January Wrap-Up!

How is the first month of 2016 already over? I swear we were just singing Auld Lang Syne yesterday...

Alas, tomorrow is February 1, so here's my January recap:

What I Wrote

A majority of my writing time was devoted to editing PIECES OF YOU AND ME, coming from Entangled Teen Crush on March 14, 2016! I also got to see a mock-up of the cover...so pretty! Can't wait to share it with you!

I'm also working on my yet-to-be titled September 2016 (ish) release! It's another contemporary YA romance. I'm 40K words in and having so much fun writing it! I can't wait for you to meet Pierce and Lia.

What I Read

The award for best January book goes to THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS by Marieke Nijkamp. Painful? Yes. Heartbreaking? Yes. But also gripping and beautiful and completely unputdownable. Check it out on Goodreads here and Amazon here.

I also finally got around to reading INSURGENT and ALLEGIANT. I'd read DIVERGENT a long time ago, before the movie came out, but held off on reading the other two when I heard the furious reactions to the series ending. However, seeing the second movie reminded me how much I enjoy that story and those characters, and...I caved.

Somehow, I hadn't been officially spoiled regarding the ending of ALLEGIANT, but I had my suspicions, which ended up being correct. I'll just be over here hoping they change the ending of the movie...

Lastly, I beta read an amazing and beautiful manuscript by Julie C. Dao. It was the kind of story that left me thinking for days after I finished, so you know it's good! You can find Julie on Twitter or her website, and can read her MG, PUMPKIN PATCH PRINCESS, on Wattpad.

Other January Life Stuff

• It was my birthday! I turned a prime number less than six squared. I'll let you guess which one.
• Snowmaggedon happened. At my house, we got an inch or two of ice and snow. In true southern fashion, I was trapped at home for three full days. When I was able to return to work, the ice in our parking lot (on a hill) started melting, and parked cars slid into each other. Crazy:

• I signed up for Audible! I do a lot of traveling for my day job, and listening to a book makes the time go by much faster! Currently I'm listening to FOUR by Veronica Roth. I got some great suggestions on Twitter, but if you have other recommendations, I'm all ears! (Get it? Audiobooks? Ears? Yeah, okay. Please leave recommendations in the comments!)

Hope your January was great! Enjoy February...all twenty-nine days of it!

Memory Books

Most of us can remember where we were when certain events happened: when we got asked to prom (in my high school auditorium), when found out we got into our dream school or got our dream job (standing in my living room), when September 11, 2001 happened (in Mr. Brandt's English class), etc.

I have book-related memories as well. There are some books, places, and times that will forever be associated in my mind.

I remember reading Hunger Games in 2010 while on a family vacation. I was reading while standing in line for security, weaving back and forth through the ropes, and hating every second it took for the book to go through the x-ray machine in my carry on.

Room by Emma Donoghue was another 2010 read that I could. Not. Put. Down. I was in my bed in Michigan, awake way too late because I had to know what was going to happen before I went to sleep.

Though I tend to read a lot of books before bed, I specifically remember reading TFIOS in the bedroom of my old apartment. Those memories mostly consist of crying so hard I couldn't breathe, and falling back against my pillows like I'd been punched in the gut. Naturally.

Going way back, I remember reading The Notebook in my college dorm room. I even remember the way my roommate and I had arranged our furniture at the time.

It's strange how I can think about some books I've read, some even as recently as 2015, and I can't remember anything about where or when I read them, but for others the details are so clear. It seems like the more invested I am in the characters and the story, the more it leaps off the page, the more I remember it and my life outside of it.

As a reader, I want more of these memory books, and as a writer, I want to produce them.

What are YOUR memory books? Where and when did you read them?