Have you got junk in your trunk?

Well, I do!

I've been trying to write the great American novel since I was 8, and that's a lot of junk!

I wanted to be the child prodigy, full of great insight.  Instead, I was a typical kid, writing sing-song poetry in elementary school and silly death stuff until I was twenty.

How do high school English teachers endure the death poetry and prose?

Since those glory days (not...), I've produced the beginnings of twenty novels, and I have one real shit book to my credit (my biggest junk).  My agent (at the time--not my current agent) told me, "If you had another book written, we could sell The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors" (my debut).  Thus, in about three months, I wrote the SHIT NOVEL.  Take the "H" out of SHIT and it's the Sit Novel, and that's what it does.  It SITS, all 600 pages, on a shelf.  What is the book about?  It's about wanting to write linearly, wanting to sell my first book, wanting to write a bestseller, wanting to write what I thought other people would like.

Thus, it sits, that shit, just as it should.  Feeling Dr. Seuss.

So I got some junk in my trunk...  You should hear me jingle when I belly-dance or Zumba!

My next two novels are under contract with Simon and Schuster.

Tell me about the junk in your trunk!!!  Please.

Peace.  Thanks for the love.

Michele Young-Stone is the author of The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors.  You can contact her at micheleyoungstone@gmail.com, subscribe to her Facebook Fan page at http://www.facebook.com/michele.youngstonefanpage, check out her blog at micheleyoung-stone.blogspot.com or tweet with her at micheleyosto@twitter.com

"Young-Stone has written an exceptionally rich and sure-handed debut, full of complex characters, brilliantly described..."  The Boston Globe

"...a book filled with characters so imperfect, they look like you and me."  The Raleigh News & Observer

"The sense of melancholy, tempered by the resilience and heart of the characters, makes this ripe for Oprah or fans of Elizabeth Berg or Anne Tyler."  Starred Review, Library Journal