Olympic Countdown: 9 days

I'm going to try something a little new and different on the blog. Since DON'T FALL DOWN is about a figure skater who dreams of the Olympics, I thought it would be fun to talk about skating once in a while.

And since the Sochi Winter Olympics are fast approaching....I hereby give you Gail's completely biased and non-expert opinion on the US Figure Skating team!

LADIES...

So this was a REALLY interesting year at Nationals. Normally, the US Figure Skating selection committee sends the ladies who have placed one-two-three at Nationals. However, they've always reserved the right to replace one of the top three with another skater who has proven herself through a "body of work". In the past, they've invoked this rule in order to send a skater who was injured and unable to compete at Nationals to the Olympics.

But this year was different, as I'll talk about below.



Gracie Gold
photo used under a
Creative Commons License;
attributed to David W. Carmichael

Gracie Gold, an 18 year old who placed first at Nationals, earned a well-deserved spot on the team. Gracie shook things up this season by not only switching coaches, but also changing her short program just a couple of months before Nationals. She did well at Worlds last year, and she has a solid triple-triple jump combination, which is kind of a must these days for top-ranked women.

Polina Edmunds, who is 15 and just barely age-eligible for the Olympic team, took second at Nationals and earned herself a spot to Sochi. Polina is fun and technically amazing (her jumps are just WOW)! She also has a triple-triple combination, but tends to be a bit rougher on the artistic side. She's like the US's answer to Russia's Julia Lipnitskaya (who is also very young and a fabulous jumper). Polina has very little senior-level international competition experience (so little that I can't even find a creative commons photo of her to use!), but what an opportunity for her to go the Olympics!


And here's where it got interesting...


Mirai Nagasu
photo used under a
Creative Commons
License; attributed to
David W. Carmichael



Ashley Wagner
photo used under a Creative
Commons License; attributed to Luu

Third-place finisher Mirai Nagasu (who competed and did very well in the 2010 Olympics) was not named to the Olympic team. Instead, the committee chose fourth-place Ashley Wagner (who had just barely missed making the 2010 team). Mirai skated great programs in both parts of the competition, while Ashley made small mistakes in each program.

So, why did they pick Ashley over Mirai?

This is the "body of work" thing. See, Ashley's been steadily improving since 2010. She won the National title in 2012 and 2013. She placed fourth at Worlds last year, and was the only US lady who qualified for fall's Grand Prix Final. She's proven she can compete with the likes of Mao Asana and Kim Yu-Na (who are, arguably, the top contenders for the Olympic gold medal).

Mirai, on the other hand, has had a rougher four years since 2010. Despite placing fourth at the 2010 Olympics, she hasn't done as well at Nationals or at international competitions since then. When you add to that the fact that she doesn't currently have a coach, it starts to make sense why the committee chose Ashley instead.

It's not particularly fair, and I can't even imagine how Mirai feels about the entire thing. Then again, how heartbreaking would it have been for Ashley -- after working so hard to build her career over four years and helping the US to earn three spots at these Olympics -- to just barely miss the team for the second time? As a friend of mine said on Twitter, I wish we could just send four women to Sochi!

Stay tuned for my equally biased and non-expert thoughts on the men's team...

The story of DON'T FALL DOWN

At this time last year, I was finishing up revisions on my latest manuscript, a middle grade novel about a figure skater who says all the wrong things and ends up having to start over with the sport's misfits.

I was busy querying another manuscript, but I'd entered this new one -- DON'T FALL DOWN -- into the yearly contest at the SCBWI Midsouth Fall Conference in September. I didn't expect to win anything, so I'm sure I looked completely confused when they actually called my name as the winner of an honorable mention.

That was exactly what I needed. I finished revising and decided to enter DFD into blog contests. Maybe a few too many contests (I really like writing contests). Somehow, I made it into the granddaddy of writing blog contests - the Baker's Dozen. (You can see my entry here.) I even got bids!! I was super afraid that the entries would go up and all I'd hear was crickets.

At around the same time, I threw the pitch for DFD up on Twitter for #PitchMas. Amazing agent Julia A. Weber requested it (and she already had a full on my other manuscript...you can see where this is heading!).

So if that's not enough, during one of these Twitter pitch parties, Kate Messner favorited my pitch for DFD. KATE MESSNER, y'all. And then she said nice things that I can't even remember because I was trying too hard not to faint and/or fangirl out.

I entered more contests -- won one at Project Middle Grade Mayhem, didn't even get selected for others -- but the support and camaraderie from these contests was enough to make me start traditionally querying DFD. And then Julia offered representation. Which I accepted, of course!

Fast forward through revisions and the submission process...in September I got THE email from Julia. The one that pretty much made me unable to do anything productive for the rest of the day.

It was an offer.

And not just any old offer. It was from an editor at Aladdin/Simon & Schuster.

OK - so you know how when you start writing, people give you the sage advice to, "Go to a bookstore and see where your book might fit in"? I did that early on. And I stumbled across these fun, light-hearted, middle grade books from Aladdin. As I stood there in Barnes & Noble, flipping pages and admiring cover art, I thought, These people would so get my writing.

So...I'm bouncing-up-and-down excited to say that DON'T FALL DOWN will be published by Aladdin/S&S in Spring 2015!!

And this is where I say THANK YOU to my critique group, my beta readers including the ever-amazing MG Beta Readers group, writing friends, non-writing friends and family, everyone in SCBWI Midsouth, all of the hard-working writing contest organizers and the awesome writers who enter those contests, the incredible writing community on Twitter, and pretty much everyone who's ever said anything nice about my writing.

A little encouragement goes a long way, folks. I only hope I can pay it forward. :)

You can follow my fabulous agent, Julia Weber, on Twitter here.  And my equally fabulous editor at Aladdin, Annie Berger, here.

And here's a Firefly gif. Just because...well, it's a Firefly gif. And you read all the way to the end, so you deserve a dancing Nathan Fillion.