Hopefully, we are entering the season of happy things, as it will be book release time before you know it. (September!) Cover soon, I promise. But first, today I'm beaming madly because the book that almost killed me received a lovely blurb from an author I admire tremendously and generally think is the bee's knees.
New York Times bestselling author Carrie Ryan says: "Unique,
fast-paced, and rife with tension, The Woken Gods brilliantly pits
loyalty against survival, trust against inevitability, and love against
fear."
One of the most charming interviews ever, in which Jamie (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) conference calls in Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) to hilarious result.
Yeah, yeah, I know! I disappeared again. But Christopher and I are finishing the first draft of our (sorta secret, except if you follow either of us on twitter or are facebook friends you know we're doing one) collaborative middle grade book today. Yep, we wrote a book together. In a month. And it was fun. Now we do some fixing, and show it to people, and I will definitely do a post about what I've learned from this process. Useful stuff I hope to take back to my solo work...especially since I'll be starting something new SOON.
Other excitment in the works: I do believe you will get to see The Woken Gods cover (eek!!!) next week. Again: !!! And I imagine ARCs will be floating around soon as well, and of course, the book itself will be out in September. I'll just be over here breathing into a paper bag. Anyway, hope you like it--cover, book, the whole shebang. And now some links!
Author Jennifer Lynne Barnes has written two amazingly smart, incredibly fascinating posts following up on the "what makes a big book?" discussion that John Green touched off with his post about TFiOS' success and what he believes factored into it. These are MUST READS if you're an author or in publishing or just talk about books in real life or online (especially the second one). Post the first and post the second.
A crazy crazy vendetta story at Salon involving Ringling Bros./Barnum & Bailey. As I've already said elsewhere, some of the things mentioned in here are why I created my own circus for Girl on a Wire...so I could have the kind of circus I wanted to write about. Because after all the reading I've done, I do find the revelations in that piece shocking, but not surprising (if that makes any sense). But hey, we've got AGES before you get to read that book, so I'll say no more.
Veronica Roth's BEA speech is well worth your time. Snippet: "People say that writing is an isolated activity, but good writing
requires company. Company that you ultimately love and cherish and
value, and this perspective towards criticism, ultimate improvement
requires humility."
The long-lost (and apparently terrible) ET game for Atari might be unearthed from a landfill? Snippet: "A Canadian studio has confirmed to the BBC it will search a former
landfill site in New Mexico where Atari's much-criticised ET game may be
buried."
A real post soon, maybe about what I'm learning (so far) from mine and C's secret project collaborative lark...as we hit the halfway point in it today. (Wow, that was fast. Double typing fingers means double word counts. And it is also proving an excellent distraction from The Nerves kicking in about The Woken Gods, now that it's more or less done and beginning to be read by some people...and even more people soon. Like, out in three months soon. Ack.)
But first I'm just going to close some tabs--many of them bookish.
The singular and amazing Chuck Wendig recently did a great two partinterview over at Fantasy Faction. Go read it, then buy his new book The Blue Blazes, why don't you?
Skeleton Lake in India. One of those rare stories where the photos and content are equally fascinating.
Let me first start this post by saying I know a little about book packaging, but purely from the outside in--through knowing authors who've done it as work-for-hire and people who worked at packaging houses and as a general "watcher of the industry" and articles that get written about it. None of that makes me an expert.
But.
The most interesting thing about watching heads explode this morning on twitter over the new announcement that Amazon has reached licensing agreements with Alloy/WBs (with more in the works) to allow writers to sell fanfic set in the Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars worlds through its new Kindle Worlds program was how few people immediately recognized these are all packaged properties. I have seen a lot of worry about the authors who created these characters getting money, and how the rights worked, and etc. etc. and I am reminded once again that lots of people--even savvy industry types--don't realize how prevalent packaging is in YA (and probably elsewhere too--I am most familiar with YA and so that's what I'm talking about here). People on twitter thought a post on the subject was a good idea, and so here one is. (Experts feel free to jump in the comments or send me an email if I've gotten something wrong or you feel there's something I missed that's important.)
