Ruh Roh

Something funny happened at work yesterday. A student, who is an admirer of reading and writing, said she found my website one night when she couldn’t sleep. She read my blog and saw that I called another student “obnoxious,” and she tried to guess who it was. Now, I had a total right to call this student obnoxious for giving away the death on my favorite TV show. I don’t feel bad about that. I did, however, have a little panic in my stomach about what else I have said on my blog. Hmmm. It’s stupid to think that no one from my day job would possibly be interested in my other life, and I know at least one person that has had an actual boss confrontation about her blog. But, do I need to worry? Is this another thing in life I have to worry about? I am full of worry lately, as well as boredom. I want an exciting (good) thing to happen. Like an email from out of the blue. Or a really early review of GET WELL SOON. GWS is actually providing a lot of my anxiety. Over the past two days I have read a million book reviews for a book order I placed at work. While I read the reviews, I kept thinking about my upcoming novel and what its reviews will look like. It seems like the publishing business is like any other reviewing business, where one influential person says something good and everyone agrees. That’s what it looked like from my review reading. The weird thing was when three review sources gave starred reviews to a book I thought was really bad and completely inappropriate for its age group. What if reviewers all decide that my book sucks? I know it doesn’t, but what if it does to the review world? Or the book award world? I can’t stand the waiting! And I have to wait for another eight months! I have way too much time right now to think about stressful things. I’m trying to start writing a second novel, and I’m having a lot of trouble. So that’s not making me feel any better about the book career. Is this boring? Does it matter? Does a blog have to be great literature? Please don’t give me a negative review on this blog entry.

J.T.'s Dead!

Does anyone who reads my blog watch Degrassi? Not the old school Degrassi, but the new stuff on The N [cable channel I can only watch at my parents' house]? If not, go to http://www.the-n.com/ and click on "The Click." You can watch episodes from the current season. Anywho, they just killed off a main character, J.T. An obnoxious student of mine told me he was going to die (I had already guessed it, but I didn't want to believe I was right) because he figured out a way to download the episodes from a Canadian website, where they air earlier than here in America. Even knowing who was going to die, the episode was very emotional. I couldn't hold back the tears. I loved that character. He was the Joey Jeremiah of this generation- a clown with heart. Sigh. J.T., you will be missed.

I hope that when Get Well Soon (my novel, out September 2007!) comes out that Degrassi is still on. And after that I hope that teens read my blog. Cause then we can discuss Degrassi.

If anyone is interested, I found this article about the publisher of my book. When people ask me who's publishing Get Well Soon, I tell them Feiwel and Friends, which no one has heard of. Here's a link to an article that explains it: http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/RBI-0072-13309119.htm

The galleys for my novel come out in March, which means that reviewers should start receiving copies. Yikes! I am going to change my web page to make it more "teen," so I have to figure that out. My goal is to do it before the galleys come out, but I'll have to find the time. I usually just build my webpage through HTML, but that's super time consuming. I'm thinking I may explore Dreamweaver. Matt's very good with it, although I'm annoying and don't like to ask for help. Stay tuned.

Idol, Anyone?

Ya know, I watched American Idol back in the days of Kelly Clarkson. I even voted for her (back then you could actually get through on the phone lines). These days, even though Matt and I watch every night, I'm just not that interested. I don't like when the judges are mean, and I don't like when people embarrass themselves. Why do they do that? It's hardly fame to look like an idiot for five seconds on TV. I suppose they deserve to look stupid if they chose to go on TV. Do they?

I was in Seattle over the weekend working on YALSA Selected Audiobooks committee's final list. You can see our choices here:

http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/booklistsawards/selectedaudio/07audiobooks.htm

It was really fun working with a group the eight other librarians to come up with this list. I was scared that we would be arguing, and I would be crying, but it was much more pleasant than that. Librarians are so awesome.

Sicko

Well, I'm sick. If I were a Dungeons and Dragons character, I would have a low constitution. I think I'd be an elf. Probably a bard. The point is, after working in schools for eight years, I still always get sick. And Matt, knock on wood, I don't even want to say and jinx it. So never mind. So I'm home because I can't speak very well or breathe very well and I think I have a fever on and off. I hate the guilt of not going to work. I'm always afraid they're going to think I'm faking. But I sound and look like a poo, so I think they'll believe me.

While I'm home, I'm playing the new Play Station 2 (yes TWO, not THREE) I receive prematurely for my birthday. I asked for it specifically to play Dance Dance Revolution, but I don't have the foot pads and I can't play anyway since I'm sick. Instead, I bought a used copy of Buffy: Chaos Bleeds. It's so awesome- just like being on the show! I even get a little creeped out when I play. I am stuck on a level with Xander as the main fighter (the fighters alternate). I finally made it to the last part, where he has to battle Anyanka, but it's really hard. He keeps dying. I am relying heavily on a cheat page that tells me how to get through all of the levels. I don't know how anyone would know to jump on in order to reach a ledge so you can shimmy across it and then jump into an open window. Who comes up with this stuff? So I use the cheat pages. Don’t judge.

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I haven't blogged in forever because something happened, and now juliehalpern.com/blog is my index or something. So you have to link from my web page. I don't know what happened or how to change it. The people at Blogger are not helping me, so I may end up switching blog sites altogether at some point. More actual news soon.