Winner of 'If I Stay' by Gayle Forman (and Being Ready To Leap)

First I want to announce the winner of a copy of Gayle Forman's If I Stay:

Jennifer Pickrell

Please email me with your mailing info!

I've been feeling a little unfocused lately, unable to stay still with one thought. I sit here. I want to blog. But my mind races. It can not settle on a topic.

So I leave you with this picture. It captures how I feel today. Holding on to the edge of things, ready to let go.

And before you take this to mean I'm plunging to my death, before you call for medical professionals and straight jackets, and your nosey neighbor leans in to whisper Well, Melissa's gone off the deep end, I'll just say, that's not it. That's not it at all. I just mean to say, I've been holding on too tightly. I've clung to these walls. And now I'm ready to exhale. Ready to leap.

Ten Things About Me & Winner of the Beth Kephart Giveaway

First I'd like to announce the winner of my Beth Kephart giveaway (I calculated the results through random.org):

Wendy @ carbibousmom

Please e-mail me at: thistooblog (at) gmail (dot) com to claim your prize. I feel very strongly about sharing these books and I hope you love them as I much as I do.

Susan Kane at thecontemplativecat tagged me in this post. She is such a great storyteller and I hope you will follow her blog. She challenged me to share ten things about myself. Since there are some new followers here I thought it might be fun. So here goes...

1. I really, really love to wear dresses. I get sad when the winter comes and all of my dresses get stored away.

2. I have a strange obsession with Julie Andrews. When I was sixteen years old, in a wonderfully embarrassing moment, my friend Leah and I created a life-size cardboard cut-out of her and stood outside of The Today Show with the hopes that this kind of crazy would allow us to meet her after her interview. Katie Couric did find us in the crowd (my goodness, how could she not?) and we had a relatively long chat. She promised she would try her hardest to help us meet Julie. In the end, it did not happen.

3. I have never met a cheese I didn't like.

4. I have the illogical belief that I can walk any distance. I'm pretty sure I could walk across the country and not get tired.

5. For a long time I was afraid to talk to people I didn't know. I have conquered that fear and now I have a tendency to babble to innocent strangers because of all those years without practice.

6. I love, love, love trees. I think they are so beautiful.

7. When I was a little girl, I lived next door to a woman who did science experiments on turtles. One summer all of her turtles got loose around the neighborhood and it became the summer of many strange turtle incidents. I firmly believe that this summer made me into the odd person I am today.

8. I used to send all of my letters without stamps when I was a kid. I would just switch the return addresses so that the letters would be 'returned' to them.

9. Outsmarting the US postal service was as rebellious as things got in my life. I received detention once in high school for cutting the first and only class I ever cut. When I walked into the detention room, the Vice Principal laughed at me and told me to go home.

10. Even though I love the outdoors more than the indoors, I have never been camping because I do not like bugs or sleeping anywhere but in my own bed.

Guess what? You're all tagged. Just go for it, my friends.

Attached to Books

I think my posts have been getting a little too long on the blog. I am constantly trying to edit myself but, sometimes, I just run away with words...

Today I'll be brief. I promise.

I've been thinking about physical attachments to books. I may have mentioned once or one million times that I live in a small apartment. There is simply not enough room to keep a massive library (though I dream of one...like in Beauty and the Beast, where the ladders fly across the shelves and I can sing as I browse.)

I came to the conclusion that I would not have a problem donating almost all of the books in my library.

As I have come to know a few authors recently, I have several books that are signed specifically to me and I would most certainly keep those.

But other than that, I only have a few select books that I feel the need to have in my home. I'm not a re-reader. I just like the idea that those books are near me.

So tell me. Do you have a physical attachment to books? Are there books you need to carry with you always? Are there books you need to have in close proximity so that you can read them again or do you simply need to know they are there?

Today is the last day to enter my giveaway for a collection of Beth Kephart books. So click and enter if you haven't already. I will announce the winner tomorrow!

It Wasn't A Dream! It Was A Place!

I'm feeling random today so this is just a mashup.

Because you can never get enough Beth Kephart in your life (just a personal philosophy) you should check out this Treasure Hunt. Two lucky winners will get a signed copy of her latest book You Are My Only and a 2,000 word critique on a work in progress. Did you catch that? Did. You. Catch. That? Writers, I think you should jump on the opportunity.

And of course, you can still win a collection of Beth Kephart books from my blog because I want you to fall in love with her books, as I have.

I did two things on the blog this week that I rarely do. I posted my fiction. And I put together the aforementioned givewaway. The only reason I have held back on doing these things in the past is because of fear.

Maybe you understand the hesitancy to put my work out there. But I'm sure you're wondering who, in the world, would be frightened to give away books? Me. That's who. Every time I post something on this blog I wonder: who will care?

And I'm always amazed, absolutely floored, that all of you do. You think I would have figured it out by now with all the times you've been there...but let me have my Dorothy-wakes-up-from-Oz kind of moment. Oh, but it wasn't a dream! It was a place! And you - and you - and you - and you were there. But you couldn't have been, could you?

Could you? You were. You are. So thank you.

A Giveaway in Anticipation of Beth Kephart's You Are My Only

I have mentioned Beth Kephart on this blog before, mainly to say that I love her blog (which you must visit) and her books (which you must read) but not much beyond that. Not because I haven't wanted to say more, only because I have tried to understand why I love her books and have found it very difficult.

The experience of reading her young adult books is deeply personal for me.

I know it's not enough to say that the 'why' can not be expressed. It can be. I just haven't tried until today.

When I read her books, I am in them. Truly inside of them. A very safe place to be. These main characters, these girls, I know them, even if their experiences are vastly different than my own.

They are girls who are searching, who are curious, who want to understand and know. They are girls who are on their way to becoming and no matter how old I get I am still that kind of girl, always searching for a better someone to be. I'm always aware of a kind of ache in Kephart's books. Like resting inside of a long sigh. And I know this ache. It is familiar to me.

Her latest book, You Are My Only (due out on October 25th and available for pre-order here) is also a book about a desperate search. Two quests, really. Emmy, a young mother, searching for her lost child. And Sophie, who begins to question her world, seeking the one thing she doesn't know to look for. All of it culminating to a discovery that left me with sweaty palms and a racing heart as I turned each page.

There is color and hope and life in this book. When I imagine it (and I always try to imagine how a book really, truly feels) I think of paint against canvas, technicolor film on a page, every image, feeling, and character bursting, so real and vivid and bright.

As I read, I was let in and out of each scene at just the right moments, enough to feel that I was there, but aware of something just out of reach. And that's the shadow. The contrast. A secret. It is also what keeps Emmy and Sophie restless and yearning. What keeps me reading Kephart's books and writing my own because I, too, am desperate to know what eludes these girls. Girls like me.

I consider a good book a gift. And the way I see it, Beth Kephart has given me many gifts: her blog (a wealth of inspiration, a treasure), her books, and her friendship. And we are all so lucky because she is an amazingly prolific writer, the gift that keeps on giving, if you will, with twelve books out there in the world, two more coming out soon, and more in progress than I would know what to do with. So, in anticipation of the release of You Are My Only (October 25th. I'll wait here for you to put it in your calendar), I want to give the gift of four of her young adult books to you.

All you have to do is comment on this post and I'll randomly draw a winner and you'll have a chance to win four of Beth Kephart's young adult books: Undercover, House of Dance, The Heart Is Not A Size, and Nothing But Ghosts.

So the rules:

Comment on this post before September 13th.
If you blog about this contest you get 2 extra entries: +2
If you tweet about this contest you get an extra entry: +1
If you follow my blog or you become a follower of my blog you get an extra entry: +1
You must add them up and put that in your comment because I don't do math.
:-)