Blog Tour: The Smell of Other People's Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock

Release Date: February 23, 2016
Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books
Age Group: Young Adult
Source: Publisher
Pages: 240
Buy: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound
Description: Goodreads
In Alaska, 1970, being a teenager here isn’t like being a teenager anywhere else. This deeply moving and authentic debut is for fans of Rainbow Rowell, Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, and Benjamin Alire Saenz. Intertwining stories of love, tragedy, wild luck, and salvation on the edge of America’s Last Frontier introduce a writer of rare talent.

Ruth has a secret that she can’t hide forever. Dora wonders if she can ever truly escape where she comes from, even when good luck strikes. Alyce is trying to reconcile her desire to dance, with the life she’s always known on her family’s fishing boat. Hank and his brothers decide it’s safer to run away than to stay home—until one of them ends up in terrible danger.

Four very different lives are about to become entangled. This unforgettable book is about people who try to save each other—and how sometimes, when they least expect it, they succeed. 

A far cry from my normal reading taste, The Smell of Other People's Houses isn't a book I would have ever picked up on my own. Thank goodness someone pushed it into my hands! This subtle historical is flawlessly written and sure to be a 2016 favorite for many readers.

I have to be honest...Historical novels are usually a huge reading turn-off for me. They always seem so unapproachable. The jacket copy often puts the time and setting - the history - at the forefront, and I find it hard to look past that to imagine what might hide within the books pages. That wasn't the case with this novel. 

Guest Post: Victoria Hanley on the Evolution of the Young Adult Genre

If you're an aspiring YA writer then listen up! Victoria Hanley is here today to talk a little bit about her newest book Wild Ink: Success Secrets to Writing and Publishing in the Young Adult Market and the Evolution of YA as a genre. Wild Ink is filled with interviews with YA authors, editors, and agents as well as tips, advice and writing exercises to keep you inspired! Take it away Victoria...

---

Victoria Hanley loves to nurture emerging writers. She is a YA novelist published in 13 languages, and her books for teens have received awards and honors in the U.S. and abroad, including the International Reading Association Young Adults’ Choices list, the Colorado Book Award, the Kallbacher-Klapperschlange Award (Germany), Colorado Authors League Top Hand Award, Publishers West Silver Award, and New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. Her work has also been placed on state award lists in Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, and Colorado and has earned a Carnegie Medal nomination in the United Kingdom.

Visit her at www.victoriahanley.com. 

Wild Ink: Success Secrets to Writing 
and Publishing in the Young Adult Market
Release date: May 1, 2012
Publisher: Prufrock Press
Buy: Amazon - Barnes & Noble - IndieBound

 What do you need to know to break in to the flourishing young adult (YA) market? With humor and a solid grounding in reality, author Victoria Hanley helps readers understand the ins and outs of the YA genre, how to stay inspired, and how to avoid common mistakes writers make in trying to reach teens. This book includes unique writing exercises to help readers find their own authentic teen voice and dozens of interviews with YA authors, blogging experts, editors, and agents to give inspiration and guidance for getting published. Chapters include writing exercises and self-editing techniques tailored to YA, along with encouraging words on dealing with self-doubt, rejection, and lack of time.

---

If you’ve recently read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling, it won’t surprise you to hear that it’s not just teens who are reading books in the YA genre. Recent surveys confirm that adults  check out plenty of “teen” titles from the library—for their own enjoyment.

Like everything else in the publishing industry, the YA genre is rapidly evolving. Once defined as stories for readers ages 12 and up, YA now includes 3 categories.

The 12+ category is the most traditional, and it’s been around for a long time. But 14+ (also known as Grade 9 – 12) is relatively new; it’s reserved for stories about young characters grappling with pretty severe hardships in more adult situations. For example, in Todd Mitchell’s The Secret to Lying (14+) the protagonist almost destroys himself by creating a terrifying rift between his inner and outer selves. In Amy Kathleen Ryan’s Glow (14+) the teen characters are on a cross-generational journey on a spaceship, only to be thrown into pain and chaos when their ship is attacked and all the adults on board killed or captured.

As dire as these situations are, they’re not any more challenging than those faced by Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games. The difference? Both The Secret to Lying and Glow include a sex scene, whereas The Hunger Games does not. Sex and/or profanity used to get YA books banned; now sex and profanity place a book into 14+.

At the same time, because today’s young people are exposed to a lot more content much sooner than people a generation ago, many of the books that would once have been 12+ are being moved to the category of 10+. I expect that this particular grouping of YA will soon change again and end up merging with what is now known as Middle Grade (MG), which is designated for ages 9 -12.

Plenty of books fall in the 12+ range, and all three categories are still part of the bigger umbrella of YA. (And just to keep things confusing, different review services will sometimes put the same book into different categories.)

As a genre, YA contains some of the most dazzlingly well-written page turners around (not that I’m biased). Whether you enjoy contemporary realism, dystopian adventure, romance, sci-fi, fantasy,  horror, or some other subgenre, there’s an excellent YA novel just waiting for you!

Dark Days of the Supernatural Winner

I am little late on announcing this, but I've been sick and haven't felt up to much so cut me a break. I mean, the books didn't get any less awesome. And in case you forgot, those books are signed ARCs of Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton, Afterlife by Claudia Gray, and Desires of the Dead by Kimberly Derting.

The lucky reader whose number came up is...

 Audrey (holesinmybrain)

Congratulations! I will send the books out to you ASAP. Thanks to everyone who entered!

Nevermore Party & Giveaway

Over the past few months I've become a roadtripping champ, but one place that I'm getting particularly good at going is Louisville, Kentucky. Just last month I was there to celebrate the release of Kelly Creagh's Nevermore at a special party she invited myself and a few other bloggers too.

 

Stacey, myself, Kelly Creagh, and Monica

On Friday, September 10 Monica from Bibliophilic Book Blog and I hopped in the car as we so often do and headed west on I-64. After a short detour to my favorite strange Virginia tourist attraction, Foamhenge, it was a smooth ride into West Virginia.

Monica & I at Foamhenge in Glasgow, VA.

We even stopped in White Sulphur Springs (great town name!) for lunch and I had "Honey Stung Fried Chicken." How delicious does that sound?

I'll skip over all of the details about traffic jams and neverending construction zones even though I know you want to hear all about it. All I'll say is that, if I had the power, I would remove the offending land mass that is West Virginia and push Virginia and Kentucky together. It would shave a good two hours off the trip.

After what seemed like forever, we finally made it to the hotel and crashed hard. The next morning we met up with Julie Kagawa at Borders and kidnapped her for the day. We ate endless breadsticks at Fazoli's, traversed the city in search of copies of Nevermore, visited a hobby shop for sealent, and finally wound up back at the hotel where we kicked off arts & crafts time.

This would involve origami. Why you ask? Because when Monica, Julie, Stacey from Page Turners and I were together in May she told us all how amazing and moving the stop motion trailer Maggie Stiefvater created for Linger was, and described it thusly:

"With the tree and the cranes, and I was like...*fanning herself with one hand and feigning sobs*"


The notorious petal fold.



That description got her mocked for an entire weekend, during which Julie and I brought up trees, cranes, and crying at every opportunity. They got drawn on napkins and pictures of trees and cranes got tweeted at Stacey pretty much non-stop and there was much laughter.

So, when we sat down for art therapy, there was no maccaroni art. Julie did her best to teach us how to paint Grimalkin on a rock while Monica listened to the monotone man on her phone describe how easy it is to fold a paper crane, all the while cursing under her breath. One day she will master the petal fold. Oh yes.

Beautiful Darkness Blog Tour & Giveaway

  I'm a girl from the South with a huge love of the paranormal, so naturally I have high standards for fiction about either. That's how Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl hooked me. (See my review here.) It had both and did them proud.

The second book of the addictive Caster Chronicles, Beautiful Darkness, released on October 12, and takes readers back to small-town Gaitlin, South Carolina, which is the middle of nowhere and the center of everything. It's a place run by gossip and rooted in tradition, much like the town I grew up in, and I wanted to find out more about how Gaitlin came to be.

And what better way to find out than to ask Kami and Margie...

When the idea for Beautiful Creatures and the series was forming in your minds, which came first the characters or the setting?

Kami: We knew right away that we wanted to write a Southern gothic.

Margie: We feel like the South is a place where magic can still happen, and we knew we wanted to set our book there. Then the words “sixteen moons” hit – then “casters” – then the ball started rolling…

Is Gatlin based on an actual town or is it a mish-mash of small southern towns?

Kami: We didn’t pattern it after a specific town, but it’s very similar to the small towns our families are from – and lots of small towns our readers are from. We call it the Casserole Belt.
Margie: But as we have traveled through the South, there are several towns that remind us of Gatlin. Moncks Corner in South Carolina and Beaufort in North Carolina would probably be the closest. It’s right by the real Summerville and the real Lake Moultrie.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Release date: December 1, 2009
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Age group: Young Adult
Format: Hardcover
Source: Purchased
Pages: 563
Buy: Fountain Bookstore / Amazon
Description: Fountain Bookstore
Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.
In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

Beautiful Creatures is a wild ride full of secrets, spellcasters, small-town prejudice, and, of course, romance. Before the end of Chapter 1 I loved it. By the time the action was in full swing I was having heart palpitations. When I finally reached the last page, I found myself itching for more.  

Garcia & Stohl have delivered a beautifully crafted southern gothic novel with a unique take on the paranormal set in a small Southern town that makes Mayberry look a little like a metropolis.

As a girl with roots in Virginia and North Carolina, I know my southerners. The behavior, the colloquialisms, the gossip, the kooky traditions, the skepticism and irrational fear of outsiders… Beautiful Creatures has it right, down to my favorite line.

“…Religion and superstition all mixed up, like only it can be in the South.”

It rang so true when I read it that I burst into laughter and didn’t stop smiling for hours afterwards. Statements like that one set the tone for this book - familiar, yet dark and otherworldly. Tiny bits of southern truth wrapped up in a paranormal tale that kept me turning pages.

Ethan's voice is clear and distinct. Lena's struggle to define who she is and take control of her life  is one everyone can relate to, caster or not. Beautiful Creatures touches on the themes of human existence from being an outcast to losing a loved one to the exploration of culture. I happily lost myself in it.

Note: I read this title prior to Wastepaper Prose officially becoming a book blog in 2010, but had not reviewed it to date.

Uncovered: The Near Witch

This ain't your grandma's cover reveal. Oh no!

Victoria Schwab, author of The Near Witch (August 2011), saw the cover art for her debut novel months ago and has been anxiously waiting to unveil it, but when she finally had the okay to share it with the world she ran into a snag. So there won't be a cover image on this post.

I know you're disappointed that there won't be a static image here for you to fawn over and debate, but Disney-Hyperion's policy of watermarking covers with a rather large "Cover Not Final" banner takes the shine off the cover reveal a bit. That's why there's not an extra large The Near Witch cover right below this paragraph.

But Victoria, genius that she is, decided to hold off. Instead of posting the watermarked image she waited for her ARCs and revealed the cover (and several other cool things) in true Victoria style.

That's right. She vlogged it!

Now that you've seen the beautiful cover, do you want to know more about the book? Of course you do. So here's the jacket blurb:

The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children.

If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company.

 There are no strangers in the town of Near.

These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life. But when an actual stranger—a boy who seems to fade like smoke—appears outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of these sayings is no longer true.

The next night, the children of Near start disappearing from their beds, and the mysterious boy falls under suspicion. Still, he insists on helping Lexi search for them. Something tells her she can trust him.
 As the hunt for the children intensifies, so does Lexi’s need to know—about the witch that just might be more than a bedtime story, about the wind that seems to speak through the walls at night, and about the history of this nameless boy.

 Part fairy tale, part love story, Victoria Schwab’s debut novel is entirely original yet achingly familiar: a song you heard long ago, a whisper carried by the wind, and a dream you won’t soon forget.

And, as if that wasn't enough, here's Victoria (or Victoria's mother) reading from the first chapter of The Near Witch.

Doesn't it sound awesome!? You're desperately searching for a way to order it right now you say? Well, luckily Amazon put it up for pre-order this week.

Click on Victoria to pre-order your copy!

Hunger Games Book 3 title & cover revealed!

Coming August 24, 2010 from Scholastic.

Read more at Scholastic's blog.