Hi guys!

I’ve decided to do a more consistent overall blog (random thoughts about shopping will appear once in a while as well of course) but in response to the huge amount of mail I get, but which I can no longer personally answer (which sucks, I know, but there is only a finite time in the world and well, Stephen King never wrote ME back either and I still buy his books) – I’ve decided to try and do a forum where I do get to personally respond to readers’ questions in some way.

I will answer questions pertaining to my books on Wednesdays. Most of your questions like “When is Van Alen Legacy coming out?” can be found and answered easily. October 6, 2009! But if you have other questions, please send your question to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with the heading “BOOK QUESTION WEDNESDAY”.

Also, since I never talk about the writing process that much (mostly because I have this superstitious fear that those who write about writing should just shut up and you know, WRITE rather than write about the process) but I’ve really enjoyed reading Ally Carter and Justine Larbalestiereli’s thoughts on writing and publishing so I thought I would try to answer some questions from my perspective/experience. I will answer general questions about the writing process/publishing industry on Fridays. Please end your writing questions to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), with the heading “WRITING BLOG FRIDAY”.

And if you have emailed me in the last six months, we are finally wading through the stack and the new newsletter with lots of fun new news is out. You can sign up for the newsletter here.

When I am on deadline, I might not be able to do the Books and Writing Q&A blogs, but I will do my best to deliver every week!

It’s a beautiful day in Los Angeles! You know when I am in NYC I tell everyone how much we miss New York, which is true, also this is what New Yorkers think when people say they can’t imagine how they can live in such a crazy city: “WIMP!!” (Actually it’s a much dirtier word than that and I have a potty mouth but I do try to keep the blog fairly clean.) New Yorkers think NYC is the only city worth living in, I know, because I was a New Yorker and whenever people said this stuff to me, I thought “LOSER!” And telling everyone how great we still think New York is (which we DO!) and how much we miss it (which we DO!) lets our NYC friends say “Oh, but LA is great too!” To which we sigh and say, “Yeah…I guess…” Because it is SO not cool to love LA.

But we do love LA. We were so FRACKING poor in New York. We lived in this crumbly walk-up building and our apartment had this bathroom where if we dropped something behind the sink it was “Gone Forever!” because there was NO WAY we were going to try and fish it out of THAT mold. But the funny thing is we still had this wonderful, great, exciting life…I was a trend/lifestyle journalist and we got invited to all the best parties and had all these perks… and our friends worked at museums or galleries or were starting bands or in a play and there was just so much to DO and you didn’t really need that much money to do all that stuff. It just occurred to me today that when we would go eat at the Four Seasons for birthdays or Le Cirque for anniversaries that back then we made LESS than the waiters who were serving us so obsequiously. And we weren’t poor in that we were trust-fund kids slumming it… (you know the type: dad won’t pay for rent but you can buy anything on his credit card. Yeah. Not us.) We were ACTUALLY poor. I had a good computer job for most of our time there and made good money but I got laid off the last two years we were in the city, and those years when we were scrambling on a freelance writer and an intern architect’s salary are what sticks with me the most. Also, during that time when I was a computer geek making six figures, everyone in the city was a dot-com billionaire, so you know, we still felt poor when we had cash. But those last two years man…when we really didn’t have much at all…those were HARD!

Then we moved to LA and it was like we got lucky…not like someone waved a magic wand, but like we had room to breathe all of a sudden. Although we still miss NYC all the time, it’s a good compromise, living here.

That is the bi-coastal thought for the day. Anyway, send your questions!

xoxo
Mel