Hi, people! (And particularly new people I haven’t met before, but who are here for the scavenger hunt) Hi!

Okay, technically the hunt doesn’t start until April 4th at noon, Pacific time. However. I’m about to dart out of town again and wanted to make sure I got this posted in a timely fashion.

The instructions are below, and remember, I’m putting this up a little early because I’m Away from the Internet, doing educational, self-improving things like writing a book and going to seminars and hanging out with MY EDITOR! (Editor! ::eeee::)

I repeat, the contest does not actually start until April 4th.

Now, without further ado:

Welcome to YA Scavenger Hunt! This tri-annual event was first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors … and a chance to win some awesome prizes! At each stop, you not only get access to exclusive content from each author, you also get a clue for the hunt. Add up the clues, and you can enter for our prize–one lucky winner will receive one signed book from each author on my team! But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online for 72 hours!

Go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. There are TWO contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or both! I am a part of the RED TEAM–but there is also a blue team for a chance to win a whole different set of twenty-five signed books!

If you’d like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the YA Scavenger Hunt homepage

SCAVENGER HUNT PUZZLE

Directions: Below, you’ll notice that I’ve listed my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the red team, and then add them up (don’t worry, you can use a calculator!). 

Entry Form: Once you’ve added up all the numbers, make sure you fill out the form here to officially qualify for the grand prize. Only entries that have the correct number will qualify.

Rules:  Open internationally, anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian’s permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by Sunday, April 7th at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered.

SCAVENGER HUNT POST

Today, I am hosting Kathleen Peacock on my website for the YA Scavenger Hunt! Kathleen spent her teen years crushing on authors and writing short stories about vampires. Her debut, HEMLOCK, is available from Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of Harper Collins. THORNHILL, book two in the Hemlock Trilogy will be released in September.

Find out more by checking out Kathleen’s website or find more about Hemlock here!

EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

Mackenzie and Amy were best friends. Until Amy was brutally murdered. Since then, Mac’s life has been turned upside down. She is being haunted by Amy in her dreams, and an extremist group called the Trackers has come to Mac’s hometown of Hemlock to hunt down Amy’s killer: A white werewolf.

— Hemlock Bonus Content —

The following is a deleted scene from one of the early drafts of Hemlock. In that version, Mac and Kyle actually left town in an attempt to escape the attention of the Trackers (after Kyle lied and told Mac he was still in love with his ex).

—

I turned on my side and stared at Kyle in the semi-dark. We had gotten a discount on the room because the last guest had stolen the curtains. The neon glow from a sign across the street cast red shadows on his face and bare chest, and it was hard not to let my gaze linger over the planes and angles of his body.

I had seen Kyle shirtless a thousand times, but that one stupid kiss had changed everything. “Are you awake?” I whispered.

“Yeah.”

“Do you think Jason’s okay?”

Kyle opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. After a long moment, he rolled onto his side and studied my expression. He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from my forehead. I found myself turning my face into his touch as his fingertips lingered on my skin. It was the first time he had touched me since his revelation about Heather.

“You’re worried about him. Even after everything he did.” 

“Aren’t you?” 

Kyle didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. We both knew you didn’t stop caring just because it was the healthier option.  

I stared into his eyes. Strong emotions seemed to bring the wolf closer to the surface and those husky-blues, still unfamiliar, gazed back at me. I badly wanted the familiar warmth of Kyle’s brown eyes, but the blue held a strange pull. Ice was dangerous: you could fall through and lose yourself in the space between heartbeats. 

Slowly, I reached out and trailed my hand from his shoulder to the top of his jeans and then back. 

I wanted to lose myself, I realized. I wanted to forget—even for just a few minutes—how completely messed up everything had become. 

How messed up we had become.

Kyle sighed, a soft rush of breath that stirred my hair. He closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose. A deep, calming breath. I didn’t want him to be calm; I wanted him to be as confused and lonely as I was. 

I rolled him and he let me. One fluid motion that put the mattress at his back with me on top. I held my face inches from his. Then, before I could lose my nerve, I lowered my lips and kissed him. 
A low groan trickled from Kyle’s throat as his lips parted under mine. The kiss was gentle at first, but it quickly slid into something feverish and almost desperate.

As Kyle’s arms strained around me, as he kissed me like he could drink me down, I tasted the edge of the oblivion I craved.

“Wait…” The word was long and drawn out, as though it had been wrenched from deep inside his chest. Gently but firmly, he put his hands on my shoulders and eased me back.  “This isn’t right.”

I slid off of him, stunned. The heat that had been building in the rest of my body rushed to my face as I moved to the edge of the bed. I stared at the far wall because looking at him was suddenly impossible. “Because you love Heather?”

“Yes.” There was a strange catch in Kyle’s voice, but I didn’t examine it too closely. I didn’t want to examine anything too closely. 

An ache spread through my chest, leaving me hollow inside. 

I used to be so good at putting up walls. Walls so that I didn’t say the wrong thing. Walls so that I didn’t get hurt. It was a skill I hadn’t needed for a long time. Now, when I needed it the most, it was too rusty to be effective.

Or maybe it was just a skill I couldn’t use against Kyle.

The mattress creaked as he stood.
 
“I think I should sleep in the car.”

“You don’t have to.” My voice was dead and automatic.

“Yeah, actually, I do.” There it was, that catch again. It sounded almost like regret. But that couldn’t be it.

The door opened and shut. 

After awhile, I stretched out on my back and stared up at the ceiling. 

I didn’t sleep.

—

Yowza! Just … 0_o

(sad)

(hot)

(sad)

Whew, okay.

So. If you love reading deleted scenes—if you’re glad that this scene has been made undeleted for your reading AND angsting pleasure—leave a comment for Kathleen, check out HEMLOCK, and be sure to visit the other blogs for more exclusive content like this!

And don’t forget to enter the contest for a chance to win a ton of signed books by me, Kathleen Peacock, and everyone else on Team Red ! To enter, you need to know that my favorite number is 11. Add up all the favorite numbers of the authors on the red team and you’ll have all the secret code to enter for the grand prize!

CONTINUE THE HUNT

To keep going on your quest for the hunt, you need to check out the next author, Mari Mancusi!

EDIT: You guys, you guys, sorry for the font confusion! The number is ELEVEN. Because it’s awesome.

Tweet #YASH

I keep telling myself that I’m going to be a good blogger. SUCH a good blogger. One of those dependable, accountable ones who follows a schedule and is all about tidiness and consistency and showing up to appointments on time and remembering to water the plants.

However, as we inch closer and closer to December, it’s becoming more and more apparent that all my good intentions and my attempts at time-management are … kind of a lie.

The reason for this is that oh-my-god-you-guys, Paper Valentine comes out in less than three months! (How did that happen?)

That is SO soon, and I haven’t even really talked much about it, or about writing it, or my playlists or my research or anything, and man—I should really do that.

The other big, demanding thing is that I am currently writing a book. Which, no matter how responsible and organized I try to be, takes a lot of time. Like, a LOT.

It’s due in December, which seems totally achievable and also like I will never, ever get there in time, because I’m at that stage where I can simultaneously feel elated over how unassailably cool this story wants to be, and dismal over how far it currently is from my epic, epic vision.

And then I get scattered and overwhelmed and wind up holding random contests for random prizes. (Which you still have time to enter, by the way! The prizes are really good—I promise. Even though neither you nor I know for certain what they will be.)

So, because I have now officially entered the realm of totally erratic and kind of twitchy, here is some music from my current, title-less, and unassailably-awesome (oh-my-god-I-hope-please-please) work in progress:

Now, use these two disparate things to make up a story in your head!

(That’s what I’m doing.)

Sometimes I dream that there’s a mean octopus on my ceiling.

The way I know it’s mean is that if it were a nice octopus, it wouldn’t lurk around on the ceiling in the dark like a creeper, it would just wait until morning and then come say hello.

But this is clearly a mean octopus, and as a result, I don’t trust it. I practice constant vigilance. I keep my eye on it.

Then D wakes up and wants to know what I’m doing sitting in the middle of the bed, staring at the ceiling. I tell him about the octopus problem, but he coolly informs me that I am mistaken.

I make him promise. I make him double-promise, which seems a little bit like overkill, because I have no idea why he would be lying about something like this.

Then he says, “Now go to sleep.”

And because he sounds so totally in control of the situation, and like a person who can be trusted to identify a rogue octopus, I do.

Now.

Here is where this whole scenario actually gets problematic.

D is on a business trip. He has been on a business trip all week.

This means that when I wake up at three in the morning, desperately certain that the house is beset by sea creatures, there’s no one around to tell me that the octopus is pretend. So, I sit vigilantly in the middle of the bed and I keep my eye on it. Eventually, I get nervous about its aimless flopping and turn on the light, but poof! The octopus scurries off somewhere and then I have to get out of bed and go look for it.

I check the closet and the recessed light fixtures and the hallway. I check the bathroom and the gap behind the dresser and under the bed.

I do this in a state of deep apprehension, convinced that at any moment, this hateful cephalopod is going to jump out and flail maliciously at me. I poke around the whole upstairs while the cats stare judgingly at me, and as time goes by, I begin to develop a sneaking suspicion that something is amiss. It’s a suspicion that only grows stronger, eventually eclipsed by the dawning realization that 3:00am is not the time to be wandering around the house looking for octopuses, and why am I standing in the hallway?

Then, duly mortified, I abandon the search and creep back into bed.

So, this is my problem. It’s a very specific problem, and unfortunately, there’s only one real solution.

I want that solution to be a particularly advanced form of dream-control, or some clever and ingenious octopus-trap, but it’s not.

First, to be very, very clear:

I have never-ever-ever been scared of the dark. Ever. In fact, I was that weird, compulsive little kid who turned off every light in the house and pinned the curtains together with a binder clip and put a row of stuffed animals against the crack under the door so no other accidental light would get in. I was on affectionate terms with every creepy tree-branch shadow and unexplained noise, and with the ghost of Marie Antoinette that I was convinced lived in my closet. I was made for the dark.

Which is why what I am about to say next is just so incredibly demoralizing.

I have spent the last week sleeping with my reading lamp on.

For real.

Which—yes—has kept my house a relatively octopus-free zone, but at the cost of my beloved darkness, my sense of self, and any respect that the cats may previously have had for me.

Aaaaaaand … this is yet another of the many ways I get really freaking weird when D goes away on business trips.

(Please come home—the cats are judging me!)

Also, it’s in that awkward beginning stage where I absolutely can’t talk about it in any practical sense because it’s still only a delicate collection of impressions and ideas and assorted sentences and characters I barely know.

It’s still basically an ugly little grub just waiting to turn into something fancy—as in, Tess and Maggie have seen approximately one page, and Editor Jocelyn has seen none of it at all.

However, because I’m really bad about always wanting to share all the things I’m excited about, I think I’ve worked out a way to kind of act it out in sounds and pictures without really giving anything away.

Hint One:

I talked about it a teeny-tiny bit over on the Penguin Tumblr a few weeks ago and said exactly this:

“A macabre adventure in the Southern Gothic style, filled with magic, danger, family legacies, and romance in the most sweeping, traditional sense of the word.”

Which tells you what it is, and also nothing at all. So I’ve compiled some additional clues.

Hint Two:

Here is the first song on my new Book Four playlist

(Also, another half-hint is that I’m totally lyrics-focused, so the words to this song will tell you more about the book than the general sound will. Although that kind of fits too.)

Hint Three:

(All photos courtesy of Little Sister Yovanoff and our enduring fascination with road trips.)

(Make of this what you will.)

Sometimes I talk about baking on here, which doesn’t really have anything to do with writing, but is still a reasonable thing to talk about. Because I like baking. I’ve been doing it since I was really young, thanks to the fact that being homeschooled always left my afternoons free, and early afternoon is, as everyone knows, the very best time to prepare something delicious.

I am not, however, what I would consider a natural baker. My mom and my sister both excel at it. They have a flair for it. They have an inherent understanding of this crazy thing called craftsmanship.

I … do not. I’m too meandering, too unstructured. I like flourishes and tangents and experiments and never doing things the same way twice.

Which means that at heart, I’m all about cooking.

I love cooking A LOT. So much that sometimes I search out things that look especially hard to make, just because I want to spend as long as possible in my kitchen. So much that when someone asks me what I’d like for Christmas or my birthday or any other gift-giving occasion, my answer almost always involves some kind of cookware, and when I got my first book deal, the way I celebrated was to get myself a really good set of knives.

(Also, they are for cooking, and not, as some people have insinuated, because I’m morbid and creepy and like sharp things. )

(However, if the zompocalypse happens, I already have my melee weapon all picked out. It’s the eight-inch Damascus steel chef’s knife with the ergonomic handle.)

In addition to my fancy knives, I also have a stand mixer, a blender, a really excellent stove, all the baking dishes in the world, a good rolling pin, and a pretty decent selections of pots and pans.

Also, this is not a post just about cooking, even though it kind of looks like it. If you shade your eyes and squint, it could definitely be a post about craft, or writing, or maybe even life. Because you know what else? The absolute most indispensable item in my whole kitchen is this:

This is a twelve-inch cast iron skillet that I bought from Target for eleven dollars the summer I was nineteen. It is the absolute dearest possession in my entire kitchen.

An abridged list of things this pan is good at:

-Getting crazy-hot.
-Pressing things flat.
-Fighting anemia. For real.
-Giving your arms a good workout.
-Being indestructible.
-Anything other pans are good at, only better.

With this one pan, you can make all of these things: broiler-ribeye, pineapple upside down cake, bacon and eggs, buttermilk biscuits, pancakes, fried fish, other fish, any sautéed vegetable, any topping or filling or sauce, Swedish meatballs, chicken-fried steak, and latkes. (Also, this pan has almost unilaterally devoted itself to what tastes delicious, rather than to what is particularly healthy.)

If this were a writing metaphor, I would tell you that a cast iron pan is knowing how to write a basic sentence, and that all the other griddles and trays and pans are just fancier dishwasher-safe versions of knowing how to do that same thing.

If it were a life metaphor, I’d say that Teflon is when you make everything way too complicated and over-think all the things you said in that meeting and wonder if anyone saw you almost bite it when you slipped walking up the steps, while the cast iron pan is you lying on your back in the yard, looking at the stars and feeling completely at peace because you know the surface is just as non-stick as Teflon, only you can still use steel wool without scratching it. You can leave it sitting on the burner and it will never warp because it got too hot. (Which is something you cannot safely do with the complicated life.)

But this is mostly a post about cooking, so mostly, I’ll just say this: if you have a cast iron pan, you can make almost anything.

Except cupcakes.

Because you need a special tray for that.

Commence radio silence in three …

Two …

One …

(gone)

While this probably constitutes retreading old ground, I feel that I should take this opportunity be very clear.

I like horror movies. A lot. Like … I really, really like horror movies.

It’s a condition that’s plagued me since childhood, and yes, I could probably even make some weird attempt to justify my obsessions or invent a cool little postulate as to why my little-girl thoughts were dominated by movie monsters, and not flowers or ponies or rainbow-dolphin-unicorns. (I was an English major with a psych minor—I’m uncommonly equipped to mangle theories into vague reflections of reality.)

But I just have this feeling that anything I could come up with wouldn’t mean that much. The true, honest thing is actually very simple. I saw my first horror movie when I was six (It was House. It was terrible.), and since then, I’ve just kind of been fixated.

As a result, I spent most of my childhood searching out terrible, hilarious monster flicks (Puppet Master, Leprechaun, Troll), and then talking my sister and my friends into to watching them with me. I saw the good, important movies, and the classics—The Shining and Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. Nosferatu. I saw All The Zombie Movies. I read special effects books about designing prosthetic wounds and watched documentaries about the rise and fall of the slasher film. If I happened to be wandering around looking oblivious and humming disjointedly to myself, there was a good chance I was bopping along to “Don’t Fear the Reaper” or “Pet Sematary.”

So it is with very little irony that I say, The Cabin in the Woods exists for me! Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard made it for ME. (Oh be quiet—I will tell myself this fantasy if I want to.)

I went and saw it on Saturday. And not just because I have a troubling, knee-jerk impulse to see every horror movie that comes out, regardless of whether it looks like it will be any good, and not just because I am in love with Topher Brink.

I saw it because it promised me something unusual and unexpected and fantastic.

These promises were not empty.

The Cabin in the Woods is my new best friend. It knows all the horror movie conventions, and it understands them, and loves them and cuddles them just like I do, and it still has the absolute temerity to flip them over and start poking around in the wiring.

Even now, three days later, I catch myself thinking about the narrative and the structure—taking apart ideas and stacking them in a neat little row like a set of morbid Russian nesting dolls. And no, I don’t think this movie will be for everyone, But I know enough to tell you that if you like the same things I do—if you get irrationally excited about zombie apocalypses, and the piano theme to John Carpenter’s Halloween makes you feel nostalgic, instead of just edgy or kind of annoyed (and yes, if you love Topher Brink)—then you need to go see it.

Because if you’re anything like me, then Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard are thinking of you.

They made this movie is for you, too.

Today is high-school post day. I know that.

But.

The thing is, it’s about to get very disorganized around here and I wanted to announce ahead of time that the next couple weeks are due to be pretty quiet.

The reason for this is twofold—first, I’m going out of town to work on the Merry Fates not-an-anthology with Tess and Maggie in an undisclosed location.* Secondly, the trip will immediately be followed by knee surgery.

Which, it’s cool. I’ve had knee surgery before and while I wouldn’t class it as fun, exactly, it’s eminently doable. However, based on my previous experience with the recovery process (specifically Vicodin), even typing out a series of four or five coherent sentences can take about twenty minutes. So, not only will blogging most likely not happen, it absolutely should not happen! I have one more fun thing that I’ll be posting on Monday, and then blog silence for the next two weeks.**

Okay, now I feel like I’ve just spent this whole post talking AT you, declaring things loudly and telling you how it’s going to be.

So hey. Hey, you. What’s up with you guys?

*Otherwise known as Tess’s living room, but it sounds way more glamorous if you imagine us working diligently in a dilapidated fortress. Or a rustic cabin above a fjord. Or anyplace else suitably isolated and weird.

**This might not work. I might disregard my own advice. I might subject you to incoherent post-surgery ramblings. Please, I hope not.

I’ll be brief today, since there is a lot of leftover-eating and lounging around to be done.*

D gave me these. For writing. Which is awesome.

Because as much as I like writing in coffee shops, sometimes the noise of them is … too noisy.

And also, if you’re wearing earbuds, sometimes people think that your small, non-confrontational headphones are an invitation to start talking to you right in the middle of a very crucial scene.

These babies, though? These are like a fortress to protect crucial scenes!

What about you? Do you write to music? To noise? In silence?

(And if in silence, HOW?)

*Okay, you got me. I’m actually getting caught up on email, but whatever. Lounge! Eat leftovers!