Rock On, Beth Revis!!!!

This is a strange, scary, silly roller coaster of a business. Of course, those of us who are lucky enough to be in it aren't complaining, but you can bet that we're always talking behind the scenes about the good things and the bad. A random day can bring emails from friends who are thrilled about their covers, frustrated about release dates, worried about sequels, nervous about Skype appearances, and so on. Frankly, it's one of my favorite things about writing YA, that there are literally hundreds of people at my fingertips who will know EXACTLY what I'm going through and will send me ridiculous emails to help cheer me up.

Yesterday, for instance, my friend K and I decided to change our last names to Freud-Drool. Because it's fitting.

So when the Bookanistas learned that one of our own made the New York Times bestseller list, we knew that this one deserved a special celebration. Beth Revis is the nicest person ever, and she had the UTTER GALL to write a sci-fi book. Everyone knows that YA sci-fi is out, right? But Beth had the guts to buck the norm and say, "Yo. I'm going to write the story I want to write, and to heck with the conventions." (Okay, maybe she didn't say YO, but you get the picture.) She did it, and damn did it pay off. So the next time you're working on a project and regretting that it doesn't have sparkly vampires or glow-in-the-dark Yeti or whatever the creature du jour is, remember Beth. Write YOUR book, whatever it may be.

And, since she really is one of the nicest people ever, who out of the blue wrote me an email last week to say that she'd randomly thought of a piece of advice for me (and a freaking good one, at that), the Bookanistas are celebrating the bleep out of her today:



From now on, I'd like you to all call me Sonar.

But seriously. CONGRATULATIONS, BETH. It couldn't have happened to a nicer or more deserving person.