(EM Castellan – New York City – 2009)… and I’m going to New York City for a week! As a result, I won’t be posting on this blog and I won’t be on Twitter much, but I promise to resume all my online activities when I return!
In the meantime, happy reading, and/or happy writing!
I love sharing stories where authors have had a writing dream since they were very young. Maybe they started with poetry or a short story. Perhaps they’d written a novel filled with hopes and ideas from their childhood. Whatever the case, as they grew into adults they held onto that dream until it became a reality. Today’s featured author, EM Castellan, is one of these cases. Writing since 13, she recently signed with an agent for her YA Historical Fantasy, LILY IN THE SHADOWS, a dark tale set in London in the late nineteenth century. EM is proof that if you hold tight to your dreams, they CAN come true!
Many thanks to EM for sharing her story…
Amy: When did you complete your first Young Adult manuscript?
EM: In January 2010. I had been writing for many years (since I was 13) and very few people had read my stories. Then…
View original post 984 more words
Hello gentle reader,
Today I’m waiting on THE FOREVER SONG (Blood of Eden #3) by Julie Kagawa (expected publication: 15th April 2014 by Harlequin Teen). I enjoyed the first two books in this YA Fantasy trilogy (although THE IMMORTAL RULES was a bit slow-paced, THE ETERNITY CURE really grabbed me). And now I can’t wait to read the finale and find out what will happen to Allie and Zeke!
From Goodreads:
VENGEANCE WILL BE HERS
Allison Sekemoto once struggled with the question: human or monster?
With the death of her love, Zeke, she has her answer.
MONSTER
Allie will embrace her cold vampire side to hunt down and end Sarren, the psychopathic vampire who murdered Zeke. But the trail is bloody and long, and Sarren has left many surprises for Allie and her companions—her creator, Kanin, and her blood brother, Jackal. The trail is leading straight to the one place they must protect at any cost—the last vampire-free zone on Earth, Eden. And Sarren has one final, brutal shock in store for Allie.
In a ruined world where no life is sacred and former allies can turn on you in one heartbeat, Allie will face her darkest days. And if she succeeds, triumph is short-lived in the face of surviving forever alone.
“Waiting On Wednesday” is a weekly event, hosted by book blogger Breaking The Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.
Have you read The Immortal Rules and The Eternity Cure? Is The Forever Song on your TBR list? What are you waiting on this week?
It’s no secret THE QUEEN’S THIEF series by Megan Whalen Turner is my favourite YA Fantasy series of all time. If you haven’t read these books yet, I’d like to convince you to do so today.
What is this series?
There are 6 books planned in THE QUEEN’S THIEF series and four of them are already out: THE THIEF (published in 1996 and awarded a Newbery Honor in 1997), THE QUEEN OF ATTOLIA (published in 2000), THE KING OF ATTOLIA (published in 2006) and A CONSPIRACY OF KINGS (published in 2010). Additionally, two short stories have also been published as extra content: EDDIS (2007) and DESTRUCTION (2011).
What is it about?
Eugenides (or Gen) is the main character of this series, although he isn’t always its focus or its narrator. He is “The Thief” from Book 1 and we follow his journey from the prison of Sounis to the court…
View original post 202 more words
Hello gentle reader,
If you’re here to enter my 600 Blog Followers Giveaway for a chance to win a copy of HALF BAD by Sally Green, please click here.
This week, I’m waiting on MURDER (Mayhem #2) by Sarah Pinborough (expected publication: 24th April 2014 by Jo Fletcher). I really enjoyed Book 1 in this duology and I’m intrigued by Book 2’s blurb…
From Goodreads:
Dr. Thomas Bond, Police Surgeon, is still recovering from the event of the previous year when Jack the Ripper haunted the streets of London – and a more malign enemy hid in his shadow. Bond and the others who worked on the gruesome case are still stalked by its legacies, both psychological and tangible.
But now the bodies of children are being pulled from the Thames… and Bond is about to become inextricably linked with an uncanny, undying enemy.
“Waiting On Wednesday” is a weekly event, hosted by book blogger Breaking The Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.
Have you read Mayhem? Is Murder on your TBR list? What are you waiting on this week?
Welcome gentle reader!
My little blog has (almost) reached 600 followers and I also have 1100 followers on Twitter. Additionally, today is my birthday, so I’ve decided to celebrate by having a book giveaway!
I’m giving away my latest favourite book: a copy of HALF BAD by Sally Green (paperback edition).
The giveaway is open until Sunday 23d March 2014 at 9pm (BST time). It’s open Internationally, as long as the Book Depository ships to your country.
To enter please fill in the contact form below with your name and email. Since this giveaway is to thank my followers, you have to follow my blog via email or WordPress to enter. If you are a Twitter follower, if you like my page on Facebook, if you follow me on Pinterest or Tumblr, or if you tweet about the giveaway, this will grant you an extra entry. Mention it below.
Entrants must be at least 13 years of age.
The winner will be chosen randomly, notified by email and will have 72 hours to reply or a new winner will be chosen.
I hold the right to end the giveaway before its original deadline without any prior notice.
I hold the right to disqualify any entry as I see fit.
Privacy information: no information given for this giveaway will be used for other purpose than this giveaway. All information provided (names, emails and mail addresses) will be deleted after the giveaway.
Good luck everyone, and feel free to leave me a comment below!
Hello gentle reader,
I’ve recently read a couple of Adult books, all set in Victorian London and with some fantasy elements…
Title: The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (Burton & Swinburne #1)
Author:
Genre: Steampunk/Alternate History
London, 1861.
Sir Richard Francis Burton—explorer, linguist, scholar, and swordsman; his reputation tarnished; his career in tatters; his former partner missing and probably dead.
Algernon Charles Swinburne—unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade; for whom pain is pleasure, and brandy is ruin!
They stand at a crossroads in their lives and are caught in the epicenter of an empire torn by conflicting forces: Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier, and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labor; Libertines oppose repressive laws and demand a society based on beauty and creativity; while the Rakes push the boundaries of human behavior to the limits with magic, drugs, and anarchy. The two men are sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack, and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London’s East End.
Their investigations lead them to one of the defining events of the age, and the terrifying possibility that the world they inhabit shouldn’t exist at all!
What I thought:
I enjoyed this book, although it became clear quite quickly this was an introductory book to a series. It has its own plot, but many aspects of the world and a lot of characters are just introduced to us and not fully developed. I’ll probably pick up at least Book 2 to see where this goes.
Title: Mayhem (Mayhem #1)
Author: Sarah Pinborough
Genre: Historical mystery with supernatural elements
A new killer is stalking the streets of London’s East End. Though newspapers have dubbed him ‘the Torso Killer’, this murderer’s work is overshadowed by the hysteria surrounding Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel crimes.
The victims are women too, but their dismembered bodies, wrapped in rags and tied up with string, are pulled out of the Thames – and the heads are missing. The murderer likes to keep them.
Mayhem is a masterwork of narrative suspense: a supernatural thriller set in a shadowy, gaslit London, where monsters stalk the cobbled streets and hide in plain sight.
What I thought:
I really liked this book. I loved that it focused on a (real) series of murders that happened at the same time as the Jack The Ripper murders. I also really enjoyed the supernatural twist. The second book in this duology will come out in April and I’ll definitely check it out.
Title: Elijah’s Mermaid
Author: Essie Fox
Genre: Historical/Gothic with fantasy elements
Since she was found as a baby, floating in the Thames one foggy night, the web-toed Pearl has been brought up in a brothel known as the House of Mermaids. Cosseted and pampered there, it is only when her fourteenth birthday approaches that Pearl realises she is to be sold to the highest bidder.
Meanwhile, the orphaned twins, Lily and Elijah, have shared an idyllic childhood, raised in a secluded country house with their grandfather, Augustus Lamb. But when Lily and Elijah go on a visit London, a chance meeting with the ethereal Pearl will have repercussions for all of them, binding their fates together in a dark and dangerous way…
In this bewitching, sensual novel, Essie Fox has written another tale of obsessive love and betrayal, moving from the respectable worlds of Victorian art and literature, and into the shadowy demi-monde of brothels, asylums and freak show tents – a world in which nothing and no-one is quite what they seem to be.
What I thought:
This book wasn’t what I expected. It’s slow-paced, and written in the style of a 19th Century novel. The two main characters are very passive, which I don’t really like, especially when they are female characters. And all in all, it was quite predictable. Maybe it just wasn’t for me.
What have you been reading lately? Any Victorian book you’d recommend?
Feel free to leave me a comment below!
Hello gentle reader,
Yesterday I finished reading HALF BAD by Sally Green (published on 4th March 2014 by Viking Juvenile). It’s a YA Fantasy which I read because of Xpresso Reads’ review. And I wasn’t disappointed. This book is awesome. I loved it from start to finish, and I can’t wait for the second book in the trilogy.
I’ve heard some people were put off by the use of the second person present in the first few chapters. Although I’m still not sure this was the best choice to start off this novel, I can only say that it’s worth overlooking. The rest of the book is in the first person, and the plot, pacing, world building and characters are so good that it makes it all worthwhile.
Now add this book to your TBR pile and read it as soon as possible.
From Goodreads:
In modern-day England, witches live alongside humans: White witches, who are good; Black witches, who are evil; and fifteen-year-old Nathan, who is both. Nathan’s father is the world’s most powerful and cruel Black witch, and his mother is dead. He is hunted from all sides. Trapped in a cage, beaten and handcuffed, Nathan must escape before his sixteenth birthday, at which point he will receive three gifts from his father and come into his own as a witch—or else he will die. But how can Nathan find his father when his every action is tracked, when there is no one safe to trust—not even family, not even the girl he loves?
In the tradition of Patrick Ness and Markus Zusak, Half Bad is a gripping tale of alienation and the indomitable will to survive, a story that will grab hold of you and not let go until the very last page.
Have you read Half Bad? What did you think? And what are you reading this week? Feel free to leave me a comment below!
Hello gentle reader,
Welcome to the Successful Queries Blog Series! The idea is to share with you Queries That Worked and to find out what made them stand out in the slushpile. My hope is that it’ll help you, querying writers, to write an amazing query for your own manuscript and to find Your Agent.
Today Marieke Nijkamp, aka The Queen of Queries, is sharing her advice on how to write an outstanding query. Marieke writes YA and MG fiction and she’s represented by Jennifer Udden of Donald Maass Literary Agency.
I’ll let you in on a secret. I’m one of Those People who loves to write queries (and occasionally, even synopses *gasp*). I love the clarity in brings when you have to sum up a story in roughly 250 words, when you have to force yourself to get to the very core of a tale. I love the structure of queries and synopses, I love writing them, and I love critiquing them. I’ve probably critiqued close to a thousand over the years.
I know. Annoying, isn’t it?
But I also love to talk about queries, so when Eve asked me to talk about advice for querying writers, I knew I couldn’t pass that opportunity up.
First of all, learn the formulas
Query formulas are amazing to understand what works, and why. Whether it’s by perusing the archives of Query Shark, subjecting yourself to AbsoluteWrite’s Query Letter Hell, or workshopping queries at a conference, you have to get an ear for queries. Know the rules, read a lot and critique more, because all those things will help you a great deal in writing your own perfect pitch.
Second, less is more
Once you’ve figured out those bare bones, the easiest step is to try to fill the out with the entire story. Far too often, I see queries that try to do and be everything. Introduce ALL the characters. Explain ALL the plot points. Mention ALL the themes. And often it’s a matter of overkill—and of the writer overthinking it.
I love specifics that make the story come to life, but if you pick up a book in the bookstore, do you want the blurb to explain everything that happens in minute detail? Stick to what entices.
Thirdly, trust your readers
The best way to know if a query still makes sense and hits the right spots? Ask a CP or beta who’s read the manuscript. The best way to know if a query entices? Ask a reader who hasn’t.
So take your time, reach out and get feedback. And revise it until it shines.
And finally, break the rules
And with that in mind… trust your own gut, too. Because formulas are amazing. But, sometimes, when we turn them into a tight set of rules, they can get very overwhelming. Use a tagline. Don’t use a tagline. Start with personalization. Don’t even bother. Use comp titles. Have a good bio. Explain the story in one paragraph, three paragraphs, two, four… When really, formulas are also just a means to an end.
In the end, your main goal is simple and very straightforward: to hook your reader. Nothing less, nothing more.
So don’t be *too* intimidated by those 250 words. It’s only one page! You’re a writer, just tell the story! After all, as a reader, I read to love a story, not to hate it. I only want to know three things:
Who is the main character?
What choice do they face?
And above all, why should I care?
Querying Writers! Marieke is giving away a QUERY CRITIQUE to THREE lucky winners! To enter, please fill in the form below with your name and email adresss, and include the genre of your mansucript. Good luck!
The giveaway is open internationally until Sunday 16th March 2014 at 11pm BST.
Any questions? Ask below!
Hello gentle reader,
Welcome to the Successful Queries Blog Series! The idea is to share with you Queries That Worked and to find out what made them stand out in the slushpile. My hope is that it’ll help you, querying writers, to write an amazing query for your own manuscript and to find Your Agent.
Today Juliana Brandt is answering a few questions and giving away a query critique! Juliana writes YA Fantasy and she’s represented by Emmanuelle Morgen of the Stonesong Literary Agency.
Tell us about the manuscript that helped you land an agent…
I signed with Emmanuelle Morgan of the Stonesong Literary agency with a YA dark fantasy titled CADAVER DOG that clocks in at just under 80k words.
How long did it take you to write your query?
I actually went through a gazillion drafts of my query–at least it felt like that many. I queried my novel for about four months before moving on, and during that time, I reworked my query many times depending on what sort of response I was getting (or not getting) from agents. My query actually sat in my agent’s inbox for about six months before she contacted me. It just goes to show that you never know what will happen! The benefit of working on my query so many times is that I ended up having a pretty decent eye for what makes a strong query/pitch.
Did you have beta readers or CPs (or did you enter contests or workshops) to help you with your query?
Yes! I had many beta readers and CPs check out my query. I entered contests and had writing friends off twitter read it and even sent it to my family to see what they thought. I’m sure that almost everyone I knew at the time read one draft or another of my query.
What was the hardest part to get right?
For me, I think the most difficult part to get right was the world building. Fantasy elements are hard to detail in such a short span of time. Balancing that with not wanting to bog down the query wasn’t easy to get right.
Any advice for querying writers out there?
Don’t be afraid to reach out for help! The writing community is such a supportive one, there are always people out there willing to give a hand 🙂
Thank you so much for taking part in this blog series, Juliana!
Querying Writers! Juliana is giving away a QUERY CRITIQUE to one lucky winner! To enter, please fill in the form below with your name and email adresss, and include the genre of your mansucript. Good luck!
The giveaway is open internationally until Sunday 16th March 2014 at 11pm BST.
Any questions? Ask below!
EM Castellan 