Julieta!

If you're anything like me, you can't wait to see the upcoming movie Letters to Juliet. If you're even more like me, as soon as you heard the film's plot, it reminded you of Suzanne Harper's amazing YA novel, The Juliet Club (now out in paperback!) . . .

Check out the cool trailer Suzanne made, with that very connection in mind, and read her book if you haven't yet!

- L'Editrice

Happy Earth Day!

As we know, Earth Day is Every Day, but I do think today is a great opportunity to make new resolutions on how to be more earth-friendly (a plus: you can then feel less badly about those New Year's resolutions for 2010 that have gone way by the wayside by now).

Here's one resolution suggestion I have: Don't buy this product! Really, Kleenex? Even public bathrooms are moving away from paper towels in favor of hand dryers. I mean, if you are going to market a home-bathroom product similar to something found in public bathrooms (but, really, why in the world would you?) at least go for something more modern, like the hand dryers. For shame.

Tree-huggingly,

L'Editrice

Late-breaking post!

I forgot to mention that tomorrow, April 20, I will be wearing red (and seeing it) in solidarity with Equal Pay Day. As the National Organization for Women says, "If we're going to be 'in the red,' we might as well wear it proudly to show our determination to end the wage gap."

Did you know that if women worked the equivalent of what their work is valued, they’d be clocking out at 3:15 p.m. every day?! This is just what NOW-NYC members and supporters (and maybe others in your area!) will be doing in commemoration of Equal Pay Day tomorrow. They figure that if women earn only 78 cents to every dollar a man makes (and the numbers are even bleaker when you look specifically at the data for women of color), why should we work more than 78% of the workday?

Learn more here and here.

- L'Editrice

Lame, Actually

So I've been catching up on my "Parenthood" episodes, and I watched one yesterday in which teenage Haddie gets mad at her new boyfriend, Steve (aka "YoYo"), because he does not think "Love Actually" is at all romantic. He says it is superficial and should be called "Lame, Actually." Hee! (Though in the end Steve tells Haddie (lies?) that he was wrong, and they make up. Blah, blah, blech.)

Anyway, I squealed when I heard that one-liner, because remember my post on that film back in December? I was sure that's what I'd called it, too, and thus surmised that:

a) Someone on the "Parenthood" writing staff is reading my blog. (Far-fetched, I know, but a girl can dream.)
AND/OR
b) I have what it takes to be on the "Parenthood" writing staff.

Turns out I had re-named the movie "Love, Crappily," which, IMHO, I think is better, but I like that there are some people in Hollywood thinking like me. Hey, Jason Katims (who, by the way, was also show runner on "My So-Called Life"): call me!

- L'Editrice

P.S. Hooray for a Lauren Graham project being a success! The poor actor gets no respect in the movies, but I think TV people appreciate her.

And it's okay if she is slightly typecast as the harried single mom who dates her daughter's teacher--at least they always cast yummy men (and this one a younger one = love it) in the roles.

L'Editrice quoted in The Boston Globe . . .

. . . website.

Two whole words! (Which is actually a relief, because I rambled on and on to the reporter nervously, whilst giggling. It felt like she was interrograting me.)

About cupcakes! (I think it's pretty funny, too, that from her article she seems to be a serious baker of cupcakes, even though she's a cupcake skeptic, while I earnestly love cupcakes but baked some for the first time in my life this past Tuesday.)

I am actually in the accompanying photo as well--major cupcake points to whoever can spot me.

Anyway, the whole event was amazing, so don't be fooled by Ms. Dreilinger's jaded descriptions: even the "amateur" cupcakes put my first-ever batch of cupcakes to shame. All that I sampled (chocolate-chocolate, chipotle-chocolate, s'mores, and yellow-cake-in-an-ice-cream-cone) were beautiful and delicious! (I'm very glad my homemade funfetti-with-chocolate-icing were gobbled up at my house long before I could even contemplate bringing them to camp.)

- L'Editrice

Linky love

Here are some things I've found interesting as of late, and thought you might, too:

- "The Danger of Always Being On" (which I stole from my former colleague/forever friend : P Martha Mihalick)

- What it really means to work your way up in publishing

- Growing success in self-publishing

- Super-cool clothing/style site ModCloth is writing a book--and asking for submissions!

- L'Editrice

A momentous occasion

Great news! One of my clients, Jen Salvato Doktorski, just sold her YA manuscript Dead Lines to Eve Adler at Henry Holt BFYR!

This is a momentous occasion for her, as it will be her first published book, but it's also a momentous occasion for me--because this is the first book that I've worked on as an independent editor that has been acquired. And, hey, it's pretty close to the one-year anniversary of my starting my freelance business, so nice timing there! Peep cupcakes all around! (See photo.)

Anyway, my work with Jen has been especially rewarding, because there's some history there. I first heard Jen read the first page of Dead Lines aloud at a New Jersey SCBWI conference in the spring of 2008, when I was still working at Greenwillow. I was intrigued by her premise of a precocious-yet-naive New Jersey teen who finds she fits in better at the obituary desk of her local newspaper than at her high school, and asked her to send me the full manuscript. Once I read the whole thing, I felt it still needed work, but knew amazing potential was there, and encouraged Jen to keep revising.

Fast-forward to June 2009, when Jen found out about my new business and hired me to look at her revision of the manuscript. Not too long after this she landed an agent, and today she is an official published-author-to-be!

Jen's is definitely an inspirational story, showing the importance of persistence, patience, and hard work.

Congratulations, Jen! We will be waiting impatiently for your 2012 publication date--and of course wishing that it will be bumped up to even sooner!

- L'Editrice

Say hello to your friends

So sad that I missed this!

Appropriately, this write-up was forwarded to me by BFF-since-second-grade/fellow-BSC-fanatic, Rekha Rad. We shared our BSC collection (both owned by us and borrowed from the library, as we did not have the kind of parents who were going to buy us the new installment every month or so, which I agree was reasonable of them), and instead of playing outside after school, we would read our respective copies together in companionable silence.

Nerdy since the beginning,
L'Editrice

P.S. Major props to whoever can tell me what the title of this post has to do with the subject matter of this post.