Lara Zielin

It’s on Publisher’s Lunch so I guess that makes it official, right? I got another book deal! I’m hard at work on my next novel, called THE VORTEX GAME, which I hope will come out in 2012, on the heels of THE IMPLOSION OF AGGIE WINCHESTER. The story centers around a 17-year-old girl, Jane, who goes to the plains of the Midwest to chase tornadoes with her brother for a few weeks. She’s escaping her home life, which is increasingly stressful and complicated as her mom’s drinking problem gets worse and worse. Jane is unsure whether she should stay in Oklahoma indefinitely, or return to her mom back in Minnesota.

Jane eventually meets a boy, Max, who tells her that making big decisions, cold turkey, is too much and the best thing to do is to make decisions in degrees and, eventually, they get easier and easier. To illustrate the point he invents the Vortex Game, in which you take two things—a cow and a chicken, for example—and you assume both of them get sucked into a tornado’s vortex. Only one can live. Which do you choose? If you pick the chicken, then you put the chicken up against the next thing—say, your English teacher. On and on, until you’re able to choose between two huge things like staying in Oklahoma or returning to Minnesota.

To find out what Jane does, you’ll have to read the book, which I hope you’ll do when it’s available! Happily, THE VORTEX GAME was sold in a two-book deal, which means that another book–which has yet to be plotted and written–will follow closely on its heels.

Yay!

I’m so excited to be doing so much writing, and to have a publisher and an agent who believe in me and help all these writing dreams of mine come true. And thanks, peeps, who read this blog and follow along on my adventures and support me with your comments. You rule too! Yayayayayay!

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 2nd, 2010 at 5:31 pm and is filed under writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.