Here is the synopsis from Publlisher’s Lunch:

VINDICO, pitched as The Breakfast Club meets the X-Men, the story of morally-questionable teens who are forced to become the ruthless and supernaturally powerful proteges of the world’s deadliest supervillains, and THE FEROS, to Jennifer Besser at Putnam Children’s, with Shauna Fay editing, in a very nice deal, by Brianne Johnson and Susan Cohen at Writers House (World).
bjohnson@writershouse.com>

It was exciting to see Bri in print and to thrill right along with her that a book that she championed is getting published by a big house. I plan to be her next new author finding a big deal. Got that, Great Book Goddesses in the Sky?

It’s funny, though, watching from afar as deals are set up. The book described above is completely different than mine, so its success doesn’t necessarily portend much for my book. I’ve done my share of marketing at day jobs, but marketing is definitely NOT MY JOB when it comes to writing. My job is to write more good books and be grateful to have Bri wearing the marketing hat. I also need to have patience and faith that great work will be rewarded. I have to make sure that the pages I turn in are my very best work and that there is no question as to the quality of my manuscripts. It’s sometimes hard for someone like me to shut up and refrain from meddling in the process. But I’ve never shied away from things that are hard…

Let’s face it, crafting a book that will attract many readers requires a hefty amount of marketing wizardry; every page and every sentence must win over readers’ hearts and imaginations.

Congratulations, Bri. I am proud to be working with you. And I promise to stop blogging now and get back to my job…

Time passes, but the work of writing continues, indifferent to the date, the number of hours spent, the non-writing events of your life that take place while the work marches on.

My daughter turns 6 in May. She is my youngest, and she’s turning in to a long-legged youngster before my eyes, her babyhood receding like the beaches on the East coast. Will she remember Mommy writing, and writing, and writing when she recounts her childhood? She already looks forward to seeing my book on the shelf at our local bookstore. How old will she be when that happens?

The truth is, the process of getting a book ready is something that just takes as long as it takes. I’ve learned not to freak out about measuring the time put in, although I do muse about how, with each revision, my hourly pay for the book goes down. And I think, wryly to myself, I may be lucky to get minimum wage for the hours I put in.
Still I can feel that I am a lot closer to my goal. I’ve started another book. I’ve gotten an agent. I’ve built a huge support group of readers and well-wishers. Best of all, I’ve learned to enjoy the journey. I used to despise people who said that, but the grueling process of writing a first novel has changed me. I relax into taking as much time as is necessary, because that’s how you polish something that is good until it truly shines.
I do hope that I’m not still looking at that © 2009 next year, however.

When asked what made her write and how she became a writer, Bray told of a personal tragedy that turned her diary into her lifeline… and the rest was history. Thank you, Libba, for sharing this with us and for your courage to busta move out of the expected.

You also have a career in standup should you ever tire of being a Michael L. Prinz Award-winning writer…

“Do you miss it?”

“What?” Lisa asked.

“Home.”

Lisa looked at me then went back to her charcoal sketch of an unlaced hiking boot. A fresh wave of anxiety doused my stomach as I waited for her answer.

“Hell no,” she finally murmured.

“Not even laying out at the Boulder Reservoir? Or going to Chautauqua?”

“A little sun would be nice,” she smiled.

Chautauqua was the park in Boulder where our neighborhood west of the university, known as The Hill, dead-ended at the foothills. Nestled just below the city’s jagged Flatirons – gentle mountains faced with massive sloping anvils of red rock – the park was a hub of activity for college students heading out for a hike or a Frisbee match, and for idle teenagers. While two-dollar movies played in a cavernous old wooden theater, bands of our friends roamed the foothill trails, having told their parents they were going to the movies.

“Why did you want to get away so bad? Did something happen with your mom and Tim?”

“Well, after he moved in, I could hear them at night.”

“Gross.”

“I know,” Lisa said in a low voice. “But that wasn’t really the reason.”

“Really?”

I wanted more details on her mother and Tim, but I decided not to ask. Teepee life didn’t offer much in the way of luxuries, but it did offer a ton of privacy. I didn’t want to invade hers. I was worried that Lisa rued the day she gave up her sun-drenched summer at ‘the ‘Res’ to isolate in this cold, glorified mud puddle. To distract myself from my imminent abandonment, I scribbled anxious notes in my journal. Suddenly, Lisa looked up from her sketch.

“Remember Mrs. McBride – Trish, who I babysat for up on Mapleton Hill?”

“Yeah…”

I had visited Lisa at Trish’s house several times over the winter. An imposing white brick house with green shutters and colonial columns, you could pick the whole house up and plunk it in one of the east coast’s most stately suburbs and it would fit right in.

“She kind of spilled her guts to me.”

“Really? She seemed stuck up when I met her.”

“Yeah, that went out the window after I’d worked for her for a few months,” Lisa said. “She’s actually really friendly.”

Mapleton Hill was a leafy, tree-lined street that culminated in a narrow but beautiful canyon. Our house was near by, but being Mapleton-adjacent was a far cry from actually living on Boulder’s nicest street. Trish McBride and her professor husband had moved away from their upper crust roots, but her blue blood pedigree permeated the house’s museum-quality oriental rugs, Tiffany candlesticks and strikingly well-painted family portraits hung amidst Trish’s stark black and white photography.

“What did she say?”

“She said she wants to raise her young children in Boulder, so they can have a normal childhood. Then she told me she is horribly lonely.”

“No duh! She’s telling her life story to the babysitter!”

“She hasn’t slept with her husband for two years.”

“Whoa. Weird.”

“That’s nothing compared to what came next. She told me that she was attracted to women, and that over the past few months, she had fallen in love with me.”

“Gross!” I gasped.

Lisa looked up from her sketchbook.

“You think?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t picture her telling you that! Did you freak?” I asked.

“By the time she finally said it, I kind of already knew.”

“Did she make a pass at you?”

I was practically shouting. I mentally vowed to calm down. Lisa was confiding all of this in such a quiet, unperturbed voice.

“No. She never touched me, except for an occasional shoulder rub. We used to give each other shoulder rubs.”

“What did you do?”

“I told her I was flattered but I just want to be friends. But things were never the same after that. I didn’t really want to have any physical contact with her. She’s a nice lady, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. But I got creeped out by the shoulder rubs after I knew what she was thinking. I had to tell her to stop.”

“What a trip!”

“I try not to judge her, because she’s really nice. And she wanted to help me out so badly. She asked me to keep working for her, and I did. But often, she wouldn’t even go out. I didn’t really know what to do. It felt strange, like she was paying me to hang out with her.

Outside, the rain swept against our canvas walls in sheets.

“God, she sounds a little desperate,” I suggested.

“Yeah. I know. By the time you invited me to the teepee, I was ready to just get away from the whole thing.”

“Damn. The woman doesn’t look like a lesbian.”

“What does a lesbian look like?”

“Motorcycles and lots of leather,” I said.

Lisa laughed.

“Not always.”

Lisa got up, threw on a poncho and stepped out of the teepee into the rain. It seemed like she considered the matter closed, although I had hundreds of questions about Trish, her bizarre confession and, most of all, Lisa’s reaction to it. How would it feel to let your guard down with a woman and to find out that she was just as hot for you as any guy? For a moment, I honestly felt for Lisa. I wanted to ask if having everyone – even women –  want you got to be a nightmare. But I decided not to probe. If I showed too much interest in Lisa’s secret, who was to say she wouldn’t uncover mine?

The core source of my dread is also the most interesting aspect of the group: my story and characters will be critiqued. This will the first and most innocuous occasion (of many, I hope) when I will buck up and smile, nod, scribble notes and in general feign fascination with every niggling criticism of my WIP. Perhaps the reason my stomach titters is that critique groups are always a brush with the unknown. Will they gush over it and tell me not to change a word, just ‘keep writing’? Will they tell me they liked that other idea from a few weeks ago much better? Will my readers understand why this idea — amidst several other book ideas they have critiqued recently — inspired me to take the leap and start the years-long journey of writing a novel for potential publication? I do not know what they will think. Therein lies the terrific value, and attendant stress, of being critiqued.

The process of writing is magical. I already think of my girl protagonist often and wonder what she would think and do in a given situation. But I am still getting to know her. I want her to be vulnerable and raw, so that the reader keeps reading to see if she will combust or get plowed under. But I don’t think I’m there yet with her voice. She is too matter-of-fact still. I know that I will be able to work on that, adding depth to her voice as I gain understanding of her backstory and her present conflicts. Yes, as you can see, I am not without my own inner critique – if I didn’t have a good sense of what is working and what is not I’d be a weak writer. The reason why I’ve shown up for a writers’ group for years is so because others point out things I don’t see about my WIP. This is a terrifically important step in the process of crafting a superior book. A novel polished enough to blow someone’s mind out there.

There are scores of gatekeepers whose main job is to say no to us. What we do with our writers groups and critiques and work shops and support groups and classes and voracious reading and Facebook-ing and tweeting is to build something that can weather the tough editorial process. I hope this doesn’t sound bitter, because I’m not. I am simply a pragmatist whose sole aim is to turn out the best material I can muster.

I already know I am going to write this book. So tonight, I am going to quietly show up, with a sharpened pencil and a receptive heart. I will thank my fellow writers, for reading my pages and taking the time to share reactions to my work. I may be tweaked and even pained by your comments, or I may be flattered and greatly heartened. It doesn’t really matter which. It’s all just one more day in a chain of days as I undertake the job of being a writer – a job I feel thrilled and blessed to pursue.

click on the picture to find a critique group near you

click on photo for full story

Sundance Film Festival is always overwhelming, and this year was no exception. How do you weed through a film catalogue that reads like Encyclopedia Britanica? One way to narrow it down is to focus on films adapted from books. There were at least five this year: Twelve (Author: Nick McDonnell); Winter’s Bone (Author: Daniel Woodrell); The Extra Man (Author: Jonathan Ames); The Taqwacores (Author: Michael Muhammad Knight) and The Romantics (Author: Galt Niederhoffer.) What a thrill it must be for these authors – to see a filmmaker take on the monumental task of bringing their story to the screen.

The year before I went to grad school at Columbia, I spent a winter working for Sundance as their press liaison by day and volunteer driver for the Sundance Director’s and Producers’ Labs by night. From driving Oliver Stone in from the airport to suggesting screenings to Roger Ansen and Pauline Kael, it was a heady and inspiring time. When I look at this photo Shaun took last week, it brings it all back – along with his tales of near-all-night parties and tagging along with Sundance folks to screenings. Long live the spirit of indie adventure – in films and in the books that inspire them.

click on picture to go to book site

Toward that end, I would like to plug a fellow YA writer I’ve been chatting with online, who I met through SCBWI: Dawne Knobbe. I ordered her book which, like mine, deal with teens in the outdoors. Here is her BOOK BLOG: runawaystorm.com – http://deknobbe.com/blog/great-kayak-giveaway/

She’s giving away a kayak on her blog!

We are going to meet in person soon and compare notes about writing. I can’t wait to meet her.