As some of you know, both of my kids have cystic fibrosis. My daughter was diagnosed at the age of seven months due to failure to thrive. It was a really hard time in our lives, but with new treatments she and her brother are doing well. And those new treatments have pretty much all been made available in some way due to efforts of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF).
Last year a friend of mine, Teresa Bodwell, came up with the idea of doing a read/write-a-thon to benefit the CFF. We raised over $10,000 and this year we hope to raise even more. The basic idea is that you read or write and people pledge money to the CFF for your efforts. The CFF set up a really nice web site for us to use so people can make their donations online–easy. :)
For more information, I’ve posted the official announcement below, or you would just like to give a cash donation you can sponsor me. Thanks in advance!
Unleash Your Story: Make a Difference brings readers and writers together to raise awareness and funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF). We all know the power of story to transform lives. Imagine hundreds of writers and readers working together to tap that energy and change the grim story of cystic fibrosis into a tale with a happy ending!
Cystic fibrosis is the most common fatal genetic disease in the U.S. Thirty years ago life expectancy for a child born with CF was only five years, but through the efforts of the CFF and others, life expectancy and quality of life has increased dramatically. We hope through our fund-raiser to help the CFF continue these efforts and to someday soon find a cure!
The Unleash Your Story: Make a Difference event will feature fun contests and prizes to challenge readers and writers to rack up the highest word counts, pages read and funds raised. Writers can strive to keep pace with prolific, award-winning author Lori Wilde while readers can try to match avid reader Michelle Buonfiglio of Romance: B(u)y the Book.
To participate you can:
Start your own team. Work with other readers or writers to raise money, complete WIPs, read books, and win prizes together.
Donate individually, and ask others to support you. Through the CFF web site every participant will get their own personal web page where people can donate in that participant’s name. (All donations are tax deductable.)
School starts tomorrow. I have Nocturne Bite due tomorrow. I finished edits on Amazon Queen last week and attended my neice’s wedding in Southern Mo. this past weekend. Crazy!! So, I’ve been a bit silent here–even missed my weekly blog at Something Wicked…
Anyway, hopefully after this week things will settle back down and I’ll get into a new steady schedule. Until then, I have a contest for you!
Fellow Juno author Maria Lima put this together. Here are the details…
JunoPalooza extended!!
Since many folks are vacationing, the contest has been extended
through Friday, September 4, the natal day of our own Maria Lima.
Stop by, give us your questions to the quiz answers and be eligible to
win one of the fabulous book prizes. Tell your friends! Please RT on
Twitter and post to Facebook and LJ! GO AND WIN!!
PRIZES:
* your choice of one of Lori Devoti’s books
* a copy of Vicious Circle by Linda Robertson
* a copy of Matters of the Blood by Maria Lima (yours, truly)
* a copy Would-Be Witch by Kimberly Frost
* a copy of Dancing with Werewolves by Carole Nelson Douglas
* a copy of Vegas Bites anthology from contributor Seressia Glass
And this is a good one! Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. It’s a YA about a place where children are separated at a certain age..I think maybe 14. At that age they become “pretty” and are sent to a separate place to live. At the beginning of the book, the protagonist has just said goodbye to her best friend who has become pretty. And she is eagerly waiting for her own transformation, but as tends to happen in books (good ones anyway) things change and she learns a lot more about being “pretty” than she ever wanted to know.
Definitely a great read! And now you can download it for free!
I love coming across free books to pass along to you. There are enough it almost justifies buying an ereader…I’m still thinking on that…
Anyway, here you go three new free books from Random House and one is by my friend Jennifer Stevenson. Check it out!
The Brass Bed
Written by Jennifer Stevenson
THE CURSE: Satisfy one hundred women or be trapped in a brass bed forever Lord Randall was a lousy lover in 1811, so his magician-mistress turned him into a sex demon. Lucky for him, his bed fell into Clay’s hands.
THE CON: Sex therapy for women on an antique brass “treatment bed” Clay has the perfect scam going, until that pesky, foxy fraud investigator Jewel comes sniffing around. Lucky for him, she has a soft spot for hunky con men.
THE CHOICE: Sex demon or sex fraudster? Jewel is Randy’s hundredth woman. Now he says he’s her personal sex slave, and her case against the con artist is dissolving in a hail of hormones. Lucky for her, she’s a tough cop with a lusty libido.
Maggie Stiefvater has a new release! I discovered Maggie not long after her first book, Lament came out. I loved it, my mom loved it, you would probably love it too. :)
It’s YA, as is her new book, but definitely something adults who like fantasy will enjoy too.
So, when I heard she had a new book, part of a new series that features werewolves, coming out, I definitely wanted to have her stop by the blog to answer a few questions, and she nicely agreed.
Q.) First can you give us an overview of your new release Shiver?
M.S.) Yup. The spiel: It’s a bittersweet love story about Grace, a girl who has always loved the wolves behind her house, and the Sam, a boy who has to become a wolf each winter. Each summer he gets fewer and fewer months as a human, so when they fall in love, the countdown begins.
Q.) How is this book similar/different from your first book Lament?
M.S.) It’s a lot more character driven. There were a lot of scenes where I thought “this scene really ought to have a corpse or something to move it along” — but it wasn’t that kind of book. It’s a slower, more detailed book. I think you could speed read LAMENT and get the gist. I don’t think you could speed read SHIVER. Well, you could, but I think it would be pretty boring.
Q.) Where did you get the idea to have a character whose shifts are tied to the seasons?
M.S.) I was trying to think of something cyclical, like the phases of the moon, but that would give me more time to play with inside the cycle. The seasons worked perfectly, plus it gave me built in, easy to understand tension as the temperature dropped.
Q.) Is Sam part of a group who also shift like this or is he affected by a curse or something similar that only affects him?
M.S.) In my version of werewolf lore, it’s contagious — you’re bitten, you’re screwed. I mean, you become a wolf. So Sam is part of a larger pack, all in varying states of their shifting. He’s one of the few that still becomes human in the summer.
Q.) Would you call Shiver a romance or something else?
M.S.) I think of it as a love story — a romance guarantees a happy ending. Also I think of romances as a bit grander. Shiver is a very quiet, understated novel. Or at least I like to think so.
Q.) Is Shiver part of a series? What characters will we see again in future books?
M.S.) It’s a trilogy — I just finished writing LINGER, which comes out next fall, and FOREVER will finish it up the fall after that. Readers will see some of the characters from SHIVER in LINGER — not saying which ones!
Q.) What formats and where can readers find Shiver?
M.S.) It’s available as a hardcover and as an audio book (and as an audio download). The audio was very cool — I went to NYC and in this very swank and beautiful studio they had me record some extras for the audio book, like an interview, and me reading the first chapters. Also, they have two narrators — one for Sam and one for Grace. I was very pleased!
Q.) How long have you been writing? What was your first sale experience like?
M.S.) I’ve been writing ever since I was a tiny, evil child. I remember writing novels (terrible, terrible things involving the death of all unicorns at the hands of evil, evil wizard-kings) on my dad’s word processor, in the days before cheap PCs. I first started submitting for publication when I was 16, which was not the world’s best idea. And I sold my first novel to Andrew Karre, an editor at Flux, shortly out of college. I had submitted it to him the year before and he’d asked for revisions, which I’d twiddled at. I didn’t really go far enough — I didn’t really know enough to revise properly anyway — and just went ahead and wrote another novel, which I submitted to him. He said “how about that first one? feel like tearing it apart this time?” So I did, and with a year’s experience under my belt, I was able to really rip it apart. On just three revised chapters, Andrew offered a contract, and I was off. He said “this is your foot in the door.” He was so, so right.
Q.) What’s your writing process like? Are you a plotter or a pantser?
M.S.) Sort of a combination. I absolutely need to know where I’m headed before I start, or I guarantee you I will get stuck. So I write a two page synopsis before I start writing my novels — the ending is true, and the beginning is mostly true, and then in the middle I stuff in lies and damn lies. I like to pretend I know how I’m getting to the end, but really, it’s just guessing until I get there.
I do a lot of plotting along the way — meaning that I cannot write every day. I will write a scene or two, and then the next day I will brainstorm and think about where I’m going next. I won’t sit down and stare at a blank computer screen. Nothing will happen. Nothing good, anyway.
Q.) I saw the cute and creative book trailer for Shiver. Can you post a link and tell us where you came up with the idea for it? Did you create it yourself?
M.S.) I got the idea for this after seeing the initial art for the cover — the gorgeous silhouettes of the trees. I’ve always been a fan of stop-motion animation and I really wanted to try it for myself. I thought a cut-paper stop animation video would be less work than hand-drawing (I did a hand-drawn one for BALLAD that I’m putting out there next month, and trust me, it was more work doing the cut outs), so I cut out the trees and the people and the wolves and wrote the music for it. My sister and I went to the studio and recorded the track and then I assembled it. It took . . . um, a lot of time. I’m afraid to admit to how much time I spent doing this when I should’ve been writing LINGER on a deadline.
Q.) What other things do you do to promote yourself?
M.S.) Well, I have my blog (both the Blogger version that I just started: maggiestiefvater.blogspot.com and the LiveJournal version that I’ve had for years: m-stiefvater.livejournal.com), and I do library and school visits. I sent out a ton of review copies of LAMENT, my debut, for review. And other bloggers have been great about guest posts and participating in contests that get the word out.
Q.) Why young adult? What about that age attracts you?
M.S.) I have a Peter Pan complex. I love writing teen protagonists because everything’s still new for them — the world stretches out with endless possibilities. I think that it could still be this way for adults, too, if they saw the world that way — but a lot of adults get into their rut and just keep going through the motions. I can’t see myself writing about desk jobs or normal adults . . . so teens it is. Also, I love reading YA and they say to write what you love to read.
Q.) What is the last really great book you read? Why did you love it?
M.S.) I read Stitches, a graphic novel memoir by David Small. It was absolutely wonderfully observed and funny and dark and brilliant. I loved it.
Q.) What’s next for you and where can readers find you on the Web?
M.S.) Next up: LINGER, the sequel to SHIVER. And BALLAD, coming out this October — the companion book to LAMENT.
The name for this blog came from a conversation I had with a friend who referred to life as a published author as "life on the bubble". And it's true; you are always on the bubble–lines close, life gets in the way, and the market changes. You can never settle in and feel secure–so there you are sitting on that darn bubble and hoping it doesn’t burst right under your…you know. But for all that, it's a great gig and I'm thrilled to have a shot at it.
And this is a good one! Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. It’s a YA about a place where children are separated at a certain age..I think maybe 14. At that age they become “pretty” and are sent to a separate place to live. At the beginning of the book, the protagonist has just said goodbye to her best friend who has become pretty. And she is eagerly waiting for her own transformation, but as tends to happen in books (good ones anyway) things change and she learns a lot more about being “pretty” than she ever wanted to know.
THE CON: Sex therapy for women on an antique brass “treatment bed” Clay has the perfect scam going, until that pesky, foxy fraud investigator Jewel comes sniffing around. Lucky for him, she has a soft spot for hunky con men. 
?
, a graphic novel memoir by David Small. It was absolutely wonderfully observed and funny and dark and brilliant. I loved it. 
Zombie Moon
