January 11, 2011 | Comments (1)
January 10, 2011 | Comments (0)
I have the best agent in the world: Laurie Abkemeier, a literary agent with DeFiore and Company who also reps Marley & Me’s John Grogan. A former editor with Simon & Schuster and now an agent for over seven years, Laurie has wisdom from all sides of the writing fence. Also fun? Laurie’s new Tumblr blog, which now features an entertaining section called Inside the Author’s Studio.
This month, to celebrate the launch of the new paperback edition of Meeting Your Half-Orange, she featured me! Here are my answers (based on James Lipton’s Questionnaire which was based on the Proust questionnaire): Inside the Author’s Studio with Amy Spencer.
And if you’re a writer or want to be? Then you must download Laurie’s FREE “Agent Obvious” iPhone App which is jam-packed with her “Agent Obvious” insights about all things book publishing: query letters, proposals, editing, writing, contracts, marketing and more.
Now, I hope I didn’t embarrass myself with my choice of superpower or favorite sitcom…
—Amy
January 8, 2011 | Comments (0)
It’s a great month for The Dating Optimist, the blog in which I provide small doses of love and life positivity when you really need it (The Dating Optimist tab on this site can connect you).
Pick up the Jan/Feb 2011 issue of Health magazine, and you’ll see that my blog was named a “Blog We Adore” for the issue, and featured a quote from the blog archives! Hilariously, it was from a posting called Dexter and You: Take Your Leap of Faith. Nothing like finding comfort in life from the character of a serial killer!
But you know what? That’s precisely the point of my site, The Dating Optimist: Positive life messages can be found in the craziest places, sometimes. And I want to do my part to help you work on your focus to find them all around you. Joy and optimism can be ours if we make the choice to use it.
So thanks Health magazine, I adore you right back!
—Amy
January 5, 2011 | Comments (1)
More and more singles are now looking for their half-oranges—their perfect, sweet other halves—and this latest profile that I found on a site called “Witty Profiles,” is my new favorite way to ask for one:
Sweet and very well said.
—Amy
January 4, 2011 | Comments (0)
God, I love blogs. Especially personal ones where I can follow someone’s journey through life or love or dating. And this new one tops my list for obvious reasons: “The Search for My Half-Orange” was created by a Meeting Your Half-Orange reader who has taken one of the most important tenets of dating optimism seriously: You have to make your message clear and shout it wide. She’s doing just that. Kudos!
As I wrote about in a recent OPTIMISM WORKSHOP on TheDatingOptimist.com called “How Not To Make a New Year’s Love Resolution,” the most important part of your search for love is being open to it. It’s not about sniffing along the ground to pick up the scent of a person you want to date, right? It’s about standing tall and proud in your own life, looking up and outward and sending the message that you are open and ready for love. Only then can it come a-knocking.
So check out Tanita’s site, as she makes some great points about being exposed to way too much negative relationship stuff, and she’s really working on embracing happiness in life and love in 2011. I wish the same for you. Happy New Year!
—Amy
December 23, 2010 | Comments (0)
All the Koreans in the house say “Hollaaa!”
My App, Half-Orange Optimisms, is now reaching out to a new Korean audience, thanks to a new book called 98 Money Making Apps that has featured my App. Well, hmm, at least I think that’s what the book is called. That’s the cover on the left there, so if you do read Korean and it turns out the book is called “Loser People Who Made The Suckiest Apps of the Year,” will you let me know?
I was interviewed for the book about what inspired the App and how I designed it and got it made, and it ended getting its own chapter. What fun, right?
Here’s a shot of some of my chapter:
An added bonus: My App falls right after a chapter on the App for the amazing Cyanide and Happiness—and if you don’t know this brilliantly cute comic and their books (their new one is Ice Cream and Sadness), you must check it out! And get their App, too, while you’re at it, I just did.
You can buy 98 Money Making Apps through the LeeChung Soft website if you’re interested and, you know, caught up on your Korean.
—Amy
November 8, 2010 | Comments (0)
This month, I’m spreading some of the happy orange buzz with a piece I wrote in the November 2010 issue of Health magazine. It’s not about dating but I think it’s worth mentioning because (a) Meeting Your Half-Orange is mentioned at the end of the piece and (b) the quest to get comfortable with our relationship to food is similar to the one we have with love. In the end, it’s all about balance and finding the healthiest, happiest balance for us. As you’ll see, my balance involves indulging in tubs of movie theater popcorn and I’ll never apologize for that.
Read How I Got Over Food Guilt here on the Health.com site.
—Amy
October 5, 2010 | Comments (0)
Last night, I went to an event featuring writer Darin Strauss reading from his incredible new book Half a Life. In fact, today I did a post on “love scars” on The Dating Optimist.com, about how the book can inspire all of us to face our painful love scars and move forward to a better life.
The author, Darin, is blogging about his book tour on Powells.com, and today, he gave Meeting Your Half-Orange a shout-out for how optimism can help in life.
Thanks Darin, and best of luck with the rest of your book tour!
—Amy
October 1, 2010 | Comments (0)
If you don’t yet have a copy of my book, or you really want another to give to a good friend who could use a dose of optimism, check out this fun Parenting.com Book Giveaway. Just share your worst or funniest dating disaster and you’ll be entered to WIN!
And while you’re at it, enjoy the dating success story of single mom writer Christine Coppa. But I warn you, her posts are addicting!
September 30, 2010 | Comments (0)
I had to love this story I just came across from writer Abigail Pickus, who writes a column for The Jewish Week about her dating life called “Abigail in Love (maybe).” In this column called “Am I Still a Dating Optimist if I Throw Away All of My Dating Books?” As she talks about reading my book as well as others, I think you’ll appreciate her frustration with not just dating, but dating books that tell you how to do dating right.
In the end, Abigail says she’s decided that because even Meeting Your Half-Orange, which she liked, doesn’t have the formula for love, she’s going to live her single life without dating books from now on. As she writes:
“In other words, people, I am done with all the dating books. Even the nice ones. From now on I am only reading books that are going to engage my mind and imagination – not give me another formula for finding love. That I will just have to leave to fate.”
What do I love so much about a cool woman who isn’t saying, “Run and buy this book”? That, inadverently, she’s come to the conclusion to live her life in the way I want all of you to. She’s not going to obsess over her dates and her single status. She’s not going to scan online for advice on how to flirt her way to marriage. And she’s not going to buy a book a week on how to change herself for the right guy. Instead, she’s going to read and do things that engage her mind—in other words, she’s going to engage in what Meeting Your Half-Orange readers know are “gratifications,” those activities that make you feel smart and strong and fulfilled. Follow Abigail’s lead and make those same day to day choices for yourself that lead to eudaimonia, the gratifying happiness of being satisfied as your true self.
If you’re feeling like this writer and want to just toss your books into the trash, go ahead and do it! (Be gentle with mine, though, would you?) Then start fresh by living your day to day the way you want to. Read the books you want. Watch the movies on your Netflix list. Make the vacation plan you’ve been putting off until you met “the right person.” The more you live life as your true self and the more truly, eudaimonically happy you are, the better the energy you’re putting out there, and the easier it will be for your half-orange to recognize you as the happy, kick-ass person you are.
