teamTEENauthor November Theme: So You Wanna Be A Writer?

First off, congrats to the winners of last month's contest. You either have been contacted via email or will be soon.

For this month, we're all talking about you (yes, you random teen reader/writer) and your secret (or not so secret) ambition to become a writer. Many, many months ago, I was asked to prepare a pep talk for young writers participating in National Novel writing month. If you don't know about NANOWRIMO I highly recommend googling it right now. My personal pep talk isn't up yet, but I've had the chance to read many of the author pep talks and I particularly enjoyed John Green's epic advice. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page of the provided right here you'll be able to read talks from authors who helped out in previous years as well. Just to give you a little help in understanding the pep talks and how they are written, each author is giving a phase in the NANO process, like beginning or the second week (this was mine) or crossing that finish line so the advice is geared toward a specific section of the journey to 50,000 words in one month.

So go check out the pep talks and come back here and tell me which is the best advice you found amongst the other authors.

TeamTEENAuthor Review: Innocent Darkness by Suzanne LaZear

It's time for another TeamTEENAuthor feature! This time for Innocent Darkness by Suzanne LaZear, which came out August 8 from Flux Books!

I just love the cover for Innocent Darkness -- One of my favorites for sure! 

Here's a bit about Innocent Darkness (via Goodreads):

Wish. Love. Desire. Live.

Sixteen-year-old Noli Braddock's hoyden ways land her in an abusive reform school far from home. On mid-summer's eve she wishes to be anyplace but that dreadful school. A mysterious man from the Realm of Faerie rescues her and brings her to the Otherworld, only to reveal that she must be sacrificed, otherwise, the entire Otherworld civilization will perish.

Here is what Perfect 10 Member Monica had to say about Innocent Darkness:

Someone ...get me to the Flux (the publisher) HQ quick or hack Suzanne Lazear's laptop! I NEED THE SECOND BOOK. Oh dear. My feelings for this book were everywhere --I promise this is a good thing. We have a bit of steampunk with the hover boards and air crafts. We have some friendship and romance going on between Noli and her best friend, V and we have a new world that you just need to know about. Noli is such a fun and an awesome character. Being a girl she's expected to be lady, a proper one, but she loves tinkering. She's smart and independent and I just completely fell in love with her character. Everyone had secrets and motives and history that I loved discovering as I read. And guess what? THREE PERSPECTIVES. I was ecstatic by this while I was reading. It was so nice to get into the head of not only one, nor two but three character's heads and I surely didn't expect was that the book was about --ha! You thought I was going to tell you? *laughs* You'll have to find out for yourself. ;)

The cover for Innocent Darkness's sequel, Charmed Vengeance was revealed not too long ago.

Have you read Innocent Darkness yet? What did you think?