It's Friday! Let's Celeb-brate

Wow, do you see what I did there with that title? Hilarious, right? Fine, maybe not. But I'm out of good blog post titles, so you'll just have to humor me.

Moving right along....

Here's what caught our eye on US Weekly this week.





I'm not gonna lie, every time I see a pic with Madonna and her adopted son I think to myself, "Oh, right. There's Madonna and that kid she stole."

This girl looks like the robot version of Megan Fox and it's totally freaking me out. I've never once seen her use a facial expression. Not. Once.

Oh Tom, you do realize this hat only makes you look MORE crazy, right?

I think this might be one of the most uncomfortable pictures I've ever seen in my life. JT has that constipated, "I'm going to $*#&%*& kill my publicist" look on his face. So awesome.

Cutest. Babies. Ever.












Feel free to chime in with your own commentary in the comments. Happy Friday!

The Awkward Tween Challenge: LiLa vs. L'Adele

As some of you may or may not have noticed, we recently updated our Twitter profile picture to THIS:

Thanks to Stacey, we have an entire flash drive FULL of awkward childhood pics and we're not afraid to use it. Our goal in this instance was to find one of the most awkward and humiliating and post it for public consumption. Please note the virgin brows, matching letter jackets and most tragic of all, Lisa's clear braces and mock turtleneck with tiny little leaves painted on.

Adele Griffin (who may or may not be a long lost Roecker christened L'Adele) claimed on Twitter that she could out awkward us with THIS:

Admittedly, she's sitting on Santa's lap wearing plastic earrings and a Mona Lisa smile. Awkwardness abounds, but I honestly think our triangle hair cuts have her beat.

We agreed to put it to a vote, dear readers and that's where you come in:

Who was the most awkward Tween?

And for the record, we have PLENTY of awkward in our archives and we'd love to make this a regular feature. SO...if you have a childhood pic that you think can outawkward LiLa send your picture here . We'll feature you on the blog and let the readers decide.

The Awkward Tween Challenge: LiLa vs. L'Adele

As some of you may or may not have noticed, we recently updated our Twitter profile picture to THIS: 

Thanks to Stacey, we have an entire flash drive FULL of awkward childhood pics and we're not afraid to use it. Our goal in this instance was to find one of the most awkward and humiliating and post it for public consumption. Please note the virgin brows, matching letter jackets and most tragic of all, Lisa's clear braces and mock turtleneck with tiny little leaves painted on.

Adele Griffin (who may or may not be a long lost Roecker christened L'Adele) claimed on Twitter that she could out awkward us with THIS:

So...the real question is: 

Who was the most awkward Tween?

And for the record, we have PLENTY of awkward in our archives and we'd love to make this a regular feature. SO...if you have a childhood pic that you think can outawkward LiLa send your picture here . We'll feature you on the blog and let the readers decide.

THIS is why I haven't written my chapter...

Does this make anyone else laugh as hard as it makes me laugh? It's okay to tell me I'm weird. I had tears. Actual tears.



It's even funnier the 23rd time you watch it. In your double pajamas (pajamas you never changed out of from the previous night). Without your teeth brushed. Or hair combed. Scratch that. Those are tears of shame.

Celebrating A Need So Beautiful with Random Acts of Kindness and EPIC Giveaways

I fell in love with A Need So Beautiful. Suzanne Young has a completely fresh, heart wrenching take on paranormal romance. Instead of dangerous love triangles or damsels in distress rescued by the bad boy du jour, A Need So Beautiful focuses on love and sacrifice and the inevitable collision of the two.


Charlotte is one of the Forgotten, an angel who sacrifices herself to help people, only to disappear when her work on Earth is done. But she's also a teenage girl with a best friend and a boyfriend she loves. And she's forced to choose: Embrace her Need to help others or partner with dark forces to fight her destiny and stay with her loved ones.


Charlotte's choice left me thinking about the strangers in our lives who have gone out of their way to help us. People who didn't know us at all, but took the time to give us a helping hand and a little bit of encouragement when we needed it the most. And you know who we thought of? 


Literary agents.


As you may or may not remember we queried over 100 agents with our first doomed manuscript. Every morning we'd wake up and refresh our Hotmail account, praying for good news. We'd stare at our cell phones willing them to ring with THE CALL. We hung out on the Absolute Write and Query Tracker forums drooling over success stories and obsessing over writers who heard back from agents before we did. 


We had the same conversation every single day:


Lisa: Did you see that rejection from [Insert Pretty Much Any Literary Agent Who Reps YA here]?
Laura: Yeah. That blows.
Lisa: Yeah.
Laura: Are you refreshing our email right now?
Lisa: Sure am. You?
Laura: Yup.
Lisa: This sucks.
Laura: Yes. Yes it does.
Lisa: I'm not sure we're cut out for this.
Laura: Me neither.
Lisa: We could just give up?
Laura: Nah, let's just send some more queries.
Lisa: OK.


And so we sent more queries and the cycle started all over again. Eventually we would have just given up. I mean, there's only so much rejection a couple of sister writers can take, right? But we didn't. And the reason we never gave up is because we got one rejection that looked like this:


Dear Lisa and Laura,


So I've finally had a chance to review THE NORTH SHORE in full. You guys really know YA voice and some of your narrative is so strong, and I especially enjoyed the excerpts from the Modern Socialite's Handbook. All of that being said, I think that this story needs too much work at this time.


Although flippant POV and long backstory really worked for Jane Austen, it does not work in today's market and especially not in YA. Flipping from the parent's POV to one of the kids back and forth, from Lauren's to Mr. Bennet's...it completely keeps the reader from connecting with your main, YA characters. It also takes too long to get to the real story, which is when the Bingley's show up. You're trying to set the reader up with too much back story on the Bennet's and their lifestyle. Although it's all written well and even really funny at parts, it just isn't necessary.


I did really enjoy THE NORTH SHORE and I'm sorry to be passing. But I would look at future work from you two...there is definitely something there in your writing. If you decide to revise NS to make it from only a couple POVs and the pacing is picked up, I'd like to take another look as well.


I'm sorry I don't have better news at this time. Good luck with all of your submissions and keep me posted on its progress!


So, instead of giving up, we kept on writing. And because one very busy literary agent took some extra time out of her day to encourage a couple of newbie writers, we're now published writers. That agent had a profound impact on our lives and we will never, ever forget her.




And today to celebrate A Need So Beautiful and random acts of kindness we've partnered with bloggers and authors across the country to give away a chapter critique. There are TONS of other amazing prizes including 3 signed copies of A Need So Beautiful and signed books and critiques from Kimberly Derting, Daisy Whitney, Lisa Schroeder and Keri Mikulski. Check out A Good Addiction to see the full list of AMAZING prizes.




The contest will run June 21 - 28. There will be 1 winner per item, and then three people will also be chosen to win a signed copy of A Need So Beautiful in addition to their other prize. The signed A Need So Beautiful copies will be US only. 


Here's how you can earn entries:


Earn one extra entry for each of the following:

• Take a picture of an author's book in the wild and tweet it to us and the author
• Post a positive Amazon review for a book you loved
• Donate a book to a library or classroom
• Tweet a good deed you plan to do this week, using the #ANeedSoBeautiful hashtag

Earn 10 extra entries for each of the following:

• Take a picture of A NEED SO BEAUTIFUL in the wild and tweet it to us and Suzanne Young
• Post an Amazon review for A NEED SO BEAUTIFUL
• Donate a copy of A NEED SO BEAUTIFUL to a library or classroom
• Click here to enter the contest and please wait until you have completed all of your entries to enter. Multiple entries will be deleted.

Good luck and have fun!!!!

THIS is Why We Write...

Some authors start writing to win awards.

Some authors start writing to get famous. (HA!)

Some authors start writing to get rich. (Double HA!)

But THIS is why we started writing.

We are so grateful for supportive friends like Steph and for 4th graders everywhere who just haven't found the right book yet.

XOXO,
L&L

Your Weekly Dose of Celebrity Commentary

 I'm putting Selena Gomez on Weekend at Bernie's Alert. Poor girl collapsed, spent like 12 hours in rehab and then they have her on stage again. We're like two weeks away from seeing her in sunglasses with the Jonas Brothers propping her up.

Has anyone tested R. Patz for anemia? He needs a neck to suck stat.

I'm scared of Kirstie Allie. Also I have no idea how to spell her name and I'm way too lazy to look it up, but I'm 99% sure she's thinking about eating someone's face in this picture.

I'm not gonna lie, for a second I thought Drew Barrymore was dating Prince Charles and I thought to myself. "Holy crap. That is so random. But kind of awesome she'll be Kate Middleton's stepmom," because let's be honest, Drew would be a killer stepmom. There's a Disney movie in here somewhere. They've probably already attached poor Selena Gomez.



















No snark here. Just pure happiness. I love Pacey. I'm so happy that he's happy. Also...HOT.









Happy Friday everyone!

A Thursday made of random...

1. We are in the process of planning WriteOnCon 2011 and we're so excited about it. It's going to be epic, EPIC and we can't wait for all the big reveals!

2. If you were the kid in elementary/middle school who brought soup in a plastic thermos (preferably the ones that matched the hard, plastic lunchbox) as a part of your lunch, I wanted to be you. I would stare longingly as you slurped up your hot deliciousness. That's all.

3. I just ruthlessly purged my closet of 3/4 of its contents. I'm thinking I'll never shrink back small enough to make what has become a crop top not a crop top anymore.

4. I was doing said purging when I was supposed to be involved in a chat. I always miss things. Especially when they're scheduled after 8 PM at night. All bets are off when the sun goes down.

5. I apologize that our blog posts are written primarily in list form (and tend to morph into Tell the Truth EVERYDAY when we're finished with them). It's as though we use up all of our paragraph-forming abilities in our books and can't bring ourselves to write ONE more for the blog. Lists are also universally satisfying, no?

What's your random today?

Shameless Agent Love

We are represented by Catherine Drayton of InkWell Management.

She is 10 flavors of awesome.

So awesome that sometimes we want to walk around wearing t-shirts that say "Team Drayton."

Our road to publication was a little bumpy, but she NEVER ever gave up on us. Even when we wanted to give up on ourselves.

Last night she took the time to hang out with the WriteOnCon Team and answer questions with the equally amazing Becca Fitzpatrick.

There's lots and lots of great publishing advice in this chat.

If you are a writer, you should probably read it.

And then you'll probably want to wear a "Team Drayton" t-shirt too.

That is all.

Tell The Truth Tuesday

1. This review almost made me cry. I think it's partly because we're really excited to read Wildefire and partly because we've had a soft spot for Karsten ever since he christened us Team Gemini.

2. Lisa criticized my presentation of raspberries and chocolate from last month's bookclub saying they were just "thrown together" and hypothesized that perhaps that's why they "didn't go." I got shiny eyes.

3. I'm pretty sure that I'm the only person watching Love Bites, but it's absolutely adorable.

4. Turns out I'm still really good at writing human resource proposals. I like to think that my proposals are more suspenseful and written in a more compelling voice than the average benefits outsourcing RFP.

5. I have another Lisa vs. the Universe story, but I'm scared to write the blog post because it seems a little absurd that all this crazy crap keeps happening to one person.

6. On the flight home yesterday, Lydia and I were stuck in the pit of the plane--ie, last seat, in front of bathrooms. There was no window and all the people around me had their windows closed giving me absolutely no frame of reference for take off or landing. I felt like I was going to vomit the whole time and unfairly wanted to take it out on the old woman sitting in front of me. I let Lydia kick her seat. 

7. My only consolation on the plane was that no one was sitting beside me so we were able to eat our bean and cheese quesadilla in peace. Yes, we're those people.

8. The AMAZING Catherine Drayton and uber talented, best selling author  Becca Fitzpatrick are going to be chatting about the agent/author relationship at WriteOnCon at 9 EST tonight and I'm praying that everything goes as planned because holy crap it's CATHERINE DRAYTON AND BECCA FITZPATRICK! They are rock stars. Please come. Even if everything goes down in flames it's bound to be entertaining.

What's your truth this Tuesday? Bare it all in the comments.

I Should Be Writing....

But instead, I've....

• Eaten dark chocolate with sea salt.
• Researched diet pills.
• Watched 60 Minutes.
• Filled up my water bottle.
• Reviewed the past two weeks of US Weekly pics.
• Clicked on a feature story marketed as "celebrities without makeup" only to be disappointed by the fact that most of them were wearing makeup.
• Read the entire #whitegirlproblems Twitter stream.
• Refreshed my email more times than I can count.
• Checked Twitter to see if @Scott_Tracey is still wearing Tinkerbell lip gloss.
• Looked up the number of text messages I've sent this month.
• Verified our checking account balance.
• Purchased sports bras.
• Talked to The Regulator about our plans for the 4th of July.
• Wrote this blog post.

I suck. 

Happy Monday!

PS: Don't forget to join us for tomorrow night's WriteOnCon chat featuring author Becca Fitzpatrick and her agent Catherine Drayton. Come armed with questions at 9 PM EST!