Generation Dead

Well I went to Barnes and Nobel with my mom a few days ago because she wanted to read "Pretties" by Scott Westerfeld and couldn't wait for me to get my copy back from my friend. While we were there I decided to look for "Sovay" by Celia Rees even though I'm not quite sure it's out yet. Oddly enough I couldn't find any books by her so my mom suggested we look in the "New for Teens" section. So we walked over there, unassumingly, without a care in the world. The shelves are filled with Libba Bray and Stephanie Meyer books, nothing out of the ordinary, until a highly made up teenage cheerleader catches my eye. I look at the book cover, mildly intrigued and read that the book is titled "Generation Dead". Suddenly a thought strikes me that goes a little something like this: 'Huh... Generation dead. Well that sounds like it could be a bit like the book I'm writing right now where this girl dies in a plane crash then wakes up at her funeral... wow... I sure hope it's not similar since I thought that was a really good idea... and there's also that little fact that this book is already published and mine is only half way written....." So the panic builds within me and I decide the only way to settle my nerves is to read the inside cover to see what it's about. The inside cover said something to the effect that the book was about teenagers dying all over and mysteriously coming back to life though no one understands why........ Yep. There it is. My future writing career destroyed... alright so that's being a bit melodramatic but needless to say I'm not very happy with whoever wrote the book... it was a very "Secret Window" moment for me... though of course they've been published so in all honesty they should be the ones mad that I had the same idea. So. My solution? Don't read their book until after I've written and hopefully published mine. Then at least I can plead ignorance. And keep the e-mail I sent to myself with the first half of the book so that I have a date to prove when I started writing it... not that I think there will be any problems... lots of people have similar stories.... but still, it's quite upsetting. Either way, I'm still going to push through and finish mine happily downing huge cups of water and eating my weight in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as I do so.

Until next time,
Shannen