Where the @&*%$ are The Lost Girls??

Okay, we'll admit it. We've been very, very lackadaisical about posting lately. I'm mean, three weeks since we last put something up? Ridiculous! But, of course, it's not because we're slackers (Oh no—perish the thought!) In the past several months, Jen, Holly and I have indeed been working hard on another LG project, something that we're finally ready (and very excited) to share officially...

In fall 2009, The Lost Girls will become a book! Fo shizzle!

Not long after we returned home from our year abroad (when we were still totally broke and had yet to find paying jobs), the three of us went up to Holly's mom's house in Syracuse, NY to spend a couple weeks in our pajamas, hunkered over our respective laptops, in an attempt to put together a book proposal. Not that any of us actually knew what we were doing. We simply bought some how-to guides with names like Book Proposals for Dummies, and The Complete Moron's Guide to Selling a Book, stocked up on piles of fatty/salty/sugary snacks from Wegman's grocery store (plus a huge tin of Holly's mom's cookies) and installed ourselves at the dining room table to get started.

Writing the proposal felt exactly like cramming for finals—an intense, pressure-cooker situation that combined lack of sleep, information overload, and way too many carbohydrates.

Our days went something like this: wake up, eat breakfast, write, eat a snack, write, write some more, take a break to walk around the neighborhood (or if you're Holly, sprint at a leisurely 9 mile an hour pace), shower, eat lunch, write, write, write, take a break to watch old episodes of Felicity on DVD, eat, write, eat, write, write, crash. Sleep. Repeat.

It took us a longer than we'd planned and we'd all gotten a bit puffier in the process, but we eventually flew back to NYC with a solid 50-page proposal in hand. Woo-hoo!

After securing superagent Ken Wright (a story best saved for another blog post!), tacking on a 30-page sample chapter (apparently, publishers want to see if you can actually write) and stressing as Ken shopped The Lost Girls around to NYC publishing houses, we finally got the news that blew our minds:

Harper Collins--The Harper Collins—wanted to buy our idea. We'd have a year to turn it into a 300-page manuscript. Now, where could they send the contract?

Holy crap!!

It took some doing (and a few cocktails at Tabla), but Superagent Ken assured us that yes, the sale was indeed for real. And now, the only thing that remains is for us to write the darn thing.

So, as we go through that process, we'll be sharing some of the highlights (and lowlights, of course) on the Lost Girls blog.

Here's a fun news item on The Lost Girls (the book, not the blog) in Variety:

Happy Feet?

HCC: A trip to Antarctica is like the real-life version of Animal Planet: Where else in the world can you sail past seals sleeping on ice bergs or plop down on a snowy beach where curious penguins climb right onto your lap? Thus far all of our wildlife spottings have been the warm and cuddly kind—until our zodiacs landed on Cuverville Island.

The rocky island is home to a rookery of gentoo penguins, so we settled on a hill overlooking the ocean to watch nature’s show. Fluffy baby penguins frolicked in the icy waves and put on live performances akin to Happy Feet. The movie moment quickly ended when an enormous leopard seal tore into an unsuspecting gentoo—throwing it up in the air and catching it in its teeth. It was an instant reminder that, despite the Hollywood-worthy scenery, we’d definitely landed in one of the wildest places on earth.

Even so, The Ice does have a small human presence in the form of scientific research stations. Our ship stopped by one such Ukrainian base, known as Vernadsky, where the hole in the ozone was first discovered. Besides recording data on the South Pole’s animals, weather, and atmosphere, the multi-talented, all-male team concocts homemade vodka and sells it for $3 a shot at their onsite “Bar at the Bottom of the World.” This is also the place where visitors can pick up souvenirs such as penguin embroidery (!) and get an official Antarctica stamp in their passport.

I waited in line with my fellow Students on Ice Ambassadors for the coveted South Pole stamp to prove that we'd made it past 66 degrees South, silently thanking the gods for allowing me to somehow set foot in this natural playground. Though it felt like I'd stepped on another planet by traveling here, this pristine wonderland is just as much part of planet Earth as the fast-paced concrete jungle of New York City. And it's all of our duty to protect this place that we call home.

So I checked out Climate Care to calculate the carbon emission caused by my trip to The Ice. C02 emissions add to climate change, so I tried to offset the damage by donating money to their sustainable energy programs after using the calculator to figure out how much CO2 my roundtrip flight (including layovers) produced. (About 3.24 tonnes of CO2 according to the calculator tool). It's not ideal, but it's better than going on the trip and then not doing anything all to offset my carbon footprint. I try to remember that even small moves can add up to a big impact if everyone lends a hand.