• In the Once Was Lost department, many thanks to BookBrowse.com for naming it Editor’s Choice, to VOYA for saying “Zarr’s fans will not be disappointed by this beautifully crafted novel about a teen coping with a loss of faith,” and (I don’t think I’ve linked to this yet – if I have, forgive me, oh merciful Internet!) Forever Young Adult’s great review, including this, “when it comes to the mysteries of the teenage heart, zarr knows how to create the Real Deal: the sweet awkwardness, the angst of uncertainty, the shimmering highs and the crushing lows.” Awwwyeah. Crushing lows, baby! You can’t have the shimmering highs without ‘em.

• How about them Saints? I thought it was a pretty great game, as Super Bowls go. Of course the best part of the S-Bowl is that it’s an excuse to re-arrange the furniture for maximum TV viewage, have people over, and eat the kind of crap food one normally denies oneself, such as kettle chips with classic onion dip. A veritable bomb of salt and fat. Until next February, my sweet!

• Over the weekend I read Richard Yates’ The Easter Parade. While I’ve always admired Yates’ prose and Revolutionary Road is a favorite (if you’ve only seen the movie, read the book!), it was pretty bleak (as is RR but this felt more so). Characters trying to transition from post-WWII times to pre-Vietnam, going from cocktail to cocktail and lover to lover, children neglected hither and yon…basically it’s Mad Men without the laughs. Okay, a couple of laughs, but it really could have used an in-office John Deere mishap. It was a fast read, about the same length as your average YA. For Sara the Slow, that is a plus. But now I want to read something happy. I’ve been peeking at G.’s library copy of Douglas Coupland’s Generation A, which looks promising if not happy.

You know what I love about shopping at my local independent book store? I go in there, and they know me. Okay, yes, part of that is because I’m an author and they are nice to authors, but when I go into Sam Weller’s or The King’s English and hang out awhile, it’s obvious that they know their other regulars, too. I know this doesn’t only happen at indies. I used to work at a little Crown Books in Daly City back when Crown Books used to be the biggest chain there was, and we knew our regulars, too, and could make recommendations and chit-chat and otherwise engage in human interaction not based on a five-star rating system or anonymous usernames.

Full disclosure: I have spent plenty of money on books at Amazon over the years, but have tapered off considerably after getting into the book business and understanding more about it. Lately I only resort to it when I need a hard to find book ASAP. But since the Macmillan debacle, and the letter from Amazon about it that felt…well, it felt hostile, frankly…I’m done with that, and keeping my Amazon purchases to blender replacement parts, the vacuum filters my hardware store doesn’t carry, and random medical supplies. Now, in saying that, I’m not berating anyone who chooses to buy books from the big A. I understand that sometimes convenience and pricing are the difference between you buying a book and not buying a book, and if you live in the boonies with no good library and you have to buy everything you want to read, it’s challenging to go indie. And, I bet that at some point in the future I will wind up clicking the buy button of a book (assuming it’s there), myself. But by shifting even 25% of your purchasing dollars to local stores, you’ll help keep the personal, human, passionate bookselling business—and the real people who make it happen—alive.

Anyway, speaking of Sam Weller’s, right now they are having a pretty fantastic sale for in-store customers—it goes through tomorrow the 6th. 50% off used (!), 25% off new, 30% off rare. Some restrictions. There is also chocolate. So if you’re in the SLC, go down there and show Catherine and Tony and the crew some love. Heck, you can even do that when there’s not a sale. All the better. To make it even more convenient, TRAX stops right at their front door, and there are two bars and a coffee shop and some restaurants on the same block, so you can eat, drink, and buy books all in one delightful outing. (All right, yes, sometimes you go downtown on Sunday or a weeknight and things are shuttered, but that seems to be changing. I am seriously hoping this “downtown rising” thing works out, because I live within walking distance of downtown and having it actually…rise…would make living here longterm so much more enticing.)

Here’s my haul from yesterday, a mix of new and used, and not counting the four books I have on order (you know you can order books through your local store if you don’t see them in stock, right?). The wrapped one (expertly, and for free by SW staff) is a top secret gift, obviously:

Coming on the blog next week: interview with Matt de la Peña, in which we talk about the wonderful We Were Here and other writery stuff. You’re gonna like it.

Have a great weekend! Go…Saints?

(Both gleaned from Volume II of collected Paris Review interviews - these collections belong in every writer’s library.)

“…I had, after reading Flaubert’s letters and the life stories of those writers I most admired, embraced the ethic of literary modernism that no serious writer can escape: to dedicate myself to art without expecting anything in return, to shun fame, success, and cheaply won popularity, to love literature for its own beauty.” – Orhan Pamuk

When asked if she makes changes in galleys, Eudora Welty replied:

“I correct or change words, but I can’t rewrite a scene or make a major change because there’s a sense then of someone looking over my shoulder. It’s necessary, anyway, to trust that moment when you were sure at last you had done all you could, done your best for that time. When it’s finally in print, you’re delivered—you don’t ever have to look at it again. It’s too late to worry about its failings. I’ll have to apply any lessons this book has taught me toward writing the next one.”

Some may say February is a good month to stay home, live in your pjs, and continue to eat winter comfort food. That’s fine for that groundhog in PA, but not for me. I’m going to be out and about and, for the pajama portion of this announcement, teaching a new online class on YA fiction. Read on:

Saturday, Feb 13 – 1 p.m. - Salt Lake City Public Library

Appearing with Paul Genesse and Bobbie Pyron for a panel discussion, followed by a signing. (What a good chance to get a copy of Sweethearts for your Valentine, eh?)

Friday, Feb 19 – Evening – Fan meetup somewhere in Omaha

Okay, this is totally experimental. I made last-minute plans to take a short research trip that includes a stop in Omaha, and I have a free night while I wait to get on a train. It’s short notice to put together an awesome book store appearance, but I know it’s rare for authors to go out that way. SO, I want to try this semi-guerrilla thing that I’m calling a fan meetup right now, though I’m tempted to call it a town hall meeting or fireside chat or a whistle stop tour, just because that sounds cool. Location TBD, and partially dependent on me getting idea how many of you there might be. One? Three? Seventeen? I don’t know. Most likely it will be at a coffee shop somewhere not too far from the train station. If you live in that area and think you might like to come out, please let me know, either in comments here or email (link on the right side of sarazarr.com).

Saturday, Feb 27 – Jacksonville, FL – Much Ado about Books

Book festival! Free and open to the public! At the Main Library on Laura Street. All the info here. My details are:

11 a.m. at the Teen Library of the Main Library, ground floor

11:45 – 12:30 signing

12:45 – 1:00 signing

In between I will pee.

2 p.m. – Session off-site from the festival, at the Mandarin Library Branch

Right Now or Whenever You Want – The Glen Online

You know I’ve been raving about The Glen Workshop for years, and how my going to it for the first time in 2002 changed my life? And how I’ve gone almost every year since? Now, IMAGE is offering The Glen Online for those who can’t make it to Santa Fe in the summers, or would rather stay home in pjs eating comfort food, working at their own pace. And, unlike at the Santa Fe workshop, TGO is offering a class on YA Fiction. Guess who is teaching it? That’s right! (Me, in case you didn’t get that…)

Now, The Glen Online is really more in a correspondence course format than a class, so you won’t be workshopping the pieces of classmates (though you can engage in discussion with others doing TGO through the IMAGE forums), and there won’t be the give-take group energy of that particular environment. On the plus side, you get one-on-one with the teachers, you can start any time, and work at your own pace. If you check out the TGO site, you’ll notice some classes have the “tutorial” option, which is basically mentoring through large chunks of a manuscript. You won’t see that option for YA, but if that’s what you’re interested in, we can work that out within the format of the class. If you think The Glen Online might be for you but you have questions about the YA class, feel free to contact me.

Whew, I am a busy lady! Back to work…

“I’ve always thought of encountering readers—of having any readers at all—as an unbelievable gift. Giving lectures, signing books, sitting hopefully behind a table at a bookstore in Wichita Falls: these rituals may be humbling, but I’ve never forgotten the fact that thousands of unpublished writers in this country would give anything to be humiliated in exactly this way. Of all the mortifications to be found in an author’s life, probably none hurts so much as the kind you get from not being able to share your work with another soul.” – Jennifer Finney Boylan in a NYT Op-Ed on Salinger, seclusion, PR in the digital age

“A real friendship ought to introduce each person to unexpected weirdness in the other. Each acquaintance is an alien, a well of unexplored difference in the experience of life that cannot be imagined or accessed in any way but through genuine interaction.” – Jaron Lanier in YOU ARE NOT A GADGET

Lest Justin think I forget him…Music Friday! (Sometimes known as Music Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.)

The longer I am a published author—and the more I am aware that’s not very long at all, really, and that I’m just starting out—the more I am interested in people who have had careers in any creative profession for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. I especially like listening to those who have made comebacks, or who take their careers in directions that critics or fans don’t understand or appreciate. Because, you can grapple with all kinds of anxiety about making people happy with your work, or not rocking the boat, but if you don’t figure out how to let that go you will be pretty miserable, I think.

I love this Fresh Air interview with Rosanne Cash. When I first heard this, I thought…damn, I want to be friends with her. Wisdom, humor, humility. (You’ve got to listen to the whole thing, not just read the transcript excerpt.) Rosanne Cash’s’ web site. (I’ve been thinking a lot lately about her song “This World” from the Interiors album.)

Steve Earle is another person I admire, and whose work I’m a fan of. He made this big country-rock-rockabilly splash in the eighties and early nineties, nearly destroyed himself with drugs, wound up in jail, then went on to make all these great bluegrass, roots rock, alt-country, and political albums. Here he is singing “Close Your Eyes,” which on my emotional playlist for Sweethearts is Cameron’s song to Jenna. Lyrics. (As a reminder: if you pause the video and let it buffer up for a few minutes, you shouldn’t get stops and starts, though YouTube has been a little difficult today.)

This song is from The Hard Way album, which I own. You can, too. (Is there an IndieBound equivalent for record stores? I don’t know the PC place to link…I guess the main thing is to buy it new, not used, so artist gets royalties.)

Finally, here are Cash and Earle (older, balder, hey, time gets us all and at least he’s sober and still a gorgeous man in my book) reflecting on some stuff then doing a rendition of “Guitar Town” together. You have to watch American cheese propaganda first…