Hello World

Since Shayda wrote such a nice introduction, I figured I'd better hurry up and introduce myself too.

I'm Nora Coon, 21-year-old soon-to-be-former college student.  Some vital information:

- I read and write YA fiction, ranging from fantasy to realistic fiction.  Every once in a while I pretend to write sci-fi, but I think it's usually space opera instead.  I do love steampunk, though.

 - I'm a senior English major at Grinnell College, a small school in Iowa.  Soon, though, I will be an intern with National Novel Writing Month in Berkeley, CA.

 - I have three books published, all nonfiction: The Diabetes Game, Teen Dream Jobs, and It's Your Rite.  All were published when I was in high school.  My first love, though, is writing novels, and that's what I'm working on now.

- I spent about a year as an intern at a publishing company, so I've seen both sides of the slush pile.

Less vital stuff:

- I am a caffeine addict, pure and simple.  I got through my first three years of college drinking multiple cans of Red Bull every day; after a stern lecture from my dentist, I've switched to coffee.

- I love National Novel Writing Month, and participate every year (since 2005).  I've succeeded 3 out of 5 years.  I also do something called National Novel Writing Day, where you try to write a novel (40K-50K words) in 24 hours, and have succeeded.

- I'm very into cooking and baking and food in general.

- In addition to English, I have an unofficial minor in Computer Science (in other words, I found out I liked it when it was too late to switch my major).

What I'm working on:

Let's see.  I'm taking a writing workshop at school right now with Paul Harding, who just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and am freaking out over the quality of a short story I'm about to turn in.  I'm in the middle of completely rewriting my dearly beloved novel, Kinesthesia.  I'm very bad at sticking to just one project, so I work on multiple things at once.

That's probably more than anyone wanted to know.  Like Shayda, I do have a personal writing/cooking/life blog, See Girl Write.  Stay tuned for our first real post on writing and publishing here at Book-Bound Writers!