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I am an agented writer of Young Adult fiction. My current project PRADA AND PREJUDICE is on submissions while I work on my follow up, a more literary work called SHATTERED, about a girl in an abusive relationship with her boyfriend, told in reverse chronological order.


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May. 15th, 2008 @ 08:45 pm Thankful Thursday--The Summer Edition
I am thankful it is summer so Brooke can do this:
Photobucket

And I can do work on my novels here:

Photobucket 



By the way, I swear to you the daughter wants to be a model, 'cus the second you put a camera on her she smiles and stares straight at it! :-)
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OFFICINA, GUS
May. 13th, 2008 @ 09:32 am Teaser Tuesday-- Shattered
Today i thought I'd share something different from SHATTERED. So I give you, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly 




The Good )

The Bad )


The Ugly )
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OFFICINA, GUS
May. 12th, 2008 @ 01:29 pm (no subject)
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I got a great gift for Mother's day. New tires for my quad. I was WAY excited.

Until I go and try them out and don't realize what a difference they make and I roll my freaking quad. Right over top of me, all 400 pounds, like three minutes into riding it. Today my ribs are sore. OOops. But here is a less sucky version of my weekend:

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In better news, I'm making progress on SHATTERED:

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
35,000 / 45,000
(77.8%)
 

10K to go! Writing a book in reverse chronological order is interesting. I have written the full arc as I see it, but now I am reading and revising it by starting at the very end and reading through their relationship---reading the book backwards--to make sure her emotions fit how long they've been together...and I find myself adding/deleting/changing a lot more things than I had thought would be neccessary!
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OFFICINA, GUS
May. 8th, 2008 @ 11:13 am IM SPEAK
 I interrupt the regularly scheduled blogging to bring you an EMERGENCY SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.

Yes, something earth shattering has happened. Something terrible.

I now say OMG and WTF outloud!! WTF?? How did that happen? Yes People, i actually pronounce it like, "Double-U Tee EFF!" or "OH EM GEE!"

This is the apolcolypse people. It has arrived. I am lowering the IQ of the masses single-handedly by talking in IM speak. 

What's next, i ask you? Will i start saying "ROFL" like "roffle?"
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OFFICINA, GUS
May. 8th, 2008 @ 10:43 am (no subject)
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Progress on SHATTERED

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter


32,048 / 45,000
(71.2%)



 Thought today I'd share my iTunes Playlist with y'all. I'm walking around like a sniffly sappy love gone wrong right now thanks to these haunting tunes:

1) Stupid Boy by Keith Urban (lyrics: She laid her heart and soul right in your hands and you stole her every dream and you crushed her plans, she never even knew she had a choice and thats what happens when the only voice she hears is telling her she can't, you stupid boy.)

2) Hate Me by Blue October (lyrics: hate me for all the things I didn't do for you... hate me so you can finally see what's good for you. . . . in my sick way i want to thank you for holding my head up late at night while I was busy waging wars on myself you were trying to stop the fight. You never doubted my warped opinions on things like suicidal hate, you made me compliment myself when it was way too hard to take.... do whatever it takes in your heart to leave me behind. ... I never was alive, 'til i saw your blue eeys cry and i held your face in my hand.... and you whispered how can you do this to me?

3) My Immortal by Evanescance (lyrics: These wounds won't seem to heal, this pain is just to real, there's just too much that time cannot erase. When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears, and when you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears.....but you still have all of me.)

4) Apologizeb by One Republic (lyrics: I'm hearin what you say but I just can't make a sound,You tell me that you need me, Then you go and cut me down, but wait, You tell me that you're sorry,  Didn't think I'd turn around, and say... It's too late to apologize,

5) Iris by GooGoo Dolls (lyrics: And I don't want the world to see me, becuase I don't think that they'd understand. Well everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am).

6) Cry, Faith Hill (If your love could be caged I would hold the key and conceal it undernearth the pile of lies you handed me)

7) The storm, Garth Brooks (lyrics:  broken jewel box dancer, Lies in pieces down the hall, She's finding out the answers
Don't change nothing at all, It's time that She stopped searching For who's to blame or What went wrong The only thing For certain is he's gone She's got to move on

8) Better than me, Hinder (lyrics: I think you can do much better than me, After all the lies I made you believe, Guilt kicks in and I start to see
The edge of the bed Where your nightgown used to be, I told myself I wouldn't miss you, But I remembered What it feels like beside you,
I really miss your hair in my face, And the way your innocence tastes, And I think you should know this, You deserve much better than me)

Yeah, so um, you can probably tell the songs are a little, uh, angsty. :-\

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OFFICINA, GUS
May. 7th, 2008 @ 09:17 am Twist on SHATTERED
Tags:
 So, I've been writing like eight million posts in the last week or so because I can't tear myself away from the writing world long enough to think of something else. 

And so, I thought I'd share with you guys what got me started on this write-a-thon. 

I told [info]cyn2writethat I wanted to write a novel about an abusive relationship, becuase I had just finished reading DREAMLAND by Sara Dessen. And while I get that abusive relationships come in many forms, i hated that she never attempted to make the reader understand the boyfriend's emotions or  motivations. There was no sympathy for him. His abuse came from a purely angry, controlling place. 

And while I'm sure there are a ton of those stories out there, there are also stories of abuse that come from a different place. A place where the abuser is as haunted by what he does as the abused. And i wanted to write that. But i know that a book about an abusive relationship might not be considered fresh. And I know that the average reader, when reading about a girl being with someone who hits her and verbally abuses her, the reader reaches a moment where they decided, thats it. That's the moment I would break up with him. It might come at a different moment for each reader, but most readers think they wouldn't put up with it. They choose that moment, and they dvide the book into before and after, and they lose their sympathy for the girl for the AFTER part, beucuase they've decided she's making the wrong choice. 

And then Cyn mentioned she'd read an article once, about a young teenage couple who were new parents, and they'd given pu on all their dreams becuase of their new responsibility, and it was heartbreaking. And the article went on to show their relationship, in reverse chronological order, so that you saw them come back to life and you saw their hopes and dreams re-enter the story. And it ends the moment they met, and you walk away, realizing that as they said hello for the first time, they had no idea the course their lives were about to take. 

And immediately, I was hooked. It was just an article, so I still have no idea if it will work, but SHATTERED is being written in reverse chronological order. It starts with the peak of the abuse, with her battered and broken both inside and out, and it carries you through their story, barreling back towards the beginning, towards the moment they met and her fate became twisted. 

it remains to be seen if it will work. Maybe my agent will read and say, "WTF? Why did you do this? Just tell it the regular way. This is weird."

But for now, I love this. I love that a reader can no longer decide, "this is the moment i would leave him," because things wil get progressively better, not worse. Its weird writing the moment they meet so long after writing everything else, but I really, really like it. Hopefully the rest of this goes well!

 
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OFFICINA, GUS
May. 6th, 2008 @ 09:31 pm (no subject)
Tags:
Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
29,000 / 45,000
(64.4%)
 
1,000 more and I'll officially be entering the last 1/3 of my manuscript, woot woot! That should occur sometime tommorrow. :-)
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OFFICINA, GUS
May. 6th, 2008 @ 08:41 am Teaser Tuesday...SHATTERED
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So, wow. In three more hours, its officially been 1 week of working on SHATTERED, and this is my progress:

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
24,700 / 45,000
(54.9%)


Insane.  I've written quickly before, but not this quickly. It's been almost two years since i've poured out a book like this, and even then, i think the record was 19K in a week. 

Too bad its slowing down, now. I may actually have to start reading through things to figure out where the new scenes need to go. 

But yay, its actually Tuesday, which means I'm putting another teaser out there......


 I don’t know what to say to him during these conversations. I’ve said every version of everything I can think of. It used to be that just talking to me was enough. His mood would shift a soon as I answered the phone.

But more and more, I have to talk him into it. More and more, I have to be clever and smart and I have to lead him down the path to get him to see it.

But today, even that is not working. Today he is unreachable.

“I want to walk to the bridge,” he says.

There is no threat in his voice. Just a promise. Just reality.

“Don’t do this, please.”

“I have nothing, Ann. You don’t understand.”

“Just don’t do this,” I repeat. “You have so much. You know you do.”

He sniffles. I know he is crying. Even though there are times he seems whole, the cracks still show. And today they are spreading and splintering, and today he may crumble.

“If I come over, will you wait for me?”

The silence is deafening. I think I may have lost him already.

“Yes. I will wait for you.”

“Be there in ten.”

And I hang up before he can argue, before he can change his mind. I find yesterday’s clothes and pull them on, and take my time opening my door. My mom’s bedroom is on the opposite end of the hall. I can hear her snore.

She has no idea.

I slip down the stairs and write a note on the notepad on the fridge. “Went to school early. Cramming for Lit class.”

I know my mom will get up at six thirty. I know it doesn’t make sense that I’d be gone by then to go cram for a class, but I don’t care.

And I know that she will know. But she can’t prove it, and she won’t try.

Our driveway is sloped, so I let out the e-brake and my car glides backwards into the street. And then I start it up and drive away.

My car is silent. I don’t touch the radio or the heat, I just shiver in the quiet.

When I arrive at his house the front door is unlocked, and I slip back to his room.

He is laying in his bed, the radio playing a haunting piano melody.

I slide into his bed and he turns to me, and he wraps his arms around me and buries his face in my hair.

We don’t speak. We just fall asleep.

And tomorrow he will forget all of this. Tommorrow he will be himself again.

But there will be more of these nights. And I don’ t know how long I can keep this up.

 



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OFFICINA, GUS
May. 5th, 2008 @ 07:48 pm TWILIGHT the trailer
Okay, I admit, I wasn't that into the book.....but this makes me want to read it again..... ;
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OFFICINA, GUS
May. 5th, 2008 @ 10:07 am Shattered--Progress/Teaser
Tags:

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
21,400 / 45,000
(47.6%)


 Yay, I've written almost half of SHATTERED in 6 days. I only wrote 3K over the weekend, because weekends are never good writing time for me. 

I'm really enjoying sharing little pieces of this. Partly because all the scenes are short and intense and easy to use as teasers, and partly becuase I'm nuerotic about this book and I keep thinking it must be total crap because it's not light and poppy and it's not high-concept, and so I can't pitch it in a sentence like I normally do. 

So, um, yeah, I'm sorry I keep forcing you all to read this, I'm pretty sure I've jsut fallen into a big vat of writer insecurities. There's plenty to go around if anyone wants any!

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OFFICINA, GUS
May. 2nd, 2008 @ 01:04 pm Shattered-Progress
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As of lunch time:

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
15,400 / 45,000
(34.2%)




As of bedtime:
Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
18,689 / 45,000
(41.5%)
THat makes Two 4K days, followed by Two 5k days. BY my calculations, that means the next two days will be 6K days. Ha. If only.

 And now a teaser of the book that is practically writing itself:

Clicky to read.... )
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OFFICINA, GUS
May. 2nd, 2008 @ 08:39 am Conversations with my agent
Abbreviated versions of my phone call with my agent:

Zoe: Um, yeah. That partial you sent me last month. It was cute...but I just kept thinking "this is cute" and i feel like you can do more.
Me: YAY, I was hoping you'd say that, i'm writing something SO MUCH BETTER just pretend I didn't send you that partial. 

Zoe: Tell me all about the conference!
Me: It was fabulous and I met cool people and YAY, everyone loved me and I loved everyone.


Zoe: I think you shoud be an agent in your next life
Me: yes, i will be an agent and I will be fabulous and I will live in New York. 
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OFFICINA, GUS
May. 2nd, 2008 @ 08:13 am Butterflies
I have a phone call with my agent in two minutes.

I am excited.

Will update soon.
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OFFICINA, GUS
May. 1st, 2008 @ 09:39 pm Three Day Record
Here is my progress after three days of work on SHATTERED:

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
13,064 / 50,000
(26.1%)


Holy Guacamole, that must be a record. 5K today after two 4K days, yay!
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OFFICINA, GUS
May. 1st, 2008 @ 08:49 am Literary Mumblings
Tags:
I'm trying to write something literary.

Yes, that's right. You heard me. Me, the queen of high-concept (okay, not queen. maybe princess) is trying her hand at literary.

It's killing me, I tell you. It's dark and haunting, or at least that's what I'm going for (it remains to be seen if I'm pulling it off), and I'm seriously zapped of all energy. I've written some on my train commute and during lunch breaks, the bulk has been written late at night, in bed, the lights out, headphones in, and I am pouring myself into it.

There is a saying about wriing that I'd never understood before. "Sit down at the keyboard, open a vein, and write"

Okay people, I get it now. I GET IT. So can this get easier, please?

But hey, at least I have this to show for my two days of work on my WIP:

SHATTERED:
Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
8,200 / 50,000
(16.4%)


Update after lunch:
Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
9,200 / 50,000
(18.4%)


Update after twenty minute break:
Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
10,540 / 50,000
(21.1%)



Not bad for three days of work!

Yes, it really is going that quickly. Now if only I can keep this up...The book will be done like, next week..... HA. Right.
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OFFICINA, GUS
Apr. 30th, 2008 @ 07:57 am Meg Cabot = Hilarious

Meg Cabot is in rare form today. From her blog:

(Because as everyone knows, by the time the zombie apocalypse occurs, Florida will be underwater, and my barnhouse is far out in the country, off the grid, and has it’s own septic tank—and of course my friends and I all assume we’re going to live, and not be turned into zombies…although my recent idea, to buy a grenade launcher with which to shoot the zombies from the barn’s hay loft windows, has not been met with as much as enthusiasm as I expected, especially from He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog, who says he would feel uncomfortable having a grenade launcher in his basement, even if it is solely for use in the event of a zombie apocalypse)

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OFFICINA, GUS
Apr. 29th, 2008 @ 11:21 am Teaser Tuesday-- "Snow"
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 Still waiting to hear from Awesome Agent what she thinks on 25 lies.  In the mean time, i'm still playing with my more literary work....and just today, Cyn gave me the MOST awesome idea for an approach on this...one that gives me new excitement for the story. 

So, just thirty seconds ago, i wrote this:


I lie in pieces on the floor. My things surround me, broken and ugly, and I think my insides must look like they do, all churned up and cracked and unrecognizable. My cheek throbs where he hit it. My lip bleeds. My chest is hollow and empty, as if he ripped out my heart and took it with him when he left, the door slamming so hard the picture frames crashed to the floor.

It is dark now. How long have I been lying here? The blackness reaches the corners of the room and fills everything. Once that darkness was a cocoon, enveloping us and protecting us from the outside world.

Nothing can protect me now. No one can protect me now. I pushed them all away. I lost everything. I gave it to him, and he gave me this.

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OFFICINA, GUS
Apr. 28th, 2008 @ 10:17 am Liesa Abrams on HIGH CONCEPT
 Liesa Abrams, of Aladdin Mix / Simon & Schuster, had a lot of great ideas and examples of ways to come up with high concept ideas. She spent several years at Alloy, who comes up with very high-concept books, so she had a lot of insight into how THEY come up with ideas to package, and she shared that. People are always asking me about the same topic, since all my books tend to have hooks. 

So, here goes:


1) News stories. At Alloy, they  had to take clippings of papers whenver something interesting would happen, and then they'd all come in with these stories and talk about how they could become a fictional story.  BREATHE MY NAME, by RA Nelson, (not an ALLOY book) was born this way. Nelson saw a story about a woman who drown all her kids. So he thought....what if you were a survivor of that? But that's not the story. That's the backstory. To get the hook and the story, he added to that-- in BREATHE MY NAME, the survivor-girl receives a note from her mother that just says, "We're not finished yet". That's it. So she launches a cross-country road trip to find her mom and find out what the note means. 

So, start watching for interesting news stories, and then think outside the box about how that could become your backstory for something really amazing. 


2) Something from your childhood. The editor who came up with SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS, once had a pair of jeans that fit her and her two freinds, and they shared it. They weren't magical or anything, but it was a tiny grain of an idea that could be expanded upon. The pants became "magical" in that they fit four VERY different girls. You'll still need the story line and the adventure, but you have the hook-- and that's where it can become high-concept. 

So brainstorm what seems like random things, and develop it into something bigger than life. 


3) TITLES. Liesa mentioned that one day, very tired and out of it, she was staring at her hands and thinking about fingerprints and how unusual they were. And then she thought....FINGERPRINTS. That would be a cool title. But what kind of book would it be? They ended  up developing it into a story in which a girl could touch fingerprints left behind and use that for pyschic powers about the person who left it. I've done something similar-- come up with a title first. GETTING CAUGHT came to me while listening to a Sara Mclaughlin song, FALLEN, and a line said, "I got caught up in all there was to offer...." And I thought, wow, what YA book ISN"T about getting caught up in something?

And then I thoguht...wow, Getting Caught, that would be a great title. But Getting Caught isn't really about getting caught up in something, it sounds more like, red-handed, getting caught. like Pranks. And then GETTING CAUGHT was born, about two high-schoolers in a prank war that won't end until one of them gets caught. 

While writing this, I was also thinking of song titles and lines, how they can become story ideas. For some reason Kelly Clarkson's song MISS INDEPENDANT came to mind, and I thought, how would that become a story? What if the girl is independant because her mom ran away or something and left her to fend for herself? What if she's secretly paying the rent with her part-time job, and no one knows she's living all alone in some ramshackle place, hoping she turns 18 before anyone catches on? And what if someone DOES catch on?  

[ETA] I forgot two more tips!!: 


4) Taking anything successsful in the adult world, whether it be a movie, a television show, etc, and turning it into a YA fic. She gave the example of Sweet Valley High, which was developed based on the TV series DALLAS. I've never seen the show so I have no idea how that relates to the books, but there you have it. Also, I'd TELL YOU I LOVE YOU BUT THEN I HAVE TO KILL YOU, I know, was developed after Ally Carter was watching ALIAS and was thinking to herself, "where did this girl learn to kick butt? Did she go to spy school? And if she did go to spy school, what was that like?" and so her book, Love you Kill you, (on the NYT bestseller list!!) was born. 

5) Make someone's dream come true. Think of your audience and the type of thing they would fantasize about. Harry Potter who felt lonely and unworthy, wanted to be special. So JK Rowling made his biggest dreams come true: not only did he have a great adventure, he found out he was special. THE BEST. in PRINCESS DIARIES, Meg Cabot takes one of the biggest dreams of YA's (being a princess) and makes it happen. Take someone's wish and make it your hook!




So, Do you see how a simple phrase or title or idea can quickly become a high-concept idea? They don't write themselves, and they don't come to you fully developed as an idea or hook.... but if you're open to them, they're EVERYWHERE. You jsut have to find the one you want to write.
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OFFICINA, GUS
Apr. 28th, 2008 @ 10:06 am (no subject)
 

The conference was totally crazy, and no doubt I’ll have more information/posts trickle in as I remember things I had wanted to share.

 

There were lots of great writers there (Chris Crutcher, author of DEADLINE, Mo Willems, author of KNUFFLE BUNNY and DON’T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS, Cynthia Lord, author of RULES, Kirby Larson, author of HATTIE BIG SKY, and more…..)a few editors I was interested in meeting (Liesa Abrams of Aladdin Mix, Jessica Garrison of Dial/Penguin), and several agents (Stephen Barbara, Kate Schafer of KT literary, Rosemary Stimola, and Marcia Werner).

 

I talked to Stephen Barbara, ate lunch with Kate Schafer, chatted several times with Liesa Abrams, socialized with Rosemary Stimola during the wine & cheese reception, and watched Jessica Garrison’s session all about Penguin.

 

There were several things I heard throughout the weekend, and this is them, in no particular order:

 

 

*VOICE. Yes, you’ve heard it a thousand times, and it’s still the thing that will set you apart. And while some people said “you either have it or you don’t”, others said you can absolutely learn voice, if you try hard enough. An example was MT ANDERSON, who is said to have hung out in malls, eavesdropping on teens.

 

*READ. Mo Willems, NYT bestseller, said there’s a name for people who read. Its READERS. He said writers WRITE, and that you shouldn’t worry about reading because that’s like watching a lot of baseball and thinking you’ll be a great player that way. However, every one else kept saying, “I love Mo, but seriously, READ.” It was kind of amusing to see him contradict what everyone else says, and its proof that everyone has their own way of doing things—and of finding success.

 

*Revisions: During Liesa Abram’s session (editor of Aladdin Mix/Simon And Schuster), she revealed that R.A Nelson’s book TEACH ME, was not originally about a student teacher relationship at all! Nelson wanted to write a book about a girl who stalked her boyfriend when he broke up with her. It was only later when a friend suggested he make it a teacher that TEACH ME was truly born. This little tidbit was infinitely inspiring to someone who goes through a zillion drafts—it really proves that even best sellers are not perfect in first drafts…they become that way through revisions.

 

*TENSION/ACTION: During the first pages sessions, it was heard over and over that your opening scene needs to have some tension and action. There needs to be something compelling. Try not to put any back story in until your readers care about the story.

 

  

The whole weekend was fun, and I have no doubt I’ll be adding more entries later as I remember things I wanted to share. I’m definitely doing an entire entry on Liesa Abram’s tips for coming up with high-concept ideas!!

 

 

 

~Mandy

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OFFICINA, GUS
Apr. 25th, 2008 @ 09:04 am SCBWI Conference HERE I COME!

So, tomorrow I'll be getting up bright and early and heading up to Bellevue for the Western Washington SCBWI conference! yay!! Lots of LJ and blue boarders will be there, along with a few editors (Jessica Garrison from Dial, Liesa Abrams from Aladdin Mix) and agents (Stephen Barbara, the supposed hottest guy in publishing)... and I signed up for lots of great sessions..... I'll try to remember the camera, and I'll post a full recap on Monday!

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OFFICINA, GUS