Tenner Tuesday with Kate Milford!

Go read this interview my pal Lindsay Eland of SCONES and SENSIBILITY did with my other pal Kate Milford of BONESHAKER. It's so much fun. just like Linds!

Tenner Tuesday with Kate Milford!

Announcing the SUPER-FABBY Scones and Sensibilities Challenge! First Prize, a signed author's copy of SCONES plus a killer Cuda critique!

In honor of the December 22 release of Lindsay Eland's SCONES AND SENSIBILITY (aka Lindsay, the Nice Cuda) Why A? is holding our very first contest! With prizes!

SCONES tells the story of Polly, the dreamy, Jane Austen-obsessed tween who sets out to make a love match for all the lonely souls in her sea-side town, with hysterical results.

Entry Rules:
All you have to do to enter is choose the Follow button, if you haven't already (on your right hand column of the blog) and leave a comment describing a poorly conceived love match, set-up or blind date in 1-3 paragraphs. Humor is encouraged.

For example:
Describe a love match between

• a cat person and a dog person
• a germophobic vegetarian and a carefree meat-eater
• a roller coaster fanatic and a carsick person
• a tightrope walker and someone with a fear of heights

Use our samples or make up your own!
You get the idea!

Deadline:
December 22 or the first 50 entries, whichever comes first;
Winners announced December 27th.

First Prize:
Signed Author's copy of Scones and Sensibility
Full-toothed Cuda crit (with bite marks) from 2 or three actual Cudas of the first ten pages of your YA or MG manuscript

Second Prize:
Cuda crit (with bite marks) from one Cuda of the first ten pages of your YA or MG manuscript

Third Prize:
Full-toothed Cuda crit from one Cuda of the first five pages of your YA or MG manuscript

Good luck! email mommatoo@optonline.net with questions

Introducing the Adorable and Brilliant Lindsay Eland

Okay, so I'm a little biased. Linds, as I call her, and I have followed each other across the internet for about five years now. Back in the day when we were both newbie writers, we joined our first critique group which later broke up. But I dragged Lindsay with me on my online quest for editorial feedback. For the past three years, Linds and I have been members of a killer critique group (killer for our editorial savagery) that I moderate. We fondly call it The Cudas (for barracudas). Linds is undeniably the "nice Cuda." But don't let that perky smile fool you. Behind that smile is a mind that churns out original and comic works of middle grade fiction faster than you can say cutie-pie.

Lindsay's middle-grade humorous novel, SCONES AND SENSIBILITY, comes out this December from Egmont. I can tell you, having witnessed it's nearly fully-formed birth—it is a hoot! So I'm going to turn the mike over to Linds and let her speak for herself.

Tell us about yourself.


Let’s see. I’m a thirty-year-old mother of four. I love to laugh, drink iced mochas, and sing really loud in my car. I don’t like brownies with nuts and I’m extremely sentimental and will probably keep this interview just because it’s been given to me by a dear writing friend!

You have a book coming out this December, the middle-grade novel 
Scones and Sensibility. Can you tell us about it?



Sure! Scones and Sensibility is about an overdramatic and overromantic twelve-year-old girl who, using her heroines Elizabeth Bennet and Anne Shirley as her guides, sets to match-making in her small beach town with disastrous and hilarious results.

You have a great sense of humor and a brand of wit all your own. 
What is your inspiration ?



Life! I grew up with laughter all around me. Listening at my Grandparents table to the roaring laughter and the pee-in-your-pants stories my parents, my grandparents, and my aunts and uncles told. And really, life is full of funny mishaps, hilarious witticisms, and knee-slapping adventures.

What advice can you give aspiring authors?


Write and read. And then read and write. A writer is first and foremost a reader…so read! And don’t ever, ever, ever give up! No writer would have gotten to where he or she was if they had given up after the first or even the twentieth rejection.

What books inspired you growing up?


Matilda by Roald Dahl
Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Patterson
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

These were the books that first gave me the deep yearning to want to create stories that were filled with magic.

Tell us something surprising about yourself.


Let’s see…I hate the sound of someone eating a banana or stirring a bowl of macaroni and cheese…it’s extremely gross to me. I’m also probably one of the only women on earth that wishes her hair wouldn’t grow….yes, I like it short and I wish it would just stay like that.

Visit Lindsay at http://lindsayeland.com/

What to expect

The delightful Lindsay Eland, whose middle grade humorous novel, SCONES AND SENSIBILITY will be released this November, will be visiting here soon, so stay tuned. I'm hoping to have a few other interviews lined up in the weeks and months that follow.