Tag Archives: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

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500 Blog Followers Giveaway! (closed)

Welcome gentle reader!

My little blog has reached 500 followers and I also have 900 followers on Twitter. Overwhelmed by those whooping numbers, I have decided to thank you all by having a massive giveaway. Hopefully everyone will find something of interest here…

Giveaway 1: For Readers

For those of you interested in winning books, I’m giving away my favourite YA books:

YA books giveaway

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner (YA High Fantasy)

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater (YA Fantasy)

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin (YA Paranormal Romance)

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi (YA Dystopian)

The giveaway is open until Sunday 25th August 2013 at 9am (BST time). There will be one winner per book (=4 winners). This giveaway is open Internationally, as long as the Book Depository ships to your country.

To enter please fill in the contact form below with your name, email and title of the book you’d like to win. 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.

Giveaway 2: For Writers

If you’re a writer, you might be interested in a critique. I’m lucky to have wonderful writerly friends and awesome Critique Partners who have agreed to give away the following critiques:

Juliana Haygert is a NA Author and a co-founder of NA Alley. She writes Contemporary Romance and Fantasy with strong romantic elements. She has published several books, including Destiny Gift and Breaking The Reins. She’s offering a 15-page critique.

Rachel O’Laughlin writes Adult Epic Fantasy and she’s a member of There And Draft Again. Her debut title, Coldness of Marek, just came out this summer. She’s offering to critique your query and first 50 pages of your manuscript.

Jessy Montgomery is a YA writer and a freelance editor. She writes Fantasy and Dark Contemporary novels. She’s also my wonderful CP and a member of There And Draft Again. She’s offering to critique your query and the first 10 pages of your manuscript.

Serena Lawless is a YA writer and a member of The Great Noveling Adventure. She writes Magical Realism. She’s offering to critique the first 20 pages of your manuscript and to interview you on The Great Noveling Adventure blog.

The giveaway is open until Sunday 25th August 2013 at 9am (BST time). There will be one winner per critique (=4 winners). The giveaway is international.

To enter please fill in the contact form below with your name, email and genre of your manuscript. 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.

Winners 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!

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5 Books that Should Be Movies

Hello gentle readers,

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, City of Bones by Cassandra Clare, The Host by Stephenie Meyer, Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl… What do these books have in common? They have all been turned into movies that will come out in 2013.

I have read them, and they are good books, which means I’ll probably go and see their movie version. However, if I had a choice in deciding which books should be turned into movies, I would have made another list. Here are 5 books I really wish were movies:

1 – The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin (YA Paranormal)

The unbecoming of Mara Dyer

I have given up hope that Mara Dyer and Noah Shaw are real. Can I at least see them in a movie?

2 – The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater (YA Fantasy)

the-raven-boys-book-coverThose boys. This girl. This school. This story. This magic. How on earth is this book not a movie yet?

3 – Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel (YA Paranormal)

InfiniteDays

The only Vampire Book out there that should be a movie, and the only one that isn’t, for some reason.

4 – American Gods by Neil Gaiman (Fantasy)

american-gods

Neil Gaiman’s books become movies, slowly and surely. I just hope this one doesn’t get forgotten, because it’s my favourite by him.

5 – The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner (YA High Fantasy)

TheThief

The awesomeness that is this book would make for an amazing movie.

Which book do you wish were a movie?

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Waiting On Wednesday – 22

Hello gentle reader,

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that one of my favourite YA books is The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by the amazing Michelle Hodkin. So when Michelle revealed the cover of Book 3 in the Mara Dyer Trilogy on the Entertainment Weekly website yesterday, I was jumping up and down with excitment. Without further ado, here it is:

The Retribution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #3) by Michelle Hodkin (expected publication:  22 October 2013 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)

retribution_510x510

Isn’t it perfect?! I love it, and I can’t wait to read this book…

And here is what Michelle herself had to say about it:

“I love it. I love it so much I can’t even really talk about it here except to say–it fits. It fits this book.

[…] There will not be any ARCs. Many of you have been asking why. This was a decision made by my publisher, Simon & Schuster, to make sure that the ending to the trilogy isn’t spoiled before everyone gets the chance to read the book on the same day, 10/22.

You’ve also been asking when you’ll get a synopsis/description/snippets, and the answer is that I’m not entirely sure, but I can say that it won’t be until much closer to the release date. Right now, the only thing I’ve been allowed to release from the actual book is this.

[…] Thank you all for the cover love–it makes me so happy to know that you think it’s as gorgeous as I do.   

And now, back to my book.”

Which book are you waiting for this week? Feel free to leave me a comment below!

“Waiting On Wednesday” is a weekly event, hosted by book blogger Breaking The Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating. You can see what other bloggers are waiting for here.

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Michelle Hodkin’s Secret to Getting Published

Michelle Hodkin is the author of The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, a YA paranormal novel and one of my favourite books. The second book in the Mara Dyer series, entitled The Evolution of Mara Dyer, is scheduled to be released on October 23d, 2012. Michelle Hodkin has an amazing blog, that I strongly recommend you check out.

Back in November 2010, Michelle published a post on her blog entitled My secret to getting published. It is an AWESOME and inspirational post, and I have decided to share it with you, would-be-published writers out there.

If you like it, do comment on Michelle’s blog and let her know on Twitter. She’s amazingly nice, so don’t be afraid. And buy The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, while you’re at it.

So, without further ado, here is Michelle’s secret to getting published:

“So! This past weekend, I got an email from a lovely woman the other day asking me to tell her my “secrets” to getting Simon & Schuster to publish my novel. I was SUPER surprised to get the email and super, super flattered! So I dove into my response with enthusiasm—I started writing back to her, and kept writing, and my response became very, very long. And I thought—well, I never expected anyone to email me asking this question, but maybe, since one person did, more people want to know? About my super magic secret to getting my beloved Simon & Schuster to publish THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER?
Well, do ya?
Okay, here it is: I worked hard. 
You thought I was going to tell you that I had no secrets, right? Well, gotcha! Because that’s my secret. Let me explain. When people talk to me about my book or the book deal or I’m confronted with the (very few) people I don’t know who have read it (no ARCs yet, so this number is small), I am very quick to brush off the compliments with a response about how lucky I was and am. You see, I am not the best taker of compliments, even though it makes me GLOW to hear good things. Like, there’s nothing that puts a smile on my face faster than hearing something nice about my book, or the fact that people care enough to want to read it. But when it’s time for me to respond? I’ll say it was the right place, right time, right agent, right editor, right book. And those things are all true to an extent; there are a bunch of folks who also work super hard on their novels and haven’t been published. Yet.
But I have a lot of faith, a lot of faith, that they will be.
Because you dedicated, aspiring authors are writing when your infants are napping and the dishes are done and the pets are fed and when the husband isn’t bothering you, in snatches of 5, 10, or however many minutes you get. You are writing on your thirty minute lunch break from the mentally exhausting day job. You are reading hundreds of industry blogs every day (my count was 115 industry, book, author, and writing blogs before publication, now I am nearing 200) to learn the difference between a problem query and a problem novel. You are reading dozens of novels, both in your genre and out of your genre, and you are reading with a critical eye to find out why these books work, not why they don’t. You are attending writers conferences, in person or online. You are on Twitter, not just chatting (which is valuable) but observing; watching what agents and editors say and following query and #kidlitchat and #yalitchat discussions, whether you agree with the tenor of those discussions or not.
And like me, you revise until your grey matter aches. You expose your words to public critique. You send your book out to beta readers you’ve found (through Twitter or Absolute Write or Verla Kay or maybe just your friends and family, who can be just as helpful) and discover that more important than getting critiques is knowing what crits to take and which to leave, and you have no idea, you really don’t, because you’re flying blind just like I was. But you do it and you do it again and eventually you find a rhythm; you figure out which of your readers excel at patching plot holes and which excel at consistency and which ones to go to when you just need to hear “OMFG THAT SCENE IS SO HOT,” which is just as important.
And all of this writing and reading about writing and revising and observing may mean that your number of watchable television shows dwindles from a meager eight to three to one, like it did for me. It may mean that after three or five or thirty rounds of revisions, you’ve only been able to tear yourself away from your laptop to watch seven movies in a year, like me. It may mean that the mountain of laundry has eaten your laundry room and is threatening to spill into the kitchen (guilty) or that your children are becoming jealous of your “imaginary friends.” You are working hard, and for no guaranteed payoff.  But that dedication, if you keep at it, will pay off. Maybe your first novel isn’t THE novel. Maybe it will be your eleventh novel that takes the publishing world by storm. Or maybe it will be your first—maybe you will have a dream that so consumes you that you have to write about it and the passion you feel for your story is so strong that readers can feel it, too. But either way? You will have worked hard. Because writing for publication isn’t easy. Not for me or for any of the writers I know and not even for the superstar writers out there. If you have been writing for 10 years you will face challenges and if you’ve been writing for ten months? You will face others.
So the only secret to getting published?
Keep at it.”

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Waiting on Wednesday – 15

“Waiting On Wednesday” is a weekly event, hosted by book blogger Breaking The Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.

This week I’m waiting on The Evolution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #2) by Michelle Hodkin (Expected publication: October 23rd 2012 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers). This is book 2 in the Mara Dyer series and I CANNOT WAIT to read it! The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is undoubtedly one of my favourite YA books and I really want to know what happens next to Mara and Noah.

From Goodreads:

“The truth about Mara Dyer’s dangerous and mysterious abilities continues to unravel in this gripping sequel to the thrilling “The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer.” One week after Mara walked into a police station in Miami at the close of “The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer,” she has been committed to psychiatric treatment for what her parents believe was a mental breakdown. But what seems like a hallucination to everyone else is a chilling reality for Mara. Someone from her past has discovered her strange, deeply disturbing secret and that someone wants her to pay. But when no one believes the truth, Mara is totally helpless. The only person on her side is Noah Shaw, as sexy and handsome as he is loyal and cunning. Noah is the only person who can help Mara–as long as he doesn’t get himself killed in the process.”

Visit Michelle’s blog here.

What are you waiting on this week?

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Book of the Week – 7

This week I’m reading The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin. I bought it when it came it out in September 2011 and it has been on my TBR pile since then… So, I know, I’m a bit late to this party, but so far I’m LOVING this book! Can’t wait to finish it…

From Goodreads:

“Mara Dyer doesn’t think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.

It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can’t remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.

There is.

She doesn’t believe that after everything she’s been through, she can fall in love.

She’s wrong.”

Check out Michelle Hodkin’s website here.

What are you reading this week?