The Summer I Became a Nerd by Leah Rae Miller

I was given The Summer I Became a Nerd for review by Entangled Publishing.  But I wanted it far before I saw the offer on twitter.

 

(Little bit of trivia. Maddie’s boyfriend at the beginning of the book is a football player named Eric.  And the main love interest is named Logan. You may remember that those are the names of the love interests in Love Sucks.  Weird, huh?  Especially because Eric’s a football player there too.)

On the outside, seventeen-year-old Madelyne Summers looks like your typical blond cheerleader—perky, popular, and dating the star quarterback. But inside, Maddie spends more time agonizing over what will happen in the next issue of her favorite comic book than planning pep rallies with her squad. That she’s a nerd hiding in a popular girl’s body isn’t just unknown, it’s anti-known. And she needs to keep it that way.

Summer is the only time Maddie lets her real self out to play, but when she slips up and the adorkable guy behind the local comic shop’s counter uncovers her secret, she’s busted. Before she can shake a pom-pom, Maddie’s whisked into Logan’s world of comic conventions, live-action role-playing, and first-person-shooter video games. And she loves it. But the more she denies who she really is, the deeper her lies become…and the more she risks losing Logan forever.

When I read about this book, I squee-ed in nerdish glee. I couldn’t wait to see a YA contemporary where the main character was celebrated for going to cons, for playing role-playing games, for making sci-fi/fantasty (hereby referred to as SFF) inside jokes.

There are many moments where the author just hits the fangirl note perfectly. Right at the beginning, we find Maddie freaking out because it’s going to take 2 months to get the last issue of her favorite comic book. Can she stay away from the chatrooms, keep spoiler-free for 2 whole months? Yeah, I’m how many episodes behind on Doctor Who and putting my hands over my ears (or eyes when online), going “la la la, no spoilers please,” and considering just downloading the eps to catch up? I get it, Maddie, I get it. The overwhelming feeling of being at your first big fan event, full of people having their wild and crazy nerdy fun, was well written. Then add in little gems of geekdom like the dog being named Leeloo (The Fifth Element) or a joke about a Jedi master getting exasperated at his Padawan for using the Force to get the remote control. And yet, oddly, along with the specific titles and references, occasionally movies/shows/songs are given to us in vague terms where we have to guess (if we even know) what Maddie is talking about. Which is a weird dynamic, especially when you have both examples on the same page, going, “What up, Akira?” “Not much, unknown sci-fi show about a love triangle and a psycho bounty hunter.”

The book does require some suspension of disbelief. You have to believe that a girl who was ridiculed in front of the entire school for being a comic book fan could erase all memory of the incident and hide her love of comics, magically become popular, and get the football star to date her even though they’re clearly not interested in each other. But, please, I’m a SFF fan, I can suspend belief like it’s a kid caught with pot on school grounds.

Maddie herself was oftentimes frustrating. She also seemed really bad at this whole lying thing. First of all, suddenly she feels guilty about it, even though her whole life is a lie. Also, she goes through the most contrived process to hide her love of comics sometimes. It is way more conspicuous to hang out in the alley between the popular kids’ favorite restaurant and the comic book store, pssting at a strange man to go pick up a comic for you, rather than taking a few seconds to walk into the store, where you would be then hidden. I understand her need for secrecy and the fear she had at being exposed, really, but sometimes it just felt like it was too much, particularly when she was already at places where everyone else was into the same things she was. The way she maintained her popularity seemed overblown in her head. Like her friends would dump her if she didn’t like the same singer as them. Like the only reason she was popular was because she was dating the head quarterback so breaking up with him would be the kiss of death (but since neither of them were really that into each other, they were both using each other, which suggests that she already was popular before they started dating).

The second half picked up a lot, while the first half dragged a little. Some of this was the repetition of the “how will Maddie hide her love of Logan and superheroes from her friends, while she and Logan bond over comics?” game. The first LARP (live-action role-playing) game isn’t all that exciting, although just the atmosphere of it can be fun to be introduced to if you’re not used to RPGs or folks in fantasy costumes. The ridiculously fake love triangle gets wrestled with in the first half, but is dispensed of, for the most part, not too far into the book. There’s a lot of talk about going to a concert with her BFF vs. going to a convention with Logan (even before Maddie realizes it’s the same day, you guess it). I was actually surprised that the concert vs. con was resolved pre-climax.

But that’s okay with me because I LOVED the climax! Actually the last quarter of the book was perfect for me. The final LARP game was amazing. It was exactly the sort of thing I wanted when I was geeking out imagining what this book was like. I know, I know, the whole concept is Maddie’s transformation leading up to that point, but it was great to have the payoff. More payoff was how a lot of minor things that had been mentioned earlier in the book got used in the final pages.

Recommended for fans of: comics; LARPing/RPGs (or just the curious about them); contemporary stories about SFF stuff; adorkable love interests; fake love triangles; secret identities; minor SFF inside jokes.

Rating: 3.5 hearts

Lots of love,

Sage

Review: The Lost Girl by Sangu Mandanna

Today I will be reviewing THE LOST GIRL.  This is a book that I got in a fit of excitement on a day when like 10 other YA books I wanted to read also came out, so it got shuffled to the side.  Then I packed it for reading over Christmas vacation, and started it Christmas Eve, but only got one chapter in before Christmas came, and I got a ton of new books.  Looking at all those shiny new books, I didn’t want to read this one anymore, so I started one of the new ones.  Well, despite that, this is the one that grabbed me.

Eva’s life is not her own. She is a creation, an abomination—an echo. Made by the Weavers as a copy of someone else, she is expected to replace a girl named Amarra, her “other”, if she ever died. Eva studies what Amarra does, what she eats, what it’s like to kiss her boyfriend, Ray. So when Amarra is killed in a car crash, Eva should be ready.

But fifteen years of studying never prepared her for this.

Now she must abandon everything she’s ever known—the guardians who raised her, the boy she’s forbidden to love—to move to India and convince the world that Amarra is still alive.

What Eva finds is a grief-stricken family; parents unsure how to handle this echo they thought they wanted; and Ray, who knew every detail, every contour of Amarra. And when Eva is unexpectedly dealt a fatal blow that will change her existence forever, she is forced to choose: Stay and live out her years as a copy or leave and risk it all for the freedom to be an original. To be Eva.

From debut novelist Sangu Mandanna comes the dazzling story of a girl who was always told what she had to be—until she found the strength to decide for herself.

Rare is a book that I read and have no complaints about. Even books I love, I tend to find fault with, but, despite the reluctant beginning, I fell hard for The Lost Girl.

The plot is fascinating. Back-ups, or echoes, of people are created to replace those who have died. These Echoes have to pretend to be the person they’ve replaced. They receive journals and sometimes letters from the person they’re replacing, and sometimes they can even see what the “others” see. There are those that control the echoes–the Weavers–and hunters who would see them destroyed.

This is the story of Amarra, who chooses to rename herself Eva to distinguish herself from her other. She wants to live her own life. In fact, she’s not much like Amarra at all, but when Amarra dies, Eva has to assume her life and pretend to be her.

The book deals with deep subjects, how far people will go to bring back those they loved and have lost, and how far they should respect the deceased’s wishes if it hurts another. While Amarra is called the “other,” it is Eva who is treated as “other” by some who find out she’s not Amarra. Others treat her as just another person. And still others are torn between seeing her as an abomination or as a person. Eva is torn between wanting her own life and fulfilling the one she was created for. At first she does so only because she could be killed if people don’t believe the soul in her body is Amarra’s, but she’s also hope to Amarra’s mom and friends, so proving that she’s not Amarra would mean killing that hope.

The writing is of great quality, and the characters are well-drawn. Even when people were making bad choices, I didn’t question their logic or motives–rare for me. I never got bored with the pacing, and was pleasantly surprised by several routes the plot took.

Occasionally the book dipped close to a love triangle, and, don’t get me wrong, I love well-done love triangles, but this book didn’t need one, so I was happy to see that most of the time there was no question about who Eva loved, only the occasional question about who she was supposed to love.

Most amazingly in this world of YA fantasy, the book had a clear ending. There are strings left loose for a sequel if there is one, and the romance isn’t definitively tied up, but I like that openness, actually.

Overall, I was highly impressed with this book. One of the most satisfying YA reads I’ve had lately.

Recommended for fans of: well-written YA contemp fantasy, stories of loss and hope, stories about identity, India, England, standalones, strong characters, strong world-building.

Rated: 5 blue hearts

Lots of love,
Sage

The Hobbit: movie vs. book

So I read The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien for the first time this month.  I’d been wanting to read it, but unlike many classics, it wasn’t free on my Kindle, so I put it off.  Then I heard about the movie, and decided to wait until after seeing part 1 before reading.

As soon as I watched the movie, I downloaded the book and began it.  And I was over half done (more than past the first movie) when I went to see it again.

There are those people out there who want movies to be identical to the books that they are based on.  I have heard many grumblings from LotR fans about the differences between the books and the movies.  And the Hobbit movie is very different from the book.  I described it to my dad like this: “It’s as if they received an outline of what happens in the book, and followed the outline to the letter, but had to fill in all the details themselves.”  That is exactly what it’s like to compare the two.

All the events in the book are there in the movie.  Direct dialogue from the book makes it to the movie too, but, quite frankly, most of the conversations in the book are told to us, not shown.  I remember remarking in Goodreads, about a third of the way in, that the longest conversation anyone had had so far in the book was between Gollum/Smeagol and himself.  But screenwriters like dialogue, so naturally they made it up.  Scenes are expanded.  Battles are more epic.  Scenes were added.  Hey, what’s this ex-Doctor brown wizard doing in here?  He’s clearly setting up the battle that we’re inevitably going to see Gandalf have in a later movie (only mentioned in the book).

But it all worked.  Peter Jackson took a thirdish of the book and made it into a full-length movie that was had it’s own plot arc.  In the book, Bilbo doesn’t become part of the gang until they deal with the spiders.  The plot arc for this movie is Bilbo coming into his own, becoming part of the gang, going from a guy who wants to go back for his hanky to a guy who throws himself between an orc and a dying dwarf.  And I dare say, I was more impressed with his arc in the movie (where he doesn’t use the ring to do his most heroic bits) than in the book.

Some parts in the movie do go overboard in their quest to be epic.  The battle against the goblins requires just too much suspension of disbelief.  I mean, really, what could possibly be a challenge to fight after 14 people take on millions of goblins.  On the other hand, the troll battle was perfectly done, IMO.  And I liked how Bilbo got to actually help in the solution to the troll problem.

Pretty much all the dwarf history, including the intro does not exist in the book, but it’s a gorgeous set-up to the movie.

Having just read the book, I can easily see where the line is drawn between movies 2 and 3.  It’s spiders and wood elves for 2 and Smaug and Five Armies (or will it be Six with the pale orc involved?) for 3.  Plus Gandalf will be off doing stuff and I’m sure we’ll get to see that added to it.  And who knows what else will be added.

If you haven’t read The Hobbit yet, I do recommend seeing the movie first, then reading the book.  For me, I’m not sure I would have enjoyed that first third as much without certain visuals already added for me.  It’s a lot of narration, which is not my preferred style.  By the time I got past the first movie, though, I was used to the style and could read the last 2/3 with ease.  In general, I’ve found that if there’s a book and a movie, watching the movie first, then reading the book, leads to less disappointment than reading the book first and then watching the movie.  Not always, but usually.

Overall, the movie was quite an achievement, and I  look forward to the next two.  I wonder if those that read and loved the book first would agree

Lots of love,
Sage

Review: An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

I’ve decided to add my reviews to my blog.  Starting this out is my 100th book of 2012, An Abundance of Katherines by John Green.  You can find these reviews on my Goodreads page as well.

Goodreads description of the book:

When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type is girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact.

On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl.

Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself by Printz medalist John Green, acclaimed author of Looking for Alaska.

Supposedly, the first John Green book is the one you like best. This is my second John Green solo book, and I liked it much better than Paper Towns, as I always suspected I would. (However, as I read Will Grayson, Will Grayson first and loved it, perhaps that counts as my first, but I digress).

I was pulled to AoK by the whole premise of finding an equation to calculate a relationship. When I was a teen, I adored math, and I was intrigued by a book that seemed to revolve around a math equation. It sort of does, but actually the prodigy main character is not interested in math, but rather in languages. Still I found many things about Colin to be fascinating. Although he is incredibly self-involved, I love seeing the way he thinks and learns. His lists of how his mind jumps from one subject to another is just the way I think. In fact, one friend calls this “Sage logic.” To outsiders there was no connection, but to the person thinking this way, the connection is obvious. It’s actually surprising, then, that Colin isn’t a math prodigy, getting in trouble for jumping to the answer in a math equation without doing the problem on paper for the teacher to see. Yes, there are a lot of us with that experience.

I was a little hesitant about the initial “road trip” plotline, since that was something I didn’t love about Paper Towns, but the road trip is actually short and the destination is quite interesting.

There is a little mystery in the book about Hollis, but it was pretty obvious what her secret is based on every single element that causes the characters to go “hmm.” Instead, it is other twists in the book that are more fun and help the story tie together, like some twists about Colin’s Katherines.

Then there’s a girl who isn’t named Katherine. Lindsey suffers from what a lot of teen girls suffer from, I think. She’s trying to define herself based on what others think she should be. Whether she’s redefining herself for Colin, it’s with him that she is the most appealing character. And their dialogue-only scenes in her secret cave are adorable.

Overall I enjoyed this book, although I was a little iffy in the beginning with an overload of the word “fug,” starting out with vomiting and a road trip. But once we got to a destination, I was pulled in on Colin’s journey of self-discovery instead.

Recommended for fans of: contemporary YA, male POVs, math, anagrams, stories about teen prodigies, non-heroic main characters, feral pig hunts, and interesting trivia (even when other characters are saying it’s not interesting).

Lots of love,
Sage

ETA: I realized that I hadn’t worked out a rating system for the blog yet.  I gave this book 4 stars out of 5 on Goodreads.  I’ll work something out before my next review, promise

100 Books 2012

Just today I finished my 100 book challenge for 2012.  And over a week to spare.  For those just tuning in, the 100 book challenge is to read 100 books in the year, which includes MG, YA, or adult, audiobooks, and graphic novels.  I also include completed, but unpublished, books that I beta read, but not books of mine that I read for fun, unless they are published.  A book is counted only once if I reread it in this year, but I can count it if I read it again next year.  For this reason, I’ve been waiting on a few books that I’m really looking forward to rereading.

Here’s my list of my 100 books for this year:

1. The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
2. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
3. Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
4. The Off Season by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
5. Front and Center by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
6. Zombie Tag by Hannah Moskowitz
7. Wither by Lauren DeStefano
8. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
9. Big Fish by Daniel Wallace
10. Geek Fantasy Novel by E. Archer
11. There is no Dog by Meg Rosoff
12. The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers by Lynn Weingarten
13. Absolute Visions by various, including some sage girl
14. Fury of the Phoenix by Cindy Pon
15. Saving June by Hannah Harrington
16. When the Sea is Rising Red by Cat Hellisen
17. Absolute Boyfriend, vol. 1
18. Absolute Boyfriend, vol. 2
19. Absolute Boyfriend, vol. 3
20. Absolute Boyfriend, vol. 4
21. Absolute Boyfriend, vol. 5
22. Absolute Boyfriend, vol. 6
23. beta read
24. Love Sucks by Sage Collins
25. Incarnate by Jodi Meadows
26. Gone, Gone, Gone by Hannah Moskowitz
27. Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin
28. Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher
29. The Duke and I by Julia Quinn
30. beta
31. Cinder by Marissa Meyer
32. Fairest by Gail Carson Levine
33. The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima
34. Hoot by Carl Hiaasen
35. Insurgent by Veronica Roth
36. Holes by Louis Sachar
37. Kiss the Morning Star by Elissa Janine Hoole
38. Demon Diary, vol. 1
39. Demon Diary, vol. 2
40. Demon Diary, vol. 3
41. The False Prince by Jennifer a. Nielsen
42. Demon Diary, vol. 4
43. Demon Diary, vol. 5
44. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
45. Demon Diary, vol. 6
46. Demon Diary, vol. 7
47. Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John
48. The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine
49. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling
50. Loveless, vol. 1
51. Loveless, vol. 2
52. Handcuffs by Bethany Griffin
53. Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins
54. The Selection by Kiera Cass
55. Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen
56. A Want so Wicked by Suzanne Young
57. beta
58. Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman
59. Eona by Alison Goodman
60. White Knight by Jim Butcher
61. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer’s Comrade by Mark Twain
62. Loveless, vol. 3
63. Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman
64. Loveless, vol. 4
65. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
66. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling
67. Enchanted by Alethea Kontis
68. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling
69. Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan
70. Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
71. Princess Academy by Shannon Hale
72. Akata Witch by Nnedi Okirafor
73. Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and their Journey by Isabel Fonseca
74. Shadows on the Moon by Zoe Marriott
75. What’s Left of Me by Kat Zhang
76. The Crown of Embers by Rae Carson
77. Spookygirl: Paranormal Investigator by Jill Baguchinsky
78. Small Favor by Jim Butcher
79. Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake
80. Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
81. Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
82. The Diviners by Libba Bray
83. The Ghost and the Goth by Stacey Kade
84. Fox’s Mask by Anna Frost
85. The Turning by Francine Prose
86. Ten by Gretchen McNeil
87. The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
88. Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff
89. Firelight by Sophie Jordan
90. Loveless, vol. 5
91. Loveless, vol. 6
92. Cloaked by Alex Flinn
93. Loveless, vol. 7
94. Columbus: Past, Present, and Future by various
95. Speechless by Hannah Harrington
96. Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
97. Phoenix by Jennifer Mason-Black
98. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
99. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
100. An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

Of books that I counted, 3 were beta reads, and 2 were either by me or included a story of mine.  4 were classics, 53 were YA, 13 were MG (counting all Harry Potters), 7 were adult, 2 were anthologies, 1 was non-fiction, and 20 were manga.

33 of these books were ones I had read at least once before 2012.  17 were ebooks.  7 were audiobooks. 13 were library books.

Oh, and I finished the 2012 YA/MG Debut author challenge, which you wouldn’t think would be too hard, since 4 people within my writing group, including myself, debuted this year and I only needed 12, but I finished the last two in mid-December

1. When the Sea is Rising Red
2. Love Sucks
3. Incarnate
4. Cinder
5. Kiss the Morning Star
6. Scarlet
7. What’s Left of Me
8. Spookygirl: Paranormal Investigator
9. Fox’s Mask
10. Stormdancer
11. Shadow and Bone
12. Phoenix

It will be interesting to see if I make the challenge in 2013 (will it be 13 debut authors?) since so many of this year’s debuts have sequels coming out, and I know nothing about the debuts for next year.  Then again, that’s how I found out about so many of the ones that I read this year and loved.

So there’s my stats for 2012.

Did you take on a challenge to read a certain number of books this year?  How did you do?

Lots of love,
Sage

Researching (#NaNoPrep)

Researching?  What is this researching thing?  We don’t need no stinkin’ research before NaNoWriMo.

Okay, I’ll admit it.  I tend to do my real research when I come across a need for it mid-book.  Very rarely do I say, “I’m writing a book set at a ranch, let me do all my research on horses in the months preceding it.”  I use horses because I did some recent horse research for a chapter book I wrote a few months ago.  It was very minimal, as I was just refreshing myself on some terms I already knew.  In that case, it didn’t take too much time away from my writing.

But in NaNo, having to do even a little research can detract from that all-important word count, so it’s good to get it in October or before, if you know what you need.  (Let’s not forget that pantsers might not even know what they could possibly research)

This year I was planning to do a different novel from A Paranormal Bromance, and it was going to require heavy research.  I searched for books, I watched documentaries, I looked for credible information and personal accounts on the internet.  Then I changed novels, so that research will have to hold for another time. But I certainly know people who do the heavy research where they read non-fiction about most of their novels, even interview people for them.  I really admire those people and their dedication, not to mention their creativity to make a novel out of this research.

But here’s how I usually research in October.  I read fiction in the genre I’m writing or about the same subject or for the same age group.  Last year when I was writing my chapter books, I read a lot of chapter books (and low MG to see the difference) to prepare myself for writing for that reading level.

This year I’m writing that paranormal bromance.  And I haven’t decided if it’s a paranormal romance but without lust between the mains or if it’s simply a contemporary fantasy with a humorous title.  Because these are two totally different things.  Even if I go the contemporary fantasy route, I still might use some tropes from PR.  So here I am reading ghost stories (because one of the mains is a ghost).  Oh, darn, ghost stories in October.  But I’m also reading paranormal romances, which are totally not my usual thing, as research.  What tropes do I want? Do I want any? Should I have a similar tone to PRs? Is there a certain formula that I can either follow or parody? Should I stay far far away from anything PR at all?  So that’s the kind of research I’m doing now.  But that’s generally the kind of research I do the most, and no matter whether you’re a planner or a pantser, whether you’re someone who does heavy research about the subject or not, I suggest reading books like yours (or potentially like yours)

What kind of research do you do leading up to NaNo or any other books you write?  Do you do any at all?  Do you find yourself researching mid-book like I sometimes do (or even during edits)?  Have you ever wished you had researched something before you started?

Lots of love,
Sage
P.S. Less than two weeks left to enter the Trick-or-Treat Love Sucks Giveaway.  This also means less than two weeks to Halloween and NaNo!

Lots of Love Thursday – 6/28/12

So as I sit here, waiting for the A/C guy, I thought I would write a blog post.  If you squint real hard at my last title and this one, you might think that I wrote two days in a row (Workout Wednesday and Lots of Love Thursday).  But, no, I was my usual lazy blogging self and neglected the blog for like a month and a half.  It’s hard to get motivation to write (anything) when I’m baking in the oven that is my house these days.

I am cursed.  This is my ninth summer in Ohio, and for eight of them, I have had a broken A/C.   This spans three different places I’ve lived and five different A/C units.  Last year was the only year I didn’t have to get the A/C unit fixed or replaced (it had been replaced the year before…for free, but apparently with a broken model that started leaking coolant…last year).  It’s been a hot spring and summer, but today is supposed to get into the 100s, so I start off LoLT with:

• My A/C is getting fixed!
• Which also means that our windows won’t have to be open all the time, which means fewer bugs and fewer allergens in the house
• I went to check out a choir (for joining) and had a great time
• I rediscovered what a joy it is to read on my Kindle
• I read THE SELECTION like I was addicted to it, which is pretty exciting since I never feel that need to read books by people I don’t know anymore.  I’m not saying it’s great literature or anything, but I could not put it down.
• My parents got back from their cruise and I wowed my dad with his Father’s Day gift
• My Dear Teen Me letter is up.  You can find it here
• My friend Suz’s book, A WANT SO WICKED, is available (our indie bookstore should have it in today or tomorrow).

Since I last was on here, tons of stuff has happened, but this was just the love for this past week (which was pretty nice).

Writing stuff:

I’m working on my Trouble kidlit, although I’m having trouble (haha) deciding where to start the series.  I thought Trouble at School was logical, but it makes the timeline of the series awkward.  I did, however, print out Trouble with Pets, which I wrote in November, and I’m highly enjoying editing that.

I wrote the Dear Teen Me letter.  Dear Teen Me is also doing an anthology, in which the lovely Hannah Moskowitz participated.  Her letter is a tear-jerker, trust me.

I’m waiting on betas for Taylor-Made, but my first beta gave me lots to think about already.

Anyway, that’s all the love for now.

Lots of love,

Sage

Less than a Week until Release

So what am I doing this weekend?

• Reading through my galleys
• Reading Hannah Moskowitz’s Gone, Gone, Gone
• Writing an author’s bio
• Doing interviews
• Going to Earth Day events
• Listening to free concerts downtown
• Playing with cats
• Sleeping in until 10 (just today)
• Betaing a novel for a friend
• Downloading Train’s and Jason Mraz’s new albums
• Working (just tomorrow)
• Eating chocolate-covered espresso beans
• Bouncing (see previous point)
• Counting down the days

Hope everyone out there is having a great Earth weekend.

Lots of love,

Sage

“Bye-Bye Borders,” part 3

       

Here’s the third installment of the “Bye-Bye Borders” Book Blowout Extravaganza.  The theme is a bit murky here.  In fact I’m not sure that with these books, there is a theme.  “Realistic” doesn’t really work with Dangerous Angels or Glee, lol.  Really, they’re just the books that didn’t fit in with the other themes I made up.

I’ve only read the Glee book so I’ll start with it.

1. Glee: The Beginning (an original tie-in novel for the show) – Enroll early at McKinley High–before New Directions was even a glimmer in Mr. Schuester’s eye.  When did Rachel first decide Finn was more than just a jock?  When did Puck and Quinn start their secret romance?  And how did the fledgling Glee Club function without a fearless leader?  Hint: It wasn’t exactly a perfect melody.

Break out the gold stars and refill the slushies: It’s time to find out what happened to all your favorite characters before the show-mance began.

Note: I thought this would be pretty ridiculous, and it was, but the same way Glee is.  If you remember the good old days of early Glee and you can deal with Glee without hearing the music (surprisingly, I had just as much fun without the music), you’ll really enjoy this.

2. Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp by C.D. Payne – Youth in Revolt is the journals of Nick Twisp, California’s most precocious diarist, whose ongoing struggles to make sense out of high school, deal with his divorced parents, and lose his virginity result in his transformation from an unassuming fourteen-year-old to a modern youth in open revolt. As his family splinters, worlds collide, and the police block all routes out of town, Nick must cope with economic deprivation, homelessness, the gulag of the public schools, a competitive type-A father, murderous canines, and an inconvenient hair trigger on his erectile response–all while vying ardently for the affections of the beauteous Sheeni Saunders, teenage goddess and ultimate intellectual goad.

3. Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books by Francesca Lia Block – In five luminous novels, acclaimed writer Francesca Lia Block spins a saga of interwoven lives and beating hearts.  These postmodern fairy tales take us to a magical Los Angeles, a place where life is a mystery, pain can lead to poetry, strangers become intertwined souls, and everyone is searching for the most beautiful and dangerous angel of all: love.

4. Buck Fever by Cynthia Chapman Willis – Twelve-year-old Joey MacTagert’s dad wants his son to carry on the family tradition of hunting. But Joey has “buck fever”—he can’t pull the trigger on a deer, and hates the idea of killing animals. He’s more interested in art and hockey, two activities that his dad barely acknowledges.

Joey’s dad wants him to use his special skill in tracking to hunt down the big antlered buck that roams the woods near their home. Joey knows how to track Old Buck, but has kept secret from his father the reason he’s gained the deer’s trust. When trouble between his parents seems to escalate, Joey and his older sister, Philly, find themselves in the middle of tensions they don’t fully understand. Joey wants to keep the peace, and if conquering his buck fever will do it, he has to try.

5. Crash into Me by Albert Borris – Owen, Frank, Audrey, and Jin-Ae have one thing in common: they all want to die. When they meet online after each attempts suicide and fails, the four teens make a deadly pact: they will escape together on a summer road trip to visit the sites of celebrity suicides… and at their final destination, they will all end their lives.
As they drive cross-country, bonding over their dark impulses, sharing their deepest secrets and desires, living it up, hooking up, and becoming true friends, each must decide whether life is worth living – or if there’s no turning back.

So there are the five books.  And you can win ALL FIVE with a song.

- Leave a comment that includes some way to contact you (like an e-mail address or your twitter name).  This way I can get in touch if you win

- Leave the title, artist, and genre (just so I’m not surprised) of a song, and give me a description of the story that song tells to you.

Examples:

The Lazy Song – Bruno Mars – pop – A guy just wants to be all lazy today.  Nothing wrong with that

Teen for God – Dar Williams – folk – A girl who really believes in God goes to a bible camp where she has to deal with the girls who came from bible schools and are very judgmental. She struggles with temptations, wondering why God even put them there for her.  And she laments that in college she’s not even going to believe in God, but for now she’s proud to be spreading His word.

(See, it can be complicated or really simple, up to you)

- You can get an extra entry if you tweet about the contest, so leave your twitter info in that case.

One winner will be chosen at random for each giveaway, which will each have the same entry requirements (but please choose different songs from any earlier giveaways you entered).   This contest ends on Saturday, May 7 at 11:59 p.m. I’ll announce the winner on Sunday (Mother’s Day), along with the next giveaway.

Have fun.

Lots of love,

Sage

Leeloo Dallas Multitask

I love the Fifth Element, thus the title.  I know all of, like, three people will get it, but for those three people, I love you.

I’m a big fan of multitasking.  I write and listen to music.  I work and listen to audiobooks.  I watch tv while I cook. 

For most of 2010, I’ve been multitasking my reading.  It’s not just three books (real, e, and audio), right now I have NINE books I consider myself to be reading (and on Wednesday, it was ten, but I finished two and added one).

The thing is that I’m reading different books based on situation.  If I’m at work, I’m going to be using an audiobook.  If I’m at the gym, it’s definitely an ebook.  If I’m home it might be a real book or an ebook.  Sometimes I have a novel I’m betaing too, and that’s possibly going to be on my computer or else printed on letter-sized paper.

Within these categories, I have multiple books going based on my mood.  I downloaded the complete Narnia series on my iPod, but I can only listen to so much of the same sorta thing, so I started listening to other things in between.  I’m having an Agatha Christie craving, and those are better on the Kindle (the books all have tiny print) so I have one there, but before I got the Kindle, I bought a three-in-one book of Poirot novels, and I’ve been making my way through that.  I have a Poirot on the Kindle, but I can only read one of those at a time, or else the clues will get jumbled, so I put that ebook aside.  Meanwhile, I’m reading The Secret Garden at the gym on the ebook.  I downloaded If I Stay after previewing it on the Kindle because I kept hearing how it made people cry.  And I downloaded Northinger Abby after watching The Jane Austen Book Club (and it’s free on the Kindle), but shortly after doing so, I put that one down because the long paragraphs at the beginning are hard to read on the Kindle.  Beside the Agatha Christie I’m reading in hardcopy, I also have Luna, which is going slowly for some reason, and Sphinx Princess, which I wanted for a long time and finally bought on my birthday when nobody bought it for me first.  Finally, I have an adult novel I’ve been working on since December, that I really want to finish someday, but I’m afraid I’ll be too confused after so much time (I was researching MG books when I put it down, but it’s still by my bed, waiting to be opened again)

So here’s the run down:

1. Three Days to Dead
2. Luna
3. Sphnix Princess
4. Appointment with Death
5. Poirot’s Early Cases
6. If I Stay
7. The Secret Garden
8. Northinger Abby
9. The Last Battle

Yep, nine books.  On Wednesday I finished The Silver Chair and Fairest.

What’s nice about the multitasking is that I finish books in waves.  On one day I might finish multiple books.  Of course, you would think that this slows down the reading of any one book, and it undoubtedly does, but since I’m choosing the novel based on mood, it’s possible I wouldn’t feel like reading the books I don’t choose then anyway.  And obviously work and gym time would be non-reading time if it wasn’t for the iPod and Kindle, respectively.  (I’ve talked about how hard it was with a real book at the gym before).

You also might think I’d get confused between the novels.  But really, as long as I don’t read two Agatha Christies or listen to two Narnia books at the same time, I don’t.  The closest I get to it is when I get this feeling that I was really emotionally into some fictional work, and my brain is trying to work out which one it was.  But this also spans tv and movies, and occasionally still influences my next read.  For example, after the movie The Good Son was on the other day and I caught the end of it, I was very creeped out by sadistic people, and, hey, I happened to be reading Appointment With Death, where the soon-to-be-murdered “victim” is also very sadistic.  That influenced which book I chose for a while.

Will I slow down as I finish books in this set?  Recent experience has told me “no.”  I keep adding books to the list.  Finishing one and starting two.  Obviously, when I finish Appointment with Death, I will go to the last novel in that three-in-one book.  Plus I have a bunch of books I’m dying to read on my bookcase, and plenty at my fingertips on the Kindle.  However, my iPod listening will slow down for now because I have to think at work for the next two weeks at least.

But we’ll see.  I’m going to try to finish one book tonight.  Off to read Sphinx Princess.

Currently on iPod: Foreplay/Long Time by Boston

Lots of love,
Sage