Thanks and thanks and more thanks!!!

To continue with our theme, we asked Sarah Prineas, author of The Magic Thief, who she wanted to thank today.

Sarah?

Hmmm. It's hard to pick just one person to thank after months of meeting booksellers, teachers, and librarians from all over the country, and after seeing how hard everybody at my publisher works.

I considered Becky Anderson, owner of Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville, who hosted the prepublication dinner where I met the first kid readers of my book; I considered thanking the book's editor, Melanie Donovan, for acquiring the books and being such a joy to work with; I considered my publicist at HarperCollins, Cindy Tamasi, who cheerfully made all the fall tour events run so smoothly.

But one thing I've realized in the six months since The Magic Thief came out is that the independent booksellers are hugely important. Most of the indy booksellers I've met have been passionate advocates for the books they love. I thank them all for that, but the one I thank the most is Diane Capriola at The Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Georgia.

When The Magic Thief was a Summer 2008 Booksense Children's Pick , Diane was the one who wrote the blurb. She invited me to attend the Decatur Book Festival, where I had an absolutely fabulous time and enjoyed meeting Diane and her staff in person. She also told me she nominated the book for the E.B. White award .

How can I thank booksellers like Diane enough? I don't think I can. But still, I'll try: Diane, thank you!!

And let us all join Sarah in thanking Diane too!

Shameless Saturday

Here's what Booklist says about Kristin O'Donnell Tubb's middle grade historical, WINIFRED OLIVER DOES THINGS DIFFERENT: "Tubb’s inventive heroine comes across as a female version of familiar characters, such as Gary Paulsen's Harris or Robert Newton Peck's Soup. This homespun tale,f ull of folksy humor and based on historical fact, will appeal to young fans of Deborah Wiles' and Ruth White's books."





Book Chic loves Debbie Reed Fischer's Young Adult, BRALESS IN WONDERLAND. Read the interview here.

SWIMMING WITH THE SHARKS also by Debbie Reed Fischer was given the Gold Star Award for Excellence by TeensReadToo.com. Here is the review.






Guess what independent booksellers for children across the nation are recommending?

THE MAGIC THIEF by Sarah Prineas and THE POSSIBILITIES OF SAINTHOOD by Donna Freitas
Check out the catalog.


GO GANG!

Shameless Saturday

Reviews:

N.A. Nelson’s BRINGING THE BOY HOME found to be “refreshing, well put-together, and completely original” at teensreadtoo!

Brooke Taylor’s UNDONE “completely spell binding” at And Another Book Read… AND "seriously amazing!" at Midnight Twillight's Book Blog (be sure to leave a comment for a chance to win an ARC of Undone!)

The Gollywhopper Games by Jody Feldman garnered a couple of local newspaper reviews far away from her hometown ... from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Book Reviews: These puzzlers are treats for tweens and from the Miami Herald Breezing through summer with books that are fun - 06/07/2008 - MiamiHerald.com

Interviews:

Susan Van Hecke interviewed M.P. Barker for Authorlink.com. You can read it out HERE and then go check out the trailer for A DIFFICULT BOY and more on Susan’s blog "Adventures in Authorhood"

Busy Busy:

Teri Brown takes time from her Read My Lips Simon Pulse Launch Gala for a guest blog at And Another Book Read…

Daphne Grab has been very busy the launch of ALIVE AND WELL IN PRAGUE:

Check out her guest blog on Teen Book Review, her interviews with Sea Heidi and Jessica Burkhart, and a review from School Library Journal- here's Daphne’s favorite line:

"The story provides a safe and positive alternative to teens who are hoping for happy endings in their own lives."

Going Live:

The microsite for Sarah Prineas' The Magic Thief is live at http://www.magicthief.com/. It includes games, exclusive content, wallpaper, podcast, etc. so be sure to check it all out!

Check out Terri Clark's funny and fierce book trailer on Youtube for her short story, DON’T MIND ME, in the YA anthology BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO with Ellen Hopkins, Lynda Sandoval and Niki Burnham. Sometimes...breaking up is for the best.

Summer Events:

Look for Zu Vincent at these Upcoming Events:

ALA Book Signings: Front Street will host two signings for Zu Vincent's young adult novel The Lucky Place at the American Library Association's Annual Conference on June 28th & 29th in Anaheim, California.

Zu will present on the panel “Managing Your On-line Career” at Vermont College Masters Program Alumni Weekend on July 13th.

Zu joins other 2K8ers for a panel presentation "Turning Old Writing Tricks into New Reading Tricks for Today's Young Audience " at the 110th California Library Association's Annual Conference & Exhibition in San Jose, California, November 14-17.

Zu's radio interview about writing her novel The Lucky Place first aired on "Nancy's Bookshelf," KCHO 91.7 FM, Saturday, May 24, 2008, at 3 P.M. Pacific Standard Time.

And don't forget Terri Clark, Teri Brown, Brooke Taylor, and Regina Scott will be signing at Readers for Life Literacy Event in San Francisco July 30th.

Shameless Saturday

Give us a week and SHAZAM good news bursts forth. It's literary lava and we are HOT!


RAVE REVIEWS

Nina Nelson’s Bringing the Boy Home received a glowing review from Kirkus. “"Told in two distinctive voices, this imaginative and beautifully realized novel, set in the Amazon, tells the story of two boys from the fictional Takunami tribe…their stories connect in a surprising yet totally believable way, giving psychological depth to this richly hued novel about the winding turns of destiny and the bonds between father and son, tribe and family.”

The Story Siren said Regina Scott’s “La Petite Four has a little bit of everything; mystery, suspense, romance and of course really beautiful dresses! The plot is interesting and captivating.” They also refer to Regina as an “awesome writer.”

BIZ BUZZ

M.P. Barker got an excellent write up in The Republican and was a featured author on Red Room.

Jennifer Bradbury’s Shift will be published in Dutch!

Teri Brown’s book trailer for Read My Lips is featured on CBS’s You Tube.

Laura Bowers is known for her amusing author interviews. Check out her latest 1-on-1 in which Daphne Grab confesses to singing to her cat.

Not only has Marissa Doyle been a featured author on the Fantasy Debut blogspot, her Bewitching Season was named in the editor's ten best summer reads for older readers in Scholastic’s Instructor, a magazine for teachers.

Sarah Prineas talks about killing your darlings aka revising as a guest blogger on Darcy Patterson’s Revision Notes. Even better, Czech and Slovak rights to The Magic Thief trilogy were sold to publisher Fortuna. That's a total of 12 languages, plus the UK/Australia!

Who knew Lisa Schroeder was an expert juggler?!? But she says as much in this great interview with Cynthia Leitich Smith. And I Heart You, You Haunt Me is going to be published in Polish. It’s official…2k8 is international!

Pittsburgh’s Lux did an awesome interview with Brooke Taylor (her first!). Check it out!

Sarah Beth Durst (Into the Wild) recently interviewed our Zu Vincent about her essay in the Teen Libris anthology, Through the Wardrobe: Your Favorite Authors on C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia.

Annie Wedekind’s new website is a must see in addition to her post about the love affair between girls and horses on the Feiwel and Friends blog.

Toodle-oo to Sarah

Sarah's talked this week about herself, her cats, her book, maps, and biscuits and bacon. Before saying toodle-oo today, because editors are such an important part of the book-making process, she wanted to share her thoughts about Ursula Nordstrom, the legendary director of the HarperCollins children's books division from 1940 to 1973.

I didn't really understand what book editors do, or how they feel about their work, until my own editor sent me Dear Genius, which is a book of letters from Ursula Nordstrom to many of the authors she worked with, including E.B. White, Margaret Wise Brown, Maurice Sendak, M.E. Kerr, Russell and Lillian Hoban, etc, etc, etc. UN had her hand in so many of the best-loved children's books published during those years; she had a vision, and she stuck to it.

The book was a revelation, really. Publishing is big business, right? HarperCollins, as far as I know, is owned by a huge multinational corporation. And we writers are aware of the tension between the business and the book. We love our own books, and we worry about whether they're going to sell well enough to make our publisher happy. This tension is nothing new; UN felt it, and referred angrily at the end of her career to "those tiny, tiny persons who live on the well-known bottom line."

As director, UN had to be aware of the bottom line, but she quite often fell in love with a book or with a piece of artwork. "There are a lot of us in publishing," she said, "who are just as romantic, or perhaps more romantic, about books than many of the authors and artists." Reading a book sent to her by one of her authors, she describes herself: "I sit here in shimmering happiness over such a lovely manuscript."

Once an author or artist was 'hers,' she became his or her champion. She discovered Maurice Sendak when he was designing shop windows at FAO Schwartz! She defended his controversial In the Night Kitchen (in the pictures, the little boy is naked) against prudish readers who wanted to censor the book and described one of her responses as leaving 'blood all over the keyboard.' She describes herself as "one who has fought, bled, and practically died to do good books whether or not they were going to be immediately profitable."

Sometimes her 'geniuses' didn't produce the work they were contracted to do. UN was a master of gentle flattering persuasion—dear genius, the world needs your beautiful book! As deadlines pass, she prods gently, and sometimes with dramatic desperation. Kay Thompson was supposed to do another Eloise book for Harper, but she didn't turn the book in on time, and stopped answering letters or phone calls. UN wrote, "I wonder if I'm dead and I don't realize it, and that's why you can't get in touch with me." And Edward Gorey made her nuts! After repeated delays, she said she hoped Harper could publish the book "before a truck knocks me down and kills me."

She was passionate about her books and her artists and authors. And I think that tradition in publishing is still alive. Editors still buy books because they fall in love with them. Thanks to them, readers can find books that they, too, can fall in love with.

Have you ever read a book that made you feel "shimmering happiness"? I bet its editor felt that way, too.


We'll leave you pondering that question while we thank Sarah for her enlightening post on editors and for a divine debut week. Best of luck, Sarah!

P.S. Everyone be sure to check our HarperCollins's new website for THE MAGIC THIEF, it just launched.

Day 4: Bacon and Biscuits

Feeling hungry? Sarah Prineas is doling out some viritual biscuits and bacon for breakfast along with the reasoning behind her fattening yummy obsession.

So…biscuits? Bacon?

Yes, there's a whole biscuit subplot running through the three MAGIC THIEF books. Biscuits dripping with butter, and biscuits with bacon, and biscuits with cheese and jam, and stale biscuits dunked in tea, and biscuits used as bait to catch a dragon…

In the appendices at the back of book one, there are even two biscuit recipes. One you'd want to make, the other you'd want to make and then feed to your dog (if you didn't like your dog).

There is a reason for the biscuit plot. Before he gets involved in magical doings, my protagonist, Conn, was a "gutterboy"—a street kid who made his living picking pockets and locks in the Twilight, the bad part of town. Because he hasn't always gotten enough to eat, he's a little obsessed on the subject of food.

Unlike Benet, the biscuit-baking bodyguard/housekeeper from the book, I am not much of a chef. The Pillsbury dough-boy makes the biscuits at my house. But I do know how to cook bacon.

There is an art to it, if you have the patience. You want the bacon nice and crispy, but not burnt, and once the bacon grease gets hot, burnt can happen very fast. I learned how to cook bacon from a friend. What you do is, get a cast-iron pan. Open the bacon package. Throw the bacon in, all in one lump. Cook on very low heat for, like, an hour. Drain it on a paper towel. Save the bacon grease to put on the dog's biscuits.

On the day I signed the book contract with HarperCollins, can you guess what the Prineas family had for dinner?

Now that we've stirred up some some unrelenting cravings in you, make sure to swing by tomorrow when Sarah talks about a book that gave her a whole new perspective on editors.

Day 3: Mapping Things Out

We all know writers have a love of words, but did you know Sarah Prineas also has a love for maps?

An interesting thing about hobbits is they don't like to travel, but Bilbo always loved maps. Especially Thror's map.

I love maps, too, with a deep and geeky love for things like magical runes and "here there be dragons" and the compass rose and place names like "the Withered Heath" and "Mirkwood the Great".

For fantasy writers, maps are really important because we often create what Tolkien called a "secondary world" that is, a world completely removed from the "real" world, with its own geography and history. Maps make real the places of the imagination. That's why you'll see maps in the first couple of pages of many fantasy novels, including THE MAGIC THIEF.
When the book was being designed, my editor asked me for a map sketch to give the artist. I started out by consulting a really excellent map of 18th century London because Wellmet, the city in my book, is very loosely based on it, especially Southwark which was, back then, the seedy side of the Thames. I was inspired by the twisty streets with the funny names:

London map

Then I started sketching, coming up with twisty streets and funny names of my own. This is a detail from the Twilight, the part of Wellmet where you wouldn't want to live:

my map sketch

Then the artist for THE MAGIC THIEF took my sketch and turned it into a real map which is right at the beginning of the book:

book map

I have a puzzle version of Thror's map, by the way. It's one of my favorite things in the world.

What a cool thing to see the evolution of a story map. Now be sure to come back early tommorrow because Sarah will be treating us with biscuits and bacon. Yum!

Day 2: Getting to know Sarah

We're back with the lively Sarah Prineas for an intimate interview with this imaginative author. Settle in for your chance to get the 1 on 1 scoop.

2k8: Tell us, Sarah, where do you do most of your writing? Are you a coffee house writer or house hermit?

Sarah: House hermit. My house is pretty small so I don't have a home office. During my "writing days" (days off from my halftime dayjob) I write at the kitchen table. Keeping me company are the cats, Feather and Sparkle (who, by some weird coincidence looks just like Lady, the cat in THE MAGIC THIEF). This is a picture of them looking symmetrical instead of fighting, which they do on a schedule. I write on a black stealth MacBook computer named Sparks. It has a dragon sticker on it. Also keeping me company when I write is a cup of Lady Grey tea with cream and sugar. Check out the mug! One of my best buddies sent it to me after I got the book's cover art.

2k8: What a great gift! So, how did THE MAGIC THIEF come about? What got you started with the story?

Sarah: It was originally supposed to be a story for Cricket magazine. I had the first couple of lines--"A thief is a lot like a wizard…"--in a file on my computer for over a year: but I didn't have a protagonist or a story. But once I saw the letters to the editor in Cricket asking for mores stories with magic and wizards and more two-part stories, Conn's voice and character leaped into being.

2k8: It's amazing how things evolve, isn't it? How did you end up finding a publisher for it? Give us the deets.

Sarah: My publication story is pretty much textbook and boring. About a month after finishing the novel I got an agent through a referral. The agent had me do some revisions. She sent off the manuscript to 10 editors and after a couple of weeks we did the deal with HarperCollins. As my agent said later, "It's the way deals are supposed to work but never do." Except that it did! It took about a year from the day I started writing the book to the day I sold it.

2k8: Very cool! We like it when things go smoothly. Did anything at all catch you off guard when you were writing it?

Sarah: Oh, yeah. I didn't know I was a children's writer! Well, and first I didn't know it was a novel. It was supposed to be a story, but I found Conn's voice so fun to write and the possibilities of the Wellmet world so exciting, that the story turned into a novel manuscript. When my agent sent it to mainstream children's publishers instead of sf/fantasy ones I was surprised. She knew what she was doing, though.

2k8: We love it when all the pieces fall perfectly together. Now what question won't most people know to ask you? And what's your answer?

Sarah: What's your favorite disease? Lyme disease, definitely. Book one was put onto a "crash" publication schedule, so the editing process happened quickly. My editor called at the beginning of June and asked if I could finish edits by the end of the month. Then I caught Lyme disease (stupid tick). All of a sudden, edits needed to be done by the end of the week. And I did them! With a 102 fever and chills from the Lyme disease. The funny part of it is, my hometown is Lyme, Connecticut. Not funny ha-ha, really…

Wow, talk about rough revisions! And you and Meg Cabot now have something in common. Hopefully you'll share some good things too! Thank you so much for your time, Sarah.

Tune back in tomorrow when Sarah will expound on maps!

Let us introduce you to the magical, mystical Sarah Prineas

We're so excited to introduce you to our magical MG author, Sarah Prineas! Sarah lives not too far from the Iowa River in Iowa City, Iowa, where she works at the University of Iowa. It's a good thing she really likes Iowa… She has two kids and two cats and is married to a mad scientist. Her biscuits are the kind that come out of a can (put 'em on a pan, hope they don't burn...).

THE MAGIC THIEF is her first novel and is the first in a fantasy trilogy—or possibly a series, who knows—about Conn, a scruffy kid with a dark past who survives by picking pockets on the streets of Wellmet. When he picks the wizard Nevery's pocket he sets off on an adventure involving magic, peril, misery eels, pugilistic displays, evil Devices, the most amazing locus magicalicus in the world, and crossing a (mostly) frozen river on a night of stars as bright as daggers. He also eats a lot of biscuits and bacon.

Chapter one can be found here: http://www.magicthief.com/

RAVE REVIEWS!

"Sarah Prineas' vivid descriptions made me feel as if I was walking right next to Conn, her young resourceful hero." –D. J. MacHale author, of the

Pendragon series

"I couldn't put it down. Wonderful exciting stuff."--Diana Wynne Jones, author of Howl's Moving Castle

"Conn's attempts—both sorcerous and light-fingered—to save Wellmet's magic will enthrall readers, leaving them hungry for more of Conn's adventures—and perhaps for a biscuit or two!"--Ysabeau Wilce, author of Flora Segunda

"An uncommonly engaging young narrator kicks this debut fantasy ahead of the general run." --Kirkus (starred)

"What works wonderfully well here is the boy's irresistible voice, which is supplemented by the writings of Nevery in his journal, its creased and stained pages appearing as apart of the design."--Booklist (starred)

Saturday Shamelessness!

CONTESTS

We've got game!

WIN a copy of Sarah Prineas's The Magic Thief and a whole bunch of other HarperCollins books by clicking HERE. What more can you ask for?

THIS:
Jody Feldman, author of The Gollywhopper Games (Greenwillow) is running a cool contest for kids to win a Nintendo DS Lite or a very cool Gollywhopper Games T-shirt. Info at http://www.gollywhoppergames.com/. Click on the Contests balloon.

AND THIS:
Nancy Viau, author of Samantha Hansen Has Rocks in Her Head (Abrams/Amulet) is having a fun drawing. Prizes include a hot-off-the-presses ARC of her middle-grade, a rock collection like her main character's, and much more. Check out her blog for details.

EXCELLENT REVIEWS & BUZZ

The buzz is building for Zu Vincent's The Lucky Place (Front Street Press), starting with a great review at School Library Journal, who call it "a stunning fiction debut by an author to watch." The rest of the review is HERE. Did you get that? Stunning. Go Zu!

The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books liked The Lucky Place, too, calling it "Moving and multilayered."

Booklist finds even more strengths: "The 1960s setting is infused with small details from a child's viewpoint, providing a solid backdrop to the timeless story of changing family dynamics and allegiances." The reviewer also notes that "Fans of Nancy Werlin's Rules of Survival (2006) are a natural for this sad but hopeful story."

Debbie Reed Fischer has been interviewed by Alice Pope (and Deb's hilarious, as usual): Check it out HERE.

Have a great weekend, everybody. See you Monday!

Shameless Self Promotion Saturday!

Sale!

Daphne Grab announces her second sale!

The Wonder Years meets Dairy Queen in HALFTIME a Middle Grade novel about a twelve year old football fanatic who doesn't actually play the sport until his long lost half-brother, and the best college football player in the league, shows up in time for middle school team tryouts, tackling bullies, and talking to girls.

Reviews

Terri Clark has a new novella on stores shelves in the YA anthology BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO with Ellen Hopkins, Lynda Sandoval and Niki Burnham. Kirkus said this “box of candy for the lovelorn satisfies” and Book Chic called Terri’s story “an extremely hilarious paranormal story that has a very awesome girl power message." For Book Chic’s review, plus exclusive mini-interviews with the authors, visit here.

The School Library Journal gave our own M.P. Barker a thumb’s up for A DIFFICULT BOY saying, “Like L. M. Elliott's Give Me Liberty (HarperCollins, 2006), this is an eye-opening look at indentured servitude in American history." Click here to read it.

The Compulsive Reader loves Daphne Grab's ALIVE AND WELL IN PRAGUE, NEW YORK. “Smooth, empathetic writing will easily reel in readers by the hordes as she artfully portrays the hurt of everyone knowing your business in a small town, and the joy of true friends.” Witness the gushing here.

Abby the Librarian said Elizabeth C. Bunce’s A CURSE DARK AS GOLD “is a book to lose yourself in, a deep story you can really sink your teeth in.” Give it a look-see.

Julie M. Prince of YABooksCentral had this to say about Sarah Prineas’ THE MAGIC THIEF, “I didn’t leave my house from the time I started the book until I finished it the next day.” Check out the rave review in its entirety!

Biz Buzz

Marissa Doyle's BEWITCHING SEASON, Sarah Prineas's THE MAGIC THIEF and Liz Gallagher's THE OPPOSITE OF INVISIBLE have been named to the Spring 2008 New Voices Pick list of the Association of Booksellers for Children. The list of 20 books will be printed in a brochure and sent to Association member bookstores in June.

Totally Important Post!

TWO of our 2k8 books have been chosen for the Association of Booksellers for Children's (ABC) New Voices project: The Opposite of Invisible by Liz Gallagher and Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas. To give you an idea of how amazing this news is, only FOURTEEN books are chosen each year! Woot! Woot!

AND Magic Thief is a Top Ten Book Sense Pick for spring/summer 2008!

A BIG FAT THANK YOU and shout out to And Another Book Read for the fabulous review you gave Read My Lips by Teri Brown.

ANOTHER big fat thank you and shout out to Literate Lives for a wonderfully wonderful review of The Gollywhopper Games by Jody Feldman.

AND guess who loves Bewitching Season by Marissa Doyle? The Looking Glass Review!

With all this great 2k8 news, all of Broadway might be cheering!

Then again, it might just be us.

We're a pretty noisy class.

2k8 Classmates are turning heads...

There are ONE, make that TWO, make that a whopping THREE starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews. Let's hear it for:




Shift by Jennifer Bradbury

A Horse of Her Own by Annie Wedekind

The Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas

AND


Marissa Doyle's Bewitching Season is an Editor's Choice pick for this quarter at the Historical Novel Society, a review mag dedicated to historical fiction. Here's the really nice review.

More insight on sites!

A Web site offers fun features.
There is one part on my Web site that I had a lot of fun doing: thinking of my all-time favorite girl and guy characters in YA lit for my Favorites page. I wanted to write YA because I read it all the time. Because much as I enjoy adult novels, I love YA more. Which means I've read, and loved, an awful lot of YA books with some pretty awesome characters. There are some amazing girl characters out there, and some pretty fabulous guys who spring to life off the written page. So who did I choose to feature on my site? Click on the link below to find out!
~Daphne Grab, Author of Alive and Well in Prague, NY,
http://www.daphnegrab.com/


A Web site is proof.
My publisher tells me that kid readers are especially interested in the authors of the books they read. It's as if they can't believe an actual person wrote the book. A website proves an actual person did write the book, and a well-designed site gives extra interesting details about that person, like how many cats she has. It’s a great way for readers to continue to interact with the book.
~Sarah Prineas, Author of The Magic Thief,
http://www.sarah-prineas.com


Teens spend time online.
I think it's important to have a personal web site because the world is so Internet-ty! Especially because I write for teenagers, who seem to spend lots of time online and be very savvy, it's the most efficient way to reach out to them, let them know about me and my book, events, news, and whatever else is going on in my book-world. I happen to be a writer who's interested in communicating with young readers, so it's a step to accomplishing that. I think teenagers almost expect the experience of a book they love to go beyond the page. Everything else seems to go online somehow! Look at popular TV shows, like Lost, who are doing webisodes to accompany the television broadcasts. Not to mention message boards!
~Liz Gallagher, Author of The Opposite of Invisible,
http://lizgallagher.com/


A strong Web presence can do amazing things for your career.
It cultivates your readership, creates word-of-mouth interest, gains press, excites your publisher, and more. With that in mind I started researching Web site designers by visiting author sites. I noted what layouts and features I liked, what I didn’t and which designers I could afford. I wanted a website that was user friendly, had teen appeal and that I could build on as my career grew. I thought of it like a starter home. I couldn’t spend $5000 on a site (or even $2000), but I could build an affordable base site and add on to it. And later on, if I wanted to, I could always remodel. My site designer, Barb of Jaleroro Web Designs, did a fantastic job of taking my ideas and making them a reality. I’ve already received positive feedback on my site and it has generated interest in my upcoming books.
~Terri Clark, Author of Sleepless,
http://www.terriclarkbooks.com/


Anybody who’s anybody has a Web site.
I think it's important to have a personal web site because everyone keeps telling me that it is, even though I'm not entirely sure what I should put on it. Frankly, I'm a pretty boring person. If I were all that interesting, I wouldn't be spending my time making upstories, now, would I?
~M.P. Barker, Author of A Difficult Boy,
http://mpbarker.net/


Web sites keep Amazon.com in business.
Personal websites make me want to read more books. Sometimes the websites give the back-story of a particular book, and I feel compelled to go straight to Amazon and order the book right away. I’ve discovered some of my favorite books this way, and I suspect I’m not the only one.
~Courtney Sheinmel, Author of My So-Called Family
http://courtneywrites.livejournal.com

Pigs, Goats, and a TON of BOOKS!!!

Sarah Prineas, author of The Book Thief, tends to EXAGGERATE, but she takes her bookstores pretty seriously, so we think she's on the level with this one (because her story is corroborated by the above artist's rendering):

So I grew up in Lyme, Connecticut, and about 10 minutes down Rte 156 from my parents' house is the best used bookstore in all of NewEngland.

The Book Barn consists of six buildings (some of which are sheds, really), with comfortable chairs, 13 cats, turtles, guinea pigs, goats, coffee, tea, cookies, a beautiful flower garden, and THREE HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND books (which is why they need six buildings).

Oh, how I love the Book Barn.

A highlight of my career will be goingto the Book Barn and finding one of my books, used, on its shelves.

Also, once my son threw up in the parking lot, but you probably don't need to know that!

Sarah, Our Proud Thief...

(You've just got to know who to steal from...)

It comes as no surprise that the lovely Sarah Prineas, author of a middle grade novel (and soon-to-be international hit, as it has already sold in NINE countries!!!) is a dirty stinkin' thief. Not when her main character is a thief, and her book is actually *called* The Magic Thief.

She's basically a booster for Thieves R Us.

So we found her response to this issue of stealing a fitting one. Sarah says:

You want stealing? I got stealing!

In the second Magic Thief book the main character, Conn, is marked by a sorcerer... so that this bad magic can find him.

Now I have not read the Harry Potter books (pause for gasps of surprise) but even *I* know that Harry has a lightning bolt mark on his forehead. So I put a silvery
runemark on Conn's temple.

Then my husband told me that was too much like Harry Potter. So I asked my editor.

Me: Is Conn's runemark too Harry Potterish?

Editor: Marks on foreheads were an established convention before HP. Glinda's silver kiss on Dorothy's forehead, for example. Wherever you mark him, you're going to run into comparisons.

Me: Okay. Hmmm. Yes! I know, this will be perfect. I'll put the mark on his hand!

Editor: Well, then you have to contend with Eragon...

Me: Doooooohhh!!!!!

Well, we worked that out. Editor had a wonderful suggestion and I... stole it.

Then there's the Tolkien issue. I love Tolkien's work, especially his gift for language. Yes, I can say Frodo's greeting to the elves, and with the correct pronunciation. In Middle-earth, the magic is based on language. So when I was looking for ways to make the magic spells in my book sound magical, I whipped out my copy of Ruth Noel's The Languages of Middle Earth and brushed up on my Sindarin and Quenya. After getting the rhythms and sounds of those languages in my head, I created my book's magic spells. One spell is a direct ripoff of Tolkien. The spell for "Light" in my book is "Lothfalas." The name of Arwen's horse in The Fellowship of the Ring is "Asfaloth." In the other spells are bits and pieces of Elvish words, because they just sound magical.

We think Sarah is awesome, and we love her unique blend of shameless stealing and absolute honesty.

Just don't let her near your pearls. *Or* your boyfriend!