Cool Tool …

Looking for some new music, or movies, or books to keep occupied during the lazy days (or nights) of summer? Well, I found the tool for you. Okay, I didn’t really find it.  Publisher’s Weekly found it and let me know with a tweet. Gotta love social media.

Anyway, this is about the coolest tool I’ve seen in a long time. Gnod is an online artificial intelligence experiment designed to learn about the outer world, and its visitors, and share its findings in an intuitive and efficient way. In other words, Gnod is a search-engine that helps you find things you don’t know about. Focusing on books, movies and music, the website provides recommendations by asking you a simple question.

Let’s take my favorite, books. So, you go to http://www.literature-map.com/ and list the name of an author you enjoy. Using its self-adaptive system, Gnod then maps this author to similar writers. The site can also make author recommendations and connect you with other readers in the Gnod community.

For movies, check out: http://www.movie-map.com/.

And for music, got to: http://www.gnoosic.com/.

Happy reading, watching and listening!

I want to hear your voice …

Today has been a big day for me. First, I joined the wonderful world of Twitter and sent my first Tweet. And now, I’m launching my blog. I’ve spent the past few hours stressing about what to write in this first post, wanting it to be perfect, important, and well, kinda cool. I’m mean, I write for the hippest demographic out

there – YA .

As a YA writer, I tend to gravitate toward stories about teens who feel they don’t have a voice, who aren’t in the majority, who have problems, who need help, who want to know they are not alone. Sound familiar? If so, stick around. We have a lot to talk about!

But, in the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that I’m not always going to deliver something that’s important, cool, or never in a million years, something that’s perfect. Still, I hope you’ll take an interest in what I have to say … and, more importantly, I hope you join the conversation.