Leap For Joy!

I like to think of Leap Day as an "extra 24 hours" each four years in which to do something special. Which is not to say I always accomplish that, but this year I made plans months in advance to meet an old friend for lunch...someone so special that she stood beside me at the altar as my matron of honor!

Happy Leap Day to all our readers, and hope you find some "extra time" to celebrate, be it with a friend, by reading a good book, or maybe to keep writing one!

The Happiest Place on Earth

Disneyland long ago coined themselves to be "the happiest place on Earth." I like Disneyland as much as the next person...in fact, we did a blog post on the cats behind the Disneyland scenes just last year.

But when I think of the place that makes me happiest, there's no Mickey or Donald or fast-moving rides. Instead, there are books. Rows and piles and stacks of books. All of which are free to borrow.

For me, a library is the happiest place on Earth.


I have been a library geek for as long as I can remember, electrified by the power and the magic and the possibilities inside the four walls. We had a terrific branch and staff within walking distance of my house when I was kid. I spent many, many hours there, and know for sure they contributed to my love of reading, and my excitement for creating my own stories. So upon the release of my first book, Top Ten Uses for an Unworn Prom Dress, I mailed a signed copy to the current head librarian, in hopes he'd display it as written by a former teen patron.

These days, I live on the other side of the country, and enjoy the services of another terrific library system. It recently added an electronic component, where a patron can request books from any of the branches, receive an e-mail when it arrives at the local branch, and another as a due date reminder. It just doesn't get any easier than that, huh? I was happy to show my gratitude and support by donating a couple boxes of signed books last year to their teen summer reading program.

So since this blog post is a love letter to libraries, please feel free to leave a comment telling us something cool about yours.

Our Weekend Giveaway Winner!

Thanks to all who shared the names of YA books they are itching to read! Our winner, chosen by my random number generator is...

KRISTA

who wants to read John Green's latest, The Fault in our Stars!

So Krista, please e-mail me at admin@tinaferraro.com, and I'll get the Amazon gift card to you!

Weekend Giveaway!

A $10 Amazon gift card is up for grabs! All you have to do to enter this giveaway is leave us a comment with the name of a young adult novel you have been wanting to read. It can be:

--a classic;

--a book that's been on your "list" for a while;

--a new release;

--a book you've heard buzz about that's not even out yet.

We love hearing about all young adult novels!

Enter between NOW and midnight on Sunday, February 19th, and check back next Monday to learn the winner's name! Best of luck!

There You'll Find Me

A couple of years ago, we hosted young adult author, Jenny B. Jones, here at YA Fresh, to talk about her current release, So Not Happening.

She now has another book out, There You'll Find Me, which I just finished reading.



Finley Sinclair is not your typical eighteen-year-old. She's witty, tough, and driven. With an upcoming interview at the Manhattan music conservatory, Finley needs to compose her audition piece. But her creativity disappeared with the death of her older brother, Will.

She decides to study abroad in Ireland so she can follow Will's travel journal. It's the place he felt closest to God, and she's hopeful being there will help her make peace over losing him. So she agrees to an exchange program and boards the plane.

Beckett Rush, teen heartthrob and Hollywood bad boy, is flying to Ireland to finish filming his latest vampire movie. On the flight, he meets Finley. She's the one girl who seems immune to his charm. Undeterred, Beckett convinces her to be his assistant in exchange for his help as a tour guide.

Once in Ireland, Finley starts to break down. The loss of her brother and the pressure of school, her audition, and whatever it is that is happening between her and Beckett, leads her to a new and dangerous vice. When is God going to show up for her in this emerald paradise?

Then she experiences something that radically changes her perspective on life. Could it be God convincing her that everything she's been looking for has been with her all along?

I loved the book and recommend it to readers looking for stories with a lot of heart. The dialogue is crisp and often humorous, the descriptions of the Irish countryside so apt they make you feel like you are there, and at all times, I could relate to what Finley was going through and feeling.

It's a tender story of overcoming grief and looking forward again. But warning: have a box of tissues ready!

Friday Night Lights!

This is not the first time I've been "late to the party" as far as great TV, movies and books. As a popular teen drama, I've had the tv program, Friday Night Lights, on my Netflix list for a long time...meaning to get to it. It's just that there were so many episodes--more than 70--and I kept thinking I needed a huge block of time. Besides, I'm not a big football fan. Would I even like it?

Well, I started watching last month, and quickly found I'd been wrong on both counts. Wrong that the football aspect would be a negative aspect...in fact, when they get to the game scenes, I'm jazzed and excited. And wrong about struggling to find enough time to watch. I am so hooked on the storylines, the characters and the drama that I find myself thinking about the program even when I'm not watching it, and "making time" to watch more episodes.

I am just finishing up Season One right now, and so happy that there's five more seasons! 70+ episodes may not seem like enough!

So how about you? Any Friday Night Lights fans among us? Any favorite characters?

Too Much of a Good Thing?

As I have mentioned here, I've been reading a lot lately, and making an effort to vary my choices. In fact, last summer, I intentionally read books I would have normally passed by for one reason or another, just to "shake things up," and really reaped the benefits by discovering terrific books and new authors.

But the problem is I am finding that the more I read, the more I want to. Which means I keep picking up books and starting them--before I've finished the one(s) I am reading. Like right now, for instance, I am 3/4 of the way into a book of newspaper columnist's reflections, 1/4 into a fiction novel, and while they are both very captivating, yesterday I found myself reading the prologue to Libba Bray's BEAUTY QUEEN, and thinking "I'll just read a couple chapters" before going to back to the other books.

Sheesh! I am starting to think this is too much of a good thing...that I need to slow down and read one at a time!

So I thought I'd toss this out to our YA Fresh readers: do you find yourself reading multiple books, too, or are you a one-at-a-time reader?

Don't Breathe a Word: the Words Have Power video!

Have you heard about young adult author Holly Cupala's newest release, Don't Breathe a Word?


Here is the book blurb:

Joy Delamere is suffocating.

From asthma, from her parents, and from her boyfriend, Asher, who is smothering her from the inside out. She can take his cruel words, his tender words . . . until the night they go too far.

To escape, Joy sacrifices her suburban life to find the one who offered his help, a homeless boy called Creed. He introduces her to a world of fierce loyalty, to its rules of survival, and to love­a world she won’t easily let go.

Set against the backdrop of the streets of Seattle, Holly Cupala’s power­ful new novel explores the subtleties of abuse, the secrets we keep, and the ways to redemption. But above all, it is an unflinching story about the extraordinary lengths one girl will go to discover her own strength.

Holly put together a video to celebrate the power of words, and invited some young adult authors to make cameo appearances, including Justina Chen, Melissa Walker, Stephanie Kuehnert, Sarah Stevenson, Denise Jaden, Lish McBride, Lisa Schroeder, Cynthia Jaynes, Tara Kelly, Joelle Anthony, Stasia Ward Kehoe, Janet S. Fox, Tina Ferraro (yes, me), and Janet Lee Carey.

I hope you enjoy the video, and that you pick up your own copy of Don't Breathe a Word!

What's Fresh with Lucienne Diver's Fangtastic!

What do you wear to face down a cadre of killer kids?

Gina Covello would rather be working on her manicure than missions for the Feds’ paranormal unit to which she’s been recruited. That changes when a group of killer kids takes out a family in the sunshine state and disappearances begin to plague the lifestylers who only play at the kind of existence our fanged fashionista leads. She and her crew are sent undercover into the vampire clubs…which turn out to be run by real vampires. While Gina’s BFF Marcy hangs with the steampunk-styled Burgess Brigade that seems to have spawned the killer kids, Gina herself is supposed to get in good with the fanged fiends behind the scenes, even to the point of playing double-agent, offering to hand over her powerful boyfriend Bobby. Her playacting threatens to become a bit too real when she discovers things about her spy handlers that make her wonder whether she’s truly on the right side of the battle between Feds and fangs.

Hello Lucienne! Thank you for visiting us again on YA Fresh. How did you come up with the idea for Fangtastic? What kind of research did you have to do to bring Gina to life on the page?

Lucienne: The good thing about writing a heroine who’s an eighteen year old girl is that I was once an eighteen year old girl. (We won’t go into how long ago that was!) That’s pretty much where our similarities end. Gina is a fanged fashionista, who only “survived” her senior prom because of a make-out session with the surprise hottie of the evening…the class chess champed who’d recently been vamped himself. I can’t claim any firsthand knowledge of such things, but I have been to a few proms in my time.

My research mostly involves locations. Fangtastic is set in Florida, where I now live, but I made a fieldtrip to a club very similar to The Tower where the vampire lifestylers meet. I also interviewed a friend of mine who is an integral part of the New England vampire community to find out a lot of what I needed to know about the philosophy, beliefs and terminology. It was really fascinating! (My husband and I met working at a haunted house, so we have many friends in unusual fields to draw on. Some have appeared on shows like Face Off and Oddities.)

At age eight, what did you want to be when you grew up? And at age eighteen? And while you’re at it, what about at age twenty-eight?

Lucienne: I’m not sure what I wanted to be at eight. Did I still want to be a cryptozoologist? Yeah, I think I did. I wanted to discover some truth behind the Loch Ness Monster, chupacabra, big foot and all those legends. I wanted them to be real, for the world to be bigger than it seemed so that there were still secrets to be revealed. I don’t think that’s changed. At eighteen, I couldn’t quite believe in Nessie any more. I wanted to be an anthropologist, learning about ancient cultures, because piecing things together through artifacts and linguistics is like gathering clues to a mystery, like solving for secrets. I also wanted to be a writer, which is why my college degree shows double majors. And twenty-eight…you mean at my (*cough*) current age? Now I write books with elements of all of the above…magic and mystery, secrets and solutions. I describe my Vamped series as Legally Blond meets Buffy. You’ve got a snarky, fanged, fashion-conscious protagonist against sometimes pretty dark things that she’s got to get to the bottom of. I love the juxtaposition of light and dark.

What is your worst writing distraction/procrastination tool?

Lucienne: My puppy! I have an adorable apricot colored cockapoo (a cocker spaniel/poodle mix) who thinks that if anything is going to be in my lap, it should be him. He’s been known to push my notebook aside to settle in or to fall asleep on my Kindle to keep my attention focused where he thinks it should be. If it isn’t that, it’s that he must go for a walk or play fetch or…. Yeah, there’s a good reason I write on that dock. It’s the only way I can get anything done!

Please describe your perfect writing day.

Lucienne: I’m in one of the Adirondack chairs at the dock early in the day, when it’s still cool. (I live in Florida.) An iced latte is by my elbow, the breeze is blowing, though not too hard, and the pen in hand is smooth and full of ink. Heaven. It doesn’t take much.

Thank you again, Lucienne! Would you like to close with what you are working on now?

Lucienne: I’ve turned in the fourth novel in the Vamped series, Fangtabulous, which will be out in January 2013. I’m now working on Crazy in the Blood, which is the sequel to Bad Blood, the first novel in my Latter-Day Olympians urban fantasy series in which Tori Karacis, a private investigator, finds out that her family tales are true and that the Greek gods do still walk the earth (Apollo as a film star, Hephaestus as a special effects artist, etc.). Her family line may even trace back to them. Unlike her gorgon ancestress, she can’t quite turn men to stone, but as for stopping them in their tracks...

Lucienne Diver is the author of the popular Vamped series of young adult novels (think Clueless meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer). School Library Journal calls the first book, “a lighthearted, action-packed, vampire romance story following in the vein of Julie Kenner’s “Good Ghouls” (Berkley), Marlene Perez’s “Dead” (Harcourt), and Rachel Caine’s “The Morganville Vampires” (Signet) series.” VOYA has suggested that the books “will attract even reluctant readers.” Her short stories have been included in the Strip-Mauled and Fangs for the Mammaries anthologies edited by Esther Friesner (Baen Books), and one of her essays appears in the anthology Dear Bully: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories (HarperTeen). Visit her website www.luciennediver.com.

What's Fresh with Eileen Cook's Unraveling Isobel

A darkly comic novel that blends paranormal mystery and romance with humor, from the author of The Eductation of Hailey Kendrick and Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood.

Hello, Eileen! Great to have you back with us. Please tell us about your latest novel Unraveling Isobel and what we can expect from your characters.

Eileen: Unraveling Isobel comes out January 3, 2012 and is published by Simon Pulse.

Isobel’s life is falling apart. Her mom just married some guy she met on the internet only three months before, and is moving them to his sprawling, gothic mansion off the coast of nowhere. Goodbye, best friend. Goodbye, social life. Hello, icky new stepfather, crunchy granola town, and unbelievably good-looking, officially off-limits stepbrother.

But on her first night in her new home, Isobel starts to fear that it isn’t only her life that’s unraveling—her sanity might be giving way too. Because either Isobel is losing her mind, just like her artist father did before her, or she’s seeing ghosts. Either way, Isobel’s fast on her way to being the talk of the town for all the wrong reasons.

What's up next for you?

Eileen: I am working on a book that we’re currently calling Shady Sadie (stay tuned I suspect the title will change!). It’s the story of Sadie, who is a teenage con artist. When she realizes that she looks like an age enhanced photo of a missing child she decides to pull the ultimate con… until she begins to suspect she may actually be the missing child.

Wow, that sounds terrific! Thanks again for sharing with us, Eileen, would you like to close with a writing tip?

Eileen: Read! I am a big believer that the best writing teacher is other books. If it’s a book you love, try figuring out how the author did it, what made the book so interesting for you? Even if it is a book you disliked, there’s still a lot to learn- why did you dislike it? How can you avoid doing that in your writing?

Eileen Cook is a multi-published author with her novels appearing in six different languages. She spent most of her teen years wishing she were someone else or somewhere else, which is great training for a writer. Her latest release, The Education of Hailey Kendrick came out in Jan 2011

You can read more about Eileen, her books, and the things that strike her as funny at www.eileencook.com. Eileen lives in Vancouver with her husband and two dogs and no longer wishes to be anyone or anywhere else.