Last spring, I spoke to my friend Lisa Schroeder about the Market, a scary word referencing what’s selling, what isn’t, who bought what and what trend is hot. Basically, all the stuff writers try to push away as we Create that later comes back to give us The Angst. We concluded that there should be a group for contemporary writers. Contemporary–you know, real things happening to real kids in real life. We both write in other genres (and I love me some princess power), but it seemed to us that contemporary fiction wasn’t getting the love it deserved. So we brainstormed some authors and Lisa took off. Lisa is an astounding organizer and a wonderful leader, and it is through her efforts that The Contemps (www.thecontemps.com) was formed.

The group includes 21 YA authors with books coming out from Sept 2010-August 2011. Our mission is simple–to spotlight contemporary fiction for young adults through blog posts, author events, and (over)sharing from our teen years. We have fun things planned all year long, including a contest going on NOW through November 15, 2010.
Read 18 of our 21 books and enter to win ALL 21 BOOKS. Visit the Get Involved page for more information. And please take time to read through the wonderful blog posts and the comments. There are some great discussions happening.

I’ll be focusing on my YA novel, SEAN GRISWOLD’S HEAD (Bloomsbury, March 1, 2011) in this group. I realized as I started to blog that I never shared the still tentative cover for SEAN. I personally love it, as I think it captures the quirkiness found in my tale of first love, first loss, and… spandex. Because no story is complete without synthetic fabric.
Drumroll please…