YA Author Stacey Kade

I’m back from vacation! It was lovely to get away for a few days–actually, almost a whole week.

We were outside of Orlando, in Kissimmee. It was warm (relatively speaking) and sunny, and I loved it. Despite my ultra-pale complexion, I think I was born to be a warm-climate girl. I just feel better when the sun is shining and I’m not wearing 27 layers of clothes. Better still if I’m on a beach with a book! (Hmmm. I wonder if this comes from living in the Carolinas back when I was very, very young. Since then we’ve lived in the midwest, but I’ve never forgotten the smell of the ocean and how much I love it.)

No beach or ocean this time, but our rented house did have a heated pool, which was awesome. It was only in the mid-seventies last week, even in Florida, so swimming would not have been possible otherwise.

We did the Disney theme park thing on Monday (Animal Kingdom), Tuesday (Hollywood Studios/Downtown Disney), and Wednesday (Epcot). My favorite, I think, was the Animal Kingdom Safari ride. A rhino came right up to the side of the bus/tram thing. Very cool and a teensy bit scary. I also loved, as always, seeing the gorillas and the tigers. At Downtown Disney, we got to see Ben Folds perform at the House of Blues, and it was a great show! He was an incredible performer and really interacted with the crowd. Loved it! The opening act, Zack Williams, was fantastic as well.

Now…did I take lots pictures of that stuff, like a normal person might? Uh, no. Instead, I focused on one of my ultimate “that would be so cool” scenarios, which happened to be just up the street from our rental house.

And what might that be?

AN ABANDONED AMUSEMENT PARK!!!

How freaking cool is that? I don’t know why this idea fascinates me, but it does. I was talking to a friend and we think it might be because of the inherent stark contrast involved. A place formerly full of people and happiness, now completely empty, desolate and sad.

In any case, what happened was this:

We were approaching our rental house and a couple turns before ours, we noticed what we thought was the entrance to an abandoned subdivision.

But as we kept going, we saw these strange buildings up against the fence. House-like structures but not. And oddly enough, there were these little tiny buildings–like huge palaces but on a really small scale.

At first we thought it was an abandoned mini-golf place, which would have been cool, but not AS cool as an abandoned amusement park.

But then we met with some friends for dinner, who told us it was, in fact, an abandoned amusement park with a Chinese-culture theme. (The picture below is of the dragon symbol near the main gates.)

SCORE!

So, on Thursday, when my husband was preparing to go watch the NCAA games with a friend, we had this conversation:

Him: “Okay, I’m leaving to watch the games.”

Me: “Have fun! I’m going to read some, maybe take a walk…” (insert super casual pause, and then continue almost under breath) “…around the abandoned amusement park.”

Him: *stops dead with keys in hand, starts to say something, and then just shakes his head with a sigh* “Just be careful.”

That is how you know he’s used to being married to a writer.

I wouldn’t have said anything to him at all, but you know, in case I fell and broke my leg, got bitten by a snake, or was kidnapped by strange beings using the abandoned park as a portal to their world, I wanted him to know where I’d gone at least.

Here are (more) results of my afternoon adventure…

This is where the sign for the entrance used to be and is now home to graffiti. It was right near the dragon symbol up above:

This is one of my favorite shots…a close up of one of the mini buildings:

A weird rock formation that you can just barely make out beyond the bars of the fence:

Eerie abandoned buildings (which I love!):

And one of the back gates with yet MORE abandoned buildings:

Also, let me take this opportunity to point out that all my pictures were obtained legally from OUTSIDE the park gates. No trespassing occurred! A) Because this place has LOTS of security. B) I am way too chicken to go inside alone. C) It could have been legitimately dangerous on the inside because even though the park is technically gone, the structures are still there, which means people. Possibly scary people.

And here, if you’re really curious, is more info about the park, which was called Splendid China, and some videos of skateboarders who are braver than I am and actually went in. (Note: I do not endorse trespassing of any kind. Mainly because you never know when some whackjob with a gun is going to take his sign more seriously than you did. Also? Getting arrested sucks. Not that I know from experience, but it LOOKS like it sucks. And so does falling through rotten floor boards that *look* solid enough to walk on. Ouch.)

Alas, one thing was missing, though, from this particular park. No abandoned, hulking, rusting rides to creak eerily in the wind. Maybe next time!

Yea! I have permission to share the cover for The Ghost and the Goth! I really love it! Alona and Will look just like they are supposed to. They even got her gym uniform exactly right!

Book Two–still operating under the title of Princess Poltergeist–is now officially turned in. Yea!!! I’m very proud of myself because this is the first book where I was under contract with a REAL deadline. I’m really happy with how it has turned out so far–my editor is awesome and will surely have suggestions to make it even better.

While I’m waiting for edits, I’m attempting to “relax.” I don’t relax well, honestly. And things are about to get rather busy, promotion-wise for G&G, so it would be good if I could take advantage of this momentary lull. But…not so much.

So I’m playing around with a few new ideas–unrelated to the Alona and Will trilogy–and letting notions for the third book in that series simmer also.

It’s always strange to be at the beginning of something again. I know, logically-speaking, that at the beginning of G&G, I started as I usually do–a curiosity about the story that won’t let go and the urge to see if I can do it, if I can tell this particular story.

In remembering it now, though, it seems it always felt like, “Yeah, this is going to work!” In truth, I suspect I was having fun trying it and felt a connection to the story, which made me want to see it through to the end.

So that’s what I’m trying to make myself keep in mind. I’m playing, writing pages to see if they will go anywhere or not and trying not to worry about whether they do or don’t. If I’m having fun, odds are, it’ll be worth it one way or another.

One of my previous day-job managers, who is writer as well, said that the uncertainty, the unsureness of whether you can write a particular project, is good. It’s an incentive. I didn’t understand that at the time. Now, I get it. I’m always looking for ways to challenge myself, improve my writing or explore different facets within it.

*****
Other stuff:

–Just picked up Hex Hall by fellow D-H author (and Tenner, I think) Rachel Hawkins. It is just awesome! Shaping up to be one of my favorite books so far this year.

–LOVE, LOVE, LOVED Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers. Kept me riveted.

–Only two more Fringe DVDs and then I’ll have to move on to a new show on Netflix because Season 2 isn’t out yet. Any suggestions?

–We saw Up in the Air (the George Clooney movie) and Percy Jackson this weekend. Up in the Air was kind of depressing, as I’d expected, but Anna Kendrick deserves all those nominations she’s been getting. (Also, I totally called the “twist” that everyone was talking about, much to my husband’s annoyance.)

Percy Jackson was…eh. I felt like they’d meant it to be like Harry Potter 1, but cast the actors like they were from Harry Potter 5, does that make sense? The actors seemed too old for some of the stuff that was going on. I don’t know why they didn’t cast younger, other than the heart-throb factor. Other than that it reminded me a lot of Clash of the Titans (the original), which only reinforced the idea that the new version of Clash of the Titans (now with MORE Sam Worthington goodness) is going to be fabulous!