Carol
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Posts by Carol
YA for NJ!
Nov 15th
THE YA FOR NJ AUCTION IS NOW LIVE! TO SEE A LIST OF ALL AVAILABLE BOOKS, GO HERE.
TO BID ON AN AUTOGRAPHED HARDCOVER COPY OF SWITCH, GO HERE.
Here in Southern California, it was seventy degrees yesterday, and my daughter was complaining about being cold. So, I know how easy it is for those of us outside the New York area to forget about the devastation that Sandy left behind. (I also know how wimpy California kids can be about weather.) But I’ve also heard so many stories of heartbreak from families and friends in my native New Jersey that I’m honored to be a part of Kieran Scott‘s fundraising effort, YA for NJ.
On November 30, personally signed books from over 200 young adult and middle grade authors will be up for auction on eBay. All proceeds will go to the Community Food Bank of New Jersey. The auction will run till December 6.
So, if you’re a fan of young adult or middle grade fiction … or if you know a fan of young adult or middle grade fiction … or if you’re looking for a holiday gift for ANYONE between the ages of, say, eight and sixteen (no, thirty) — please consider bidding!
Bubble World!
Oct 20th
Breaking news! I sold my next young adult book! To Holt/MacMillan! In July 2011!
So maybe I’m a little slow on my book news. But I really am excited about Bubble World, which will be in stores in July 2013. Don’t tell my other titles, but I think it’s my favorite book, and not just because it has the cutest cover in the world.
(Those models are not just any old dolls, by the way. Laurie Everton of The Barbie Canvas hand-painted them to look like my characters.)
Here’s what the book is about:
Freesia Summers lives on the island of Agalinas, a hidden Pacific paradise somewhere off the coast of California. Northern California or Southern? Freesia doesn’t know. Or care. She’d much rather spend her time thinking about things that matter, like glittery eye makeup and lovely boys. Freesia has everything a girl could want: an enormous closet, her own ocean-view balcony, a pink itty car, singing peacocks, and a magical bubble that lets her talk to her besties and keep track of her de-vicious clothes.
If Freesia’s life seems too good to be true, well, there’s a reason for that. She does her best to ignore the signs that something in her world has gone terribly wrong: the electrical outages, the time slips, the sudden departures that border on disappearances. But when a blackout lands her in an unbeautiful place — and in an equally unbeautiful but oddly familiar body — reality hits her head-on.
As far as Freesia is concerned, reality is overrated.
To read the first chapter, go here. And if you’d like to pre-order (hey, I’m only thinking about you and your busy schedule), check out Amazon, Books-a-Million and Barnes & Noble (which doesn’t have the pre-order link up at the time of this posting, but should soon).
Ask an Author: Halloween Edition
Sep 20th
My mother always told me to sit next to a fat lady on the beach. Why limit myself to the beach?
October is around the corner, which means that when I tire of checking Facebook and scouring Pinterest for crockpot recipes (it’s all part of the creative process, people), I can turn my attention to things that matter: like seeing how many people have come to my blog in search of Halloween costume ideas. Last year my ground-breaking blog posts included such topics as The Best Halloween Costumes You Never Thought of and Lame Costume Ideas for the Truly Desperate. An astonishing number of people land on my site after Googling “lame costume ideas,” which I never imagined would be anyone’s actual goal.
On the bright side, far more people get here after typing “original costume ideas”or “current events costumes.” (Two words: Summer Olympics. Three words: Avoid presidential politics. Unless you want to dress as Big Bird. Or a binder.) My favorite searches, though, are the questions. I will answer some of them here:
Is it bad taste to dress like Casey Anthony for Halloween? Yes.
Is it ok to dress up like Amy Winehouse for Halloween? No. Still too soon. Give it another year.
Is Richard Simmons a stupid Halloween costume? Are you kidding me? Richard Simmons is a fabulous costume! But you have to be prepared to guide an exercise routine on the dance floor.
What should me and my husband be for Halloween? I’m sorry, but I can’t answer that question until you rephrase using proper grammar.
Hot tramp stamp see thru shirt with black bra. Okay, that’s not a question, but I still feel the need to respond. No. Just no.
Sadly, I have no advice for the person who wanted to Find costumes for a Hemingway party — though I wish I were invited. Likewise, I’m out of ideas for the individual looking to find a Kevin Federline costume for a dog. (Do they make doggie wifebeaters?) As for the people searching for sick and wrong Halloween costumes and costume ideas for people going to hell, see my Casey Anthony response, above.
It’s kind of funny that a lot of people come to my costume posts after Googling Never thought of before Halloween costumes. If something has never been thought of before, it’s not going to be on a blog. Because a person has to think of something before she blogs about it. So, um. . . yeah. But here are some standouts from my last Halloween party:
And, finally, to all those people looking for Costumes where you don’t have to dress up: Come on! You get to be you 364 days a year. It’s Halloween. Be a superhero. Or a rock star. Or maybe even . . . a book.
More Halloween Posts:
Halloween Costumes: Rockers and Pop Stars
Halloween Costumes: Television Shows
Halloween Costumes: In the News
Bubble World
Coming in July 2013 from Henry Holt
Attack of the Killer Zucchini
Jul 2nd
And now, the saddest line I might ever type: I’m really excited about my zucchini board on Pinterest!
Just kidding. I’m not that excited about the board. Right now, it’s only got seven recipes. (I’m way more proud of my crockpot recipe board: 64 pins and counting!) This, then, is for real the saddest line I might ever type: I spent yesterday evening taking cellphone pictures of my zucchini.
The zucchini thing started innocently enough, with a harmless-looking little plant from Home Depot. Next thing you know, the zucchinis have taken over my garden, my breakfast, my dinner, my mind! In college, I appeared in “Little Shop of Horrors,” a musical about a man-eating plant intent on world domination. My zucchini plant is kind of like that, except for the man-eating part.
I’ve made zucchini fritters. Zucchini casserole. Zucchini tater tots. Zucchini fries. I’ve added shredded zucchini to spaghetti sauce and pancakes. And still: the squash grows faster than I can cook it. We both know who’s in charge. Today, for the first time, I threw a week-old zucchini into the trash. It will come for me when I’m sleeping. Until then, here’s an old family recipe.
ZUCCHINI BREAD (makes 2 loaves)
Beat:
- 3 eggs
Add:
- 1 cup sugar
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- ½ cup applesauce
- 2 cups zucchini, peeled and grated
- 1 Tbsp. vanilla
Sift together & add to wet mixture:
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1 Tbsp. cinnamon
- 3 cups flour
If desired, add:
- 2 cups chopped walnuts
Pour into two greased pans and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.
Life in a Virtual World: SEO
Jun 20th
So today we’re going to talk about Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as SEO. Woo hoo!
In case you don’t know, SEO is how good a website is at getting traffic from searches on Google, Yahoo, Bing and the like. Good SEO is achieved when the fairies that fly around the World Wide Web sprinkle pixie dust. Poor SEO can generally be attributed to fungus-munching gnomes that live in underground tunnels. Of course, the full process is more complicated and technical, but that gives you the basic idea.
I don’t know what kind of blood pact the good people at FSB Associates made when they designed carolsnow.com (if you think fairies are all giggles and glitter, think again), but my SEO is so good it borders on creepy. See, I use a couple of programs that tell me what visitors to my site typed into search engines. The programs also tell me how long people stayed on the site, how many pages they viewed, and other stuff that I don’t pay much attention to. It’s all intended to help me be a better marketer. Because pretty much everyone who goes into fiction writing secretly wishes they were doing PR.
Most people come here after typing in “carol snow” or “carol snow author” or one of my book titles. That’s nice and good and what I hired FSB to do. Less expected: for almost a year, I have been a foremost web expert on clams. No, I’m serious. See what happens when I type “how to cook steamers” into Google? The internet fairies offer almost four million results, but my steamers blog post comes in at number four, and a whole bunch of those people click through to my site. Sunday I saw a spike in traffic, presumably as dads across America requested steamers for Father’s Day. And do you know how many of those people went on to read my books? Probably none. But I kind of don’t care because I think it’s so funny.
Other posts that have generated a surprising amount of traffic include my ground-breaking report on Skotidakis yogurt dip (in which I revealed that it tastes good), my Halloween costume suggestions, and my holiday series, “Gifts for People You Don’t Like.” (Related Google searches: Gifts for people you don’t really like; Gifts for family you don’t like; Best wine for people you don’t like; and — shoot me now — Gift books for people you don’t like.)
As pleased as I am with all those web hits, I understand how they happened. Less expected search terms that led people to my site include: What (13 hits); What? (1); Babies (26); Baby (13); and Yeah You Heard Me (1).
Let us all pause to consider the aimless souls who have nothing better to do than Google “What.” Did they follow up with Where, When, Who, or Why? What in the world did those people hope to learn? Then again, vagueness may not be all bad. At least “what” and “yeah you heard me” aren’t disturbing. Like, say, these other search terms that landed people on my site:
First date white shirt see thru black bra
Adult baby torture devices
Bad lip injections
Sequin Klingon dress
Sick and wrong costumes
Toga lawyer
Unintended nudist
I gotta say: The Unintended Nudist would make a heckuva book title, though I don’t think I’m the person to write it.
