Tu Publishing

Megan from Po(sey) Sessions brought to my knowledge a new independent publisher called Tu Publishing. Their focus is mainly Science Fiction and fantasy for children and Young Adults, which already makes this company one I'm interested in. I'll let their website describe it to you, since they can do a much better job:

"The word “tu” means “you” in many languages, and in Ainu (the language of Japan’s native people), it means “many.” Tu Publishing is dedicated to publishing fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and historical fiction for children and young adults inspired by many cultures from around the world, to reach the "you" in each reader."

They also state this:

"To be able to achieve that goal, we need to raise enough money to fund the acquisition, production, marketing, and distribution of our first two books, for which we hope--with your help--to begin acquiring in January 2010. With your help, we can make this happen."

They have a donation page up if you want to pledge, and depending on the amount you donate, prizes. This is an opportunity to become a part of the publishing process and support it. If you pledge just $30 you get an ARC and an extra $15 gets you doodles from Stacy Whitney inside, the editorial director. Donating any amount gets you the satisfaction of helping this publishing company succeed. It's a really great set-up with a great purpose and I hope Tu Publishing the best of luck.

Stacy Whitney, the founder of Tu Publishing, was an editor at Mirrorstone for three years. While there, she worked on (edited) a series I personally love - Hallowmere by Tiffany Trent, as well as several others like The Red Dragon Codex and the NYT Bestselling picture book A Practical Guide to Monsters. Obviously, she knows her stuff. I hope she has a chance to show it with Tu Publishing.

"This project will only be funded if at least $10,000 is pledged by Dec 14, 1:00am EST. " Help make it happen! They're almost halfway there as of this post.

E Lockhart Blog Tour!

I'm lucky enough to host E Lockhart on her blog tour today, as well as reveal to you the new cover for The Treasure Map of Boys, featured to the left. I love it and totally want her shirt. You can find out how to see the rest of the covers, as well as read more E Lockhart interviews, by checking out the tour stops listed below, after E Lockhart speaks her word(s):

Being a fly has its benefits. If you could turn into a fly for the day, where (out of anywhere in the world) would you want to get your spy on?

The men's locker room, of course. That's what Fly on the Wall is all about! But of course not a high school locker room. Those dudes are way too young for me. I'm a respectable, if dirty-minded, grown-up lady.

I'd also like to watch rehearsals for a Broadway musical.

Ruby, in The Boyfriend List, has a steady list of guys she’s had even a remote relationship with. If you could make your own fictional boyfriend list, who would you want to be on it? (Jensen Ackles and Taylor Kitsch for me!) Book characters are encouraged!

Hard question! I think most of my books are anti-romances, with the exception of Fly on the Wall: because my first thought is, if there's more than one person on the boyfriend list, that means the rest of them are ex-boyfriends. Right?

Like, I'd have sad, awkward encounters at parties with Hugh Grant? And when I bumped into Johnny Depp we'd spit angry little mean sentences at one another? And Taye Diggs would send me weird Christmas cards that were kind of like, "Oh, I'm so happy now without you"?

That sounds tragic!

I am always the person to think about the breakup at the end of the romance.

I really love the names of your characters, and I’m always interested in how authors come up with them. Did Ruby Oliver just fit for you, or was it a process? Did she ever have any other names before the final draft?

Lead characters usually remain the same as when I started writing them, but I change the names of minor characters quite a lot, often for how their rhythms work in the scenes in which they appear -- and trying to find names that connote certain social classes and situations. The names of girls at Ruby's Seattle prep school, for example, include Cricket, Dempsey, Heidi and Ariel -- all, to my ear, west-coast preppy things to name your kid. Whereas the girl's at Frankie's Massachusetts boarding school are named more patrician names, generally -- more old fashioned, more likely to come from a dad's name or a grandmother: Claudia, Elizabeth and Trish (from Patricia).

For Ruby I looked at a list of popular names for girls -- I think the top 100 names for the year I estimated she'd be born. Ruby was the one I liked best and it wasn't too ubiquitous: #97, if I remember right.

In Fly on the Wall, Gretchen Kaufman Yee's name is meant to show her split heritage (Jewish caucasian and Chinese American), which connects thematically to her split as a human and an insect. Frankie Landau-Banks's name does a similar job: the Landau is a name from the Jewish side of her family that her fellow students don't recognize as Jewish. It is one of the many ways her friends do not see her accurately. And Banks -- well, it connotes money and establishment ideas. Frankie's father's name.

Aside from being full of fun, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks has, in my opinion, a really strong feminist message. Are you a fan of girl-power books, and if so, who are some of your favorite kick-butt female heroines?

Girl-power is always good, but I'm more interested in thinking through issues than in just seeing girl characters act heroic or strong. So John Green's Paper Towns, for example, with its idealized, romanticized dream girl, is a fascinating meditation on what that idealization means for the boy who is doing it -- and for the girl who is idealized. But she's hardly a kick-butt heroine. Likewise, Jaclyn Moriarty's The Murder of Bindy MacKenzie, shows a smart, analytical, irritating, insufferable, lonely girl. She hardly kicks butt, but her story is the story of a fully-realized female character who breaks stereotypes.

What was the coolest, or strangest, thing that’s ever happened to you at a book event? Any awesome fan moments or weird gifts?

I toured with Sarah Mlynowski and Lauren Myracle. Copperfield's bookstore in California built us a Waffle House -- because the girls in our co-authored book, How to Be Bad, all work at Waffle House. They had decor, they had teenagers making waffles, they had hats for everyone, they had whipped cream. It was incredible.

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Thanks, E Lockhart! Remind me to become a cool, famous author one of these days, guys. I'll put lots of cupcakes in my books and hope for the best. (Seriously, how cool is that Waffle House thing?)

Here are the other stops in E Lockhart's tour.
December 7th: Bildungsroman (where you can also see the new Boyfriend List cover)
December 8th: The Story Siren (featuring The Boy Book cover)
December 9th: The Page Flipper
December 10th: Cheryl Rainfield (featuring the Real Live Boyfriends cover)
December 11th: Sharon Loves Books and Cats
December 12th: Park Avenue Princess and Royal Reviews

Prize Pack & Contest Winners

If you've read my blog for a while, you know I go back and forth between weekly contests and monthly contests. That's because I go back and forth between having money and not having money. So, I'm sad to say, weekly contests will be put on hold and I'll be offering (roughly) 5-book YA prize packs monthly now, to save on shipping. "Bubble Comedy" might make a comeback at some point, but for now I'm saving up for my traveling costs. (San Francisco next month, and LA and NYC next year.) Unfortunately, also due to shipping costs, my contests are still reserved for those with a U.S. address I can send to.

IMPORTANT: If you already have one or two books in the pack, or if you are only interested in a couple, enter anyway. If you win, you can opt out of any of the books and I will try and find a replacement prize.

I've shipped out all past winners' contest books, so if you're waiting on a prize and don't receive it within the next week or two, please email me.

And, by the way, the winner of Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon is Briana, The Book Pixie. I'll be emailing you shortly for your address.

Anyway, I'm sure you want to know what I'm giving away this month:

1 ARC of Fallen by Lauren Kate

1 ARC of Breathing by Cheryl Renee Herbsman
1 ARC of Duplikate by Cherry Cheva
1 Paperback copy of The New Kid by Temple Matthews
1 Hardcover copy of The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

To enter, fill out the form below. (If you have trouble entering or the form doesn't load, please let me know in the comments.) You may only enter ONCE. This contest will end on the last day of December, and a new prize pack will be up in January! Note that, while following gives you an extra entry, it is not required to enter.

Fade to Blue by Sean Beaudoin

I've never read a weirder book in my entire life. I've also never had one keep my interest as steadily as this one did. It was confusing, strange, and very, very dreamlike, but I still kind of...liked it. Drea from Book Blather and I decided "The Matrix on Acid" would be a perfect description/tagline. Attempting to summarize this book would be very difficult and painstaking, so I'm just going to leave you with that.

What I liked about it, though, was the voice. The main character, Sophie, was sarcastic and bitter and funny. She had a very blatantly out-there personality. The first few chapters, I thought I was going to be completely in love with this book. But it got progressively weirder every single page. One of the chapter headings was "Bite Me, for I Am Full of Creamy Nougat". That says a lot about her personality.

It was unique, but tangent. Very, very tangent. One second Sophie would be doodling at her high school and the next she'd be fighting zombies. I'm still not sure if the story was supposed to be viewed as actual events, like a weird sci-fi, or if Sophie was supposed to be insane.

It was just...so strange.

I'd really love to hear any opinions from readers. I think part of the pull was the strangeness, but it also kept me distanced.

So if you've read Fade to Blue, please comment. Sean Beaudoin is also the writer of Going Nowhere Faster, which I've been wanting to read. I want to read it even more now, just to see if it's as strange as FtB or if it has more of a contemporary feel.

Very WTF.

Hunger Games: Tres

August 24th, 2010.

That's when we get the third Hunger Games novel.

Roughly nine months. 9? N-I-N-E!

I'm really wishing these months would pull a New Moon and just fly on by. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Head straight to August, where we'll all stake out B&Ns or Borders to find out what happens in the Districts.

DecemberJanuaryFebruaryMarchAprilMayJuneJulyAugust.

But we have milestones in-between. Christmas, New Years, BEA, Eclipse.

We'll get there, guys. Deep breaths.

Here's the Publisher's Weekly article announcing the release date.

Sea Change by Aimee Friedman

Miranda was a completely different character than what I'm used to in YA. I've never come across someone who hates English/creative reading in a teen book (most people reading these books relate to those types of characters, so it makes sense), but Miranda does. She loves science, and is pretty closed-minded about the supernatural when she first arrives at Selkie Island. But all of the mystical, mysterious legend and lore of the island attracts her, as does a local boy, and her mind begins to open.

I loved that the uniqueness of this book took me to a place that criticized the plot. That sentence may come across as negative - usually, I choose to praise a book that makes me forget everything and become immersed - but it was so different that it made me stop and think. In a good way. It broke an average YA mold and made itself it's own. It had a character who I disliked at first, which was unique enough to startle. By the end, that changed, but it caught my attention enough to keep reading.

I was really interested in the lore aspect - it's what made me even want to read it in the first place - which I wish had been more developed, but I liked it for what it was. Sea Change showed the most character growth I've read in a book since The Secret Garden, and it did it without being too obvious.

The summer romance Miranda goes through struck me as slightly unrealistic, but it was still enjoyable. I liked the summer-boy-changes-outlook concept, and I really did like Leo, but it seemed rushed to me. I hate, hate, hate when YA romances seem rushed. I need the chase and the catch and the chivalry. If two characters meet and then instantly fall in love, it doesn't seem authentic. Romance needs backstory, and I feel like part of that was lacking in Sea Change. But, then again, it's hard to manage in one short book. I think one single memorable scene can make a romance much more real - you have to get into the grit and emotion of it and just have one experience where you really FEEL sparks. I got some scenes with Leo and Miranda that I really liked, but none that I loved.

Sometimes I like endings that wrap up neatly, and sometimes I like an ending that gives the reader an imagination. This was one of the latter, and while part of me liked it, part of me wanted to know the exact truth. I'm just a curious person. But I think part of the meaning of the book was to make you curious. The fact that it didn't give you a straight answer to some of the mythological elements held a big meaning for the book. The lack of answers gives a spark of the unknown, and Miranda accepted that unknown (which, for a scientifically-based mind, is hard to do), so I found myself accepting it, too.

Regardless, I really enjoyed visiting Selkie Island, and I wish I could come back next summer. If the boat is sailing (*cough*, if Aimee Friedman writes a sequel), I definitely will be on it.

Notes from the Dog by Gary Paulsen

I read Hatchet by Gary Paulsen for school back in fifth (?) grade and really liked it, but it still left me with semi-neutral feelings. Later, I picked up a book called Rifle by him, and it was the worst book I'd ever read. It may sound a little harsh, but reading through it's lengthy descriptions made me want to shoot myself (which could have been the point?)

Notes from the Dog, though? It was gorgeous. It was a really short book, but it held a lot of emotion in it. You could say it's about cancer, but I think it's more about people. Finn and his friend Matthew meet a girl named Johanna, a 20-year-old with breast cancer and a whole lot of personality. She hires Finn to grow a garden in his own front yard, and an unconventional relationship between Finn's family and Johanna's meshes. She comes into the town, stirs things up, and leaves a little piece of herself with everyone she meets.

Although Johanna seems to take the spotlight at times, Finn is a great character. Very shy, like me. Very bookish, like me. Plus, every time I read his name I thought of Glee, so it was like a shot of happy every five paragraphs. I related to him a lot, and both his character and Johanna's are still stuck somewhere in my heart.

This book shows the effect of one singular person, and it shows the effect of several. It has compassion and rawness, and it leaves you with a warm, gooey, inspiring feeling. A microwave flicked on someone in my tummy and it never really turned off. Very, very touching.