil), and Australia and the UK, and closed on a film option for Matthew Cody’s Powerless.

We got some great reviews, including several stars, and a lot of love from the internets for for our books and our authors — I couldn’t be prouder. Tom Sniegoski’s Fallen series hit the New York Times bestseller list, and over a million nerdfighters heard John Green praise Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins.

What else? Sara Beitia’s debut The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon came out to much praise, Kater Cheek’s weekly webcomic brought chicken-related laughs, S. Terrell French’s Operation Redwood continued to win awards, Sara Raasch got a tattoo and finished college, Susan Steward went to the Kennedy Space Center as part of NASA’s TweetUp program, Daniel Blau Rogge moved back to NYC, and Amy Spalding rocked the improv stage at LA’s Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.

And what can we look forward to? LOTS!!

January brings the release of XVI by Julia Karr, Small Persons with Wings by Ellen Booraem, and the US release of Pink by Lili Wilkinson. Looking beyond that, Spring sees the long-awaited release of The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson, the sequel to 13 Little Blue Envelopes, and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, while Summer brings us Carrie Harris‘ debut Bad Taste in Boys. Fall takes us to London for The Faerie Ring by Kiki Hamilton and The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson, the first in her new series, and gives us Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins, Faking Faith by Josie Bloss, and The Dead Gentleman by Matthew Cody.

Plus, my own long-expected debut of BabyUn.

I can’t wait to have even more things to celebrate! In the meantime, I hope you all have a very happy, healthy, and book-filled holiday season. I’ll check in here occasionally with more news as I have it to share. Merry merry!!!

• Teens Read Too posted a great review of Albatross by Josie Bloss. In part:

ALBATROSS is a powerful, insightful novel that centers on a problem in relationships that has unfortunately become all too common. Readers will feel like the people who witness those being emotionally abused in a relationship, and want to try so hard to tell that person to get away from the abuser, but are unable to fully control the situation. Josie Bloss constructs a realistic portrayal of such frightening yet truthful experiences of abuse that will exert a passion in readers to take action when they witness or are themselves in an abusive relationship.

• Cynthia Leitich Smith of Cynsations posted an interview with Sara Beitia (who has a blog and didn’t tell her agent — bad author!)
• Matthew Cody was at NY Comic Con last weekend to moderate a panel and sign copies of Powerless. Suvudu got a video interview. And hey, speaking of Powerless, wouldn’t it make an AWESOME Cybils nominee? This blogger thinks so, and I agree!
• Finally, Ransom Riggs has a cool post up at Mental Floss about his “found snapshots” collection, and the things people write on the back of pictures. Some things never change.

Have you found anything cool on the internet lately I might have missed? Link ‘em in the comments!

Author of ALBATROSS and BAND GEEK LOVE, Josie Bloss’s FAKING FAITH, about a teen shunned for a “sexting” incident who fakes her identity to fit in online with a community of ultra-conservative homeschooled teenage girls, again to Brian Farrey of Flux, in a nice deal, for publication in Fall 2011, by Kate Schafer Testerman of kt literary (NA).

And a question for my readers. Have you ever met someone in person that you first connected with online, on a blog, forum, or some other site (but not a dating site, which is specifically for the purpose of meeting people face to face)?

I think most of my readers know I have. Rexroth and I first “met” playing a computer game, and in the online forums for that game, then extended our friendship to our respective personal blogs before finally meeting in person and beginning to date. The rest is nerd history.

How about you?

But I did want to make sure you saw the fantastic interview with Josie Bloss than Meg Cabot posted on her blog! Please do check it out, and consider picking up your own copy of Albatross!

My favorite part may be the picture of Josie and Meg at one of Meg’s signings years before. It reminds me of a picture of myself from college, when some friends and I went down to New Orleans over Spring Break, and I insisted on our visiting Anne Rice’s house in the Garden District. (I was a huge fan of her vampire books, looooooong before the current vampire publishing phase.) We were looking at the outside when who should pull up but Anne Rice herself! So yeah, I totally got a picture — and years later, when I worked at Janklow & Nesbit, I got to work on some of her books!

What authors have you met that inspired you in some way?

Taut and emotionally wrenching… I couldn’t put it down. Josie Bloss is an author to watch.

Josie, take it away!

I was inspired to write Albatross after realizing something important from personal experience – the obsession that sometimes accompanies infatuation can be a terrible thing.

There are plenty of YA books that depict the intensity of first love as sweet and wonderful. I wrote about it in Band Geek Love, in which the main character, Ellie Snow, was drawn out of her defensive shell by devoted Conner. Even if Ellie and Conner weren’t meant to be together forever, it was a formative and positive relationship for Ellie and helped her become a better and more mature person.

But sometimes the object of our affection is not…deserving. Sometimes a crush is manipulative, knows the power he or she has and uses it to take advantage. If it involves the wrong person, sometimes an infatuation doesn’t fill us with light and happiness but instead drags us down into the worst parts of ourselves. Into jealousy and darkness and self-destruction where we molder away until we find the strength to climb out again.

That’s what happens to Tess, the main character of Albatross, when she moves to a new town after escaping her controlling and emotionally abusive dad. In the midst of that turmoil, Tess meets and becomes entranced by Micah, an intense and (literally) biting boy who knows exactly how to manipulate and push all of her buttons. Her intense pseudo-relationship with Micah progresses as he gives her just enough to keep her hanging on. Tess becomes obsessed with the girl she considers her competition for Micah’s affection, lies to her mom, and neglects all her other friendships. Because of her infatuation, Tess slowly turns into a version of herself that she despises. It’s only when she finds the strength to confront her dad that Tess is able to really face what her screwed-up relationship with Micah has become.

I sometimes joke with friends that writing this book-of-my-heart almost ended me, that I felt like I was going through every wretched minute of confusion and despair with Tess as she fought her way through her obsession with Micah and out the other side. But the payoff feels worth it. My favorite stories are about a girl casting off her demons and finding her inner-badass, which Tess most certainly does. And I still tear up (happily) whenever I read the last page. Tess is my hero.

Remember, you can win a copy of Albatross by commenting on yesterday’s post with a story about a high school experience that involved music. Or you can order your own copy at Amazon, B&N, or your favorite independent bookseller.

As you may have read in Josie’s interview on the Flux website, music plays a part in Albatross, just as it did in Band Geek Love and Band Geeked Out. In order to enter the contest, tell me in the comments how music played a part in your high school life. Intern Jenny and I will pick the best, most entertaining story to win a copy of Albatross on Wednesday!

But let’s not leave out fans of Maureen Johnson, and the eagerly anticipated sequel to Suite Scarlett. The Kirkus review I linked to the other day gives a little hint about a plot point — Spencer gets a role on an insanely popular tv show. To win a copy of Scarlett Fever, imagine you’ve got a high powered talent agent like Mrs. Amberson, and tell me what show YOU’D want a role on, and what that role would be. Again, Jenny and I will look through the comments on Wednesday and decide which special guest star performance we’d most want to watch.

So have some fun in the comments, and good luck! And if you just can’t wait to win, may I suggest IndieBound to find a local independent bookstore where you can buy your very own copy of Albatross or Scarlett Fever — or both?

UPDATE: The contest is now extended to next Wednesday, February 10th. Good luck!