Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Ensconced in YA Turns ONE! Day 3: Some Favorite Indie Authors who have changed my life

If you've been following me thus far, you know that one of the reasons I started my blog was to support indie authors and give them a bigger audience if I loved their books. I've come across several that have become good friends, supported me in one way or another, and all have wowed me with their awesome books.

In no particular order:

1. Ingrid Ricks (see Day 1 post). As you know from Monday's post, she is the author of the now New York Times bestselling novel, Hippie Boy: A Girl's Tale! I think the post speaks for itself :-)

2. Vicky Savage- Vicky was one of the first authors that I ever contacted, and Transcender: First Timer was one of the first books I've ever reviewed. That was when I got the reviewing bug. She's been my confidante, friend, supporter, and peer ever since. I don't know what I would have done without her! She has been a loyal supporter of my blog since day one. You should definitely pick up her books too-- they are fantastic.

3. Howard Shapiro- Howard is one of my new indie author friends. He wrote the fantastic YA graphical novel, The Stereotypical Freaks. I was not expecting to love it as much as I did. But I cried because it was so moving. Since then, he's been a great friend and someone I really admire. We talk on a regular basis, and he tells me all of his adventures at BEA, etc. I can't wait for the sequel of Freaks to come out!

4. Christina Smith - Christina emailed me one day and wanted me to edit one of her books. I didn't realize how fantastic it would be! She is a terrific writer. We emailed at least 5 times a day, and it was one of the most fun exchanges I've ever had. We hashed out plot points, talked about our personal lives, and it was glorious. Since then, we've supported each other through thick and thin, and I'm so excited for her next book to come out!

5. Shawn Keenan - Shawn is someone I consider my crit partner, even though I haven't really written anything of substance yet. I met him after reviewing his book on Librarything, and he emailed me back, thanking me for the review. Since then we've hashed out one of his other books-- the wonderful The Intern's Tale, and his most current book, which I'm not going to talk about, but I think this is THE ONE. He's amazing and always supports what little I do write with really insightful comments. He also periodically guest posts on my blog with his terrific rants.

Other indie authors I love include: Stephanie Judice, Diantha Jones, Sara Zaske, Erika Kathryn, Leonie Rogers, Andrea Colt, Ashley Farley, Scott Cramer, Samantha Durante, Jennifer Lane, Kaitlin Bevis, Lindsey Loucks, Anna Silver just to name a few.

But honestly, if I worked with you, you are a favorite of mine. So even if you don't see your name on this list, that doesn't mean anything. I love all of you!!! :-)

Today's question: Who are some of YOUR favorite indie writers?

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Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Ensconced in YA turns ONE! Day 2: Left Bank Books Appreciation Post and Blogoversary Giveaway!

I would be remiss if I didn't include how awesome local bookstores are and how vital they are to bringing awesome authors into town for events. That's why a love letter to Left Bank Books, our local bookstore here in Saint Louis, gets a whole post during my anniversary week!

I am so excited to have Antony John, one of the great YA authors in St. Louis, present his thoughts on our beloved local bookstore, Left Bank Books. As you all know, he wrote the wonderful Five Flavors of Dumb and Elemental, the first book in a dystopian paranormal trilogy.



Since this is the first Left Bank Books[http://www.left-bank.com/]-sponsored giveaway on Christina's much-lauded blog, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to explain exactly how the giveaway came to be (it's not as random as it seems), and why it's proof that St. Louis is an awesome city.

Here are some things people told me about St. Louis when I moved here in 2008:

1. It's a city that feels a lot like a town. (Which, I think, means that it has the amenities of a city without the overcrowding. Those amenities include some astounding indie bookstores.)

2. It's a city that loves books. (Very true, as it turns out. St. Louis has the second-ranked library system in the US. Also, the intersection beside Left Bank Books has been designated "writers corner," [http://www.missourireview.com/tmr-blog/2011/10/word-missouri-st-louiss-literary-heritage-comes-to-life-in-the-central-west-end/] with bronze busts of neighborhood authors and poets: Tennessee Williams; T. S. Eliot; Kate Chopin; and soon, William Burroughs.)

3. Where the rest of the world operates on the principle of six degrees of separation, St. Louis has streamlined things to two degrees of separation. (It's true! Going to events here is kind of strange, because within five minutes everyone has worked out that they all have the same friends. I don't understand how this happens, although it definitely saves us from awkward small talk.)

When it comes to bookstores, though, two degrees of separation becomes one degree. If you are an author in St. Louis, booksellers and librarians will TRACK YOU DOWN. Admittedly, it wasn't a particularly challenging task for the folks at Left Bank Books -- I can see the store from my house -- but as soon as I arrived in town they offered to hold a launch event for my first book, helped to set up school visits, and gave my books such prominent window placement that I felt like I was someone famous, like Jonathan Franzen (coincidentally, another St. Louis-raised author). Since then, they've organized YA panels for me, given me free all-weekend tickets to Comic Con, and helped me meet countless other authors.

Left Bank Books (and the other local indies) aren't doing it for financial gain, either, let me tell you. The profit they make from book sales at these events probably wouldn't buy a six-pack of Bud (or Schlafly [http://schlafly.com/]). It's all about their role as promoters of literature and reading in St. Louis -- a job they take VERY seriously. They even team up with local bloggers like Christina, because awesomeness should be shared among all bookish folks, you know?

Here's a final St. Louis tidbit: The city's indie bookstores were the first to band together to promote each other. Left Bank Books, Main Street Books, and Subterranean Books are just three of the six members of the St. Louis Independent Bookstore Alliance [http://stlindiebook.com/]. The Alliance has become a model for other cities, and is cooperative bookselling at its finest.

So if you're ever in St. Louis, please stop by Left Bank Books and say hi to Spike the cat.

To help us celebrate local bookstores, Left Bank books has generously donated a signed copy of Elemental by Antony John (US only).

Elemental (Elemental, #1) Goodreads Book Description:
Sixteen-year-old Thomas has always been an outsider. The first child born without the power of an Element—earth, water, wind or fire—he has little to offer his tiny, remote Outer Banks colony. Or so the Guardians would have him believe.

In the wake of an unforeseen storm, desperate pirates kidnap the Guardians, intent on claiming the island as their own. Caught between the plague-ridden mainland and the advancing pirates, Thomas and his friends fight for survival in the battered remains of a mysterious abandoned settlement. But the secrets they unearth will turn Thomas’ world upside-down, and bring to light not only a treacherous past but also a future more dangerous than he can possibly imagine.


Today's question/comment: Please talk about your local bookstores. How have they affected you?

Enter to win some terrific prizes, including a signed hardback copy of Elemental (US only)!!! There are other prizes that are International :-)
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Monday, June 17, 2013

Ensconced in YA turns ONE! Day 1: Highlighting Hippie Boy: A Girl's Story by Ingrid Ricks and INT giveaway

This week, I'm celebrating Ensconced in YA turning ONE! Thank you SO much for all of your support! I have a big giveaway planned, so hold onto your hats! We'll get there in a second. But FIRST...

Hippie Boy: A Girl's StoryI am SO THRILLED to re-introduce Ingrid Ricks! She has JUST made the New York Times Best seller list and was the first interview I ever conducted. I'm so incredibly proud of her. She deserves it for being just an amazing person and a really great author too.

Goodreads Book Description: What would you do if your Mormon stepfather pinned you down and tried to cast Satan out of you? For thirteen-year-old Ingrid, the answer is simple: RUN.

Ingrid Ricks grew up in a dysfunctional, untypical Mormon family with an absent, freewheeling dad and an intensely religious mother who was desperate to ensure her family's eternal salvation. For years she yearned to escape the suffocating religious atmosphere cultivated by her mother at home by joining her dad on the road as tool-selling vagabond. When her parents divorce and her mother marries Earl--a cruel authoritarian who exploits his Church-ordained priesthood powers to oppress her family-- she learns the lesson that will change her life: she can't look to others to save her; she has to save herself.

Rating: 5/5 stars 
See my Amazon review at this link : Hippie Boy Amazon Review

Hippie Boy Book Trailer (created by Ingrid's daughter!)
Hippie Boy Book Trailer

Ingrid Ricks 
Ingrid Ricks is a Seattle-based writer and speaker who focuses on overcoming adversity and embracing life. Ingrid lives in Seattle with her husband and two daughters. She is also the author of A Little Book of Mormon (and Not So Mormon) Stories.

Enter my humongous BLOG GIVEAWAY with giveaways of books that I loved since Ensconced opened! I'll be doing this a little bit differently. I'll be selecting prize winners EVERY WEEK to keep people's interest (and mine) and to keep things under control a little better since this giveaway is the biggest I've ever tried to do! :-) Enter now!

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Sunday, June 16, 2013

Interview with Elizabeth Norris, the author of Unraveling and Unbreakable and INT giveaway!

Unraveling (Unraveling, #1)Goodreads Book Description: Sixteen-year-old Janelle Tenner is used to having a lot of responsibility. She balances working as a lifeguard in San Diego with an intense academic schedule. Janelle's mother is bipolar, and her dad is a workaholic FBI agent, which means Janelle also has to look out for her younger brother, Jared.

And that was before she died...and is brought back to life by Ben Michaels, a mysterious, alluring loner from her high school. When she discovers a strange clock that seems to be counting down to the earth's destruction, Janelle learns she has twenty-four days to figure out how to stop the clock and save the planet.
 

My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars 

Unbreakable (Unraveling, #2)Goodreads Book Description: Four months after Ben disappeared through the portal to his home universe, Janelle believes she’ll never see him again. Her world is still devastated, but life is finally starting to resume some kind of normalcy. Until Interverse Agent Taylor Barclay shows up. Somebody from an alternate universe is running a human trafficking ring, kidnapping people and selling them on different Earths—and Ben is the prime suspect. Now his family has been imprisoned and will be executed if Ben doesn’t turn himself over within five days.

And when Janelle learns that someone she cares about—someone from her own world—has become one of the missing, she knows that she has to help Barclay, regardless of the danger. Now Janelle has five days to track down the real culprit. Five days to locate the missing people before they’re lost forever. Five days to reunite with the boy who stole her heart. But as the clues begin to add up, Janelle realizes that she’s in way over her head—and that she may not have known Ben as well as she thought. Can she uncover the truth before everyone she cares about is killed?


I have this one coming to me in the mail, will have a review up after I read it!!!

 
Author Blurb:  
Elizabeth Norris briefly taught high school English and history before trading the southern California beaches and sunshine for Manhattan's recent snowpocalyptic winter. She harbors dangerous addictions to guacamole, red velvet cupcakes, sushi, and Argo Tea, fortunately not all together. Her first novel, UNRAVELING (Balzer+Bray, April 2012), is the story of one girl's fight to save her family, her world, and the one boy she never saw coming.

Author Interview
1. I love that you were an English high school teacher before you were a YA writer. Can you talk a little about your journey and how your experiences as a teacher influenced your writing? 
I was! I taught high school English in San Diego for six years. Being a teacher is what brought me to YA literature in the first place. I liked to know what my students enjoyed reading, so I read Gossip Girl and Twilight. At first I read YA novels in order to recommend good ones to my students, but I fell in love with them. I loved that they had everything: romance, great writing, high stakes. You can also actually see one of my lesson plans in Unraveling. The scene where Ben and Janelle argue about marriage proposals--that's from the AP class that I taught.  

2. Your main character, Janelle, rocks! I know a lot of people have been comparing her to Veronica Mars. Can you tell us what fictional character other than Veronica Mars (and maybe they are too similar to be friends) would be best friends with her and why?  
Thank you! I do really love Veronica Mars. I'm excited for the movie! I think Janelle and Katsa from Graceling would be best friends. They both work so hard to protect the people they care about. As long as they didn't have opposing causes they would be a great team. 

3. Did any of your characters surprise you? If so, which one?  
My minor characters always surprise me a little. Cecily was the biggest surprise in Unraveling. She actually wasn't even in the first draft--or really, she was but she didn't have a name. She was just a girl Janelle occasionally ate lunch with. But as I was editing, Cecily demanded to have a presence. 

4. If you could be sorted into a Hogwarts house, which one would it be and why?  
Ravenclaw. I actually did the sorting test with Pottermore and I think it's the love of knowledge and learning.  

5. What was your favorite YA read of the past year?
Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood 

6. Favorite show of all time?  
There are so many! Probably X-Files or Buffy the Vampire Slayer 

7. Tell us about your dogs. 
I have a boxer and a pit lab mix. They're big and lazy and sometimes quite excitable. They also really enjoy playing ball. My pit lab mix loves her the ball and the boxer loves her so we do a lot of throwing it around the apartment. 

8. I love how on your blog you say one of your most favorite things is used books with inscriptions to other people. Do you have a favorite book and inscription that you could share with us? 
I have a copy of Pride & Prejudice that says "To Deena, may you find a love like this." 

9. Can you tell us what you are working on now? 
I'm working on another YA novel for Harper. In short, it's about a girl named Maya who has to work as an informant for federal agents and falls in love with a guy who's being recruited by the mob.

Now enter to win a signed copy of either Unbreakable or Unraveling or some great swag!
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Saturday, June 15, 2013

A VERY detailed Review of Rewrite Redemption by JH Walker

I want to start this off by saying that I have always read books that I've reviewed. If I don't read it, I don't review it. So I'm going to make this particular review EXTRA detailed to show the two weeks that I spent reading this very long book-- two weeks I could have been reading other books. You guys know that I don't usually post spoilers, but hey, if that's what I need to do to prove I read this book, so be it. Also, this will not be like my other reviews. I was told I didn't put enough accurate details into the plot, so that's what you're going to get in this review.

Rewrite Redemption alternates chapters between two main characters in a first person point of view: AJ, a girl who gets periodically yanked back into time/location without knowing when it's going to happen. This unsurprisingly causes her a lot of anxiety, so she makes rules for herself at school so that people don't notice her just in case this happens at school (kind of effectively making her INVISIBLE, but not as a GHOST). She thinks (and it sure seems so) that this is why her mom died because she's the only one who has seen AJ disappear and no one believed her, and that her dad drinks all the time because he also sees her disappear after his wife died. So lots of guilt there. But by the way, they have enough money for a large house sized treehouse to be put up in the backyard (but it doesn't have a bathroom by the way). When she's in the treehouse, it makes her feel a lot more steady because apparently her powers are connected to trees, which she'll learn later. If she spends too much time away from trees or nature, she starts feeling drained of energy.

She also has two best friends Lexi and Ipod. All of them have been damaged in some way by their parents. Lexi has an awful relationship with her mother who I think sleeps around (I'm too lazy to go back and specifically look at this relationship), and Ipod gets beaten by his father all the time. This is how Lexi and AJ originally found Ipod but now AJ also magically has the powers to heal, so he basically gets beaten by his father, goes to see Lexi to heal him, and he hides out in the treehouse.

AT THE SAME TIME, we also get a first person perspective of a guy, Constantine, who doesn't originally live in the same city. First of all, his voice sounds just like AJ's and so especially since the chapter headings don't have labels for each character, initially this is very confusing. Constantine also can travel through space and time, and has been trained for a long time on his powers. Because he was being a high school guy, he changes time so he can simultaneously date some girl, go to a concert, and take his chem test. By rewriting time, his brother ends up in a wheelchair, depressed, and always just plays video games. There is a huge guilt complex here, but Constantine is prevented by some nebulous board of people (again too lazy to go back and get specific labels for these people) to go back and change things to the way they were because of RULES and the DANGERS of time travel and CHANGING THINGS.

Going back to AJ, she gets yanked back into time early in her childhood, NOT IN CURRENT TIME BUT A FLASHBACK, where she meets an Indian boy named Hosa, which will become important later in the story.

Back to Constantine, his family moves to the same town as AJ, and he can sense her power/skills and spends many chapters trying to find her in the school. This is EXTRA important because he wants to USE her so that he can prevent his brother getting in the wheelchair in the first place and trying/and succeeding to commit suicide.

At the same time, AJ has a makeover and takes off her hoodie so that people can see her for the hottie that she is.

Back to Constantine, he finally contacts Lexi, who helps them meet for the first time. AJ can also feel his power, and in the middle of the school, they stare at each other for a long time just sensing each other's powers. Constantine actually falls into her memories as they occur.

OK I was going to detail the rest of the story, which contains AJ having her worst nightmare come true and getting almost yanked in time/space during school, but Constantine saves the day by "stabilizing" her, and then she goes back to the time of cowboy and Indian, where she meets Hosa again, and almost gets raped by a cowboy, and Constantine meets up with Lexi so that he can try to save AJ. At the same time, Ipod gets beaten up by his father after Lexi's mom accuses him of impregnating her daughter, and sent to the military. So when AJ and Constantine go through a bunch of stuff like almost getting killed, Constantine getting shot right as they are going back to their original time. But of course survives after AJ heals him in the treehouse. This part DRAGS for me and it was more difficult to get through this part. Yes, there's lots of action, but I found myself being BORED.

THEN they have to go back and save Ipod by rewriting time BEFORE saving Constantine's brother (if you don't get the title by now, shame on you, REWRITE REDEMPTION, right???). Constantine has some inane idea that AJ and Ipod are together. I hate when characters don't communicate with each other. So he's like, okay well, I won't know you guys anymore, but it's for the best. I'm sure I'm not getting the details EXACTLY right, but again, I refuse to go back to the book to specify these things further.

So more things happen, and they end up rewriting everything perfectly, and Constantine really spearheads this effort before things start, but AJ and Lexi time things (as the people who carry out this plan) so that she ends up meeting Constantine shortly thereafter with a convenient phone message from Constantine in the future before things have been rewritten.

The End. I'm not putting a rating on this for various reasons.

For those of you that think that I just spent all day yesterday actually reading the book just to write this review TODAY, that's not true and probably isn't physically possible because it literally took me two weeks to get through it.

Hope you all found this illuminating.