Mondays: Yay or Yecch?

For the longest time, I’ve loved Mondays. My family--who of course, I adore, but sometimes enough is enough--goes back to work and school and I get to spend quality, uninterrupted time with my characters and my on-line friends.

I’ve always figured I was alone in this (insert The Bangles singing “Manic Monday” and The Mamas and the Papas harmonizing about how you “can’t trust that day”) until I started talking to an author friend or two.

So that spurred on to an Author Round-up with some of our favorite YA FRESH guests. And let’s see what they had to say.

So...Mondays: Yay or Yecch?

Simon Pulse author Wendy Toliver calls it a YAY because, she says, “I can get back into some semblance of a routine."


"My two oldest boys go to school," Wendy says, "and my youngest and I go to the gym. I like exercising and the other women have become good friends. I usually get to write (or do other authorly things) after lunch time and when my youngest naps. I love making nice dinners for my family, and my husband seems particularly thankful after a hard day at work (Mondays are almost always that).”

Debut author Deborah Pape Kerbel concurs. “I have a six year old son and a three year old daughter, both of whom I love more than life itself. But being 'high energy' children, they keep my husband and me so busy on the weekends, there's no chance to do anything for ourselves."


"When Monday morning rolls around," Deborah continues, "I breathe a sigh of relief, send them back to school with hugs and kisses, and then reclaim the silence of my home and the freedom to write.”

Two time RITA finalist Rosemary Clement-Moore is in the YAY camp, too.


“Since writing is my day job," Rosemary tells us, "when a book is really calling to me (or, ahem, on deadline), I work just as hard on the weekends as the weekdays. And on those times, as much as I love my family, I'm sort of glad when the house clears out and I have it to myself!”

The always funny Ben Esch offers us a different take.


“One of the cool parts about being a writer," says Ben, "is that the days of the week kind lose their significance pretty quick. So, Monday is pretty much the same as any other day of the week in that I get to sleep in until noon and eat cereal in my underwear until I feel like getting to work. I understand this arrangement might change should I ever get married and/or have kids. Anyway, I'm going to say Monday is a yecch mainly because there's nothing that good on TV that day, which really bums me out.

"But do you know what day gets a double big yay? Wednesday. That day is either South Park or Top Chef and for a few magical weeks, both South Park and Top Chef. God I miss Top Chef.”

Never having seen either show, I'll just have to take Ben's word on that!

The creator of the Aspen Brooks series, Stephanie Hale, remembers when she lived in the real world of 8-5, how she used to give Garfield a run for his money on hating Mondays.


“But now that I stay home,” Stephanie says, “it doesn't really matter. My hubby has weird days off that rotate every week, so usually his days off feel like the weekend anyway. Luckily I have a calendar in the kitchen so I can figure out what day it is. It is kind of a bummer to send my son back to school on Monday mornings though so I guess I'm still with the other yecch Mondayers. Yeah, I just made that word up. I can do that stuff cuz I'm a riter.”

PAY IT FORWARD author, Catherine Ryan Hyde is on the fence.


"The thing I love most about being a writer is the freedom to make my own schedule," Catherine tells us. " So if I want to work all day Sunday and kayak all day Monday, it just means less traffic on the water. The only slight downer about Monday is that the email (I "just say no" to the phone) starts up again. Over the weekend it's either delete-able junk or from friends. On weekdays I get slammed again, usually with requests from total strangers. Then again, I can answer it any day I want, so why fault Monday?”

All great answers. Thanks to our six fantastic visitors today. And now it's your turn-- jump in and now tell us your opinion! Monday: Yay or Yecch?

Interview with Catherine Hyde Ryan

On Monday, we ran a review of Catherine Hyde Ryan's May 2008 young adult novel, The Day I Killed James. She was gracious enough to answer some questions for us, too...so without futher adieu...

Hello, Catherine. Thank you for joining us. Could you please tell us a little about your writing background and how you made your first sale?

Like most writers, I couldn't initially publish anything to save my life. I couldn't even get an agent for many years. I began to write short fiction, which I marketed myself. It's a nicely level playing field, because agents won't touch it (very little money to be made) and so (short story) editors accept and, in fact, expect submissions directly from authors. After a few short story acceptances (which I accomplished after a few hundred rejections) I found agents much more attentive. But I still had to start with a very small press (for my first novel, Funerals for Horses) and work my way up.

Readers and writers often like to get a behind the scenes peek of an author's writing routine. It would be great if you could please share your typical writing day schedule.

They don't all look the same, so I'll describe two.

In one, I have a novel in progress. It's working. So I get up, do ten or fifteen minutes of Yoga, drink a cup of tea, and start work. I usually try to knock off in time for the evening news, but will usually go back and spend several hours polishing what I wrote that day, taking me close to bedtime.

In the second, it's not working. Which really just means that the scenes that come next are not ready. Not fully imagined. I find it not only waste of time but a morale drain to write pages that are destined for the recycle bin. So I may take off with my kayak and not come back until nightfall, or I may spend the day doing drudge work like getting the car serviced or catching up with email. It all depends on how much I have to do.

I think I'm still caught on the kayacking! Wow.

Please tell us about your novel, The Day I Killed James, and what we can expect from your characters.

Theresa is an eighteen-year-old girl who blames herself for the suicide of a young man who loved her. She didn't hurt him with malice aforethought, but she did hurt him. On the same night he drove his motorcycle off a cliff. So you can expect her to wither under the burden of her own crushing guilt. And to run away from everything she thinks of as comprising herself. And to try never to let anybody close enough to get hurt again. But since she's one of my characters, you can expect her to climb her way out of that self-made prison (one of my characters in one of my unpublished novels once remarked that a prison is a prison regardless of its builder). She does this with the help of an 11-year-old girl who sticks to her like a piece of gum on the bottom of her shoe, but who ultimately helps her turn around them both around.

What's up next? Do you have another project in the works? If so, please tell us about it.

I always have another project in the works. Except when I have two or three.

Next summer, Knopf will release my next YA book, Diary of a Witness. It's slightly different, in that it involves two teenage boy characters. Our protagonist, Ernie, (who is more than 100 pounds overweight) is an outcast, and so is his best (and only) friend Will. But Ernie has a mom who, though a bit hysterical, loves him. He also has his Uncle Max as a leveling figure. But Will's home life is falling apart and so is he, and he is about to take matters into his own hands regarding the popular jocks who torment them daily. And poor Ernie may be the only one who can prevent disaster.

I also have a new adult novel that is not yet under contract here in the US, but which has just been sold to Transworld, my UK publisher (things are actually much better for my career over there). I hope that I will soon be able to say it has a US publisher as well.

My YA editor is just now reading my new YA novel, Jumpstart the World, about a teenage girl who falls in love with her older next door neighbor before realizing he is transgender (female to male in transition).

And I'm writing a new YA right now.

They all sound terrific. Now, would Would you like to close with a writing tip?

I guess I'd have to say, "Expect rejection." I don't mean it as a negative. I say it because so many good writers get discouraged over it, and many give up. But maybe they could weather rejection better if they had set themselves to expect it. It's part and parcel of the business. I've gotten rejections within the past few months (editors who think my newest adult novel is too literary for the current market) and I hope newer writers will remind themselves of that before they decide they had better not quit their day jobs. Maybe just look at your next rejection as your membership card in the Real Writer's Club.

Thank you so much, Catherine, and we’ll be keeping our eyes open for all your books!

Book Review: The Day I Killed James

Catherine Ryan Hyde and I have been Myspace friends for a while, a fact I find very cool since I am a fan of her novel, Pay It Forward, and its feature film version, starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment.

And while Kelly is primarily the book reviewer here at YA Fresh, I approached Catherine about reviewing her May 2008 release, The Day I Killed James, and was very pleased when she not only responded enthusiastically, but had her publicist mail me a copy.

Here is the press release blurb:

Everything seems ideal in Theresa’s life--she’s beautiful, popular, and she’s dating the “perfect” guy. So when her fickle boyfriend decides he’s not sure what he wants, it’s only harmless jealousy and a little self-pride that makes Theresa bring her cute older neighbor, James, to a party. And even though James loves Theresa, it’s only for the night, so it’s risk-free, right? But when everything goes horribly wrong, and James commits suicide, it becomes anything but a “harmless” night. To cope with the pain, Theresa runs away, shaves her head, and vows never to let anyone close enough to love her again. But the more Theresa runs, the more she must face herself.


I really enjoyed this book. It kept me thinking, kept me feeling, and kept me rooting for the main character to find her way to self-forgiveness.

Theresa reveals her pain in journal form, first person and third, in short chapters, but the writing is so heartfelt and powerful that the book has a bigger, meatier feel that only 200+ pages.

Take, for instance, the following passage. When musing about how Theresa suddenly started missing James, she says:

“No, that’s not right to say I started. I didn’t start. I just kind of joined it in progress, zero to a hundred percent while I wasn’t even paying attention. It wasn’t there, then it was.”

I stopped short after reading that paragraph, marveling over how many times in my life I have suddenly found myself in mid-emotion, not knowing when it started or how I’d gotten so far into its throes. And thinking about how she’d not only identified that feeling, but how perfectly she’d described it.

Catherine Hyde Ryan weaves a tender and beautiful story in The Day I Killed James. I expect it to hear much about it in the days to come, on Favorites and Best lists...and who knows, maybe it’ll make to the big screen, as well?