Mini blog: naps, printers and deadlines

Three things I did today:

worried about deadlines
installed my new wireless laser printer
worried about deadlines
tested the laser printer
worried about deadlines
took a nap
woke up worried about deadlines.


Wait, did I say three?


-Ally

17

Seventeen things you may (or may not) know about the Gallagher Girls books.

1. The arena at my alma mater, Oklahoma State University, is called Gallagher-Iba Arena, and it's routinely recognized as one of the toughest places for visiting teams to play. It's a very historic building, and I love going to games there, so when it came time for me to name the school where smart girls learn teamwork and defense, then that was the only name I ever considered.

2. The first line of Love You Kill You was the first thing I ever wrote for the book and--through all the drafts--it never changed even a single syllable.

3. I chose some of the girls' last names to make it easier for you to remember who is who when the teachers call them Ms. ____. For example, Bex Baxter, Eva Alvarez. I don't know if it works or not, but that was the general idea.

4. Mr. Solomon's codename is "Wise Guy" based on King Solomon who was known for his amazing wisdom.

5. Cammie spends her summers on a ranch because a. that's the most un-spy-like place I could think of and b. that's something I know a lot about.

6. The pharmacy in Roseville is based off of the pharmacy in the town where I used to live where I used to eat lunch a lot on the days when I'd write at the library.

7. I have A LOT of cousins, and I used one of their names in CROSS MY HEART. Now, I've been given orders that I have to use ALL of my cousins' names in future books (so far, three make an appearance in GG3.)

8. LYKY is dedicated to a wonderful woman who was a great friend of my sister's. She worked for the CIA and the Justice Department and ran marathons and was genuinely kind to everyone, and it is a great, great tragedy that she passed away about the same time that I had the idea for the Gallagher Girls. She was very much on my mind at that time, and I think there's a great deal of her spirit that made it onto the page.

9. CMH is dedicated to my two nieces.

10. The Gallagher Mansion is filled with secret passages partly because I thought it made sense, and partly because Cammie needed them to exist, but mostly because ever since I was a little girl I've really, really, really wanted to live in a house with secret passages.

11. Originally, Macey was only going to show up for the Code Red, but she wasn't going to stick around. Thankfully, my agent, Kristin Nelson, forbade me from letting Macey leave.

12. Like Cammie (and Josh), I completely, totally, 100% prefer waffles to pancakes (even though Mom will no doubt point out--again--that it's the same batter!)

13. Cammie's eyes change color depending on what she's wearing. (And so do mine.)

14. Like Liz, I absolutely LOVE studying with flashcards.

15. Like Anna Fetterman, I once gave myself a bloody nose while opening a can of Pringles.

16. I cut seventy pages out of Love You Kill You during the editing process (and ended up with twice the book).

17. Cross My Heart went through about four different PLOTS--yes, entire plots--before I finally found the center of the story.



--Ally

Competition

One of the questions I seem to get a lot when I'm doing school visits is "who is your biggest competition?"

I think people are usually surprised by my answer: "bad books."

You see, I was a reluctant reader as a kid (a fact that I've heard a lot of other authors echo lately), and I spent a long time thinking I didn't like to read simply because the first books I tried to read were bad books.

So I never think of authors like Stephenie Meyer, E. Lockhart, Rick Riordan, Sarah Dessen, Meg Cabot, etc., as my competition because if readers love their books then those readers are going to go through life looking for MORE books and eventually they might read some of mine.

If readers--particularly reluctant readers--pick up a few BAD books then they're going to start thinking that they don't like to read--period. And that's not doing me any favors whatsoever.


-Ally


PS...I'm still a reluctant reader, by the way. I finish maybe a third of the books that I start--we're talking big, national best-selling books and award-winning books and books that everyone and their dogs just loves and I'm like "oh, yeah, I'm 30 pages from the end of that but I sat it down one night and never had the desire to pick it up again."

(By the way, I never actually SAY that, I just think it!)

I don't know what kind of example that's going to set the readers of the world, but I think it's a pretty good lesson for the writers of the world: never, ever, ever give a reader an excuse to walk away from your book--or readers like me will take it.

Mini blog: the t-shirt contest

Hey gang,

Many of you have been asking when I'll have the results of the t-shirt contest. Well, the short answer is "I'm not sure".

You see, I'm calling upon the talents of some very special guest judges and we've all scattered to the four corners of the earth at the moment.

But you can rest assured that as soon as I know the winner--you'll know the winner!

--Ally

Mini blog: the power of a nap

Hey gang,

Still super duper uber busy trying to wrap up GG3, so it's mini blog time:

All of you writers out there frequently write me with questions about what to do when they get blocked or stuck or just, in general, and I always say "well, you just have to write through it."

And that's true.

But today I remembered there's actually another (totally more fun) alternative:

TAKE A NAP!

I'm so not even kidding. Sometimes I'll work for hours and hours and hours on something, and then as soon as I go to bed or lay down to take a nap, I'll start to drift off to sleep and then my subconscious will kick in and say "here's the answer to your problem, stupid."

So, when it doubt. Sleep.

-Ally


PS...what made me realize this is that I took a nap this afternoon and as I was drifting off to sleep I had a major idea...

For book 6!