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*stops* *gulps in air* *wheezes* *cries*

Sorry; it’s a pretty busy month. That’s kind of just how I breathe now.

It’s a lot of fun and cool stuff, though! So really, I just wanted to chill out for a second and talk about it, because I’m kinda plagued with the feeling at this point that I’ll never get a chance to again because ALL THE THINGS TO DO.

First things first, you might have picked up that I’m blogging for Barnes & Noble now. Which is awesome. I freaking love Barnes & Noble, and I freaking love promoting books, and yes, I even freaking love blogging. (I also really love getting paid for blogging, as it turns out.) So, this is pretty awesome. In case you missed it, my first post went up this week: The Rise of the Unreliable Narrator in YA Lit. In it, I got to rec a few books (none of which I’ll mention here, in case you don’t want spoiled for you that those books have unreliable narrators) and talk a little about what I’ve found to be a fascinating phenomenon in the past year or so, i.e. the search for the YA GONE GIRL. This seemed to be the top of every agent’s wishlist for a while, and I don’t blame them; it’d make a pretty awesome YA. (And, as I argue in the post, I think it already is.)

Here’s the interesting flip side to all that, though: this was the first time I’ve ever been a truly faceless and basically nameless blogger. When I blog, it’s either here, for YA Misfits, or for a friend who asks me to do so on a particular topic. Tweets are “Check out this post by @MissDahlELama” or RTs of whatever I put out there.

This time, there was a lot of “This article.” No name. No knowledge of me. No nothing. Even crazier were the people tweeting it: authors of the books mentioned in the post. Authors I hadn’t tweeted the post to. Authors who just…saw it. Or were told about it by others. I also thought, “Hey, OK, not that many people seeing it – there aren’t even many comments.” And then saw that actually there were a massive amount of likes and comments on Facebook.

For some reason, this sort of terrified the hell out of me.

We’re meaner to faceless bloggers. We just are. We will eagerly talk about how much a post sucks when we don’t know the author behind it, and say how little they know about YA, or what an oversight it is that they omitted X book. I’m gonna be a person that happens to now. And that’s okay. It’s worth it. And I want to learn. And I should know more. And people should be honest about their feelings.

But it was definitely a new feeling.

(And I say this, by the way, as someone who has had her blog posts trashed, and despite the fact that actually this one was really well received.)

Anyway, so that’s a little about that. Next week, I’ll have my second post going up, and spoiler alert: it’s probably gonna make you want to buy some books.

In more fun and exciting news, this coming Tuesday is the cover reveal for BEHIND THE SCENES, thanks to the lovely ladies (particularly MG Buehrlen) of YA Books Central. The cover creating process is definitely an interesting one, especially given that I have zero artistic eye or ability. I don’t know what I expected, but I know it wasn’t what I got, largely because I never would’ve been creative enough to come up with it. So, I’m excited to talk about all that after the reveal, and I hope everyone else appreciates just how much the cover will stand out on shelves as much as I do!

Finally, back to blogging, here’s a bit more about what’s up:

Today, I’m on YA Misfits, talking to superstar literary agent Sara Megibow about what she’s looking for, and why she’s adamantly putting herself out there as an LGBTQ-seeking agent. It should surprise approximately no one that I think this is an awesome thing for agents to do, because the effect it can have on what people write that they might previously have been afraid to try can be huge. There’s no question that both YA and NA (oh God, especially NA!) need more QUILTBAG lit, and anything that helps make that happen is absolutely fantastic in my eyes.

Next week, I’m back here, with a weeklong miniseries of Dahlia’s Top 10 of 2013. Most of the books will probably be glaringly obvious, given how much I’ve raved about them in the past few months, but a few haven’t gotten as much attention from me as they’ve deserved, and I’m psyched to revisit them. But whether you think you know what they’ll be or not, I highly, highly recommend stopping by each day, because the series has a little something extra that you’re definitely gonna wanna check out.

The week after that, I’m participating in the 2013 YA Superlatives blogfest, because I really, really like talking about books, and I hope you’re doing it too! That means I’ll have a blog post up every day, and actually, I’ll have two on Tuesday the 17th, because as you may have noticed, I’m a sucker for Broke and Bookish’s Top Ten Tuesdays, and “Top 10 New-to-Me Authors I Read in 2013” is just not a topic I can skip!

And, because, honestly, the 2013 version is still probably my favorite post on this blog, you can definitely expect 10 Blunt Messages on the Eve of 2014 at some point.

What’s keeping me busy otherwise? Quite a bit 🙂 Currently awaiting line edits on BEHIND THE SCENES, drafting its followup (which I won NaNo with, helping me along a lot), and drafting a NA contemp I’m hoping to be the thing I finally self-publish. (You may have read the first five pages in WriteOnCon.) It’s been pretty cool watching all those green progress bars in the blog margin move. (UtL = the BtS follow-up; LWaT = the NA, which is actually at almost 70K after last night.)

And, of course, reading. Alllllways reading. Currently AMY & ROGER’S EPIC DETOUR by Morgan Matson. Next up? Still not sure, but I’ve got a billion new books at home and I’m hoping to fall in love with one!

So, that’s what’s up. Sorry if you’re sick of my voice; it’s gonna be around a lot this month!

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