DIANA RODRIGUEZ WALLACH

So this Sunday officially marks the first open house for the little place I’ve called home for the past six years. And so far I’ve learned that the process of preparing a house for sale, well, it pretty much sucks. There are rubber gloves involved. And paint brushes, and mops, and grout cleaner, and spackle (lots of spackle). Exciting, right? But it is my life, and since this is a blog about my life, I’ve decided to spruce things up for your reading pleasure by giving you some imaginary YA-esque plots centered around the concept of selling a 175-year old home.

So here it is (imagine a James Earl Jones voice here):

1. In a world… where nothing is as it seems. Seventeen-year-old Abigail moves into a historic house in Philadelphia to find she and her parents are not the only residents. After her radio begins to mysteriously play a classical piano tune every time Abigail is left alone, she discovers her home was once a music school, but the lessons it taught were far from pleasant. Abigail must track down the last living descendant of her home’s vicious piano instructor, or the ghosts that haunt her home may be teaching Abigail a lesson she’ll never forget.

2. In a world… where real estate is wicked. Sixteen-year-old Franklin thinks he’s helping his single mom stage another Philadelphia home for open house, until he unearths the remains of an old outhouse, which is really a portal to another dimension—an alternate reality where his deceased father is still alive and Franklin is an Olympic athlete. As Franklin visits this alternate life where his family is happy and reunited, he must decide whether he’ll return to his own place in the universe or whether he’ll find a way to take his alternate persona’s place—and at what cost.

3. In a world… where selling a house means selling a life. Sixteen-year-old Katie has spent her entire life on the same South Philly block. But when her father takes a job in India, Katie is faced with not only leaving her life behind but also Jesse, the boy she thought she’d marry. So Katie and Jesse team up to make sure no buyer would ever want her family’s home. But between faking hauntings during open houses and spraying the house with animal odors, Katie realizes that preventing this family move may also mean preventing her father’s dreams. Will she put her family’s needs before her own?

So there it is, folks! Three YA plots that sound way more interesting than the endless, stressful ordeal that is selling a home. Feel free to add your own plot suggestions in the comments. I’m always up for a good, fake, YA query.

POP CULTURE RANT: Celebrities on Twitter
I follow a few celebs on Twitter because I initially thought it would be cool to hear these actors, singers, models, speak in their own voice directly to fans. Then, I heard what they had to say—which for the most part is nothing. I don’t want to know that an actor eats six eggs for breakfast and does nothing but work out, or that he/she uses the word “peeps,” or that they watch their own show and critique themselves. It’s like they say, “Don’t sit up close at the ballet. It spoils the illusion.”