It is the second book of a trilogy. Why did you bother finishing the first, you might ask. Well, I was hoping the soap-opera-ish* plot actually made sense, and the author would do something that would at least begin to clarify the burning questions I still had. She didn’t. It only got worse.

*For those of you who are old enough to remember All My Children, think Luke and Laura. Oh, come on, admit it. You watched it.

Read a bunch of comments from teen readers about a YA trilogy I personally love*. Many seem unhappy that the third book is so unlike the first two. They can’t understand it. So, here’s the scoop, young people. It took the author five years to write the work. She was in her mid-twenties when she started the first book and early thirties when she finished. Different world view.

No new visiting nations to report today. At least Brazil came through.

*And have already given enough publicity to, so I am not going to mention that the protagonist is 17, Jewish, has superpowers and that her first name is Mara.

Heading up to a writers conference on Friday. Just read the fine print. “We are happy to announce that every room at the inn now has it’s own bathroom.” Hmmmm.

I am giving up on ‘The City of the Day” conceit as it seems to have resulted in increased traffic from South Korea, but not the US.

So many of today’s YA books have the words ‘The First (or second or 254th) in the Deadly ( Endless Pain,Bad Thing, Dramamine) Trilogy (Cycle, Saga, Series, Running Joke), that sites like Goodreads now refer to the books that don’t as ‘Stand-alones.’ In my day we called them ‘Books.’

The city of the day is Fairbanks, AK. And a warm welcome to Sri Lanka (I’m not making that up).

I would like to welcome the people in Malta and Romania, who for no reason I can imagine, visited my blog yesterday.

Just finished this wonderful book. Technically YA, but really a good adult read. As previously mentioned, sometimes I hate reading something this terrific, because I know I will not write anything like that. It made me cry. On the other hand, it didn’t make me laugh. I can do that! It would be nice to make someone cry with my writing…not the “I can’t believe I spent $22 on this book” crying, however.

In keeping with an earlier post, today’s city is Burlington, VT.

Examining my stats, I also seem to be popular in Italy. I have had random visits form Angola, UAE, Barbados, Malaysia and Algeria, but I don’t count a country until I get at least 3. So my plan is to mention a different city and state in every post and see how that works. Sioux City, Iowa, you’re up!

When I find a book only mildly entertaining, it doesn’t matter to me if there are holes in the plot. When I really love a book even a tiny one bothers me, and big ones keep me up at night trying to ‘fix’ them. This is what comes of writing too many mysteries. I have mentally ‘fixed’ a very important plothole and I would be happy to share it with the author, who is not now, nor shall ever read this blog.*

*I would tell you her name, but I don’t want anyone to think it was a cheap way of tricking Michelle Hodkin into finding me. Also, she might think I’m a literary stalker.

Now well into reading my 2,063rd YA novel, I’ve discovered that nearly all the love relationships use one or more of the following conventions.

1. Protagonists seemingly unhappy about being forced to work on a school project together.

2. Incredibly dangerous and/or bad boy to whom the female protagonist is drawn to in a ‘The lady doth too much protest, methinks’ sort of way.

3. Male protagonist who pretends he doesn’t like female protagonist, because he thinks he will be bad for her

4. Female protagonist who has secret power that could hurt male protagonist. Neither of them is aware of this, natch.

Even before I finished reading a single YA novel, I had managed to use everyone of the above conventions in one or more of my three novels. YIPPEE!

Through the magic of technology I am able to see where my blog visitors come from. Not as in 5000 Forbes (shout out to everybody at CMU), or even Pittsburgh or Pennsylvania, but I am able to see the country of origin. It seems that nearly every day, for reasons I cannot fathom, I get at least one or two visitors from Brazil. I’m guessing it’s the same one or two, so I’d like to say ‘Obrigado’ to my loyal Brazilian followers, and to any other Brazilians who just happen to be here by mistake.