Awesome Authors: Lynn Weingarten

In addition to being an AMAZING writer, Lynn Weingarten is one of my bestest of friendlies.
When we are not tapping away on our respective projects at a downtown coffee shop, we are generally distracting each other via IM or email. Lynn was kind enough to take some time to procrastinate with us here at the Blog Bash.

Blogs are a central part of the Bradford Novels universe. If you have a blog, why did you start blogging, and how did you come up with the name for your blog?
My blog was started for me by a very, very nice friend of mine who called me one day and said, “Hey, I bought you a website today. It’s going to be your blog!” and then set the whole thing up and just showed me how to use it. The name is based on a funny made-up word one of my nieces once said.

I also have a Livejournal that I started not too long ago. I think I’ve only used it once so far, because I keep forgetting that I have it. But any day now I might actually start posting in it! That one’s just my full-name at Livejournal. I wanted to make that my public one since I keep the other one semi-anonymously.

What's your favorite thing about blogging? The fame mostly. If you go to Google and search for the phrase, “What if you stick something up your nose?” My site is the number 1 hit. I am very proud of this.

What's the difference between a blog and a diary? Diaries are for secrets! Blogs are for photographs of funny stuff you see in the supermarket and drawings of dogs standing on top of cupcakes.

Dogs and cupcakes=two of my most favoritest things. Okay, so, Spencer Grace Kelly, the main character in GoldenGirl, is named after her distant relative, the Princess of Monaco. What’s your favorite Grace Kelly movie, and why?
Rear Window, because it is the only one I’ve ever seen.

GoldenGirl is full of scandals and exposed secrets. What was the biggest scandal at your high school? Did your classmates discover any of your deep, dark secrets?
There was always some scandalous rumor or other floating around. I remember once hearing a story about a particular girl in my grade doing some very private, very dirty stuff at a party, in the kitchen, with a big group of people watching. This very well may have been just a rumor,
but when I bumped into her in NYC just a couple years back and all I could think was OOOOOOO!

My group of friends all mostly knew all my secrets, but thankfully they were very good at keeping them.

That's what you think! ;) What’s the worst thing you ever did to a friend? Are you still friends with her or him?
Unless my subconscious is blocking something out, I don’t think I’ve ever done anything particularly awful to anyone. My best-friend in high school and I definitely got in a lot of random fights, including one that left us not speaking for a few months when we were 17 or so. But that was almost 13 years ago at this so I do not remember what the fight was about. We’re still close friends.

What are your most recent books? What new projects are you working on now?
My most recent (and only!) book is called Wherever Nina Lies, which was just released by Scholastic on Feb 1, 2009. It’s about a girl named Ellie who takes off on a cross-country road trip in search of her missing older sister Nina. Along for the ride (well, doing the driving) is a hot and mysterious guy named Sean who Ellie knows very little about. Lots of scandalous stuff happens along the way. Sometimes when I think about the fact that my parents are going to read certain sections of this book, I cringe.

Now I’m working on a new YA project, a picture book idea, and an article about the time I got to be in the studio audience of the Maury Povich show.

We're definitely going to want to see that article! Thanks for stopping by, Lynn!