This Just In: Heart And Soul Ball Full Of Heart, Souls

Before Girls Camp even ended, I was oh-so-aware of how long it had been since I wore a bridesmaid dress.  Too long.  So I knew what I had to do.  I had to finish up Girls Camp, take a shower, and get to the SCBWI L.A Conference, already in progress. While I had missed quite a few speakers, I had not missed the highlight of any conference:  The Ball.

Here I am with Bree and Brodi, as well as Lindsey Leavitt and Lisa Schroeder, who aren't just my friends, they are my FELLOW CLUB MEMBERS!  Yes, it's true, for the first time in my life I've been asked to join a club!

Okay, so it's not that true.  The club is less of a "club" and more of a "group," but tomatoes/ tomatoes.  We're called the Contemps, and from the countdown on my sidebar you'll note (now's the time to check out the countdown on my sidebar) that we are thisclose to releasing our fabulousness to the world!  All will be revealed soon.  Until then, grab the stylish countdown clock and rock it on your own blog.  Who needs details when you can have stylish countdown clocks?

Speaking of details, back to my trip to L.A.  I mean, I could have just gone for the ball, the fishnet stockings, and the chance to rub shoulders with Matt Kirby.

But I didn't.  I went for this guy:

Ta-da!  My utterly and completely awesome agent Michael Bourret, who has represented me for about two years (I just checked and I signed with him on August 29, 2008.  I'll send him flowers for our anniversary in a few weeks) (Just kidding, I don't even send my husband flowers on our anniversary.  I'm too cheap).   Anyway, I had yet to meet Michael, even after almost-two wonderful years together.

Unlike Brodi, who wasted her first forty minutes with Michael by rambling on about Rafa, I spent my first forty minutes regaling Michael with tales of Girls Camp, and also reasons why I will never be featured on the website cutencraftyldsmoms.org.  Even if there were such a website.  And even if I were a mom.

Clearly, I wowed him, as evidenced by this picture in which he is trying to pretend he doesn't know me:

Photo brilliance brought to you courtesy of my cameraphone.  After twenty minutes my husband was able to get these pictures onto my computer, "thanks to the power of stuff."  Those were his exact words.  He did not offer to teach me to use this powerful "stuff," leading me to believe I'm doomed to a life of technical ineptitude.  Which I'm more or less okay with.

I have more good news to share (I know, MORE??).  I'm too excited to wait until next Tuesday to post it, so check back on Thursday for an update!

How Girls Camp Reaffirmed My Faith In God

DAY 1:

I drive my mother's mini-van up to camp.  The road is straight uphill, unpaved, and covered with rocks.  Bumpity-bump we go.  I do not get woo-head.  I do not even get mildly dizzy.  I ignore people flipping me the bird when I realize it is not because of my driving, but because of Mom's choice in bumper stickers, proclaiming her support of Obama, public radio, and elitist liberal art colleges.  I smile and wave.  The girls and I are safe and on time.

A hornet lands on my arm.  It fails to sting me.

DAY 2:

I realize that I've sneezed a grand total of three times since my arrival at camp.  I've had worse allergies than this in my dentist's office.  It's as if no blade of grass, no tree nor bush can harm me.  I wonder if perhaps I have become immortal.  To double check, I trip over a tree root.  The ensuing bruise confirms that I am indeed still human.  The meager size of the bruise confirms that some higher power has heard the pleas of myself and my other dedicated blog-readers.

We are in bear country.  We see nary a bear.

DAY 3:

It's our turn on the much-buzzed-about zipline, which is less a real zipline and more an elementary-school-playground get-up that happens to cross a deep ravine.  I'm in charge of waiting at the bottom to help the girls dismount.  They fly to me at Superman speeds.  They ask me to try.  Despite worries of woo-head and Bad Hand, I oblige.

Once I get on the zipline, time seems to slow down.  Then I realize that no, it is not TIME slowing down, I am actually moving slow-motion in real-time.  I dangle over the ravine, admiring its beauty, vaguely aware that something has gone awry.  "Bend your knees!" the girls say.  I do, but it does not change anything.  I gradually stop short of the finish line.  There is no need for help dismounting.  Which is good, because no one would be able to.  They're all rolling on the ground, crying with laughter.  I am unscathed.

It pours rain.  Lighting strikes a tree.  Ominous smoke billows.   This tree is not on our campsite.

The tree hit by lightning on our campsite is fine, as are we.

DAY 4:

The mini-van's battery is dead, but luckily we have a nice neighbor with jumper cables and a leader named Grandpa with a powerful truck and engine know-how.

My flesh wounds are so scant I can count them:  6.  This is a 317% improvement over last year.

Prayer works.

I love you, girls.  We are small but mighty.

Gone Campin'

If you're reading this, I successfully managed a delayed posting.  As of right now, I am camping with five girls between eleven and eighteen years old.  With a little luck,  no major travesty will befall me and I'll be back to post next week. Pray for me.

My Favorite INFJ

First, the promised writing news: My next YA novel, BACK WHEN YOU WERE EASIER TO LOVE, officially releases April 28, 2011! I have an almost-final copy of the cover, which I should be able to post by next week. If you've already seen the "working cover" you know how much I love it and can't wait to share. Do you think it's possible for your personality to change over time? I've been mulling it over lately as I've been working on a new manuscript. The main character is a lot me now. She's also a lot like I was as a teenager. Which makes sense--I feel like I'm exactly the same now as I was ten or even twenty years ago.

I'm just happier. Healthier. And I have more friends. But does that change a personality? Would my friends now even recognize the me of days gone by?

When I was taking a psychology class in high school, we took a field trip to a nearby university and each filled out a questionnaire determining where we fell on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The MBTI determines where you fall on  four spectrums:

Extraversion (E)	Introversion (I)
Sensing (S)	Intuition (N)
Thinking (T)	Feeling (F)
Judgment (J)	Perception (P)

This means there are sixteen personality types, depending on which four traits you prefer (this is a super-shortened, not-that-great summary).

I was an INFJ.   A quick look on Wikipedia shows that only 1-3% of the U.S Population is INFJ, making it the rarest personality type.  Which figures.  INFJ is often called "The Sage," personality type, which is kind of cool, but not really.  It's especially heavy on the "not really" when you're seventeen years old and your personality type is represented by this:

I memorized my friends' personality types (because I had so few friends, this was easy).  For a time, I took to referring to them as, "My favorite ENFJ," or "My favorite ESTP."

A week or so ago, I was reading the Shrinking Violets website and found that in this day and age, you can actually find the Myers-Briggs Type for your blog!  Of course, I immediately typed in my url and got this:  ESTP.

My blog's personality is the opposite of mine!  On each one of the  four spectrums!  Crazy, no?   The best part is that ESTP is often called "The Doer" as is represented by:

Doesn't she look kick-a?  And unlike me  in every way?

I would love to be this girl.  But I am not.  I don't try to hide that on my blog, do I?  I keep it real, don't I?  Or has my personality changed?  Will I soon wake to find myself wearing knee-socks and casually holding a ball of some sort?

So the next day I was sending a message to a friend via facebook when I saw that she'd taken a facebook-app version of the MBTI.  So of course, I had to take it, too.

I know there's been much controversy surrounding facebook of late.  I haven't shown much interest because facebook doesn't really do that much for me (or I for it).  But seriously, love orr hate it, the MyType app is awesome.  It gave me a quick but comprehensive eval which determined I was...yep.  An INFJ.

Can I represent myself with this, instead?

And the Winner Is...Plus, Weekend Plans

And the winner of  the Warriors in the Crossfire giveaway for true BFF and fellow author Nancy Bo Flood?  My own sister-in-law, Shannon Smith, who commented on my blog via Facebook!  Congratulations, Shannon!  I promise I did not rig this, even though now it means I won't have to actually package and mail the book!  Nonetheless, I did not rig this. In other news, I am leaving for St. George basically as soon as I finish typing this (in other words, next year) (no, really, I have to be there tonight).  Why?  Because I'll be on a panel for the Utah Library Association Conference tomorrow, and I'm speaking bright and early with  YA writer friends Bree Despain, Sydney Salter, and Bobbie Pyron.  If you're a librarian and will be there, come say hey!  If you'll be in St. George because, for example, you live there, let me know and we can figure out a way to still say hey.  Because I don't discriminate.  Although I do love librarians...

Then, on Saturday, I'll be speaking on another panel.  This time the venue will be the historic Provo Library, for the Provo Children's Book Festival.   We'll have Utah authors and illustrators galore, plus Jenni and Matthew Holms of BabyMouse  fame, and the event is FREE.  So there's really no excuse not to be there.

Most importantly, one of my girls will be in her school's  Broadway-style musical revue Friday night, and there's no way I'm missing it.  Break a leg, Mariah!

What are your weekend plans?  If you don't have any as of yet, I'd love to see you.  And if you're some crazy-A stalker-type...I'd probably still love to see you.

How To Be Prepared...For An Impromtu Found Art Exhibit

The other day I was telling my agent Michael, who recently moved to Los Angeles,  about my fear of earthquakes.  We're talking verging-on-paranoid fear (some might say I've already reached the point of paranoia).  He assured me that one of the first things he did when moving to California was prepare survival kits for the house and the car. Truly, he is my kin.  I'm all over emergency preparedness kits.  For the house.  Because, well, I'm not in my car that often.  And I tend to forget that other people are.   So the other day, Dan came home from work with this:

This was once part of our car emergency kit.  By once, I mean however long ago it was I assembled these kits.  I'm guessing it was a long, long, time ago, back when the purple thing was still a candle, the pack of Big Red was still chewable and the change...well, I don't really know what that's all about.

I'm thinking that with these kits, we'd survive all of 7 seconds in a disaster.

Now, for the good news!

1) I've since updated the kits.  In case an emergency strikes and we happen to be in the car, I've upped our survival time to 3 1/2 hours.

2)  Physical Therapist Amanda retested me and yes!  When I walk, I am no longer in the "fall risk" zone.   So in an emergency, if I am required to walk, don't worry about me falling.  I can go all night, baby.  Oh yeah.

3) Lately I've been working on a set of goals with the young women who I will, in only a few months, be taking on yet another camping adventure. One of these goals is to learn a new skill.  As my new skill I decided to learn to  refinish our bedroom dressers.  These dressers, while super-functional, are really, really ugly.  And I have a pretty high tolerance for ugly.

Oh vanity, thy name is Em Dawg.   I get out of the "fall risk" zone and think I can do anything.  Including refinish a dresser.  All I can say is that my accomplishment today was changing the sheet of paper in the power sander.

Okay, this is not the power sander.  I'm still not sure why.  I took another picture, one of me next to the power sander, but taking photos of myself is another New Skill I Must Learn because it was so bad I stuck with a power sander still-life.  Only now, instead of the still life, I have a Mac battery.  Why is there even a picture of a Mac battery on my camera?

If we had our Mac with us in case of an emergency, our odds of surviving unscathed would be through the roof.  As long as the battery was charged.

This Would Be A Sweet April Fools. But It Isn't.

Ah,  American health care.   Truly, you are an admirable foe.  One of your many mysteries in the Flex Spending Account.  Supposedly at the beginning of the year we intuit how much money we will spend on health care the following year, and if we predict correctly, we get to use  it tax-free.  If we guess incorrectly, the money is gone.  You, my friend,  are like a Japanese game show. My Flex Spending Year was winding down, yet money remained.  A lot of money.  Which begged the question, which part of me to fix?  I made a list of what was wrong with me and then played MASH until one thing remained.  Which is how I ended up in physical therapy.

My first day of PT I filled out a  questionnaire and I swear, it's like they were reading my mind:

Do everyday activities make you dizzy?

Do you find yourself walking into walls, furniture, and and other large objects?

Have  others mistakenly thought you to be inebriated?

Amanda, my physical therapist, rocks.  Her assistant, Adam, not so much (ha!  That's just a joke in case any of the fine people at Performance West read this).  After a few visits, I realized I was bringing down the house with my mad skillz, yo.  Never before had I felt so coordinated.  Then I spied this brochure in the office:

If you'll note the couple in the above picture , then multiply it by 10, you'll get an idea of Amanda's clientele.

And me.  So the rock star.

In other rock-star-but-not-really news, I am featured in the latest issue of the ALAN Review, a journal for the Assembly on Adolescent Literature of the National Council for Teachers of English.  The article, titled "An Intersection of Meaning:  A Conversation with Emily Wing Smith," is by the lovely and talented April Brannon.  April is an English  professor at Cal State Fullerton who chilled with me at my first ALAN conference two years ago.  Thanks, April.  Enjoy your month.

And you enjoy it, too.

Winners Announced! And A Mad Tea Party

The moment you've all been waiting for...the winners of  the WIFYR giveaway are:  Laura, Kaylie and Lana!  Congratulations!  Please email me with your address and choice of book!  This is where my friends say:  "Email address in the sidebar," but I don't know if my email address actually is in the sidebar, so it's just: emilywingsmithATgmailDOT com. In case you wondered how the winners were "generated" it was by a complex algorithm in which I wrote down everyone's name as many times as they entered and then played MASH until only three names remained.  This provided some quality entertainment during the less interesting portions of church yesterday.

In Friends Reading My Mind News:

I recently inherited my grandmother's china.  Inherited is the wrong word, I guess, as my grandmother is still alive.  So that's good, but it did raise the question why give it to me now?  I mean, it should have raised that question.  Of course  I didn't actually think about it until my husband asked me:  "Why did she give it to you now?"

Um, because she loves me?

But whatever the reason, I am now the proud owner of a lovely tea service, and as I removed each delicate piece from its bubble-wrap I thought what a shame it is I don't give tea parties.

What should happen the next week, however, but some of my writer friends and I decide to get together and I offer to host.  And Sara Z. says, "how about a tea?"

Bingo!

Right-side-up photo courtesy of Sara's iPhone.

The top photo features our original writing posse of me, Anne Bowen, James Dashner and the lovely Sara Zarr (who is, in this picture as in life, head and shoulders above the rest of us).

But wait, there's more!  Who should grace us with her presence that day but terrific writer and local celebrity Ann E. Cannon.  In fact, she's head and shoulders above the rest of us, too.

I need a bigger couch.

A Brush With Stardom

If you haven't already, check out my uber-swank contest promoting the Writing for Young Readers Conference this summer!  Yours truly will be teaching the beginning novel workshop,  so for all you writers out there, sign up!  You will be hard pressed to find a better value for your money out there.  And I'm all about  value for da money, trust me. If you're not a writer, or just can't swing the conference this year, help promote it and be eligible for the same great prizes!  The contest ends on Friday, so enter now, while you're thinking about it.

So, remember how I want to be a TV extra?  This is actually not a totally random whim (of which I have many) and it's not for my love of the spotlight (which is a lukewarm love at best).   It's for a writing project I'm working on and have been planning for awhile.  Then, luck of luck:  I discovered that the show I wanted to be an extra for was actually filming an episode in Utah the very NEXT WEEK!

Then the luck ran dry. My husband, who is rarely sick, fell victim to a nasty flu.  Determined not to let it affect me, I avoided this flu by getting 12 hours of sleep a night, drinking plenty of fluids,  bathing in hot water with Epsom salts, and getting close to Daniel only to give him my miracle-cure apple cider.

Unfortunately, I avoided this flu until the day BFF Brodi and I were heading up to Park City to be part of the action.   After a prolonged, boring exchange with the Film Commission and our various "contacts" we learned that the show already had more than enough extras.  Which was good, because although I deluded myself into thinking I was healthy that day, when I washed my hands at Brodi's and saw myself in the mirror, I said (not just to myself, but audibly) "I look sick."

Indeed I did.  In every sense of the word.

Worse still, once in Park City my ears clogged up, my hearing not to return until the end of the day.  Oh, and it was FREEZING.  Brodi noted my lack of  usual "sidling skills."

B:  So what do we do first?"

ME:  Well, first we should...you know...wait, what did you just say?

But the day wasn't a total waste.  We chatted with an actual extra, and managed to get close to the filming due to our "contacts."  Of course, I didn't take a picture then.  No, I waited until we were walking away.

Awesome pic, right?  In case you were wondering, yes, I did take this literally as I was walking away.  I figured it couldn't be worse than the blurry photos I take while standing still.

The best part was when we stopped for lunch and a hot beverage:

Besides it being a fun time, lunch was also where I met Stephanie, waiting for a pick-up order.  I knew she worked for the show immediately because of her accent specific to the region where the show filmed.  Not, of course, by the puffy vest she was wearing with SHOW'S NAME embroidered on the back.  Stephanie was the tutor for the little boy in the above picture (not Brodi.  The one above that).  This struck me as the COOLEST JOB EVER.

Which is probably why I will never be famous.

Princess Parties And Free Books

When I was five, I was invited to a princess party for my friend Emily P.'s birthday.   Even though I was then, as I am now, not a huge princess person, I waited for the party with bated breath.  Seriously, bated.  And then, one day, as I was expressing this anticipation to my mother for the zillionth time, she said, "Wait!  The party's right now!" This wasn't just a cruel joke.  She had FORGOTTEN about the party and by the time we got there, it was over.  Oh, the humanity!  Emily P. opened my present even though the other guests had left.  I hesitate to go into details, lest my mother read this and have one of those "I'm-a terrible-mother" moments mothers are prone to, but let's just say it was somewhat of a let down.

But all is not lost!   Because on Saturday afternoon, nearly twenty five years after the fact, the universe corrected itself and I was able to attend the best princess party ever.

Imagine me living vicariously through one of these  happy kiddos, enjoying candy necklaces, tiaras, and other goodie bag shwag at the amazing Lindsey Leavitt's PRINCESS FOR HIRE  book launch at fave indie bookstore the King's English.  Her book is fresh, funny, and the first in a series.  What more could you want?

Lindsey and I have been tight since we bonded over a quick lunch together one of the last times she was in the SLC, and kept it up in LA at the SCBWI conference where we cried like babies over Richard Peck and strutted our stuff at the Blue Moon Ball .  Our next plan is to rock the Vegas at Barrypalooza '10.  But back to Lindsey's special day.

Here we are holding uber-princessy copies of PRINCESS FOR HIRE.  I'm holding two, because I bought one copy for me and another as a prize for my terrif  WIFYR contest!

I'm holding the contest to get the word out about the fabulous Writing for Young Readers Conference this summer at its new venue in Sandy, Utah.  You can sign up for it or just help spread the word and win free books!  But you must hurry, because this contest ENDS!

Yep, people have asked if there's an actual end to this contest.  I was like, "why bother?" but then I realized it had to end sometime, or else no one could win.   So the LAST day to enter is THIS FRIDAY March 26.  And although I should be using all my typing-time this week to finish the edits on my forthcoming novel (!) I will be rockin' the time management skills and blogging, too!  To remind the world of this contest, and to share some hilarious stories that have made March a Month to Remember.

As if the princess party wasn't enough.