The Featured Grownups topic this time around involves defining an abstract word of our choice. At this point in my life, I feel pretty confident defining this word for you:
Happiness.
It looks like this:
My latest project, a young adult novel about teenage shapeshifter in small town Texas, is almost finished, and I’m already brainstorming about what to work on next. My favorite projects have been ones that explored real life problems with a mythical element, using the paranormal as a lens through which we can better understand the human condition (or I just read too many fairy tales as a kid). Think, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. So I’ve been thinking a lot about something Daniel came up with while we were brainstorming together, a story about a young married couple, one of whom is paranormally challenged in some way. It’s strange how many style questions this raises for me. I’m most comfortable in first person, past tense stories, but I’m thinking of switching back and forth between their perspectives, which would be much more fluid in third person, and I’m also beginning to like the immediacy of present tense (I re-read The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger recently. It’s such a good story that I want to live inside it, Eyre Affair-style). They seem like small questions, past or present, first or third, but they’re the basic characteristics, the starting point. Short brunette, tall blonde, first person past tense, third person present tense, second person future tense (which I’m pretty sure would be both confusing and annoying). But I have to say, I love these questions. And I love the questions that come after these questions. And after these.
I think happiness is finding something you love.
In other news, I got the coolest video review on my Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award entry page. I laughed for an hour after I saw it. I have to meet that woman someday.
Since my ABNA novel, Thirst, was also my NaNoWriMo novel, the NaNoWriMo people featured me and two other semifinalists on their site: www.nanowrimo.org
I also got a free Earth Day coffee mug at Starbuck’s today. Awesome.
