If you are currently participating in the YA Scavenger Hunt, my page is located here.

In a few weeks, I'm going to be participating in my first ever YA scavenger hunt with sixty other young adult authors. Each of us is offering a book, so you could essentially win an entire young adult library doing this thing. Here's the explanation from the organizer, author Colleen Houck:

I'm very exited to reveal to you the 60, count 'em 60 authors that will be featured on the Fall 2013 YA Scavenger Hunt! That means that not only do you get access to exclusive bonus material from each one, and a chance to enter so many contests that it will blow your mind, but there is also an opportunity to win an entire library shelf full of books because each author will be giving away one featured book as a prize. - 

Here's the line-up:

THE BLUE TEAM

ANN AGUIRRE

AMBER ARGYLE

ANNA CAREY

SHELLEY CORIELL

KIMBERLY DERTING

TARA FULLER

CLAUDIA GRAY

TERI HARMAN

KAY HONEYMAN

AMALIE HOWARD

SOPHIE JORDAN

ALEX LONDON

DAWN METCALF

ELIZABETH NORRIS

KATHLEEN PEACOCK

KIM BACCELLIA 

CARRIE RYAN

JESSICA SHIRVINGTON

APRIL GENEVIEVE TUCHOLKE

JILL WILLIAMSON

_______________________________

THE RED TEAM

GENNIFER ALBIN

GWENDA BOND

RACHEL CARTER

JULIE CROSS

DEBRA DRIZA

MICHELLE GAGNON

SHAUNTA GRIMES

RACHEL HARRIS

P.J. HOOVER

TARA HUDSON

JESSICA KHOURY

KATHERINE LONGSHORE

PAGE MORGAN

AMY CHRISTINE PARKER

AMY PLUM

C. J. REDWINE

OLIVIA SAMMS

J. A. SOUDERS

CORINA VACCO

SUSANNE WINNACKER

_______________________________

GOLD TEAM

RITA ARENS

JESSICA BRODY

TERA LYNN CHILDS

TRACY DEEBS

SARAH BETH DURST

COLE GIBSEN

CYNTHIA HAND

LEANNA RENEE HIEBER

COLLEEN HOUCK

MICHELE JAFFE

SUZANNE LAZEAR

MINDY MCGINNIS

LEA NOLAN

FIONA PAUL

LISSA PRICE

GINA ROSATI

VICTORIA SCOTT

ELIZA TILTON

MELISSA WEST

TRISHA WOLFE

---

I'm still familiarizing myself with how this works, but it's going to be really cool. It runs from October 3-6. I'll be preparing some bonus material for THE OBVIOUS GAME, as will the other authors, and I'll run a giveaway here as well as the main one. Lots of fun! I can't wait to read some of these other books, too.

I'll use this URL and update this post and push it up to the top when more info is available, so if you want to participate, you can bookmark this page. More soon!

DJ Nibbles loves YA.

[Editor's Note: Prior to running the Warrior Dash, the blogger thought she was a badass. Also note: the blogger used a waterproof disposable camera, but it got "sent off" and will take two weeks to be developed, just like it's 1984, so she's relying on spotty memory of obstacles and their order.]

Oh, look! The starting line shoots fire! That's totally cool. FIRE FIRE FIRE

I probably should've trained on grass. Grass with lots of shale and sticks in it. 

No problem. I am doing awesome. I am going to try to stay with my brother-in-law, because I am a badass.

This is, well, quite a hill.

OMG, still a hill.

FUCKING HILL.

When will the obstacles start? Is this hill an obstacle or just a never-ending vertical slope?

Okay, a bunch of things to climb over. I've never really climbed over anything before. I should've played football.

That was not just a paper sign. That was a semi truck to crawl under. Nice job, Rita. Way to slam your back into it.

(at this point, my brother-in-law decides to wait for me after obstacles so he'll have someone to run with, as he puts it, or to make sure I don't die, as I put it)

Running, running.

Tires! High knees, hippety hop, look at me go!

HEAVY BREATHING. ANOTHER GODDAMN HILL.

Barbed wire. Why are these people just stooping over? Why not crawl? Here I'm crawling! And I'm passing people! 

Why did that bitch just tell me not to cut in line. Isn't this a race?

USE THE ANGER, RITA.

Eat my dust, sister. *passes immediately after obstacle in fit of immaturity brought on by extreme humidity and barbed wire*

HILL HILL HILL HILL HILL HILL

Oh, fuck. That is a twenty foot wall I'm supposed to climb over with a rope. 

Climb, climb, climb.

OMG, there is nothing but a rope on the other side.

WATER WATER WATER

Guess we're running again, huh?

Trenches! See, all those other people were going to have to crawl at some point, anyway. HA I SNEEZE IN YOUR GENERAL DIRECTION.

Running downhill is, like, so much better than running uphill. 

Climbing up and down chains. Anyone who has a child under the age of ten has a total advantage here. *scampers up and down over this oversized playground equipment*

Running through the woods. Sticks, rocks. Other people. OH, FUCK STEEP DOWNHILL. Make that quickly walking through the woods.

OH GOD NOW WE HAVE TO GO BACK UPHILL THROUGH THE WOODS.

I hate the woods.

More large walls to climb over. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. 

Running! 

Rope wall. Totally easy if you hold on to the top. Oh, boy. Not everyone is holding on to the top. Poor them.

WATER WATER WATER

Wait, what? Why are those people so short? You mean they are in a pit? And there is a giant dirt hill? And then another pit? SIX MORE GIANT DIRT HILLS WITH PITS?

This is it, I'm going to die right here. Look, they already dug my grave.

PANTING 

Brother-in-law laughing.

Brother-in-law teaching me the doctor way to quickly bring down your heartrate.

It so doesn't work for me.

Running through the woods again. So tired. Sticks.

OH SHIT I TRIPPED IN THE WOODS WITH TWO FEET OF TRAIL, OH PEOPLE ARE LEAPING OVER ME LIKE I'M AN OBSTACLE, TUCK AND ROLL, RITA!

BOING! I'm back up. Fuck it. Running.

No, ankle hurts. Walking.

No, dammit. Running.

Big tank of water with boards across. Under normal conditions would walk across. However, I just tripped over a stick in the middle of the woods and do not trust my balance at all right now. Sit on my ass and swing my way across. Ignore other people giving me the side-eye.

And there's the fire. I am so not jumping over fire. I would be the one person in the history of the Warrior Dash who trips and falls right into the fire and dies.

MUD AND BARBED WIRE. BUT WHO CARES BECAUSE RIGHT BEHIND THAT IS THE FINISH LINE! AND WATER!

*plop* Oooh. If I put my hands down I can just float under the barbed wire.

This mud feels incredible. I was so hot. I am not hot now. The mud is cool and peaceful.

I have just communed with pigs.

Trying to stand without falling over. This must be special mud, because I have seen mud before, and it has never looked so homogenous on people.

FINISH LINE!

We leave tonight for Iowa to run the Warrior Dash in honor of Beloved's 40th birthday tomorrow.

Hopefully will have pics on Monday, provided I can find a waterproof disposable camera!

There was a day last week when I thought I might crack in two. Something happened with the girl, something happened with me, and I was so stressed out I found myself in my garage with tears coursing down my face, knowing my husband and my daughter and my neighbors were waiting for me in their SUV, ready to take us out on their boat in a beautiful invitation to frolic on Blue Springs Lake.

I'm trying to pretend I am mentally healthy.

I'm trying to model a mother who knows how to deal.

Earlier that day, my girl dissolved into tears on the way to summer camp, and here I was, dissolving in tears in the garage. I wanted very badly to model self-control.

I forced myself into the neighbors' SUV wearing my sunglasses. Tears still streamed down my face, uncontrollable, but I just assumed no one would see because of my sunglasses. In my experience, most people don't actually pay attention unless you draw their attention to you.

At one point, my neighbor woman asked me a question, and I just nodded, too upset to speak.

I wanted to model someone under control, though, so I just sat there.

It was awkward, I admit.

My neighbors are wonderful human beings. They invited us out on the lake on a Tuesday night, and they had every intention of taking us, despite my obvious awkwardness. We got to the lake and backed the speedboat into the water, and upon seeing the expanse of blue I started to feel the tension ebb, just a bit.

"Rita, all you need is some HYDROTHERAPY," my neighbor man said. And he dropped in the boat.

For three hours, we played. We tubed, the little angel and I knocking against each other in two separate tubes, her face alight with glee. I waterskiied. The little angel and my husband got up on skis gripping the boom, their eyes wide, finally understanding what it feels like to flit like a waterbug across the surface of the water at high speeds. 

It feels like flying.

We swam, and we saw the two parent eagles and the two baby eagles calling SCREE SCREE SCREE across the sky to their nest. 

"Do we have time?" my daughter asked, looking to the water. 

"Yes, it's 8:15. Sunset's at 8:41," said my neighbor lady.

And as we pulled the boat back out of the water, I felt like a new person. "Thank you," I said. "Thank you for letting me shake off my mood. I almost didn't come because I didn't want to subject you to me tonight. Thank you, it worked, the hydrotherapy."

My neighbors grinned. They are happy, wonderful people. They are my parents' age. I want to be them when I grow up, logging their time on the water in a little notebook, telling stories of when they learned to barefoot ski.

I saw the sun set that night over the water. It was summertime, and none of the things I thought were so important mattered.

Last week while my mom was visiting, she, my girl and I went to Panera for dinner before Ma sweetly took my girl home so I could have a few hours to work on PARKER CLEAVES. As we ate, I found myself completely overtaken with the conversation of the two women behind me, who were filling out some sort of Bible-related workbooks. 

Their conversation was HILARIOUS and not intentionally at all. I sat there, nodding and smiling at my mom and daughter because they thought they were talking to me, but they were not. They were talking at me while I listened with all my might to the women as they discussed their answers to the workbook questions. 

When we were done eating, we walked out into the parking lot and I told my mom and daughter what they'd been saying. My mom laughed out loud. 

Me: "I'm totally blogging this."

My Conscience My Daughter: "Mommy, what if they saw it?"

Me: "How would they see it? They don't know me. Plus, I don't know their names." (fully aware of how completely wrong and backward this conversation is)

My Conscience My Daughter: "MOMMY."

Me: "Twitter?"

My Conscience My Daughter: "MOOOOMMMMY."

Me: "Okay, fine."

So I told the story in my editorial meeting to my co-workers, and we laughed and laughed. And see, I found a way to blog it without violating the spirit of my daughter's wise words. The best part about this story: Right before I started eavesdropping, I was telling my daughter she can't have her own blog until she's 25. 

I'll just find a way to work that conversation into dialogue in PARKER CLEAVES.

It's been unnaturally cool here right up until this week -- so much so that last weekend the two afternoons we spent at the pool involved a little shivering, and none of us had the gumption to try the lake. I remember visiting San Diego a few times and thinking how nice the weather always is there, day after day after day. And then Kansas City randomly had day after day after day of seventy degrees. Surely, we thought, they would stop after Memorial Day. Nope. Still seventy degrees, beautiful.

Surely, we thought, not into June? 

SEVENTY SEVENTY SEVENTY SEVENTY

I realized I am too hot-blooded for seventy degrees in summer. I adore you, seventy degrees, in any other season of the year, but I like summer weather to be eight-five or above on the weekends so I can get in the water without shivering, lie on my towel and feel the water evaporating off me in the sunshine, walk inside a movie theater and catch my breath at the temperature drop. These things mean summer to me.

I was really starting to worry until this week. My husband is out of town for work and my mom came down for a visit. She took my daughter after dinner on Tuesday and gave me a pass to go write. I took my printed-out draft and my notebook down to a local pub and sat out on the deck for two hours, and the people I saw were wearing clothes I expect to see in June: tank tops, shorts, sundresses. The air still held the days' heat even after the sun set. When I walked into my house, I felt the air conditioning hit my arms. 

Thank God it's back to normal.

Hoggin Craft now has its own home on the web with nine custom pigs currently for sale. You can also email me your theme and we'll custom-design one for you. 

It's Children's Book Week! Yay!

And to celebrate, I'm giving away a copy of THE OBVIOUS GAME and joining a bunch of other great authors and bloggers on a blog hop. (Although teens aren't really "children," YA falls in this category.)

In order to enter to win, please fill out the form below. Also! If you want to read THE OBVIOUS GAME but don't have a book budget, don't forget to ask your library to order it. Or if you just want to be nice, ask your library to order it. I'm not afraid to beg you to ask your library to order it. All you have to do is go up to the librarian (check to make sure the library doesn't already have it, of course), and ask them to order it! Aren't libraries fantastic? Don't forget high school libraries! And then, once you asked your library to order it, email me at ritajarens(at)gmail.com and I'll send you a signed book plate for your troubles.

It's the fifth anniversary of the publication of my parenting anthology, SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK, this year, and so in honor of Mother's Day coming up, I rang up two of my contributors -- Alice Bradley and Eden Kennedy -- who went on to write their own parenting tome, LET'S PANIC ABOUT BABIES. We decided what might be really fun to do in a veiled attempt to remind you our books make excellent Mother's Day gifts for the lovelies in your life is update you on one of our vignettes from SIFTW and ponder which bit of baby advice from LPAB works for tweens, which we all now have.

SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK, Edited by Rita Arens -- buy it here!

I'm going to update my essay, "Sleep Cycles." (p. 25) Originally I included these stages of adult sleep cycles: 1) Alcohol-induced 2) Insomnia-Related 3) The Love Bug 4) New Baby-Induced 5) Toddler-Induced. Clearly, I had a toddler when I wrote this post. There are all sorts of other reasons you can't sleep after becoming a parent. 

My daughter is now nine. Since the Toddler-Induced days, I've also experienced the following sleep disturbances:

6) Growing-Child-in-My-Bed-Induced. My daughter has slept through the night since she was around four or five. It was a gradual thing, when the waking up and crying three times a night became waking up and walking into my bedroom once a night to try to crawl in where it was warm. At first, I gave in (it was always my side of the bed she approached, of course) and let her crawl in, only to find her elbow in my ear, her bony butt in my hip and the amount of body heat with me in the middle unable to crawl out from under the covers or even slip out a temperature-regulating foot stifling. This led to the next stage.

7) Trying-to-Sleep-in-a-Twin-Bed-Induced. When she showed up in the middle of the night, I'd take her back to her own bed and lie down with her, thinking of course I would get up and go back to my own, queen-sized bed in a few minutes. Of course, inevitably I'd lie down, fall asleep, and then be on that dividing line between too tired and too lazy to go back to my own bed even though trying to get any sleep with a grade-school-aged child in a twin bed is just plain ridiculous.

8) Sleepover-Induced. Whether there's an extra kid in my house or my girl is somewhere other than her own bed, I just don't sleep so well, period. I'm going to absolutely die when she goes to college.

I haven't yet gotten to the stages of driving- and dating-induced sleep problems. God help me when I do.

LET'S PANIC ABOUT BABIES! By Alice Bradley & Eden M. Kennedy -- buy it here!

NOW. For the LPAB baby advice that applies to a tween. 

Ahem.

I'm staring at "This Is Overly Difficult, and I Have Changed My Mind." (p. 142) I hope Eden and Alice don't mind if I update their advice for tweens.

Having a baby tween will:

• Win you the approval of the far right Update! As long as you don't end up with a pregnant tween!
• Allow you to start one of those "mommy blogs" everyone's been talking about Update! You'll realize when your kid hits around six OH MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE? I'M A FUCKING LIFESTYLE BLOGGER. THERE ARE NO MOMMYBLOGS.
• Give you an excuse to expose your nipples in public Update! Give you an excuse to revisit the eighties when your daughter asks for neon socks.
• Allow you to catch up on all those episodes of Sesame Street you've missed. Update! Allow you to catch on to all that is wrong with Disney programming for tweens.
• Exercise your arms from hours of vigorous stroller-pushing and baby-rocking. Update! Exercise your jaws from all those hours of teeth grinding. 
• Provide you with someone to blame for all those thwarted ambitions. There is no need for an update here. Move along.

Read Eden's post here and Alice's post here. And don't forget how lovely books are, especially for pregnant people, new moms, or anyone who prefers to laugh rather than to cry when thinking about children. Who wants to win a set of both books? One entry for each comment, every comment counts, enter as often as you like. I'll ship the winner the books directly from Amazon. The contest ends at noon CT on Monday, May 6 to ship in time for Mother's Day!

UPDATE: Congratulations, Julia! I'll be contacting you for your address. You win both copies!