spinning blog tour - interview with author tillie walden

Today’s post is part of the blog tour for Tillie Walden’s illustrated memoir, Spinning. Walden is the author of one of my favorite webcomics, On A Sunbeam, and is a decorated comics artist as well as an all-around lovely person. Read on for an interview and a brief review of Spinning!

It seemed like one of the themes of this book was solitude and a sort of loneliness, even when deeply involved in a team sport. Do you/did you recognize that as you put together the story?

Honestly, no! I noticed it afterwards. Which is hilarious to me now. It’s amazing how blind we are to ourselves and our patterns. But I’m glad that comes out in the book. I think it’s very easy to believe that team sports are an endless show of camaraderie and togetherness, but I found it all extremely isolating. And I imagine I’m not the only person to feel that way. Ice rinks, to me, are also especially lonely places. They’re freezing cold, and they’re either full of bright lights or kind of stuck in the shadows. And those locker rooms were just depressing. Full of leftover air from the ice and stressed out girls in full make up.

Writing and illustrating a memoir means drawing younger you a lot - did you find that easy/difficult/in-between? Did you refer to pictures?

I didn’t use pictures to reference. I was pretty easy to draw, luckily. I had long blonde hair and glasses, and I just sort of ran with that. I knew going into it that my drawings of myself would be interpretations, so I was ok with any inaccuracies.

What's the last thing you read (aside from your own work), and what are you reading now?

Omg, I love this question. I wish people asked me this more. SO, the last thing I read was The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino, and it was totally amazing. But all the prose I read is almost entirely mystery or crime dramas. I’m a little obsessed. And currently I’m reading the next book after The Devotion of Suspect X, which is called Salvation of a Saint. They’re detective thrillers set in Tokyo. Come on, how could I not read this?

Tillie Walden is a two-time Ignatz Award–winning cartoonist from Austin, Texas. Born in 1996, she is a recent graduate from the Center for Cartoon Studies, a comics school in Vermont. Her comics include The End of Summer and I Love This Part, an Eisner Award nominee.

Interested in reading more about Spinning and Tillie? Check out the full tour schedule here, or just click on any of the links below!

9/11 — Tales of the Ravenous Reader
9/12 — Love is Not a Triangle
9/13 — The Book Rat
9/14 — YA Bibliophile
9/15 — Fiktshun
9/18 — Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia
9/19 — Book Crushin’
9/20 — YA Wednesdays

Have I convinced you to pick up Spinning yet? If not, check out my mini-review below!

Figure skating was Tillie Walden’s life. She woke before dawn for morning lessons, went straight to group practice after school, and spent weekends competing in glitter and tights. It was a central piece of her identity, her safe haven from the stress of school, bullies, and family. But as Tillie's interests evolve, from her growing passion for art to a first love realized with a new girlfriend, she begins to question how the close-minded world of figure skating fits in.

Poignant and captivating, this powerful graphic memoir captures what it's like to come of age, come out, and come to terms with leaving behind everything you used to know.

Tillie Walden grew up figure skating, and while she found success on the ice, she faced many challenges off it. Those awkward, weird, and sometimes wonderful young adult years are detailed in her beautifully illustrated graphic memoir, Spinning.

I identified strongly with Tillie’s experiences skating as both an individual and in a team – I was a competitive swimmer all the way through college. The isolation of competition, the gossip and enforced together-ness of the team all resonated. Pair that with Tillie’s scholastic struggles, her forays in youthful friendship, burgeoning artistic talent, and her relationship with her first girlfriend, and the book is brimming with all of the bits and pieces of life that seem to come at you 100mph during the teenage years. It’s not easy, of course, and Tillie’s experiences with bullies and worse are detailed as well. Tillie has written and illustrated not only her life from memory, but also a highly relatable book for teens and young women everywhere. It’s honest and beautiful and poignant and sad and all of the things that life is while you’re living it. I loved it.

Recommended for: young women ages 11 and up, especially introverts, artists, and those into sports.

Fine print: I received an advance copy of this title for review consideration. I did not receive any compensation for this post.

interview with molly knox ostertag - comics extravaganza blog tour

Today’s post is part of First Second’s Comics Extravaganza blog tour. It features an interview with the super-talented Molly Knox Ostertag. Ostertag did the art for one of my favorite books of the year, Shattered Warrior, and both wrote and illustrated one of my most anticipated 2017 reads, The Witch Boy. Read on to learn more about her!

I’ve been reviewing (and reading!) more graphic novels, and I’ve been so lucky to find not only fun books, but also discover brilliant artists. From Alex Puvilland, the artist behind Scott Westerfeld’s magnificent Spill Zone, to Matt Phelan (Snow White), to Andrea Offermann, I’ve been checking out and getting a feeling for different art styles in young adult graphic novels. And today I get to feature an interview with Molly Knox Ostertag – I couldn’t be more excited. Check it:

Tell us your first memory of reading a comic or graphic novel.

My very first comic books were the Tintin comics. For some reason we only had the French editions in our house, but Hergé is such a clear and dynamic cartoonist, so I could follow the action perfectly even without understanding the words. In high school, The Sandman series showed me that adult comics didn't have to be exclusively about superheroes, and I was hooked! 

What's your favorite comic or graphic novel, and what do you love about it?

This is one of those impossible questions, but one I think about a lot is THAT ONE SUMMER by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki. I love how the story is structured, the drawings are detailed and gorgeous and restful and full of atmosphere, and I appreciate how it's a young adult book that doesn't talk down to its readers.

Tell us a little about your latest graphic novel. 

I have two out this year. SHATTERED WARRIOR, out from First Second, is a collaboration with fantasy/sci fi romance novelist Sharon Shinn, and is about survival and finding love in a dystopian society ruled by tyrannical aliens. THE WITCH BOY, out from Scholastic this fall, is my first solo project, a story about a boy who wants to become a witch, even though in his family traditionally only women are allowed to be witches. 

What comic or graphic novel are you reading now? 

I just read ROLLER GIRL by Victoria Jamieson because I'm trying to catch myself up on all the excellent middle-grade graphic novels that have come out in the past few years. I loved it! It's a sweet and boisterous story about roller derby and pre-teen friendships with a moral that I really appreciated. 

Molly Knox Ostertag grew up in the forests of upstate New York and read far too many fantasy books as a child. She studied cartooning at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and now lives in Los Angeles, where she enjoys the beach year-round but misses good bagels. While at school she started drawing the award-winning webcomic Strong Female Protagonist, which continues to update and be published through Kickstarter and Top Shelf Comics. She draws comics about tough girls, sensitive boys, history, magic, kissing, superpowers, and feelings. mollyostertag.com

Interested in reading more from comics authors and artists? Check out the full tour info here, or just click on any of the links below!

7/10 – YA Bibliophile interviews Shannon Hale

7/10 – Fiction Fare interviews Tillie Walden

7/11 – A Backwards Story interviews Landis Blair

7/11 – Bluestocking Thinking interviews Mike Lawrence

7/12 – Book Crushin interviews MK Reed

7/12 – Miss Print interviews Scott Westerfeld

7/12 – Ex Libris Kate interviews Box Brown

7/13 – Love Is Not a Triangle interviews Nick Abadzis

7/13 – I’d So Rather Be Reading interviews Alison Wilgus

7/14 – The Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia interviews Molly Ostertag

7/14 – Adventures of a Book Junkie interviews Nidhi Chanani

Oh, and if you haven’t checked out Shattered Warrior yet, you totally should! Here’s the synopsis (or read my review!):

It is ten years after Colleen Cavanaugh's home world was invaded by the Derichets, a tyrannical alien race bent on exploiting the planet's mineral resources.

Most of her family died in the war, and she now lives alone in the city. Aside from her acquaintances at the factory where she toils for the Derichets, Colleen makes a single friend in Jann, a member of the violent group of rebels known as the Chromatti. One day Colleen receives shocking news: her niece Lucy is alive and in need of her help. Together, Colleen, Jann, and Lucy create their own tenuous family.

But Colleen must decide if it's worth risking all of their survival to join a growing underground revolution against the Derichets.

lady of magick blog tour: author interview & giveaway

Today at Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia I’m interviewing Sylvia Izzo Hunter, author of (the absolutely fantastic debut) The Midnight Queen and its follow-up Lady of Magick. These books are my version of bookish catnip - completely irresistible, lovely, and smart all in one go. Check out the end of the post for your chance to win a copy of Lady of Magick!

Sylvia Izzo Hunter was born in Calgary, Alberta, back in the days before Star Wars, and started making up stories at approximately the time she learned to talk. A couple of decades ago she moved to Toronto, Ontario, where she now lives with her husband and daughter and their slightly out-of-control collections of books, comics, and DVDs. She studied English and French literature (with a particular focus on medieval and Renaissance poetry and drama) at York University; she has since discovered that her mom was right: in order to be a functioning grown-up, you really do need to know how to do math.

Over the course of her working life Sylvia has been a slinger of tacos, a filer of patient charts and answerer of phones, a freelance looker-up of unconsidered trifles, an Orff-singing stage monk, and an exam tutor, but has mostly worked in not-for-profit scholarly publishing, where she started out making lots of photocopies and now gets to make XML and EPUB files (which is more fun). She also sings in two choirs (including the Orpheus Choir of Toronto), reads as much as possible, knits (mostly hats), and engages in experimental baking.

Sylvia’s favourite Doctor is Tom Baker, her favourite pasta shape is rotini, and her favourite Beethoven symphony is the Seventh.

What was the most surprising/strange thing you learned while doing research for The Midnight Queen?

OK, given the cover of the book, hopefully it's not spoilery to say there's an owl in it? Anyway there's an owl, so I did some research on owls generally, and on this particular type of owl -- it's a Great Grey Owl, Strix nebulosa lapponica; the owl on the cover I'm pretty sure is a barn owl, but isn't it beautiful? -- so I would have a clue about things like its wingspan, what its various calls sound like, how big it is, and so on. And wow, SO MUCH of an owl is just feathers! Inside the feathers, an owl's body is kind of a stereotypical vulture shape, with the switchbacked neck. It's a bit disconcerting actually.

Who do you think is the perfect/ideal/likely reader for your books?

Hmm. Good question! Well, I think you're likely to enjoy them if you like your fantasy to have some romance in it, and your romance to have some fantasy in it; if you enjoy the occasional explosion, but also enjoy watching a story unfold at a more leisurely pace; and if you like your historical novels to take a quite creative approach to history...

Also, this book isn't categorized as YA, but I think any YA reader who can enjoy Jane Austen might also like The Midnight Queen [and Lady of Magick]. The youngest reader of TMQ that I know of so far is twelve. She had some Serious Questions for me about my use of Greek and Roman mythology.

What is one fantasy novel I absolutely must read?

Well, I could make a lot of recommendations, but if I had to pick just one: you absolutely must read Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold. The setting is based on mediaeval Spain, the protagonist is a 40-year-old widow whose family keeps trying to protect her from herself, and it's got fighting, sorcery, explosions, cunning plans, romance, trickery, and a god with a naughty sense of humour. And it's Bujold, so you know every sentence, every word in fact, is right where it should be.

I see that you read a lot of SFF YA. What's one recent YA book that you wish had been around when you were a teenager?

Wow, so many! (I do wish I'd known about Tamora Pierce's early books when I was a teenager: way better role models than Piers Anthony!) But I'm going to pick Holly Black's Faerie books, and particularly the middle one, Valiant, which is about seeing past the surfaces of people, including yourself.

If you could host a dinner for fictional literary characters, who would you invite, and what would you serve?

So first I'm going to pretend that I'm not really, really shy IRL, and could actually do this thing. OK … Go!

I would definitely invite some people from Jane Austen's Persuasion: Anne, Frederick, and Admiral and Mrs. Croft. (And I would beg, borrow, or steal a piano so that Anne could play it and we could all sing.) Also, I would have Miles and Ekaterin and Aral and Cordelia and Ivan from Bujold's Vorkosigan books, and of course Ista dy Chalion from Paladin of Souls. I would very much like to have Will Laurence and Temeraire from Naomi Novik's Temeraire books, but I'm already not sure where I'm going to put all these people, never mind a fully grown Celestial dragon!  Possibly we could have the dinner party on the roof of the building, but even so. I'd invite Door, from Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, and she could finally finish reading Mansfield Park. Carmichael and Jack from Jo Walton's Small Change series, and Patricia from My Real Children. Hermione Granger, because Hermione is awesome and my daughter would enjoy hanging out with her. Ned and Verity from Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog, and the long-suffering Badri.  And some detectives: Roderick Alleyn and his wife, Troy; Albert Campion; George and Bunty Felse, and their son, Dominic, and his girlfriend, Tossa;  and Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. And Angela Carter's Dora and Nora Chance, to liven things right up.

I have no idea what all these people might like to eat, so I expect I'd make an enormous pot of marinara sauce, cook an unbelievable amount of spaghetti, do several French loaves of garlic bread, and throw a few thingies of spring mix in a big bowl, which is what I usually feed people when they come over (you know, unless it's Thanksgiving or Passover or something). But I would make something fancy for dessert, because that's how I roll :)

What books are on your nightstand (or your to-be-read list) right now?

Oooohhh I really need to make some reading time!

Currently reading The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley and Lex Talionis by R.S.A. Garcia.

In the official TBR pile:

Kari Sperring, The Grass King's Concubine

People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish SF & Fantasy, ed. Rachel Swirsky & Sean Wallace

Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs Aliens, ed. Patricia Bray & Joshua Palmatier

Anton Strout, Deader Still

Caitlin Sweet, The Door in the Mountain

Christopher Moore, Sacré Bleu

Plants vs Zombies: The Official Guide to PROTECTING YOUR BRAINS (It was a present, okay?)

Cassandra Clare, City of Bones

The Walking Dead, Compendium Two (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Cliff Rathburn)

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Thanks so much for sharing your answers, Sylvia!  Now a bit more about Lady of Magick (plus that giveaway!)...

Sylvia Izzo Hunter brought “both rural Brittany and an alternative Regency England to vivid life” in The Midnight Queen, her debut novel of history, magic, and myth. Now, in her new Noctis Magicae novel, Sophie and Gray Marshall are ensnared in an arcane plot that threatens to undo them both.

In her second year of studies at Merlin College, Oxford, Sophie Marshall is feeling alienated among fellow students who fail to welcome a woman to their ranks. So when her husband, Gray, is invited north as a visiting lecturer at the University in Din Edin, they leap at the chance. There, Sophie’s hunger for magical knowledge can finally be nourished. But soon, Sophie must put her newly learned skills to the test.

Sophie returns home one day to find a note from Gray—he’s been summoned urgently to London. But when he doesn’t return, and none of her spells can find a trace of him, she realizes something sinister has befallen him. With the help of her sister, Joanna, she delves into Gray’s disappearance, and soon finds herself in a web of magick and intrigue that threatens not just Gray, but the entire kingdom.

Would you like a copy of the book for yourself?  You're in luck!  The publisher will send a finished copy to one lucky winner.  To enter, simply fill out the FORM.  Giveaway open internationally, will end on Friday, September 25 at 11:59pm EST.  Winner will be selected randomly and notified via email.  Good luck!

Fine print: I did not receive any compensation for this post, and the publisher will provide the giveaway prize.

zita the spacegirl author interview with ben hatke

Author and illustrator Ben Hatke is here today at Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia for an interview.  His middle grade graphic novel Zita the Spacegirl is the first in a sci-fi comics trilogy that features a young heroine saving the day... and the planet. The third book, The Return of Zita the Spacegirl, was released by First Second (Macmillan) on May 13, 2014. 

Ben Hatke's first graphic novel was Zita the Spacegirl. He has published comics stories in the Flight series as well as Flight Explorer.  In addition to writing and drawing comics, he also paints in the naturalist tradition and, occasionally, performs one-man fire shows.

Hatke lives and works in the Shenandoah Valley with his wife and their boisterous pack of daughters.  You can learn more on his author website.

Welcome Ben!

You have four girls of your own.  Did any of their antics inspire Zita's adventures?

Their crazy antics definitely inspire me but I think the two handiest things about having a pack of little girls is 

1) that I have an immediate audience of different ages all checking up on my work. They are often my first story critics and it's great to talk to them about whatever I'm working on because they always let me know if story points are confusing, or if jokes fall flat.

and 2) I have a bunch of little models of various ages running around. Sketching kids is a fantastic exercise, and because they really don't sit still you learn to draw fast -- catch things in as few lines as possible. In fact the book I'm working on now stars a 6-year-old girl, and I've caught a lot of poses from my own 6-year-old.

What is your favorite Zita quality?

I think it's her temper. She has this terrible sense of justice and she ends up being kind of a dangerous enemy when she's angry.

Who/what are your influences in comics and prose?

That's a rather looong list, but I'll name a few of the big ones. In prose I'd say Roald Dahl was a big one, as was G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, Neil Gaiman, Randall Jarrell...

Artistically, there's the intersection of Jim Henson and Brian Froud, Maurice Sendak and Trina Schart Hyman, Arthur Rackham and Howard Pyle.... And funny enough, I'm still very much inspired by the Italian Renaissance because it was a time of such explosive creativity when the idea of the artist and the inventor were often very much the same. 

What are you working on right now? 

Right now I am working on a book called Little Robot. It's about a young girl and a small robot and their very particular friendship over the course of a summer. It takes place in locations based on places near my own house so I've been able to go out and sketch from life quite a bit and take a lot of reference photos. It's been a really fun project.

What's one book you read as an adult that you wish had been around when you were a kid?

You know, I feel like there were more books that actually were around when I was a kid but that I just didn't know about. Jeff Smith's Bone was around when I was a teenager. WHY DIDN'T ANYBODY TELL ME?

What is one sci-fi classic I absolutely MUST read?

Oh man... I wish I had some little-known gem... If you haven't actually read The Time Machine then do that even if just for the crabs. And this might not qualify as a classic, but one book I've really enjoyed is The Draco Tavern by Larry Niven. It's like a whole book of the Star Wars cantina scene.

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Thank you for taking the time to answer those questions, Ben!  I thoroughly enjoyed Zita’s adventures (see my review of the first in the series here), especially the mix of humor and friendship, and the subtle homages to sci-fi in pop culture.  I can’t wait to see where your next book takes us!

Ben Hatke brings back our intrepid space heroine for another delightful sci-fi/fantasy adventure in this New York Times‑bestselling graphic novel trilogy for middle grade readers.

Zita the Spacegirl has saved planets, battled monsters, and wrestled with interplanetary fame. But she faces her biggest challenge yet in the third and final installment of the Zita adventures. Wrongfully imprisoned on a penitentiary planet, Zita has to plot the galaxy's greatest jailbreak before the evil prison warden can execute his plan of interstellar domination!

Fine print: I received the Zita the Spacegirl trilogy for honest review from the publisher.  I did not receive any compensation for this post.

the mark of the dragonfly blog tour: author interview with jaleigh johnson

Author Jaleigh Johnson is here today at Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia for an interview.  Her middle grade debut The Mark of the Dragonfly combines steampunk, an epic train ride, and a wholly magical adventure.  The Mark of the Dragonfly was released by Delacorte (Penguin Random House) on March 25^th, 2014.

Jaleigh Johnson is a lifelong reader, gamer, and moviegoer. She loves nothing better than to escape into fictional worlds and take part in fantastic adventures. She lives and writes in the wilds of the Midwest, but you can visit her online at www.jaleighjohnson.com or on Twitter @JaleighJohnson.

Welcome Jaleigh!

The Mark of the Dragonfly has been described as steampunk and sci-fi.  What is your favorite thing about writing steampunk/sci-fi?

Well, the “steam” parts were a lot of fun to write, especially the 401 train and its defenses, but I think my favorite thing about writing the steampunk elements of The Mark of the Dragonfly is that I was able to explore the impact of an industrial revolution when combined with an age of exploration. I think that’s more of the “punk” part of the equation. I wanted to write a book where these two forces—exploration and technology—collided and left the world struggling over limited resources, how that would create its own class system, and how it would impact people like Piper, who are at the bottom.

What is the most interesting discovery you made while researching The Mark of the Dragonfly?

I think the most interesting (and unsettling) discovery I made was that as much as I love trains, when I started writing I knew very little about how steam engines work, so that was a huge hurdle to overcome. I also had no idea how dangerous early rail travel could be, or that some people were afraid of the effect that travelling at those high speeds would have on the human body. And by “high speeds” they were talking about anything over 13 miles per hour! For that fact, and many others, I owe a lot to The Railroad Passenger Car by August Mencken.

What are you favorite middle grade/YA speculative fiction titles, aside from your own?

I love Madeleine L’Engle’s books, my favorite being A Wrinkle in Time, and anything written by Robin McKinley, especially Beauty, Rose Daughter, and The Hero and the Crown.

Do you have any hidden (or not so hidden) superpowers?

Hmm, that’s a hard one. Most people are surprised when I tell them that my day job is doing tax and accounting work. Hehe, maybe it’s a superpower to be able to balance all those numbers and words in my head at once. It can be maddening too, though.

What are you reading right now?

At the moment, I’m reading Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo and loving it. Talk about superpowers. Super-powered squirrels for the win. 

What new(ish) book do you wish you'd read as a kid (or at least earlier in life)?

Good question. I’m going to cheat a little because this isn’t new. But more than a specific book, I really wish I’d discovered Diana Wynne Jones when I was younger. I came to her books just a few years ago with Howl’s Moving Castle. I love her writing now, but I would have loved it when I was a kid too. It just goes to show how many amazing books there are out there to discover. I know I’ll never find them all, but it doesn’t stop me from trying.

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Thank you for joining us, Jaleigh!  I too love Robin McKinley and Diana Wynne Jones – you have wonderful taste in books.  *grin*

Fans of The City of Ember will love The Mark of the Dragonfly, an adventure story set in a magical world that is both exciting and dangerous.

Piper has never seen the Mark of the Dragonfly until she finds the girl amid the wreckage of a caravan in the Meteor Fields.

The girl doesn't remember a thing about her life, but the intricate tattoo on her arm is proof that she's from the Dragonfly Territories and that she's protected by the king. Which means a reward for Piper if she can get the girl home.

The one sure way to the Territories is the 401, a great old beauty of a train. But a ticket costs more coin than Piper could make in a year. And stowing away is a difficult prospect--everyone knows that getting past the peculiar green-eyed boy who stands guard is nearly impossible.

Life for Piper just turned dangerous. A little bit magical. And very exciting, if she can manage to survive the journey.

Fine print: I received an e-ARC of The Mark of the Dragonfly from the publisher for honest review. This post is not sponsored in any way.

the creature department author interview + giveaway

Today’s post features an interview with Robert Paul Weston, author of The Creature Department, and a giveaway.  The Creature Department is a middle grade novel/collaboration between Weston, the folks at Razorbill (Penguin) and Framestore, creators of Dobby from Harry Potter and the Geico gecko.  The Creature Department was released by Razorbill on November 5, 2013.

Robert Paul Weston is the British-born Canadian author of Zorgamazoo, Dust City, and Prince Puggly of Spud and the Kingdom of Spiff, along with recent release (just this past Tuesday!) The Creature Department.  He currently lives in London, England, and you can follow him on twitter or find him on Goodreads.

Have any experiences in your everyday life prepared you for the job of making up marvelous monsters?  Which ones?

I live in London, England, on the east side of the city, where there is a large amount of street art. In my neighbourhood, a simple walk to the library takes you past capering creatures of all shapes and sizes. They are painted on the walls of tall buildings as well as hidden in the shadowy crags of back alleyways. I discover new ones nearly everyday and, if you are in the right frame of mind, they are always inspiring. I often take photographs of them and post them on my website. You can see some of them here: http://robertpaulweston.com/blog/london-street-art/ 

Did you have to do any specific research on monsters/creatures?  What was your most interesting and/or disgusting discovery?

Of course I research! It's a writer's lifeblood, no matter what you're writing. Perhaps my favourite find is a rare creature called the Gillygalloo. Details about its appearance are sketchy and vary somewhat, but I've come to understand it's a part-fish, part-bird creature that lays valuable square-shaped eggs. Also interesting is the fact that it originates in North Eastern American and Quebecois lumberjack mythology.

What are your favorite young adult or middle grade speculative fiction titles (aside from your own)?

Skellig by David Almond

Momo by Michael Ende

Young Adult Novel by Daniel Pinkwater

What I Was by Meg Rosoff

House of Stairs by William Sleator

Do you have any hidden (or not so hidden) superpowers?

I can speak to inanimate objects. They are excellent listeners.

What are you reading right now?

On Familiar Terms by Donald Keene

Thanks so much for answering those questions, Robert!  Skellig has been on my to-read list for ages, but now I know I’ve got to get to it sooner rather than later. 

Think you might like to read The Creature Department?  Enter the giveaway!  Two (2) entrants will win finished copies of the book.  To enter, simply fill out the FORM.  Earn up to two (2) extra entries by commenting on this interview post and/or my review post.  Giveaway open internationally, will end at 11:59pm EST on November 22, 2013.  Winners will be selected at random and notified via email.  Good luck!

It’s a tentacled, inventive, gooey, world in there...

Elliot Von Doppler and his friend Leslie think nothing ever happens in Bickleburgh, except inside the gleaming headquarters of DENKi-3000—the world’s eighth-largest electronics factory.

Beneath the glass towers and glittering skywalks, there's a rambling old mansion from which all the company’s amazing inventions spring forth. And no one except Uncle Archie knows what’s behind the second-to-last door at the end of the hall.

Until Elliot and Leslie are invited to take a glimpse inside.

They find stooped, troll-like creatures with jutting jaws and broken teeth. Tiny winged things that sparkle as they fly. And huge, hulking, hairy nonhumans (with horns). It is unlike anything they’ve ever seen.

But when Chuck Brickweather threatens to shut down the DENKi-3000 factory if a new product isn’t presented soon, the creatures know they are in danger. And when Uncle Archie vanishes, it’s up to Elliot, Leslie, and every one of the unusual, er, “employees” to create an invention so astonishing it will save the Creature Department.

Fine print: I am providing/mailing the giveaway prizes (or ordering them from The Book Depository), and did not receive any compensation for this post.

zenn scarlett: author interview & giveaway

Young adult sci-fi is hitting the big time, and I am one hundred percent behind the trend.  I’m trying to read more YA sci-fi in 2013, so when I heard about Christian Schoon’s Zenn Scarlett, a book featuring a girl living in a cloister on Mars and learning to be an alien veterinarian, I knew I had to learn more.  Zenn is one of the most fascinating and unique sci-fi books I’ve ever picked up.  Joining me today for an interview is Christian Schoon, the author who created Zenn Scarlett (and stay tuned until the end – there’ll be a giveaway!).

Born in the American Midwest, Christian started his writing career in earnest as an in-house writer at the Walt Disney Company in Burbank. He then became a freelance writer working for various film, home video and animation studios in Los Angeles. After moving from LA to a farmstead in Iowa several years ago, he continues to freelance and also now helps re-hab wildlife and foster abused/neglected horses. He acquired his amateur-vet knowledge interacting with animals ranging from black bears and cougars to Burmese pythons, alligators and other exotic and local critters.

1) Your book features Zenn Scarlett (she of title fame), who is studying to be an exoveterinarian.  How did you decide to feature alien veterinary science?

 Two-part answer: 1. I’ve been a deeply ardent science fiction consumer since grade school (anyone remember “Rusty’s Space Ship”  illustrated and written by Evelyn Sibley Lampman? A masterpiece of genuine all-wooden spacecraft adventure, to my 4th grade mind.) And 2. I’ve also been an animal person from my earliest memories. More recently, after moving to a farmstead with lots of pastures, barns and outbuildings, I started volunteering with several different horse rescue and wildlife rehab groups. So, I found myself interacting with veterinarians and accumulating some amateur vet know-how. Zenn Scarlett is the love-child of these two passions.

2) I'm sure you had to do extensive research for this book, because even though it features alien biology, it's still biology.  What was a surprising/disgusting/extremely cool discovery you made while writing Zenn Scarlett's story?

Actually, writing the “biology” sections of the book took less research than some of the “Martian environment sections.” My long-term interest in animals also included a fascination with the astounding organic machinery that makes life work. I mean, if you stop and give serious thought to the details of what your own body doing right this second, it borders on the incomprehensible. How your eyes have adaptive lenses to deliver this picture of the world to the retina and zip it along to the parts of the brain that construct what you’re seeing on the screen in front of you, how your heart moves blood through miles of veins and arteries, how the arteries grew along their miles of pathways in the first place, the way evolution basically took sea water and, over a few millions of millions of years, morphed that water into blood… I could go on. And on. But, it was of course enjoyable to extrapolate known biologies into the alienesque, stealing from a prehistoric architecture of, say, a plesiosaur and incorporating it into something like a Tanduan swamp sloo. That sort of blending is always cool. As for disgusting, what happens when Zenn administers a vaccination to a big, lumbering yote comes from experience with animals that have a crop, like some birds of prey. They hold food in the crop for a while before swallowing it. Zenn should’ve stood a little further back after giving Ernie his shot….

3) I know you are a big fan of sci-fi - what are your favorite YA sci-fi titles?

 Just a few faves would be Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, the classic Edgar Rich Burrough’s Princess of Mars/John Carter Barsoom books (and, unlike some, I thought Disney’s John Carter was a grand movie in the swash-and-buckle genre), Jonathan Howard’s Katya’s World, A Wrinkle in Time, Revis’s Across the Universe, Kim Curran’s Shift, too many more to remember, let alone name!  

4) Do you have any hidden (or not so hidden) superpowers?

 My superpower, bestowed on me by the color of Earth’s moon since the moonlight on my homeworld is paisley, is the ability to understand the languages of most animals. It turns out that, much of the time, they’re saying “Treat-Monkey! You are SO not getting me any food right now. What’s up with THAT?”

5) If you could host a dinner party for any fictional literary characters, who would you invite and what would you serve?

Well, let’s keep this initial gathering small and intimate, so that everyone gets a chance to speak up…

I’d send out invitations to Merlin from T.H. White’s The Once and Future King (because, well, MERLIN!),  Ford Prefect from HHGTTG (this guy has been places and I wanna hear about ‘em), the gruff-but-irresistible polar bear Iorek Byrnison (I wanna hear whatever he’s got to say),  Jones, the war vet from Neuromancer (I hear he cleaned up his act and is now counseling other dolphins) and, of course, Death from The Book Thief, because I have some questions for him. I’d serve my world-famous, simmered-all-afternoon rigatoni Bolognese. Crème brûlée for dessert.  Champagne for everyone. Except Death. Sorry, but why chance it?

6) What books are on your nightstand (or wherever you keep your to-read pile) right now?


I’ve only got a few that are physically on the nightstand right now: Redshirts by Scalzi and Ashfall by Mike Mullin (who was kind enough to give Zenn Scarlett a really marvelous endorsement). In ebookery, I’m chomping at the bit to dig into my advance copy of T.L. Costa’s SF thriller Playing Tyler. And I also need to snap up E.C. Meyer’s Fair Coin and Quantum Coin, which have such a grand premise: what if your choices in life had a re-do button?

Thanks for answering those questions, Christian!  If you’d like to learn more about Christian, check out his website or follow him on twitter.  Zenn Scarlett will be released by Strange Chemistry/Angry Robot Books on May 7, 2013. 

Want a copy of Zenn Scarlett for yourself?  Enter the giveaway!  Simply fill out the FORM.  One winner will receive a copy of the book courtesy of the folks at Strange Chemistry.  Giveaway open internationally, will end at 11:59pm EST on May 6, 2013.  Winner will be selected randomly and notified via email.  Prize provided and mailed by publisher.  Good luck!

Fine print: giveaway courtesy of Strange Chemistry.

a natural history of dragons: author interview & giveaway

As part of the blog tour for A Natural History of Dragons, which I thought was “fascinating, uncommon, and full of unexpected bits of alternate world society trivia,” I’m interviewing author Marie Brennan today and hosting a giveaway (courtesy of the kind folks at Tor).

Marie Brennan is a former academic with a background in archaeology, anthropology, and folklore, which she now puts to rather cockeyed use in writing fantasy. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to many short stories and novellas, she is also the author of A Star Shall Fall and With Fate Conspire (both from Tor Books), as well as Warrior, Witch, Midnight Never Come, In Ashes Lie, and Lies and Prophecy. You can find her online at SwanTower.com or follow her on twitter.

On to the interview!

1) A Natural History of Dragons is clearly a dragon book, but it's also a fictional memoir.  Did both of those story elements occur to you at the same time?

Very nearly. I actually thought first about running it as a role-playing game; one of the inspirations was the D&D supplement Draconomicon, and I wondered what it would be like if you had D&D characters going around trying to study dragons, instead of killing them and taking their stuff. But within about half an hour, I was also thinking of it as a novel, and the novel ended up winning out. The memoir voice followed naturally from the setting.

2) Your books are always meticulously researched, and you have an academic background in history, archaeology, myth and folklore.  What types of sources did you delve into for this (slightly) more scientific fantasy?

I tried to take it a bit easier this time, compared to the Onyx Court series . . . which means I only read, y’know, a small stack of books on Eastern Europe, Victorian fossil-hunters, Judaism, and so on. Plus random questions about chemistry, early rappelling techniques -- oh, and the climatology reading that went into figuring out the map and the weather.

I appear to be constitutionally incapable of taking it easy.

3) You've mentioned previously that you'd like to write YA.  I think that A Natural History fits as a YA/adult 'crossover.'  Do you have any projects in mind/coming to fruition that are purely YA?

Interesting you should say that; I actually wondered at one point whether this could work as a YA. The first book probably could, but since the series is going to continue on through Isabella’s life, it will move out of YA territory pretty fast, in terms of her age and what kinds of issues she’s dealing with.

As for your question, I tend to keep future projects under wraps until they become definite, but I do have several things potentially in the works. And Lies and Prophecy, my first novel with the Book View Cafe, is right on the YA border, too -- the protagonists of that one are in college.

art by Todd Lockwood

And now for a bit of fun...

4) Do you have any hidden (or not-so-hidden) superpowers?

I can find things. People will be looking for something they've dropped or mislaid, searching all over the place, and I'll find it in about five seconds.

5) If you could host a dinner party for fictional literary characters, who would you invite and what would you serve?

Oh, yikes. I could spend months wibbling over this -- there are so many great characters, but then the ones I find the most compelling aren’t necessarily the ones I’d want to have at dinner, and then of course I start wondering how they would get along . . . but I’ll say that Francis Crawford of Lymond, from Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles, could be relied upon to make lively dinner table conversation.

6) What books are on your nightstand (or wherever you keep your "to read" pile) right now?

I actively avoid keeping a pile or anything in that vein; the size of it would only depress me. My unread books are shelved with the ones I’ve read, and I just pull things out as they strike my fancy. But since I mentioned Dunnett above, I’ll say that I’ve started reading her House of Niccolo series, and am looking forward to the next book.

Thanks so much for answering those questions, Marie!  I shall have to read the Lymond Chronicles and meet Francis for myself.

Finally… a GIVEAWAY! I have three hardcover copies of A Natural History of Dragons to offer to you, my lovely readers. To enter, simply fill out the FORM. One extra entry will be granted to those who leave a comment on this interview post. Giveaway open internationally, will end on March 3rd, 2013 at 11:59pm EST. Giveaway winners will be selected randomly and notified via email. Prizes are provided and shipped by the publisher. Good luck!

Fine print: giveaway prizes courtesy of Tor (Macmillan).

bbaw 2012 interview swap (+ giveaway) – as usual, i need more bookshelves

Here we are, on my favorite day of Book Blogger Appreciation Week – interview swap day!  Allow me to introduce Elizabeth, of As Usual, I Need More Bookshelves.  Isn’t that blog name genius?  I think that exact thing to myself every couple of months.  Elizabeth has kindly answered my questions (and if you read through to the end, you’ll find a giveaway!).  You can check out my answers to Elizabeth’s interview here.

What's your story, in three sentences?

I'm a wife, mom, sister, daughter, friend, and avid reader. I don't feel like I have time to be any of them enough. My life tends to be completely crazy, and yet it's the best life I could ask for.

Five favorite books?

(note - this list is subject to change based on my current emotional state, and the reliability of my memory. *grin*)

The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd

The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins

Are there any genres you refuse to read?

Self-help. I can't stand them. Those types of books make my teeth grate. And I don't technically REFUSE to read westerns, but I honestly can't remember the last time I did.

Do you have any hidden (or not-so-hidden) superpowers?

I think carrying two two-year-olds up and down a flight of stairs without dropping them counts as a superpower, right??

If you could invite any literary characters to a dinner party, who would you invite, and what would be the party theme?

Two of my favorite heroines are Anne from the Anne of Green Gables series, and Katniss from the Hunger Games trilogy. I'd love to have them both together for an evening - Anne is all hopes and dreams, and Katniss is all down-to-earth practicality. I don't know if they would love each other or detest each other, but I'd love to get them together. We could have an "Iron Chef" party - the secret ingredients could be rabbits and brown sugar, and I bet the results would be hilarious!

You're trapped on a desert island. Which books do you NOT want with you?

Huckleberry Finn. Ulysses. The Five Agreements.

Give me your best: one book I must read, one book blog I must visit, and one thing I should never say to strangers.

You MUST read The Lions of Al-Rassan. It's fantasy wrapped in history wrapped in an incredible love story. My mom (who doesn't read fantasy)  even liked it, and it's the novel I want to read over and over again.

You MUST visit BookLust - http://www.aartichapati.com/. Aarti is constantly reading something that sounds interesting, and I've read some fantastic books by following her recommendations. I don't have time to read nearly as many blogs as I'd like, but hers is one I keep up with whenever possible.

One thing you should NEVER say to strangers - So, what do you think about the current vampire situation in Congress?

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Thanks Elizbeth!  I think your superpower definitely counts, and wouldn’t you know it, I hate self-help books too.  I haven’t read The Lions of Al-Rassan, but I’m convinced I should give it a try – and so should everyone visiting! 

Hauntingly evocative of medieval Spain, The Lions of Al-Rassan is both a brilliant adventure and a deeply compelling story of love, divided loyalties, and what happens to men and women when hardening beliefs begin to remake — or destroy — a world.

If you’d like to win one paperback or ebook copy of Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Lions of Al-Rassan, simply fill out the FORM.  Giveaway open internationally, will end on September 15, 2012 at 11:59pm EST.  Winner will be selected randomly and notified via email.  Good luck!