“It’s one of the great tragedies of life — something always changes.” -House, MD

The writing on this show was freaking brilliant. It influenced me in ways I’ll never be able to unlearn. Most importantly, House taught me that the key to creating unforgettable characters is knowing the truth about them they can’t yet face themselves.

1. Did you know PREP SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL is on GoodReads? There’s no description yet, but still. My book is on GoodReads! You can add it to your To-Read shelf, if you feel so inclined.

2. My lovely agent-mate Farrah Penn interviewed me over at her blog. Check it out for some querying tips.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Since I last updated this site, I turned 22, the Giants won the Super Bowl, I finished my first graduate class, and NEW GIRL became the best show on television.

On that note, I leave you:

Since the movie version of EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE is coming out tomorrow, I hereby present “Stuff that Happened to Me” in the spirit of Oskar, who topped my 2011 list of favorite main characters.

1. PREP SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL was mentioned in the Hollywood Reporter!

2. I joined The Lucky 13s, an awesome group of YA and MG authors debuting in 2013.

3. Eli Manning had a 24 hour stomach bug, but he returned to practice today. (Okay, this doesn’t technically count as something that happened to me, but SERIOUSLY, that was a close one.)

So, what happened to you this week?

Road Trip Wednesday is a weekly prompt hosted by YA Highway.
This week’s prompt is: If you couldn’t use your own name, what would your pseudonym or pen name be?

When I read this week’s RTW topic, I was all like:

“Hey, that’s me!”

Coming up with a pseudonym was something I never thought much about until I really had to think about it– which was when Suzie, my agent, suggested it to me.

There are a lot of reasons why someone might want to write under a pen name: privacy, trying to keep writing separate from the day job, sharing a name with an unpopular Ottoman dictator, etc. I’m a certified English teacher, and while I’m not currently looking for a teaching job, someday I might want one. And I’m not so sure I want my students reading my work. Being a teacher is kind of like being naked in front of 100+ teenagers a day. They comment on your clothes. Your nail polish color. They Google you. They make fun of you after Googling you and finding your university ID photo.

See what I mean?

So, that’s how Kara Taylor came to be. What about you? Would you ever use a pen name?

Thank you everyone for entering my celebratory giveaway! I really appreciate all the congrats.

So, winners. WEEE! (Since you can’t hear me yelling WEEE, here’s a pig on a zip line)

Winner of TEMPEST: Charlee Vale

Winner of SWITCHED: Angie

Winner of WHEN THE SEA IS RISING RED: Vivien

Winners, I’ve emailed you. I plan to have some more giveaways in the future, so if you didn’t win this time, stay tuned!

I’m going to cut to the chase here. A lot of things have happened since I disappeared from the internet in September, including me getting a college degree then almost getting a job and then watching said job go to someone else.

But this happened too:

Kara Taylor’s PREP SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL, the story of a sixteen-year old Queen Bee who is kicked out of her posh Manhattan prep school and sent to a blue-blooded prep school outside Boston, only to find herself embroiled in a murder mystery that will eventually reveal the storied school’s disturbing secret history, pitched as GOSSIP GIRL meets TWIN PEAKS, to Anne Bensson and Brendan Deneen at Thomas Dunne Books, by Suzie Townsend at Nancy Coffey Literary & Media Representation (World).