Emo-Puppy Moments of Publishing plus SHIVEREVIEW!
Happy Friday!
Things are changing so fast, and it’s making me fursplode (phrase credit to cleolinda into an emo-puppy (cred goes to m_stiefvater
First off, the contest was funtastic. Loved it. But also some People in High Places are discussing my fantasy trilogy. And it’s making me Shiver. I’m trying not to think about it. =X
Then today, my lovely intern Mitali (yes, I have an intern, and she’s awesome, how did that happen?)
Sent me THIS NOTE from one of my winners, Sophie:
“Sneak in a mention that I did pre-order Sea even though it doesn’t come up easily on amazon, will ya?? LOL. I know that must frustrate her beyond belief. It would me. Can hardly wait to read it. :) June 2010. Summer reading.”
And seriously?
I got so happy, I emailed her back thanking her.
And just now on Twitter SEA was included on someone’s wish list along with Sara Zarr’s new book. (!!)
This is new to me. And it may sound lame, but it’s SO exciting!
Then I think about my friend Maggie, whose book is taking off like crazy, who already had a first book out, who can’t possibly respond to all the little I WANT SHIVER! That are all over the place.
And it reminds me of what my New School professor Dani Shapiro told us one day in writing class.
She was telling us that THIS was the best time.
This early time, where we were writing for only us.
No one was editing, no one was shaping the story for the current market.
We were just writing whatever our muse was telling us to write.
Of course NONE of us listened.
US: Yeah right! We want to be published! We want to be dropped off at our sought-after teaching gig in a town car with our Starbucks. We want to be cool!
But she insisted.
I don’t know. I’m not sure she was right.
But I do know one thing.
I think THIS TIME. This pre-published time for me, really is simply “Day before the wedding” special. There are no bad reviews, no low-rankings. Of course there are no good reviews or high sales either–but it’s simply just all…expectation. And it’s really a nice feeling. But then there’s what Maggie is going through: foreign sales! Big giant book dumps! And it just seems like a happiily-ever-after fairytale. And I’m so happy for her.
Basically, I think ALL of it is good. The no-agent, no contract writing for yourself is awesome, the selling stage is awesome, the revision stage is awesome. It ALL is. Even the hard stuff, because we are all exactly where we are meant to be in the long-windy process of creating.
So on that emo note, here is my review of SHIVER. In not quite normal review form. But what the heck.
SHIVER
If you like love stories, you will love it.
If you hate love stories, you might not.
If you like beautiful rich lyrical writing, you’ll love it.
If you don’t, you probably won’t.
If you like multi-faceted characters and a fresh mythology, you’ll love it.
If you like mainstream overly predictable stuff like they sell at grocery stores, you might not.
If you are a hopeless romantic, you’ll probably love it.
If you are cynical and love hating love, you probably won’t.
If you like emo-puppy tortured boys, you’ll love it.
If you like dumb boys who live to beat up freshman at school? You probably won’t.
If you like werewolves, vampires, faeries, witches, etc? You’ll love it.
If you love Twilight, you’ll most-likely love it.
If you hate Twilight, you’ll most-likely love it too.
You can probably guess which category I fall into.
I LOVED IT!
Thanks, Maggie for letting us share SHIVERWEEK with you. Thanks to everyone who played, and to Scholastic for giving away the ARC’s!
Have a great weekend!
It’s a TIE! And you both win!
The boy, it turns out, is a critical reader and excellent judge of literature. (Who knew?)
He created his own “rating” system on the fly giving the entries between one and five stars, if they were unrated, it means he passed them over with a gentle shake of blond bangs. (He has the 70′s summer shag going…)
THE WINNING SENTENCES posted below will BOTH receive ARC’s courtesy of SCHOLASTIC. Please message me your email addresses here on live journal. Thanks for playing!
***** RATING’S GO TO:
“Arg. Don’t that treasure just make you SHIVER!”
:) Erica, thebookcellar
AND
“The boy shivered looking up at the hot sun; he was cold, wet and stuck in a dinghy in the middle of an unexpectedly green sea.”
:) allthingsequalateral.blogspot.com
Since this was such a success and so much fun, I will host another contest with BOY JUDGE.
BEAUTIFUL CREATURES will be up soon and SURF MULES by Greg Neri. Stay tuned!
SHiver review tomorrow! Thanks again to all the participants and to Johnny Depp for lending his awesome to the contest. (Because I know JD reads my blog…right?)
ARrr, me hardies. I had SHIVERing good time on Lady Heidi’s blog…thanks for playing the seas.
(Also, in case you are wondering Pirates and SHIVER? Absolutely completely unrelated. I specialize in random publicity. Apparently.)
SHIVER ME TIMBERS! GIVE-AWAY NOW!
CONTEST NOW CLOSED! THANKS FOR THE WONDERFUL ENTRIES!!
Thanks everyone for weighing in. I’m so glad you enjoyed the interview with The Sausage Queen, Maggie Stiefvater. I fear at the rate she’s going she will one day live in a protective bubble of awesome, so I’m happy for the opportunity to have her on now. =D
HardCopy or ARC I asked?
The people spoke.
THE ARC it is!
I agree, only because I have a FIRST EDITION of SHIVER, and I worry it will already be in second printing by the time I get around to buying another copy. Thank you all for thinking of me and my YA BOOKSHELF. ;)
SO without further adieu, the GIVE-AWAY!
If you’d like a chance to win the ARC, leave a CREATIVE SENTENCE below in comments using the word SHIVER!
I’m going to let my wordsmith son choose his FAVORITE ONE as the WINNER.
So keep in mind: 6 year-old-boy is the JUDGE, meaning Potty humor, pirate speak, will be appreciated.
I’m going to post my review tomorrow instead of today…
Can’t wait to hear what you come up with!
The lucky winner I will message to get your address and will OVERNIGHT you the copy of SHIVER!!
Let the SHIVER games begins!
NOTE: If you’d like to write a SHIVER sentence and DO NOT want to be included in the ARC give-away, just say so, we’d love to see what you come up with anyway!
I don’t know about you, love, but I’m adoring this SHIVER book.
Author Chat with SHIVERRIFFIC Maggie Stiefvater!
Welcome to ShiverWeek! Today we have the guest of honor, Maggie Stiefvater, in the hot seat. Read the interview and stay tuned below for details about the BOOK GIVE-AWAY this week!
But first, author chat:
Hey Maggie! Thanks for coming on Author Chat and celebrating Shiver Week with us! First off, I loved SHIVER so much. Please give us the two sentence elevator pitch for people who’ve been living in caves and haven’t heard about your book.
Pity those ignorant cave-dwellers! Languishing away with only ROBINSON CRUSOE for entertainment. So. SHIVER. It’s a bittersweet love story about Grace, a girl who has always loved the wolves in the woods behind her house, and Sam, a boy who must become a wolf each winter. Every year, Sam gets fewer and fewer months as a human, so once they fall in love, the countdown begins.
Why wolves? Why not, lets say for argument’s sake, bears? Bears are furry. Bears hibernate in the winter?
Bears are conspicuous, Heidi. You cannot hide a pack of bears in the Minnesota woods. Also, bears are solitary. That would screw up Sam’s home life even more, and God, I believe the poor boy has had enough.
Where did you come up with the mythology for SHIVER?
In my kitchen, while making chicken and rice soup. Wait, is that what you meant?
Um, I guess so?
Quick: Faeries or werewolves?
Faeries, still, I’m sorry. Werewolves are a one shot deal for me. Faeries are forever, dude.
Oh really? We’ll see about that, Maggie Stiefvater! #TeamWerewolf
How do you manage all these projects you have going on? And can you tell us about them?
Okay, I’ve got BALLAD coming out this October. LINGER, the sequel to SHIVER, is coming out fall of ’10. And FOREVER is coming out fall of ’11. There are other books that may or may not involve homicidal faeries coming out also during that time frame. I’m booked through 2013 at the moment.
I sort of like to have two projects going at once: one in rough draft form and one in edits. Plus I can’t seem to be not writing, so I’m productive despite myself.
I’ve recently discovered your Merry Fates site and it’s wonderful. Tell us about it!
Merry Sisters of Fate (www.merryfates.com) is a weird and crazy idea I had soon after I hooked up with Brenna Yovanoff and Tessa Gratton as critique partners. Before I was an author, I was a full time artist. There is an art movement called “A Painting a Day,” where the object is to create a complete work of art from beginning to end each day. I did that for almost two years and sold the resulting paintings (so somewhere out there are over five hundred Maggie works of art) and the effect on my art technique was absolutely stunning. I thought . . . can I do the same thing with my writing? So I proposed the idea to Brenna and Tessa: each of us write one short story a week for a year. We did it and . . . woof. You learn really fast what you’re good at and what you’re not.
This year, because of all our other writing projects, we’ve dropped back to two pieces of fiction each a month, but it’s still a great playground for ideas that may never make it into novel form.
SHIVER sort of puts new meaning into the phrase: You can love your dogs, but don’t LOVE your dogs. Can you expand on this? ;)
Oh, Heidi. Don’t go there. There is no inter-species LOVE with capital letters in SHIVER. As I feel it should be.
Your trailer is breathtakingly beautiful in its simplicity. Do you find your musical talents help your writing? Hinder?
Thanks! I think they are just different aspects of the same psychotic need to create that I harbor. So I can write a tune, but it doesn’t take the place of writing the stories I need to write, and vice versa. Only recently have I been able to really write songs about what I’m writing in my novels and vice versa.
Shiver has a lovely scene in a candy shop. I hear your release party involves candy–tell us about it.
THE REAL CANDY SHOP IN SHIVER! *swoon*
Oh, yes! The infamous candy shop in SHIVER — the one that was actually cited by my editor in the letter when she acquired the manuscript at auction — is based on a real candy shop in Colonial Williamsburg, Wythe’s Candy. When I was looking at stores to host my launch party, the Williamsburg College Bookstore pleaded for me to hold it there. The allure of holding the launch five minutes away from the candy store was definitely too strong to resist.
If there is one song that says SHIVER to you, what would it be?
I actually have a . . . theme song, I guess, for each of the novels I write. It’s a song that I find either right before writing the book or while writing the first third, and it embodies the mood that I’m trying to invoke. For SHIVER, that song was “The Ocean” by The Bravery. It’s a sad but lovely song about loss and saying goodbye. I listened to it a million times while plotting SHIVER.
If you could live on a desert island with one of your characters who would it be and why?
James, from BALLAD and LAMENT. He’s the only one I could stand after 500 days without caffeine, cookie dough, or running water.
Luke or Sam? (Heidi note: Luke is from Lament, Sam is from Shiver)
Sam. They’re both tormented, but Sam can cook.
NOM.
Are you more like Dee from Lament/Ballad or Grace from SHIVER/LINGER?
Eh, I’m not really like either of them. More like Grace, I suppose, as I almost never get nervous. There is a character that is very, very much like me in one of my books, but people usually guess wrong which one it is.
I totally know who that is! Can I guess here? Can I? *I…
What’s up with the one word titles, are you copying me?
Yes, Heidi. I am. My next book is called SEA: A novel of plagiarism.
*narrows eyes* I knew it.
What’s up next for you?
Well, other books aside, I am contemplating recording an album-length set of tunes. Also thinking about doing a graphic novel. And after that, taking over North America. Something like that.
Do you think being crowned The Sausage Queen was what Miss Maggie had in mind? Well, I know one hungry wolf who would be her #1 fan.
Kidding aside, SHIVER is a fantastic book.
Everyone buy the delectable love story, it’s out now!
Stay tuned Wednesday for my officially official review and GIVE-AWAY!!!
Also, PLEASE leave in the comments if I should:
a) Give-away my ARC
b) Give-away my Brand New Blue-inked Super Awesome First Edition Hard Copy!
Whichever one gets the most votes wins!
For Cavedwellers: The Official Shiver book trailer courtesy of Scholastic.
For More on the talented Maggie S. visit her here, here, here and there.
_____________________________________
LAMENT (Flux ’08), BALLAD (Flux ’09), SHIVER (Scholastic ’09), LINGER (Scholastic ’10)
My novels: http://www.maggiestiefvater.com
my writing blog: http://m-stiefvater.livejournal.com
weekly short stories: http://www.merryfates.com
my art blog: http://greywarenart.blogspot.com
Thanks for stopping by Author Chat!
SEA is on AMAZON!!!!
http://www.amazon.com/Sea-Heidi-R-Kling/dp/0399251634/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248466550&sr=1-1
*dies*
Would it be horribly lame if I pre-ordered several hundred copies of my own book?
The Liar Controversy
Justine Larbalestier posts her opinion on the controversial ‘white-washing’ of her latest novel’s cover, of her fight to get a new paperback cover and what you can do to help.
Justine’s response:
http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2009/07/23/aint-that-a-shame/comment-page-1/#comment-82330
Publisher Weekly’s article on topic:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6672790.html?nid=2788&source=title&rid=1000205892
The Ground is Shaking!!
1. Literally. Also, the ceiling. Apparently someone has been stuffing baby wipes down the toilets and has clogged up the sewer line. So peeps are outside crunching into the sidewalk with scarily loud tools. Don’t look at me either. I know baby wipes go in the Trash can. My husband on the other hand…
2. I got the NAUGHTIEST Shakespeare book in the mail this weekend from Miss Kelly Fineman! kellyrfineman. I won a contest! I never win anything, so this was very exciting. Also, since I am so behind on reading my friend’s blogs I didn’t realize I won said contest until she messaged me. Thanks, Kel. And I’ll never read the word SHAKESPEARE the same way again. *tainted for life*
3. Insomnia. Me haz it. Last night I was ruminating on everything under the sun. Namely bookmarks and posters and signatures etc. etc. When I used to direct children’s theatre I was like this during every play. Until the curtain fell and I started all over with a new one. #mindfail
4. One of my old creative writing buddies from college facebook’d me all excited about my book. I love that.
5. SHIVER WEEK!!! I’m officially one of the stops on Miss Maggie’s m_stiefvaterblog tour for SHIVER! I’m very excited as I’ve never been an official blog tour stop. I’m more like one of those, “Oh cool Heidi wants to interview me too” tag-on stops, which is fine and dandy, but now since I’m “official” I’m taking it very “officially” and hath declared:
THE WEEK OF AUGUST 1 to be SHIVER WEEK!
And will include, and not be limited too, interview with Miss Maggie herself, a REVIEW by Yours Truly and…A SHIVER ARC GIVEAWAY!
Yes, my grubby hands hold not one but TWO ARCS of SHIVER.
One you may not have, because it is mine and signed by Maggie herself with a very snarky note, which I love. But the other one is all YOURS!!!
Will give details later…
And as a preview, have you seen this beauty? Maggie created this trailer herself. Even wrote the music. Sitting next to her on the sofa in Savannah she played it for me. Of course, I rubbed up against her trying to get some of that talent…not sure it worked.
Happy Monday, all…enjoy this little preview of the fall.
Please don’t fursplode! Ech. Too late.
Friday Five where I talk about Pop-Tarts and Horses and Saltwater and Stuff
1. Catalog copy? Done. I’m so grateful to be included in the process. I love working with my editor.
2. Just bought two shiny new books: SEA CHANGE, by Aimee Friedman (I’ve been drooling over the cover for awhile) and Susane Colasanti’s WAITING FOR YOU. I’ve heard good things about both and am happy to dig in. Coincidentally, SEA CHANGE takes place on an island off of Savannah, Georgia where I just was with my Gothic Girls AND has an Isak Dinesen quote in the beginning I thought about using for SEA:
The cure for anything is salt water—
sweat, tears or the sea.
So I suppose it’s fate that I read. =)
3. Do girls just innately love horses? I know I did as a kid. Went to horsemanship camp. Subscribed to Horse and Rider magazine. Had a dream horse name all picked out for when we left Orange County and moved to the ‘country’. Thunderbolt*. He was a mythical Palomino and we often rode across pearly sand beaches. Did I ever get him? No. But at the bookstore this morning, my baby girl went NUTS for a horse stable. Starting pounding on the plastic and smiling and dragging the wooden box around. So of course I had to buy it for her. And me. And it’s awesome.
4. Twitter cracks my sidewalk in half. Maureen Johnson follows Miley Cyrus and Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag and keeps reporting on their tweets. In summary: Miley Cyrus talks to God and when not predicting the upcoming End of the World, Heidi tweets on how many pounds of weights she can curl. Which of course leads to tweets about Worshiping Miley as a Prophet etc. etc. Twitter. 140 characters of bliss. Don’t ever leave me.
5. POP-TART FRIDAY. My son invented this. Theory: If you deprive yourself of the good stuff all week apparently on Friday the sweet artificial flavors just explode into rainbows. So there you go. Indulge people.
Have a great weekend!
Thunderbolt: Oh you with the nonsensical name, one day you will be mine.
*I also had a parakeet named Weather. But I’ll save that post for another day.
Thankful Thursday
My husband just sent me an email link with this subject: Thanks, Obama.
So I’m thankful for our president, and for having a husband who cares about things like this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/us/16asylum.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
Coldplay!
Seriously awesome.
Once you’ve been engaged to Brad Pitt it’s going to take someone pretty cool to fill those shoes, you know? After seeing Chris Martin live and in person, it’s perfectly clear how he snatched up Gwyneth.
Whoa. What a show. They played all my favorite songs. During YELLOW they tossed bright yellow balloon balls into the audience, lit up the stage. During FIX ME (le sigh) they lowered huge Japanese lanterns and invited the audience to sing the last bit along with Chris. During some other song they dropped a million count flock of paper butterflies out of huge nets. Everyone was jumping up trying to grab them. My sister’s boyfriend caught her a blue one. Me=jealous. But I found a yellow one on my way out on the sidewalk.
THEN as if all that coolness wasn’t enough, COLDPLAY jets off into the lawn crowd (sold out lawn, meaning wall to wall people) and sings GREEN EYES on a tiny stage while swarmed by a mob of fans.
Chris moves like a wood nymph. The concert reminded me of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM I saw once in Stratford-Upon-Avon so colorful and emotive. It was clear to me he LOVES what he does. In honor of MJ, he cooked up an awesome rendition of BILLY JEAN, and also whooped up a WHITE STRIPES song early in the set.
RULE THE WORLD was tremendous. Heart-pounding vibrations–giant half yellow moon night that was actually hot, even at 11:00 pm. As we made our way out after the last encore, people were taking pictures of the marquee. It was just so so so fun and totally sparked me back to life.
Thanks, COLDPLAY!
And now for you…
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