RTW #119: Best Book of February

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question that begs to be answered. In the comments, you can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

We'd love for you to participate! Just answer the prompt on your own blog and leave a link - or, if you prefer, you can include your answer in the comments.

This Week's Topic:What was the best book you read in February?Road Trip Song of the Week:


I'm glad YA Highway and Suze Reese are doing these blog carnivals, since I rarely seem to post unless someone gives me a prompt to write on. This one turned out to be easy, since as it happens I finished seven books in February. Not that I read them all in the course of the month, of course: I usually have about four books going, and finish them whenever I finish them. The ones I finished this month, in chronological order, were:

1. The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2010 (ed. Rich Horton).
2. Death Comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James
3. The Stranger Beside Me, by Ann Rule
4. Sinful in Satin, by Madeline Hunter
5. Pirate King, by Laurie R. King
6. Anna Dressed in Blood, by Kendare Blake
7. The Hinge Factor, by Eric Durschmied

Most of these were really good, so the decision is a bit harder than it was last month. In the end, I'd call it a toss-up between Anna Dressed in Blood and The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy.

RTW #116: Stolen Ideas, and Why They're Okay

This is a post for YA Highway's Road Trip Wednesday. I am posting it late because I am a lazy ass and didn't get out of bed until *mumble* o'clock this afternoon. However, there's still time: if you're interested in the topic and want to have your own say, then write your own post and post the results here.

This Week's Topic:

What SNI [shiny new idea] were you psyched to work on, but discovered it was too close to something already done?

Let me start with a story: When I was in middle school, I fell in love with Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles. If you don't know them-- and you should!-- they're a delightful quartet of YA novels set in and around the mythical Enchanted Forest. They're full of fractured fairy tales, but the characters are smart and sympathetic and have real, perilous adventures-- and, also, they teach you that you can melt a wizard in soapy water with a little bit of lemon juice.