Borders Book Carnage

I've heard all the reasons why Borders went out of business and why many bid them good riddance, from horrible customer service to poor business strategies and failure to jump on the ebook wagon. Truth be told, my favorite book store is our local Tattered Cover but...Borders was by far the closest book store to my house and the staff there were always awesome to me. My hubby and I would go there almost every date night after dinner to browse. I've taken my kids there numerous times, and loved watching their excited faces as they explored the kids' section and got to pick out a book. I did most of my holiday shopping there last year and spent so much money I was sure I'd keep them afloat. That's why even though I wasn't surprised, I was still sad to see Borders go.

So last weekend, my hubby and I paid our final respects and went there after an amazing dinner. I expected to stroll through the aisles one last time, lingering in the YA section and giving a nod here and there to my favorite writers. What I didn't expect was book carnage. It looked something like this, only much worse:

Gone were the neatly shelved books in alphabetical order. Instead, Lauren Myracle was tossed onto Libba Bray, while Carrie Jones bumped up against Holly Black. It was mayhem and madness, and made me kind of sad. I fought the urge to straighten them all and put them back in their respective places. I know electronic publishing is the wave of the future, and books will still sell in various formats, but there is one old-school book lover here who will miss my trips to Borders. Farewell, Borders!

I know there a lot of Borders haters out there, but anyone else who will miss them? Or at least feel sad about the demise of a bookstore?

Win a signed copy of Bad Taste in Boys by Carrie Harris

Wanna win this signed book by zombie-riffic author Carrie Harris?

I thought so. Just head on over to my other blog at Sisters in Scribe for the deets. Good luck!

Writing more than one book at a time

Until now, my writing process has been fairly straight forward:

 
Step 1. Get story idea.
Step 2. Write it and revise ad nauseum.


End of story (pun intended). I never worked on more than one thing at a time, because I  became obsessed with that one manuscript. This time around has been a little different. I've gotten excited about several different projects and couldn't pick just one. I know last week I confessed to a little summer slacking, but I've started working on three different projects. (Side note: as I tend to be an over-achiever by nature, my definition of slacking might differ from others.) They're pretty different in scope (boy-centric MG, YA ghost story, and YA horror).

I thought if I started on all of them, one would sort of "take over" and I'd finish that one first, but so far, I'm still drawn to all three. Granted, I haven't gotten that far yet but I wondered how that has worked for others. On the plus side, it gives me the opportunity to go back to something with fresh eyes pretty quickly if I've worked on a chapter for a different ms. One big negative is that if I keep working on all of them at once, it will take me that much longer to finish something.


Has anyone out there worked on more than one ms at a time? What did you see as the positives and negatives? Did one eventually take over? Am I crazy? NOTE: my lovely blog sisters are prohibited from answering that last one. :)