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The internet is filled with misinformation. Some of that is about me. So, I'm going to set the record straight by saying a bunch of things about me and my books that are true, so if you read things other places, you can be all, "Nah, that's not true. Here. Check out Amanda's blog." I'm twenty-six years-old, not twenty-seven, twenty-five, or any other age.  I live in Austin, Minnesota, not Minneapolis. I like Minneapolis a lot. I just don't live there.  I have published eight books and one novella, so there are nine works that you can purchase from  Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Smashwords.  I've written 19 books.  All of my published full-length novels are available in both ebook and paperback.  Three of my full length novels are priced at $.99 in ebook, and my novella is priced at $.99. The other five books are priced at $2.99. All my paperbacks are priced at $8.99 and $9.99.  I was never traditionally published. I still have not been traditi...

Every year, Eric tries to force everybody he's ever met into Oscar bets with him. I'm pretty sure that I'm the only who's ever beaten him, but every time we got against each other, we're like a point or two away from each other. We love the Oscars. Here are my picks for the evening: Best Actor: Colin Firth Best Actress: Natalie Portman Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo Best Director: Darren Affronsky (Black Swan) Best Picture: Black Swan (Eric says it will be The King's Speech , and he's probably right, but I already locked in my vote) Best Original Screenplay: Inception (I'm not convinced this will win - but it should win) Best Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network Best Original Score: Inception (this is actually the win I'm most excited about - the Inception score is totally and completely brilliant and NEEDS to win) Best Documentary: Exit Through the Gift Shop Best Foreign Film: Biutiful  Best Visual E...

What you may not know about me is that I love rodents. Hamsters are my favorite, but I love rabbits, chinchillas, guinea pigs, mice, gerbils, and rats. I watched an episode of Hoarders tonight, and this neat place called North Star Rescue took in over a thousand rats. They're working to find them all homes. Also, on the main page of their site, they say the recently took in a lot of hamsters as well. I've secretly harbored a fantasy for years of running a hamster sanctuary, and it's great to see a place like North Star Rescue working like they are. I'm too far away to adopt an animal from them or volunteer my time (they're in California), but they have a PayPal button where you can donate money. They also have a list of supplies they need and an address to ship them. So, if you're an animal lover, and if you can, please donate or send supplies. And if you're nearby, I encourage you to volunteer or adopt a rat or hamster. They really do make excellent pets....

It's Saturday night, at 9:30. I'm in my jammies, watching a Lifetime movie with Hayden Paniettiere, and Eric is sleeping on the couch next to me. I'm a very exciting person. I also filled out forms to go see a dentist, and I'm very excited about it. The dentist sounds very fancy. Eric was making fun of me for being so excited to go to the dentist, but I am. This movie is scaring me about going to other countries, but it's also makes me want to go to Europe. They have such pretty buildings there. All the buildings here are crap. Well, not all of them. But a lot of them. I like this place. It's probably my favorite place in all of Austin, MN. My friend Pete is getting married there this fall, and I'm jealous, because it's such an awesome place to get married. You can't tell from the outside, but they have really pretty starlights and awesome balconies and stuff.  Here's in the inside of the Paramount: This is the really pretty church/pavillion that...

Today I have a guest post from J. L. Bryan - author of Jenny Pox and the newly released Haunted E-Book . He's having a lot of really fun giveaways to go along with the release of his latest book, and he's a great writer, as well as a terrifically swell guy. So enjoy his post, and check out his boo ks. Lesser-Known Ghosts of the Upper Midwest For my Haunted E-book Tour stop today at Amanda’s blog, I thought it would be nice if I showed some research initiative and dug up some famous ghosts of the upper Midwest, which must have its share of them, with all those dark forests and desolate dairies. But if they’re already famous, do they really need more press?  Instead, I decided to talk about some less well-known ghosts.  These ghosts are so little-known, in fact, that you probably won’t find much information about them, no matter how much time you spend researching them.  So, here they are, in the order in which I invented them: 1.       The Polka...

Jacob Wetterling is still missing. When I was a kid, I used to lay awake at night a lot, imagining where he might be. I always thought he'd be in Egypt. I don't know why exactly. But I just thought nobody would look for him there, so he might be there, and nobody would know. He might be there alive. I think less about where he is now. Sometimes I still do. I imagine that he was brainwashed, and he doesn't know who he is. But he's an adult now, and he's far away from who ever kidnapped him. He's a little damaged from the experience, but he's met a nice a girl, and he's going to therapy and moving on with his life. I don't know if I believe that's true. But I hope it is. When the FBI began digging up around his neighbor's house last year, I sorta had a mini-breakdown. It occurred to me - like really occurred to me for the first time - that he might not be alive. I watched footage of the farm being exacavated on a news broadcast, and I ended up...

The latest word on the street is that Joseph Gordon-Levitt will play the Holiday Killer in the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises . Eric told me this on Friday, and I was so excited when I found out that I literally tripped on the stairs while running up to get my copy of The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale. I grabbed it to show Eric pictures of the Holiday Killer, but of course, he didn't care, and just wanted me to show him illustrations of the Riddler. But still. I'm very, very, very excited. In more exciting news: If you're a follower of my blog, you may have noticed my frequent mentions of Eric (the above Eric obsessed with the Riddler). He's my roommate, platonic life mate, and life guru. Starting Tuesday next week, he will also be my assistant. This is especially cool for us because his goal in life has been to be a personal assistant. In fact, we've been good friends for like ten years or something, and throughout the duration of our friendship, our mu...

In case you missed yesterday's epic post (and it truly was epic, in the real sense of the word, and not in the fake "epic fail" kinda way), you should check it out: here . After I made the post, I did the next logical thing: I took a nap and watched Top Chef. I get the biggest news of my career and life, and then I take a nap. In my defense, I was tired, and I've lost my voice. I sound Kathleen Turner with emphysema, I want to thank everybody for all your undue praise and crazy support. I do really appreciate it, and if it weren't for you guys, I doubt all of this would happening. I just wrote a book. You guys made it popular. For people asking how this happened, as far as I can tell it happened like this: Terri Tatchell bought Switched and Torn (this was before Ascend came out). I'm not sure what ereader she bought them on, but it was an ereader. She read them, enjoyed them very much, and decided she'd like to adapt them. She emailed me and her agent e...

I've been sitting on this for what feels like forever (but it's really only been a month), and today I got word from agent that I can FINALLY tell people about it. The Trylle Trilogy has been optioned for a film. Terri Tatchell - Oscar nominated screenplay writer and Bradbury Award winner for District 9 - is going to adapt the screenplay for the trilogy. Now, before you get too excited, I'm going to clarify - she's only optioned to write the screenplay. This is no guarantee that this will be a movie. Things fall apart all the time for various reasons. And I have no idea how long it would be before a movie would be released, if it were to even come to frution. With all that said - I am still very, very excited. Terri Tatchell is tremendous. Regardless of how this all turns out, it really is an honor that she wants to do this, and it's still pretty neat that this happened, even if Switched never becomes a film. Will Switched ever be a movie? I honestly don't kn...

I wrote a blog a couple days in hopes that I had said everything I could possibly say about publishing, and then I would have one nice big blog that I could point everyone back to when they had questions. (And if you want to check it out, here it is: Pretty Much Everything I Have to Say About How I Do What I Do). But with the recent influx of emails in my inbox and some of the buzz I'm hearing on the interweb, I feel like I have something more I need to say. Self-publishing is NOT is the easy way out. If you simply want to be published, and do not care if everyone reads or enjoys your work, then yes, self-publishing is easy. If you want to be sucessful and make a living as a writer, then it is hard work. In a lot of ways, I suspect it is harder than being traditionally published. I'm just under the impression that a lot of people are now looking at this as a Get Rich Quick scheme, and this is no such thing.  So much of what people are saying about me is, "Look what Amanda...

I wrote a whole blog and just deleted it. It was a bit of an industry post, but you know what? I don't want to write an industry post. My shoulder is feeling better (thanks everybody for your well wishes). I do think I'm going to see about getting a massage or something this week, because it's still sore and weird. I also ordered one of those back support things that pulls your shoulders back. I think I slouch too much when I write. Anyway, my back was feeling good enough so I could some of the writing done that I needed to get done. So yay to that! But mostly what I want to talk about is how neat Daniel Johns is. Every few months, I remember how much I enjoy Daniel Johns and Silverchair, and I start getting really antsy for a new album. If you caught my Top Ten Albums of 2000 Through 2010 lis t, then you saw that Silverchair's Young Modern is #1 album on my list. Look, America, I get it. It's confusing at first. Frogstomp was all grungy, and it was these three pre...

Today I encountered a perplexing error in the portlet factory designer: (com/ibm/workplace/wcm/api/Workspace) bad major version at offset=6 Cannot instantiate Class Name: com.dsixe.wcm.Content - java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: (com/ibm/workplace/wcm/api/Workspace) bad major version at offset=6 Now I've seen this type of error before, all it requires is a tweak to the project properties, change the runtime to the appropriate version - in this case it seemed to be 6. But the error would not go away. The source of the problem was a linked java object builder pointing to a class which contained a reference to a class requiring java 6. When a classname is defined in the builder, I assume it must attempt to introspect the class to determine its methods, and I guess it was unable to instantiate it. So the problem seemed to be that the designer (eclipse) needed to execute in java 6 environment. Switching to JRE 6 Eclipse start parameters can be defined in a configuration file named...

Today I planned to blog about Jacqueline Susann, and how she really is a huge inspiration for me (be charming, be everywhere, work hard, and write romance). I think there's some really good advice in there for aspiring authors, and I've been getting a lot of questions from them lately. But because I really, really need to turn of the internet and get some serious work done, I'm going to keep it brief, but give you the best advice for authors that I have in a nice bullet point form. -If you're looking for good advice on how to be a better writer, check out Stephen King's On Writing . It's a great book, and he's a better writer than me, so his advice is more sound. -If you're looking for info on how to e-publish your books and get into it, check out J. A. Konrath's blog and book A Newbie's Guide to Publishing . Also, check out Smashwords style guide for tips on formatting, as well as the Kindlboards . -If you're wondering how I managed to self...

I love Fabio. Not the shirtless blond guy on romance novels. I mean Top Chef 's Italian Stallion Fabio Viviani. Here's how super bizarre my life is: I made the USA Today Bestelling ebook list, and I was thinking that I should write a blog about that, and link to some articles and the TV interview, and talk about ... well, me. But I'd much rather talk about Top Chef . This season is Top Chef All-Stars , meaning they picked people who'd been on previous seasons but didn't win. And it is crazy awesome . It's all my favorites, and some people who really deserved a second chance at winning, namely Richard Blais, Dale T (who I still think should NOT have been eliminated when he was the first time around), and Angelo. But, even though I don't think Fabio is necessarily the best chef on the show, he was my favorite. Because he's very funny, charming, and nice. And the accent is kind of adorable. I didn't think so at first, but I love him now. (Somebody else ...

Okay, I'm writing a blog in a response to a blog, so it might help if you read the blog I'm responding to first. In this case, it's this blog: 'Ain't nothing gonna break  my stride': or WTF YAlitchat . Several things I want to point out before proceeding: That blog was written by April at Good Books &Wine , a person and blog I am unfamiliar with. I was only directed towards this blog because of somebody else's retweet. The other thing is the really important part - I did not and have not read any of the #YAlitchat from February 2nd. It's because of that that I've been hesitant to comment on this blog, but it's been bothering me for a week now, so I've decided that I've got to say something. If you didn't read the blog (which you should), I'll just explain the main points. YAlitchit is basically just a discussion on Twitter where people talk about young adult books. It's pretty self explanatory. According to what April say...

Lately, I've heard a lot of talk over the internet about going indie or going traditional in terms of publishing. More and more people are suggesting going indie, while some people still believe traditional is the best for long term goals. But I'm going to let you guys in on a little secret: This isn't an either/or situation. You guys are both on the same team - Team Writer. I've talked a bit before on my feelings about indie publishing (see: My Thoughts on Indie Publishing ), and my thoughts haven't changed much over time. Here are some other things I'm going to say: I don't actually know how my sales stack up other authors. I have a pretty good idea how I compare to other indie authors, but I literally have no clue how many books traditionally published midlist authors sell or even best sellers. No clue. So I can't actually compare my sales to other authors, because again, I have no clue. I also know that ebooks only make up a small portion of the numb...

I like e e cummings a lot. The titles of the My Blood Approves series are all taken from the poem "since feeling is first" by e e cummings. So I really like this video because it reminds me sort of e e cummings (particularly the poem "anyone lived in a pretty how town, ") and it's a little steampunk-esque. So it's fun and pretty and enjoyable to me. As such, I'm sharing it with you. <p><br><br><br>Plu</p> And I analyzed my writing on some website by copy and pasting five chapters from Ascend , and it says that I write like one of my favorite authors. And it's since it's on the internet, it's completely true and accurate. That's always fun, right? I write like Chuck Palahniuk I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software ....

Last night, I dreamt that Joseph Gordon-Levitt and I got a really cute dog. Some kind of pug mix, and it was super cute. So I woke up today, thinking about what a swell guy Joseph Gordon-Levitt is, and I tried to convince Eric to let me watch Inception tonight (but failed - we're watching Buried now). And then I learned the most magical wonderful news ever - Joseph Gordon-Levitt is going to be in the new Batman! Me & Eric are hoping he's the Riddler, but really, I don't care what he is as long as he's in it. (There is actually a video floating around on the Youtube of me drunkenly sobbing over Robin Williams possibly being the Riddler instead of JGL). I am pretty sure that the third Batman film is going to be the greatest experience of my entire life. I love Batman. A LOT. Probably too much, but I don't care.

Some info: My KTTC interview (the NBC affiliate out of Rochester, MN) will be on Thursday, February 3rd at 10 PM. I've been told it with be on the KTTC website at some point, but I'm not sure when. I'll have links and what not when it is up (assuming I'm not horrible in it). The interview I did with a reporter for USA Today should be in the edition on sale next Thursday, February 10th. That's not completely certain yet, but that's what I've heard so far. And I got this tweet today: I'm pretty excited about that. I do in fact mention Motion City Soundtrack a couple times in My Blood Approves (Jack and Alice talk about them and go see them at First Ave), and I also listened to MCS a bunch while writing Hollowland (mostly "Disappear"). And I put "Always Running Out of Time" by Motion City Soundtrack on the soundtrack for Honalee . Now I am going to continue watching Top Chef , and then go to bed.

A common problem when working with data sources configured in the application server and the sql call builder is tying the two together. The builder provides a dropdown list of JNDI names that it thinks are defined, but sometimes the name that you're looking for isn't there. Ensure that your project is deployed A typical scenario is starting a new project which contains a service provider model that retrieves data from a data source. You figure you've done this before so you know what you're doing, but somehow the JNDI name just isn't there. Here's the problem - the designer needs to communicate with the server to retrieve the list of JNDI names, and it does this by issuing an http call to a model on the server from within the eclipse tool. So if the project hasn't been deployed or the server is not running, then the names cannot be retrieved. Digging deeper So you're sure that the project has been deployed and the server is running because you successfu...

On the internet, I found a list of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. It was a very long list. I went through it, but I hadn't seen that many movies before 1950, and it had several movies I suspect were fake. So then I found the list 101 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and I've seen 93 of them. What does that prove? That I watch a lot of movies. A Clockwork Orange A Fish Called Wanda Alien Amadeus Amelie American Dreams Annie Hall Antonia's Line Apocalypse Now Before Sunset Being John Malkovich Ben-Hur Blade Runner Bonnie and Clyde Braveheart Breakfast at Tiffany's Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid Cabaret Carlito's Way Casablanca Chariots of Fire Chinatown Chocolat Cinema Paradiso Cool Hand Luke Dead Poet's Society Deliverance Dog Day Afternoon Enter The Dragon E.T Fargo Fiddler on the Roof Forest Gump Four Wedding and a Funeral From Here to Eternity Gandhi Gladiator Gone With The Wind Goodfellas Talk To Her House of Sand and Fog In The Name of t...