Want to Win a Book? Like Shatter Me? By Tahereh Mafi?

A couple of my Borders girls and I went into the city on Sunday to the Spring Into the Future book tour with Tahereh Mafi, Lauren Oliver, Anna Carey, and Veronica Rossi. It was so much fun!

There's a post up over at our Booksellers Without Borders NY website where you can see pictures and even enter to win a book!

And that's the lot from me for today. It's the end of the semester and you know what that means...

But I can't leave you without an adorable animal picture. Of course not!

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

Books of Gratitude

If someone asked you what book you were most grateful for, what would it be? Could you even choose?!

Well, Beth Revis asked this question and I had the hardest time coming up with an answer.

I definitely have to be grateful for Little Women - it was the first book that made me cry and realize that books could move people so deeply!

There have been multitudes of books since then that have affected me one way or another, but right now there are two that I am particularly thankful for:

Divergent by Veronica Roth

and

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi (coming out in TWO WEEKS PEOPLE GO PREORDER IT!)

Both books inspired bursts of creativity in me and reminded me why I love this whole writing thing so much. I wouldn't be so psyched about NaNo if it weren't for books like these that are so creative and fun and good that they inspire me to strive to be all I can be.

How about you? Have a book that you are grateful for? Check out Beth Revis' giveaway where you can win 19... yes NINETEEN! signed books that she is grateful for! PLUS an ARC of A Million Suns which I am DYING to get my hands on!

Cover Love Thursday: How to Judge a Book by its Cover

A little twist on my normal Cover Love post... Inspired (as you might guess) by Polaris. On Friday we went to a panel called "How to Judge a Book by its Cover." It was really fascinating. The panelists were Stephen B. Pearl, Julie Czerneda, Erik Buchanan, and the lovely Nikki Stafford. So there were authors, art directors, editors... pretty much the whole gamut to give us a perspective on how a cover is chosen, what makes a cover good or bad, and what a publisher is trying to do when they slap a cover on a book.

The interesting thing is that most authors have little say in their covers, but Erik and Nikki both work for/with smaller publishers and Julie used to work in publishing (if I'm remembering correctly) so they have had a greater opportunity for helping choose or, in some cases, actually putting together their covers. Stephen is working with a larger publishing house, so he's had very little say in the final product.

They talked about the "thirty foot rule" in that, having a cover that stands out, or at least has a visible title from a good distance away is important. Nikki talked about her original cover for her Season 6 Finding Lost book, which featured a chessboard with a black king and a white king in the center and red lettering. The thirty foot impression was of Twilight, not Lost, so they reworked it.

Though I liked the original, I absolutely ADORE this cover.
It sums up the final season so well in my mind.
And I got my copy autographed, so I'm thrilled :D

Erik had both of his books, Small Magics and Cold Magics and talked about how the stock fantasy imagery was so corny that he actually worked with a couple of friends that do photography to shoot what became the covers of his books.

This is his second novel - note how the white swirl
draws your eyes up to the title

Julie shared some of the interworkings of publishing houses and how they buy art, sometimes not even for a specific book, but keep it in the files to use someday.

This has nothing to do with what she talked about,
but I wanted to throw up one of her books
And I think this cover is sweet!

Stephen also had one of his books with him, which he passed around and shared the humorous confusions that can sometimes occur when an artist isn't quite getting the same picture the author provides.

See that windmill? That's supposed to be a wind turbine.
It's also supposed to be on a solar powered van
Which you can kind of see under the windmill.
Disconnect much :)
But overall, he liked the effect of the cover

It was just such an interesting panel to listen to how authors work with their publishers to create the best possible cover, the ups and downs authors and editors have trying to produce the best product possible, and the types of things they themselves look for in covers.

So what catches your eye on a cover? Have you seen any covers you've loved recently? Have you seen the cover of Tahereh Mafi's Shatter Me?!

Shatter Me, Possession, Liar Society, Supernaturally etc, etc, etc

There are so many cool contests going on right now that you need to check out!

Tahereh Mafi, sweetness personified, is FINALLY giving away ARCs of Shatter Me. So Exciting! Check it out! It's super easy to enter! Contest ends April 24!

THEN Elana Johnson, who's totally frawesome, is giving away swag and a signed ARC of Possession and all kinds of totally amazing stuff if you'll just play TAG, or rather NOT TAG. Um, I'm not explaining that very well. So check out the link or click the button on the sidebar.

Do you like mysteries? Because the iClue contest is made of so much WIN! Lisa and Laura Roecker, Beth Revis, Kimberly Derting, Adele Griffin, Mandy Hubbard, and Lee Nichols have teamed up to provide 6 mysteries YOU get to solve and each one correctly answered gets you an entry to win an iPod touch loaded with all 6 of their books! Click on the button on the sidebar to see more! There's a mystery a week for 6 weeks and we're only on week 2!

Are you as stoked as I am about Kiersten White's (who's like one of my heroes and a fellow Damon eye admirerer) Supernaturally? Do you want to win an ARC, plus an ARC for Jon Skovron's Misfit? Cindy Pon is doing a giveaway! Ends April 22.

And that's all I've got for now!

My thumb pin comes out on Monday for those of you following my progress. Thanks for all the well wishes!

Some Stuff I Learned :)

So today I actually took time to bounce around and catch up a little bit on y'all's blogs. If I haven't made it to you yet, well, let's just say that I spent all day reading and I still have 848 unread posts in Google Reader.

Anyhoodles.

One thing that I have noticed all around is that people are posting lists of things they learned this year and I had so much fun reading yours, that I decided to make one of my own. So here goes - my witty and wise lessons of 2010:

1) Pantsing can be totally good for me. Sometimes I need to shut up my internal editor and just get some words on the page. Because really awesomesauce things can happen that way that I KNOW would never happen otherwise.

2) "Research" and "Plotting" can = "Procrastination." I am NOT saying that I shouldn't research or plot, but when I sit down to write and spend the whole time doodling about things that might possibly happen in the sequel to the book I haven't even finished yet, it is NOT GOOD.

3) It is possible to write a WHOLE lot more than I do now. If there was one thing I learned from NaNo, it's that when I make myself find the time, I find it. Even in the middle of the rest of life there IS time for writing.

4) There are really awesome authors out there. Okay, so I already knew that, but with the chance to meet some of my writing heroes as well as some authors I had never really heard of or read, I have come to one conclusion. We authors are pretty much the coolest people ever.

Crazy people tend to gravitate to each other :D

5) You meet the right people at the right time. I met a lot of new people this year, both in person and online and each one of them has come into my life for a specific reason. Some of them it was only for a season - maybe even just that one encounter. Some of them are friendships that could last me a lifetime. I am incredibly grateful for every single one of them.





6) There is NO substitute for a good book. Okay, I knew that already, too, but having lost a lot of my leisure reading time, I can tell you that I adore those moments when I can curl up and lose myself in a book I'm reading just because I want to. Each book I read becomes a part of who I am and reminds me that it is still possible to write something good and fun and worthwhile, no matter how much has been written before.


7) TV shows can sometimes feel like a good book. You know, when the writing and the casting and the acting all gels and you get that really special show that pulls you in and makes you believe that it's real and you cry and laugh and want to LIVE with the characters. It doesn't happen that often, but I've discovered a few shows like that this year. Some are fluffier than others, but each one of them has impacted my story-telling abilities. It's still the written word, even if we're receiving it through a different medium.

8) Sometimes you need a break from the internet. I am blessed in that I have easy and ready access to the web pretty much any time I want it. We have WiFi at home and it's at school too. Then we left on Christmas day and visited my Grandma and Papa who have no computer much less interwebs. It was a much needed and surprisingly refreshing break. I'm glad to be back, but I think I will definitely need to take a week off here or there to keep myself alive.

9) You learn something SO much better when you teach it to someone else. I spent 30 years of my life trying to figure out how on earth to use commas. Then I taught college freshmen and we went over it and now I remember almost all of the rules and I'm actually able to give the reason as to why a comma should or should not be used. Does that mean I always do it right? No, I screw up that no comma before a coordinating conjunction that's followed by a dependent phrase rule ALL the time. But now I can go back and see that it's wrong.

10) Never say Never. I told myself I would NEVER in a million years write a novel featuring a vampire. Cue SNI with the faeries and the vampires and the gnomes and everything. And cue me loving every minute of it. It's not like most vampire novels and they're not really normal vampires either. I mean they are, but don't go thinking Sookie Stackhouse or Twilight or anything. It's more about the faeries and the faerie tales. But what I'm trying to say is, if I'd stuck to that vow this WIP would be a LOT less interesting and I'd be having a lot less fun right now. Keep your mind open to the possibilities or else you might miss something!

And I'll stop it there. A lot of these are writing related, but I think I've done the most growing in how I approach my writing this year so there you have it. Thank you to everyone who has helped to to learn and grow and realize that I'm not alone on this crazy journey whether it's writing or reading or grading a thousand papers - you all rock socks.

Why Write? E. L. Doctorow has the answer!

Sometimes I am so amazed at the opportunities that fall into my lap. Our school has authors in to do readings and last night we were blessed to have E. L. Doctorow come. I have class on Wednesday nights, but our professor arranged things so that our class could go. It was so great!

Here's a really horrid cell phone picture of him on stage:

He read a new short story called "Assimilation" that hasn't even been published yet. It's going to be in the New Yorker in a couple of weeks. It was really enjoyable to actually hear the author present his own work and the story was quite interesting (that sounds less enthusiastic than I intended...) The story was great!

The reading was fantastic, but the highlight of the evening for me was the Question and Answer time at the end. He was so funny and gave some fantastic advice that I just knew I had to share with all of you. I was just listening and enjoying until someone asked the question:

Why do you write?

Everyone kind of chuckled and Doctorow waited until the laughter had subsided. Then he leaned in to the microphone and said,

"Why not?"

Applause and laughter. What a great answer!

At that point I thought, this could make a great blog post! So I whipped out my notebook and started furiously taking notes. I think my friend thought I was crazy. It looked like I was preparing for a test. But I got some great quotes for you guys! So here's some of the Q&A:

Q: What authors influenced you?

A: Doctorow's father was a big Poe fan, so he grew up with him. "Poe is our greatest bad writer." When Doctorow started writing in middle school he wrote a lot of things that were heavily influenced by Poe. "'The cellar was dark and dank.' That was one of my great first lines." He read books because the titles interested him. He saw a book called The Idiot and thought, that's a great title. So he picked it up and read it - so he'd be reading Dostoevsky one day and a comic book the next. Some of the other authors that influenced him were London, Twain, Melville, Whitman, Dickens, Hardy, Chekhov.

Then he started writing. He said when a child stops asking "what happens next" when they're reading and starts asking "how is the author doing it," that's usually when you can see they're getting interested in writing. His writing is "just a response to good writing."

"If you want to write novels

you have to read them."

Q: How much research do you do before you let your imagination take over?

A: "Just enough" He went on to say that sometimes you can kill a story by doing too much research, but at the same time you have to do enough to be accurate. When he was writing Ragtime he needed to know if two of the characters could take a trolley from where they were to Connecticut. He didn't know where to find the information and he was wandering around the mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library, not really sure where to go or what to do and he picked up a book that had been left on a table and it was a history of trolley cars.

Q: Do you use an outline when you write?

A: No. Many people do, but he never has. "You want to be in a position where you can find out what you're writing... It begins to tell you what will happen or what needs to be done."

"It's not an entirely rational process

and I don't know if I would recommend it to anyone."

Q: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

A: There is a "continuum between reading and writing. Just read continually."

"Try to write every day." He talked about just sitting there and letting the cursor blink at you on the screen. "Just say anything that comes to mind." Eventually you'll come across "something that interests you. Something that lights up the page for you. That could be the beginning of a story."

"Constancy is the key."

Q: What was the inspiration for Ragtime?

A: "That book came out of sheer desperation."

He had finished a book and was completely exhausted and unable to write anything for months. He sat down in his office. He likes his desk to face the wall, not the window. And as he sat there staring at the wall he started to write about it. He talked about the wall and described it and then moved from there to the house that the wall was a part of and just kept moving out from there.

After the Q&A time, they had books for sale in the back and he stayed around to sign books. Here's a slightly better picture of him as I waited in line:

So guess what I got:

Yeah! Another autographed book to add to my collection!

So, Why Write?

WHY NOT?!

BRANDON MULL!!!!!!!!

Last Tuesday (yes, it took me a week, but HERE WE ARE!) Brandon Mull! Fantastic author and amazingly sweet guy came to our store to sign books and chat with people! Oh my werd, but he was so much fun!

Yes, that's right, I got a picture with him!

And so did Naomi and her friends!

The opportunity to have him kind of fell into our laps and we were so excited! A dad from a local school was working to get Brandon to come and speak at some of the schools. So he called the store and asked if we would want to have Brandon come in and do a signing.

We were not about to say no to an offer like that. We're kind of a small store, so we rarely have the opportunity to have a big name author come in.

If you don't know (and SHAME ON YOU) Brandon Mull is the author of the fabulous Fablehaven series and the standalone book The Candy Shop Wars and he's got a NEW series coming out, starting in March, called The Beyonders.

Here he is with his books and creatures!

You should totes go check out his website to find out more!

Anyhoodles...

We had so much fun with Brandon in the store. And since I work there I got to hang around and stalk hang out with him and my fellow co-workers. He was willing to sign as many books as the kids brought in and took a few minutes with each one, chatting with them and letting their parents take pictures. So. Nice. He would ask if the kids had any questions for him. One girl thought about it for a moment and then asked if he liked pie. He does (just so you know).

One kid said something about how many people there were waiting and Brandon said, "Well, that's good. It's always nice when you write a book to know that people want to read it."

Oh my werd, but it was just so much fun being there.

AND you guys totally benefit from it TOO! Because I asked him to sign books for YOU! Aren't you excited!?



Here's a group of us Borders people with Brandon Mull!

Leave a comment on this post between now and Saturday night and I will randomly select 2 (yes, that's right) 2! winners.

One person will win an autographed copy of The Candy Shop Wars (ooh, ah!)


And one person will win an autographed copy of the first Fablehaven book!












Aren't you just SO excited!

All you have to do is leave a comment, but if you want to mention it on your blog or on your sidebar I will give you 1 extra entry (because I'm nice like that!) Just leave a linky thingy in your comment or come back and leave a second comment with the link :)

Now go forth and ENTER

Oh, and I will go ahead and open this up internationally, because it's just one book and I think I can swing that :)