Archive for May, 2010

May 25, 2010 • 5 Comments

I’m very excited to touring ENDLESS SUMMER by Jennifer Echols.

Two irresistible boys. One unforgettable summer.

Lori can’t wait for her summer at the lake. She loves wakeboarding and hanging with her friends–including the two hotties next door. With the Vader brothers, she’s always been just one of the guys. Now that she’s turning sixteen, she wants to be seen as one of the girls, especially in the eyes of Sean, the older brother. But that’s not going to happen–not if the younger brother, Adam, can help it.

Lori plans to make Sean jealous by spending time with Adam. Adam has plans of his own for Lori. As the air heats up, so does this love triangle. Will Lori’s romantic summer melt into one hot mess?

And now for the usual questions:

What inspired the plot for your book?
I grew up on a beautiful lake in Alabama, and I invented a romantic plot that should have happened to me when I lived there. I’m a sucker for books about love triangles, the boy next door, and finally getting together with the crush you pined after forever—so I threw every bit of that into the pot and made it into the book I wanted to read.

Why did you decide to write in this genre?
I love the romantic comedy genre above anything else.

What is your writing process like?
It’s a total mess. It takes me forever to figure out what I’m writing about next, and then I start the book…on page 150! I don’t write in order. I have tried to streamline my process, but I’ve found that I need the chaos. It drives me crazy but it seems to work for me, and I do produce a book I love in the end.

What are you working on now?
My next romantic drama, Forget You, is coming out on July 20. Right now I’m writing still another romantic drama that will be published in July 2011.

What do you do when you’re not writing?
I work as a copyeditor. In my free time I hang out with my son, run about four miles a day, and read!

Who do you like to read?
I like to sample one book by everybody just so I’ll know what’s going on—but my all-time favorite writers are Jane Austen, adult romantic comedy writer Jennifer Crusie, and my fabulous critique partner, Victoria Dahl.

Bio:

Jennifer Echols grew up in a small town on a beautiful lake in Alabama–a setting that has inspired many of her books. Always interested in creative writing, she finished her first (and still unpublished) novel soon after graduating with a degree in English from Auburn University at age 20. She worked as an editor for newspapers, a writer for business publications, and a writing instructor for three major universities, completed a master’s degree in English, and finished the coursework for a PhD in genre studies before selling a book. Since then, she has written many young adult novels for Simon & Schuster, including Major Crush, which won the National Reader’s Choice Award, and Going Too Far, which is a finalist in the 2010 RITA, the National Reader’s Choice Award, and the Book Buyer’s Best. Her next novel, Forget You, will be released on July 20. Currently she works as a copyeditor and lives in Birmingham with her husband and son. Please visit her online at www.jennifer-echols.com.

Endless Summer is Published by Simon Pulse, a division of Simon & Schuster. ISBN-10: 1442406593; ISBN-13: 978-1442406599.

May 19, 2010 • Comments

Today I’m doing a blog tour with a difference. The fabulous Lauren Baratz-Logsted, fellow TFCer and awesome writer is doing THE ONE-QUESTION INTERVIEW BLOG TOUR which involves touring from blog to blog answering one question on each. So, I came up with a two in one question for Lauren….. and we really got value for money.

But first the books Lauren’s touring:

THE EDUCATION OF BET published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and coming out in July, is about a 16-year-old girl in Victorian England who impersonates a boy in order to get a proper education.

Volume 5 of the Sisters 8, co-written with Greg Logsted and Jackie Logsted, also published by Houghton Mifflin, MARCIA’S MADNESS which came out on May 3rd and is about Marcia – the fifth-born sister, Marcia, the sensible one; Marcia, the reasonable one; Marcia, the one who would never do anything crazy, begins to act in a most unusual way.

And now for the question:

What I find incredible is the way you move, seemingly effortlessly, from one genre to another. How do you manage to do this and what tips would you give anyone wanting to do the same?

I’m glad it looks effortless, but it isn’t always! Basically what it boils down to is that like a lot of people, I’m an eclectic reader. There are books I love in nearly every area of literature. I’m the same in terns of writing. I can no more see myself sticking to writing in one area than I can picture myself saying I’ll only read adult comedies for the rest of my life or only YA vampire novels. Obviously if I have a multibook contract with a publisher, I have to write the type of book they hired me to write in terms of what I deliver to them, but for things not under contract, I simply move where the whim takes me. In fact, that’s how I wrote my first YA novel, Angel’s Choice. I’d started it thinking I was writing yet another novel for the adult market but somewhere in the process realized that the voice of the narrator was authentically a teen and that I’d stumbled into writing YA.

I’ve loved writing YA ever since. One of the fabulous things about it is that a writer is less likely to get pigeonholed by YA readers. When you write for the adult market, people try very hard to keep you in the box you first were published in. If you start out in light comedy, they get perplexed if you published a book classified as literary Victorian suspense – ahem. Not so with YA. Perhaps that’s because readers of YA are as eclectic as I am: as likely to read a contemporary problem novel, a seriocomic sort-of mystery, a fairy tale re-visioning, or a novel set in the Victorian era about a girl impersonating a boy in order to get a proper education.

As for tips for people who want to do what I do – well, hopefully they’ll do it better! – I would say simply to begin thinking as early as possible about what would make you happiest in terms of a writing career and also examine why you write in the first place: Do you do it primarily because you love to write, or because you want to be published? You can have both goals simultaneously but they are separate things. If you’re more security-oriented, you may want to stick to one area so you have a better chance of branding yourself as the marketing gurus like to call it these days. But if you’re more task-oriented, like me, you might want to try writing what you love, whatever that might be on any given project, and hoping the money will follow. If, like me, you’re not a branded author, the money will not follow all that heavily, but it may just be enough. And in my case, writing as I do means I’m never bored as a writer, which is important to me since life is short. I hope my readers are never bored either.

And now this is, officially, the longest answer I have given on The One-Question Interview Blog Tour!

Bio:
Before becoming a published author, Lauren was an independent bookseller, a Publishers Weekly reviewer, a freelance editor, a sort-of librarian and a window washer. You can read more about her life and work at www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com.

May 11, 2010 • Comments

Head over to Teen Fiction Cafe because we have some very exciting news. In fact, you might want to pop over every day this week. That’s all I’m going to say the rest you have to find out for yourself!

Other news…. well, I’m writing up a storm which is very exciting. It’s different from my usual style and I’m LOVING writing it…. who knew I had such a dark side????? My crit partners would probably say they did, it just took a while for me to realize.

Not a lot else to say, unless you want me to bore you about the weather, and how much I’m hanging out to move to Australia (of course it’s not on my mind every minute of every day, whatever gave you that idea?).

Have a fabulous week, wherever you are!

May 4, 2010 • Comments

It gives me great pleasure to be touring Jeri Smith-Ready and her latest book SHADE (how awesome is the cover).

About the Book:

Love ties them together.

Death can’t tear them apart.

Best. Birthday. Ever. At least, it was supposed to be. With Logan’s band playing a critical gig and Aura’s plans for an intimate after-party, Aura knows it will be the most memorable night of her boyfriend’s life. She never thought it would be his last.

Logan’s sudden death leaves Aura devastated. He’s gone.

Well, sort of.

Like everyone born after the Shift, Aura can see and hear ghosts. This mysterious ability has always been annoying, and Aura had wanted nothing more than to figure out why the Shift happened so she can undo it. But not with Logan’s violet-hued spirit still hanging around. Because dead Logan is almost as real as ever. Almost.

It doesn’t help that Aura’s new friend Zachary is so understanding—and so very alive. His support means more to Aura than she cares to admit.

As Aura’s relationships with the dead and the living grow ever complicated, so do her feelings for Logan and Zachary. Each holds a piece of Aura’s heart…and clues to the secret of the Shift.

And now for the usual questions:

What inspired the plot for your book?

It originally started as an idea for a world where the existence of
ghosts had been proven, and a law firm that specialized in wrongful
death suits.  As tickled as I was by my cheesy tagline, “I sue dead
people,” the idea went nowhere without a main character or a
compelling story to give it life.  (Besides, I know zilch about law,
so it wouldn’t have gotten far.  It wasn’t until the main character of
16-year-old Aura Salvatore came into the picture that the story took
off.  I thought hey, what if all people her age and younger could see
ghosts?  And then the biggest part of the story of all: what if her
boyfriend died and become a ghost?

Why did you decide to write in this genre?

Going from adult to young adult urban fantasy was a very natural path
for me to take, because all of my books have a young focus.  My Aspect
of Crow fantasy trilogy had 16 and 18-year-old protagonists, and the
heroine of my vampire books, WICKED GAME and BAD TO THE BONE, is only
24 and has a very young, contemporary voice.  My adult books have a
large teen readership because of these factors.

More important, in writing for teens, I get to focus on the elements
of storytelling I enjoy most and that I think I’m best at: character
development and voice, especially dialogue.  Writing for teens usually
requires a faster pace, and I’m all for that.  Whether I’m writing for
adults or teens (and I will continue to do both), I believe in following
Elmore Leonard’s #1 rule of writing: leave out the boring parts.

What is your writing process like?

Hmm, it tends to be different for each book, because each book forces
me to learn how to write a novel all over again.  But here’s the usual
process:
1. Set unrealistically high word count goals.
2. Meet those goals for roughly two weeks.
3. Burn out.  Panic.  Despair.
4. Re-examine plot, make changes to the outline, and move on with a
more realistic deadline.
5. Finish filthy first draft and send to critique partners, praying
they don't wonder which hole my talent crawled into to die.
6. Do massive overhaul second draft.  This is where the real writing
happens for me, where I discover the true story.
7. Submit to editor.
8. Repeat as necessary until I can look at myself in the mirror and
honestly say the book is as good as it can ever possibly be.

What are you working on now?

I’m writing the sequel to SHADE, called SHIFT, which will be out in
May 2011.  I also just finished page proofs on the third book in my
adult vampire series, BRING ON THE NIGHT, which comes out in August.
I can’t wait to see what fans of the series think of this instalment!
As soon as I turn in SHIFT, I'll be finishing the rough draft of the
fourth, still-searching-for-a-title vampire book.

What do you do when you're not writing?

I love to play with my dog or cats.  They totally live in the moment
and get so thrilled over the smallest things.  Our kitten recently
saw her first millipede.  She celebrated by jumping over it five or
six times in a row, chirping as she leaped, then doing a little dance. 
So far she hasn’t worked up the courage to actually touch one.

Who do you like to read?

What I really enjoy most these days are non-paranormal humorous books,
usually with romance or at least romantic elements. My current faves are
Victoria Dahl’s contemporary romances (her historicals are
wonderful, too, and I don’t usually read historicals) and Caprice
Crane’s romantic comedies (especially STUPID AND CONTAGIOUS). I also
really love Nick Hornby and Carl Hiaasen. Neil Gaiman is still my
all-time favorite author.

In YA, some of my favorites are Jennifer Echols, Stephanie Kuehnert,
Lisa McMann, and Lisa Schroeder.  My favorite books this year are THE
SKY IS EVERYWHERE by Jandy Nelson, SPLIT by Swati Avasthi, and WILL
GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON, by David Levinthal and John Green, two of my
other favorite YA writers.  I just got my hands on ARCs of Jennifer
Lyn Barnes’s RAISED BY WOLVES and Jackie Morse Kessler’s HUNGER.
Can’t wait to read them!

Bio:

Award-winning author Jeri Smith-Ready lives in Maryland with her husband, two cats, and the world’s goofiest greyhound.

Jeri’s plans to save the earth were ruined when she realized she was more of a “problem maker” than a problem solver. To stay out of trouble, she keeps her Drama Drive strictly fictional. Her friends and family appreciate that.

When not writing, Jeri she can usually be found—well, thinking about writing, or on Twitter. Like her characters, she loves music, movies, and staying up very, very late.

Jeri loves to hear from readers, so please visit her at www.jerismithready.com, or even better, on Facebook (www.facebook.com/jerismithready) or Twitter (http://twitter.com/jsmithready), where she spends way too much time.

Praise for SHADE:

“Shade is a hauntingly good story and an intriguing beginning to a new series. Jeri Smith-Ready proves again why she is one of my very favorite reads! — PC Cast, New York Times-bestselling author of the House of Night series

“The perfect combination of mystery, ghosts and romance, Shade left me breathless.” — Lisa Schroeder, author of I Heart You, You Haunt Me and Chasing Brooklyn

“Smith-Ready changes the world completely by simply changing our ability to see.”  PW  Starred review