Wanted Tour: Tens List and Giveaway

Here today for the Wanted tour is the author, Heidi Ayarbe, with a Tens List AND a giveaway! Here's what she has to say!

This, I think, is a catch-22 question because not only does the tens list tell readers a lot about who I am, but what I choose to do the tens list about tells even more. It’s a very David Letterman thing, isn’t it? I could write about the top ten reasons thongs and high heels should be outlawed. I could write about the top ten novels that have impacted me the most (zzzzzzz … Actually, I like to know what people’s top ten are, but it can be boring and intimidating and repetitive and slightly snooty, too.) Hmmm … so. The topten? How about the top ten reasons I write?

10. I love the SCBWI community and community of children’s writers, bloggers, librarians, reviewers and more. What wonderful, open people that inspire me and keep me going.

9. I make good cappuccinos and lattes. (A skill all writers should have.)

8. I love “what if” … the basis of all great stories. What if, for example, a high school bookie starts to gamble … and lose? What if a high school soccer star had OCD, and was trying to keep the secret from everybody? What if a young girl’s father is sent to prison, and her only hope of not going into foster care
is finding a long lost aunt? What if a 15-year-old boy shoots and kills his best friend?

7. I miss the Oxford comma.

6. Reading has been one of the greatest joys of my life – getting lost in the magic that unfolds between the covers of a book.

5. I love creating people in words that I wish I knew in real life.

4. I love the challenge. I haven’t had to work my brain so hard ever. Writing, I believe, is learned – a skill we have to work on every day to get better. I don’t believe in that whole muse-inspirational thing. I do believe that some people have a vocation for it, but to write, you need to work your tail off and become a master of the skills needed to pull a novel together.

3. I learn every day because everything … I mean EVERYTHING … has to be researched from the time the sun rises in Nevada in October to how many steps it takes to run one and a half miles if you’re a 5’10” adolescent boy running approximately seven-minute miles.

2. I love words. The difference between vehement, fervent, passionate and intense matters to me.

1. I get to spend all the time I want with my daughters. I have to work really REALLY weird hours, of course, but it’s the best exchange ever. (My brain doesn’t go mushy from talking about, well, the inappropriate body functions four-year-olds love to talk about … All. Day. Long. because I get to use it for other, perhaps less gross topics, after hours.)

And now for the giveaway! Up for grabs is a swag pack and a signed copy of Compulsion!
a Rafflecopter giveaway