It's been a great day in writerville!  This morning I found out SYNAPSE made the latest cut in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest.  They've whittled it down to 50 YA semifinalists out of 5,000 entries and, OMG, SYNAPSE is still in there.

Tonight I realized that semifinalists got Publishers Weekly reviews, too.  Here mine.  I like it!

ABNA Publishers Weekly Reviewer
Strong characters and a  tight plot bring this victims-take-down-a-mad-scientist yarn to life.  Eighteen-year-old Jake's twin brother, Gabriel, has been housed in a mental  hospital since an accident at age nine damaged his brain. Tough, remorseless  Amnesia is sentenced to death after killing a cashier in an armed robbery.  Terra, a scientist who has discovered a revolutionary garbage-eating fungus, is  unable to move or speak after an attack by her jealous and money-hungry  employer, Dr. Burlington. That a sinister Dr. Ryder will be the thread  connecting the three stories is telegraphed almost immediately, and so when she  appears with a notepad (in Amnesia's case) and an “offer [Jake] can't refuse” (in the twins'), an ominous tension has already built. Mind-reading is Ryder's  field, and details about electrical signals and virtual reality games make her  work seem plausible. What results is a dramatic, high-stakes contest to see who  can use the technology most to their own advantage: the “good guys,” communicating telepathically and extracting plans and pass-codes from their  captors' minds, or Ryder and Burlington, listening in on the mental chatter and  torturing those with whom their victims connect. A final battle rages on  Kaho'olawe, a Hawaiian island littered with unexploded bombs, until every loose  end is tied up. Excellent entertainment with provocative questions about science  and the human brain.

This weekend was the SCBWI Los Angeles Writer’s Days, and while I
was able to go only for Saturday’s events, I learned lots.

 One of the most encouraging things I learned was that some agents and editors DO still edit!  Sara Wilson Etienne’s new book, Harbinger, was certainly the product of Sara’s long efforts, but it also had the benefit of the expertise and devotion of agent Michael Bourret (of Dystel and Goderich literary agency) and editor Stacey Barney (of Putnam/Penguin).

I confess I was emerald with envy.  I have long coveted a team like that, and truly believed it was a myth
from the days of yore. Michael said that for adult books this kind of editing might not be the norm any more, but he indicated it was still there for children’s books.

The dream lives!

Lee Wardlaw told us all the important lessons she has learned from her cats.  I practiced one of her tips today – the nap.  Very helpful!  She also showed us some of the rejections she got for Won Ton Cat before
it went on to win more awards than a cat has furballs.  Nice to know even the best get rejected.

Dawne Knobbe shared her Runaway Storm journey, and gave us some tips on creative marketing.

Terri Farley told us how one good girl’s misbehavior turned into fodder for great stories.  But a book every two months?  Wow!  That’s a lot of naughtiness.

I met some new friends off the stage, too, another of my favorite things about SCBWI conferences.  You never know who you might run into, but if they are interested in children’s literature you know they will be fun to know.

Sarah Laurenson and Lee Wind (also known as Sarah Lee) did an excellent job of pulling it all together and then pulling it off.  

My thanks to the entire team and to SCBWI!

One of the wonders of writing is that everything you do or read, every movie or stupid TV show you watch, every adventure you take can be considered research.  Every aspect of life is work, so you are never just slouching off!  Everything is guilt free!  I love it!

The other fun thing is seeing things I wrote about as fiction turn up in the real world.  Like Terra’s hot science project in my YA novel, SYNAPSE – the discovery that promises to make Dr. Burlington rich if he can  just find a way to dig the specifics out of her newly-damaged brain.

In SYNAPSE, Terra is taking garbage (something  nobody wants) and using a genetically engineered yeast strain to turn it into  fuel.  Not so far-fetched when you recognize that people have been doing this with corn and sugar cane stalks for a while now.  Terra’s innovation is to engineer a strain of yeast that makes use of something we wanted to get rid of anyway – trash.

Here’s the Science News version - Seaweed Fuels Bioenergy Optimism developed at a company in Berkeley.  Hey, cool! That’s where Terra started out in SYNAPSE, and where I did my own gene jockey work once upon a time. 

So Anyway, a company in Berkeley has genetically engineered a strain of E. Coli bacteria to be able to do the same thing Terra did, only with seaweed where Terra used trash. 

The cool thing about using seaweed instead of corn, for example, is you don’t have to waste fresh water, or farmland.  You don’t have to pour a bunch of potentially polluting fertilizers or weed killers out there.   And you aren’t going to be running a bunch of diesel-guzzling, smog-spewing tractors back and forth over the piece of ocean where the seaweed grows.

Now why didn’t Terra think of that?  Next time!  If she gets her brilliant brain back.  You might want to read SYNAPSE and see.