Pens for Paws



Hey all! Want to bid on some fantastic prizes and help raise money for an awesome cause? The Pens for Paws auction is going down right now to raise funds for Fat Kitty City, a no-kill, cage-free cat and dog sanctuary located in El Dorado Hills, California. You can bid on signed books, agent critiques, and even a fabulous Operation Awesome package full of critiques and more swag than you can shake a stick at, featuring the ladies and gents of Operation Awesome. (Yours truly included!)

Bidding for the OA package ends on March 15th at 11:00pm, so don't miss it!

Finding my quiet place

Post-Zombie Apocalpyse DC? Nope - just DC on President's Day at 8:00 in the morning.

At this point, I should just start skipping the caffeine. I could run on nerves alone.

It's a combination things, really, the first and the most obvious being sub jitters like whoa. I was in denial for the majority of January and parts of February, if just because after years of waiting, everything happened so fast. And at some point, the whole thing sank in, and it has dawned on me that this thing might actually happen for real.

Scream.

Thankfully, my family and friends are awesome, and no one has had to talk me off the ledge yet, because my amazing agent has made sure I don't get anywhere near the ledge. I'm a lucky, lucky girl.

When you combine that with day job, though, it makes for some... interesting results. There are moments here at work where my head is decidedly elsewhere - in my head I'm reading my PM announcement and planning a launch party and holding my book for the first time, and then, complete with a sitcom-esque record scratch, someone interrupts my fantasy to ask me to fix the printer. And then on the other hand, the day job stress ends up displaced to some other inopportune moment. Like when I'm trying to sleep.

Contrary to popular belief, the writing life is not for the faint of heart. As much as I wouldn't trade it for anything, it's terrifying.Writing does make for excellent stress relief much of the time, but generally, it helps my writing when I'm not a distracted mess.

And for me, the best thing I can do for myself is find a quiet place and set aside a few moments to just exist in the universe and take in what's going on around me. I had to work on President's Day, for example, and rather than going straight to work, I took a different bus than usual, and I wandered down one of the busier streets almost completely alone. Sometimes I don't have the time or energy to go out of my way, but finding a quiet place for myself can be as simple as turning off all the lights and watching the city from a distance.

Some days it works better than others. But much of the time, it helps me catch my breath, put everything in the appropriate boxes, and start over with a clearer head.

And now I'm going to unpack one of those boxes, because I have some receipts to process. So tell me, readers - how do you manage your stress?

Because I could really use some pointers. ;)

Operation Awesome debut!

Citizens! I just made my first Operation Awesome post, brought to you by sub, the ALA Youth Media awards, and lots and lots of daydreaming. Check out my post, Secondhand Triumph, and have yourself an awesome Friday.

To all my New England/Tri-State Area people out there, stay safe and stay warm!

Awesome News!

Just a quick update, but for those of you who haven't heard yet, I will be joining the... well, awesome bloggers of Operation Awesome as a new member of their team! You can catch my first post there this Friday, February 8th, but in the meantime, do check out all the amazing posts over there, if you haven't already. Operation Awesome was a huge help to me during my agent hunt, and I hope I can be just as helpful to all the newcomers!

Please Allow Me to Re-Introduce Myself!

Good morning, all! Just saw this awesome-looking blogfest going around, and thought I would dive in myself. I'm always getting awesome new people around here, and I don't always get a chance to properly meet all of you.

So, hi! My name is Rebecca Mahoney, but the only people who call me Rebecca are the ones who don't listen when I say "please call me Becky." So please, call me Becky. :) I am almost 25 years old, and I've been writing for almost all those years. Most of what I write is YA, generally of the fantasy, horror, or mystery persuasion, but I will dabble in anything that grabs my attention. I am represented by Sara Crowe of Harvey Klinger, Inc.

Some fun facts about me:

- I am originally from the Boston area (er, Southern New Hampshire, really), and I currently live in DC. It's a strange, strange city, but its quirks have somehow grown on me. Nevertheless, my level of New England pride borders on obscene most days.

- By day, I work as an admin coordinator, which is a fancy way of saying that I spend most of my day trying to keep that throbbing vein in my forehead in check.

- I am proficient in Japanese, but my real second language is sarcasm. I am also fully conversant in silliness.

- I love: food, accessories, marathoning really well-written TV shows, marathoning really hilariously bad movies (preferably with friends), champagne, new recipes, buying more tea than I can possibly drink, adding excessive amounts of hyperbole to rather everyday routines, and of course, reading amazing books.

- I don't love: rude people, DC public transportation, being chased by bears. Terrible things, all.


I am also opening today up as an Open Question Day. If there's anything you've wondered about me (within reason), please do ask!

Sidekick Love

Pictured above: Actual flawless human being John Watson.

(I found that .gif on Life in Publishing, where you should spend your Friday afternoon today if you like laughter.)

I am deeply in love with all things Sherlock Holmes. My bookshelf prominently displays that giant compendium of all the stories, which could probably kill a man if I threw it fast enough. I also not only have Holmes-inspired blends of tea (mmm, earl grey with hazlenut and caramel), I also have Holmes-inspired perfume oils. I wouldn't call myself an all-knowing superfan by any means, but we are approaching serious geekery levels over here. Arthur Conan Doyle is my hero, even though he totally forever bitter that his Serious Fiction didn't get as much attention.

But anyway. Like most fans, I have been slowly working my way through all those adaptations, pastiches, homages, and Doyle estate-approved fanfics that are out in the world today. And I'm not actually very picky! As long as its own merits are strong, I don't care if it's particularly faithful to the original stories. The basic idea if the brilliantly observant social maladjust genius is so prevalent, especially on TV today, that you can go at it many ways.

The way Holmes and his multitudes of TV clones are written and played is a dealbreaker, especially since it's easy for writers to veer overenthusiastically in one direction or another. But lately, I find that even if the central character is brilliantly done, I can't get behind an adaptation without a great Watson.

John Watson might be one of my favorite characters ever: a good, honest, ordinary person who somehow catches the attention of this larger than life personality, and as the stories go on, the narrative shows us exactly why he is worthy of Holmes' (and our) notice. Not to mention he's a total badass, as well as the POV character of the entire series. There's so much you can do with that character type.

And plenty of adaptations have completely effed that part up. Adaptations and Holmes-inspired fiction lately has generally been a lot better about that, but others write the sidekick character as a complete non-entity, there to emphasize the brilliance of the protagonist.

No matter what the genre is, the development of the best friends and sidekicks is vital to how much I enjoy a piece of fiction. If he or she exists purely for the protagonist to bounce off of and then ignore when the love interest comes along, it kind of makes the protagonist seem like a bit of a sociopath. Who you choose to associate with says a great deal about you as a person, so what does it say about the protagonist if he or she spends so much time with a blank slate? When you leave a best friend underdeveloped, you leave the protagonist underdeveloped, and you miss out on having a potentially great character and a really interesting relationship.

So in conclusion, remember to love your sidekicks. They will love you back!

(This post is brought to you by my WIP, in which I took a Watson character type and made her the protagonist of the whole damn story. I'm telling you: serious levels of geekery going on here.)

Ready, Set, Sub!

Hello, loves, and welcome to my first post of 2013! It promises to be a very, very exciting year, with lots of great changes to come – you’ll see some announcements around these parts before long!

But first, something I must get off my chest...

~I'M GOING ON SUB~

(Y'all know you missed the multi-colored text. It is not a celebration without it.)

It's an interesting little in-between world I've stepped into, leaving the agent-hunt behind. It was easy to give into querying despair, especially toward the end there, but for the first time since early 2010, everything is new again. I can remember what it felt like to be at my college roommate's house during our February break, sending my first query in the midst of one of those classic New England snowstorms. I remember trailing after my friend during our shopping trip, checking my e-mail every two minutes, and hearing her remind me, very nicely, that it was a Sunday.

Granted, I am a little more jaded than 2010 Becky. I can (and will) still dream about a quick and wildly successful sub process, but I know now that these things can take time. Sometimes lots and lots of time.

So in learning to navigate this world, I'm keeping one eye on what is and the other on what might be. I'm going to start working in overdrive to balance the progress of my WIP with the needs of my day job, with the optimism that I will get the opportunity to tip that balance in favor of the former before long. I'm going to make time for things that make me happy and enrich my writing, like reading amazing books, seeing the sunlight on occasion, and working on my mindblowingly awesome just-for-fun cowriting project with my friend. (I highly, highly recommend the latter, by the way. It's like improv with plot outlines!) And I also want to make time to just think, reflect, and just exist in the world for a while, without anxiety gnawing at the back of my skull. I think that might be more helpful to my writing process than anything.

My only resolution for 2013 is to be brave, whatever that means in any given situation. And for this situation, it means that I'm going to tackle the next step head on and try to enjoy the ride. And wherever it takes me, I look forward to it.

Happy New Year, and I wish you all the luck in the world on your publishing journeys. I can't wait to see where you end up, too!