A book I can’t wait to read

A fellow Elevensie, author Beth Revis just got a nice and well-deserved plug from Publisher’s Weekly on her debut novel, Across the Universe. Now that I’ve had a first chance to read the first chapter, I agree with Publisher’s Weekly’s assessment that this is a killer first chapter. I can’t wait to read Beth’s novel.

You can read the first chapter here, but I should warn you that the book will not be available until January. After reading this chapter, you’re going to wish you could get your hands on the book right away!

What books are on your to-read list?

Getting to know guest blogger author A. Lightbourne

I am pleased to welcome A. Lightbourne to be today’s guest blogger. I love her writing journey and can totally related to her cats on the hands situation. Make sure to read to the end of this post and see how you can take part in her fun crossword puzzle game.

I am so happy to be on stop 8 of my book tour here with Alissa Grosso!
I have been to 7 other blogs so far, answering interview questions and leaving little ‘guest blogs’.
At this stop I would love to tell everyone about my series, characters, what inspires me and my advice for aspiring authors.

I currently have 3 books out as ebooks, the first 2 are also available together in a one volume paperback through any bookstore in town or online.
Book 3 will be out in paperback later this year.

Space Trippers is a fun space adventure story spread out into episodic segments. There will be about 12 segments/books, each one progresses the story and builds on the last.

I grew up loving tech, built my first computer at 15 from scrap parts, that was the old DOS days too. LOL
So I guess it was only natural that I would write Sci-Fi. I love Fantasy stories too, read a lot of them as a teen, so I tend to incorporate that style into my books as well.

Sci-fi is fun, it is a type of fantasy where you can create new worlds and peoples and build gadgets, what could be better?

In my books Valesque, the main character, is a Virrilian Scientific Engineer, so she is pretty smart and loves her tech. Being a loner that is usually stuck in a lab all day she does have some problems with ‘people skills’, but we’re working on that.

I like humor so I always have to incorporate it into my work, either in conversations or observations. Funny things will just pop in my head and I have to write them down. For example, Tim is pretty funny, he is a laid back kind of guy and just says whatever he wants whenever he wants, sometimes in the middle of the strict Captain’s serious meetings. Couple him with Valesque, who can’t stand him, in a scene and watch the sparks fly.
I love this series because the characters are so fun to write!

Many people ask me what books or authors have influenced or inspired me.
It sounds strange but I would say my love for Jane Austen’s works helped me with incorporating humor and dry wit into serious situations, she had such a humorous way about her.

I also think watching a lot of Japanese anime (subtitled, thank you) and reading manga has really helped with my timing and scene ‘storyboarding’. You can’t say and show every little thing, like the frames in a manga, only show what is important at the moment. I tend to picture my story as I write it like an anime or manga in my head, cutting out unnecessary side point and sticking with what moves everything forward.

Some details or conversations may not seem important at first, but everything is carefully planned out. Some conversations, for instance, in book one are very important for events that happen in book 3.

I like putting some mystery into it too, so as the story progresses you get a slow unraveling of what is really going on, what everyone is finding out, who knows what.

Finding time to write is hard lately, ‘real life’ tries to keep me busy. I am currently on a Virtual Book Tour, as you know. So that is keeping me busy. But I still try to squeeze in writing, especially when the pressure builds up in me and I just have to write out scenes and let the creativity out.

I am currently working on three books; Space Trippers book 4: Will work for parts, Brass: a steampunk fairytale (kind of Cinderella meets Pride and Prejudice), and The Prince and The Creature (kind of a reverse Beauty and the Beast meets Cinderella).

I typically sit on my couch in the family room, surrounded by cats and type away on my laptop, with my Sisson’s Synonym finder by my side and internet search a click away. Sometimes the cats want to lay on my hands, so typing can get difficult.

I usually have nothing but silence in the room, I tend to get bottled up by talking or lyrics. It seems if a movie, game or music with words are on in the background I have a hard time getting the words out of my head and into the book. Sometimes I will get on Pandora and play some of my ‘stations’, like Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Smile DK, Celtic Women etc.

If I could give advice to aspiring writers, young or old, I would say; write what you love. Write because you love to write and have a story to tell. If you do it for fortune or fame you will be frustrated and quit. But if you write because you want people to read and love the story that plays in your head, then you will enjoy it no matter if you sell 10 or 10 million.

Personally, I love writing, I have been doing it since 1^st grade. I have so many stories rattling around in my head, I just have to get them out and on paper. So I foresee writing for many years to come, I hope to sell many, many books of course, so that others can enjoy my characters and worlds as much as I do, but also because I an donating 10% of my personal profits from my books sales to no-kill animal shelters.

Like I mentioned before, right now I am on a Virtual Book Tour, that means people can ‘follow’ me online, like here on this blog. If they leave me a question or comment I will be happy to respond! And they will be entered to win an autographed copy of one of my Space Trippers books as well as a custom book-thong.

Also, if they follow me on twitter/facebook/myspace they can play a crossword game with me. They need to visit each of my stops and leave me a special message “Hey, A. let’s play!” and leave their twitter Id or facebook/myspace link so I can verify they are following me, then I will DM them the clue for that stop. There are 14 clues for 14 words on my crossword, one for each stop. Even though this is stop 8 of my tour, since it is online, they can still go back to the earlier stops on my schedule and check out my posts and leave me comments to join the game. They may just need to scroll down to find my posts.

To see my tour schedule and the links to the sites I have been/will be on visit my event page on facebook. You can also get the blank crossword to fill in from there.

For more information about Space Trippers and me visit my author site.

Space Trippers paperback containing both Book 1: Trippin’ and Book 2: Just Passing Through is available from any book store in your town or online; such as Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Space Trippers Book 1: Trippin’, Book 2: Just Passing Through and Book 3: A Frosty Farewell are available separately as ebooks for ipad, kindle, sony reader, nook and more through any ebook retailer; like Amazon, Barnes and Noble or the iBookstore. Click here.

I really enjoyed visiting with you here, if you have any questions or comments feel free to post them, I will be happy to reply!

The end of the world

Like Dirk Gently I love the interconnectedness of all things, and especially love when the different things I am reading seem to connect with one another.

Over the past week or so the audio version of Zeitoun by Dave Eggers kept me company on my travels. This non-fiction book tells the story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a resident of New Orleans who chose to stay in the city during Hurricane Katrina to look after his home and business. Six days after the storm hits he suddenly disappears and his wife, who has evacuated the city desperately works to piece together what happened. It’s a gripping and disturbing story, which I highly recommend.

At the same time that I was listening to Zeitoun I was reading a short story anthology. At first glance a non-fiction book and a science fiction anthology, might seem to have very little in common, but Wastelands edited by John Joseph Adams collects a 22 outstanding post-apocalyptic tales, and there was something about these survivors living in these wildly altered and often hostile landscapes that reminded me very much of Zeitoun’s own real life story.

It’s a truly impressive anthology. Sometimes themed anthologies can be a bit iffy, but Wastelands doesn’t really have any duds. The stories in this collection range from good to great. If you like science fiction or short stories in general, you’ll definitely want to read this one.

It’s Monday, What are You Reading?

It’s group blog time once again, It’s Monday What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at One Person’s Journey Through a World of Books.

I’ve been doing more writing than reading this week, and only managed to get through one “real” book and one audio book. I finished the awesome Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde and listened to the moving Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr.

Shades of Grey

I’ll be honest, although I like the premise behind Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, I had a hard time getting into those books, but when I read the premise behind Shades of Grey, I knew I had to give Fforde another try, and I am so glad I did. The novel is set in a dystopian future where everyone is obsessed with color and society is organized into a rigid hierarchy based upon one color’s reception. Our narrator Eddie Russett has strong red perception, but thanks to a bit of trouble he caused back home he’s been sent out to the sticks with the assignment to complete a chair census. He finds that the village of East Carmine is filled with dark secrets and curious characters, and gets himself mixed up in things a bit over his head. Really no description of this book can quite do it justice. A wonderfully original premise, colorful (sorry, I couldn’t resist!) characters and the sort of humor one would find in a Douglas Adams book makes this book a must read. The good news is that it is the first book in a planned trilogy. The bad news is I have to wait for the other two books to come out.

Story of a Girl

With audiobooks, a book’s reader can make or break a book. I appreciated the fact that Sara Zarr herself was the reader for Story of a Girl. It made this book about a teenage girl coming to terms with an event that occurred a few years ago, and which has come to define her both in her family and at school, all the more powerful. If you enjoy good young adult realistic fiction, this is one definitely worth checking out.

What’s next

Thanks to some library reserves coming in for me, my reading plans changed a bit this week. Right now I am reading the nonfiction book Booklife by Jeff VanderMeer, and am already by the wealth of information it contains for writers promoting themselves and their work in these modern times, and I’m only on chapter 2. Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick also came in for me at the library this week. So, I’ll probably read that next, and then hopefully read Handcuffs by Bethany Griffin.

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?

It’s Monday What Are You Reading? is a group blog hosted by J. Kaye’s Book Blog. You can link your blog by clicking here.

A week spent traveling all over creation or thereabouts doesn’t necessarily lend itself to lots of reading. I did manage to finish up This is Me, Jack Vance by Jack Vance, the other two books I got through this week were audios I listened to while driving around, Feed by M. T. Anderson and Superfreakonomics by  Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

This is Me, Jack Vance

I’ve always loved author memoirs. Jack Vance is one of those science fiction authors I discovered when I was younger after reading a short story in an anthology. When the internet was still young, I found a great website that sold all sorts of old science fiction paperbacks and went about tracking down every Jack Vance book I could find. Even though his books contained a lot of the classic science fiction themes, there was something about his writing that was always a notch above the average science fiction book. This memoir was not exactly what I expected. It read more like a travelogue recounting the various adventures he had, mainly with his wife as they journeyed around the world. I suppose that writing about writing can be sort of boring, but I would have preferred a bit more of that and less descriptions of meals consumed, but that’s just me. It was an interesting book, nonetheless. Jack Vance lost his eyesight later in life, and so this book and his other recent stuff was written via dictation. Perhaps because of that, the book has the feel of someone sitting down and telling you a story about their life.

Feed

This is one of those novels I’ve been meaning to read for awhile, but never got around to. M. T. Anderson imagines a future in which nearly everyone has a device implanted in their brain that allows them to communicate instantly with anyone around them, but also tracks all their behaviors and is constantly streaming advertisements into their head. This was a book where the audio experience was definitely different than reading the book. The portions where we caught a glimpse of what the feed was like was done with different voices and sound effects to bring it to life. That said, there were points when the sudden intrusion of the feed startled me as I was driving and made me jump a little. It’s one of those science fiction stories that paints a dark view of the future, and gives one plenty to think about.

Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

This is one of those non-fiction books that is full of quirky facts that I find fascinating. The book covers it all from the disturbing – the centuries old problem of doctors not washing their hands – to the wow – a man who has discovered a cure to the common hurricane – and even just interesting stuff like the fact that child safety seats are no safer than standard seat belts. This “sequel” (though, I assure you the order in which you read the books doesn’t matter) was another great compendium of things that make you think a little differently about the world around you.

What’s Next

Right now, I am reading Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. The audio version of An Abundance of Katherines by John Green will keep me company during this week’s travels. I’m not sure what else will be on tap. I think it will depend a lot on my mood.

Life imitates art

I experienced a slightly disturbing case of life imitating art the other day. I had just finished listening to the audio version of Feed by M. T. Anderson. For those not familiar with the book, it’s set in a future where folks have the feed implanted in their brains, which is sort of like having an internet connection inside your head where you are bombarded by advertising almost constantly. The audio experience of the book, really brought this aspect of the book to life with reenactments of the advertisements complete with sound effects and music.

The other day I stopped in a Wal-Mart that opened back in the fall. While, any experience to Wal-Mart can be disturbing, mine was especially so because for a moment there I thought I heard a feed going inside my own head as some woman started telling me about the wonders of a new foamy hand soap that would keep me and my family safe from scary germs. It took me a moment to realize that this was a talking video advertisement located near a display of the foamy soap. As I walked through the store, I noticed there were more of these video ads scattered throughout the store. It was a weird experience.

I suppose a brain implanted feed can’t be too far away. I think I’ll pass on having one installed.

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?

It’s Monday What Are You Reading? is a group blog hosted by J. Kaye’s Book Blog. You can link your blog by clicking here.

This week I finished up the awesome and hilarious graphic novel Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Voume 1 by Michael Kupperman, read the hard-to-put-down YA novel The Dark Divine by Bree Despain and listened to the audio version of  Mary Pearson’s YA novel The Adoration of Jenna Fox.

Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Volume 1

Graphic novel isn’t really the right term for this work by Michael Kupperman, as novel implies that there is one overarching story. This is not the case, instead this is a brilliant collection of a bunch of humorous short comics. Most are one or two pages at most. It’s in full color and many of the comics blend retro style comics with a healthy amount of weirdness to produce wonderful gems. Interspersed throughout are extremely funny fake advertisements. If you like your funny stuff on the quirky side, this is definitely worth checking out.

The Dark Divine

Bree Despain’s debut novel is a classic YA paranormal romance. From the first page I was sucked into the story even though at first, I wasn’t so sure about the seemingly perfect main character. Grace is a minister’s daughter who gave the impression of being  a little too goody-two-shoes, but she soon proved to be a wonderfully well-rounded girl, and it was hard to put down this book as I tried to find out what was going to happen to Grace and her tortured boyfriend, Daniel.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox

This young adult science fiction novel by Mary Pearson is set in a not too distant future, where medical technology has made some tremendous leaps forward. From the start we know that something is not quite right with Jenna, and we soon figure out what is going on, long before she actually works out what happened. Jenna is forced to come to terms with her own identity. The story raises some interesting questions about how far medical technology should go and what it means to be human.

What’s Next . . .

Right now I am reading the memoir This is Me, Jack Vance by Jack Vance and listening to the audio version of Feed by M. T. Anderson. I have plans to dive into Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl next, as well as Superfreakonomics by D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

What are you reading this week?

It’s Monday, What are You Reading?

It’s Monday What Are You Reading? is a group blog hosted by J. Kaye’s Book Blog. You can link your blog by clicking here.

This was a two book week for me. I listened to Paper Towns by John Green on audio and read Makers by Cory Doctorow.

Paper Towns

Paper Towns is a great YA novel, with all the elements that make for a good teen read. There’s silly pranks, a mystery and even a zany race against time road trip. It’s realistic fiction, and the sort of realistic fiction that actually feels real. The characters are multi-dimensional and fight off those usual high school stereotypes. Our main character is Quentin a high school senior on the verge of graduation, who spends a lot of time in the band room, even though he isn’t even a member of the band. His next door neighbor and childhood friend is the ultra-popular Margo Roth Spiegelman, but when Margo disappears and Quentin takes it upon himself to track her down, he starts finding out that he doesn’t know Margo as well as he thought he did. John Green has a knack for writing about and for teens, and his novels manage to be both fun and thought-provoking.

Makers

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author who occasionally writes for the YA end of the spectrum. His latest book, Makers, is clearly an adult novel. There are a lot of characters in this near-future science fiction book, but I think the main character here may be the technology itself. The biggest difference between the world of the novel, and our own is the existence of 3-D printers. Rather than paper these printers are fed with “goop” and what they turn out is various three dimensional objects. What this means is that production becomes much more of a small scale sort of thing. The novel follows this technology and the different players involved in using it as they try to understand the business logistics of it from the geeky engineers who just want to make stuff to the Disney executives who just want to make big bucks. It’s an interesting look at a very possible future.

What’s Next

Right now I just began the funny, out there graphic novel Tales Designed to Thrizzle Volume 1 by Michael Kupperman and am listening to the audio version of the YA novel The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson. I’m not sure what I’ll be diving into next, I bought a few YA novels with an Amazon gift certificate I had, and I’ll probably have to do an eenie meenie miney moe to figure out which one I read next.

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?

It’s Monday What Are You Reading? is a group blog hosted by J. Kaye’s Book Blog. You can link your blog by clicking here.

I’m cheating this week. I was on the road last Monday, and didn’t get around to participating in the group blog. So, today’s post is actually what I’ve been reading over the past two weeks. I read both of my Christmas gift books The Devil’s Eye by Jack McDevitt and The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett. I also listened to the audio version of Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, read The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell and an all ages sort of picture book by Jon Muth called Stonecutter. My quick reviews on each of these books are listed below.

The Devil’s Eye

Jack McDevitt writes the sort of science fiction novels that are perfect for escaping into, especially during the dead of winter. The Devil’s Eye is part of the series chronicling the adventures of far future antiquities dealer Alex Benedict and narrated by his loyal assistant and pilot Chase Kolpath. These novels combine mystery and space-faring science fiction and remind me a little bit of Sherlock Holmes with spaceships, though Chase is far cooler and prettier than Watson. At the start of The Devil’s Eye, the pair are contacted by a bestselling horror writer with a cryptic message and zip off across the galaxy to try and solve the mystery. Although Alex and Chase figure out what’s going on well before the conclusion of the novel, they then find themselves in a race against time to try and avert certain disaster. The Devil’s Eye like everything I’ve ever read by Jack McDevitt is a wonderfully entertaining novel.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective and a World of Literary Obsession

It will probably come as no surprise that I love books, and I have a soft spot in my heart for books about bibliophilia and book collecting. I do make a small amount of extra money dealing in used books and find the used book world to be a strange and fascinating place. In The Man Who Loved Books Too Much Allison Hoover Bartlett takes readers into that world, as she introduces them to a small time criminal obsessed with expensive books who lacks the means to acquire his books through legal means. Bartlett tells the story of John Gilkey the thief who stole thousands of books from used book dealers mostly by using stolen credit card numbers. He’s an interesting character, and the glimpse into the collectible book world is fascinating. It’s a must read book for anyone who loves books not only for the stories they contain, but also as wonderful physical objects.

Leviathan

Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan is a big change from his previous Uglies series. The novel is a steampunk tale set at the beginning of World War I in which the British travel the skies in huge living gas ships made of fabricated animals. Our two main characters are Deryn Sharp a girl posing as a boy aboard one of those British air ships and Prince Aleksander of Austria who is a devotee of Clanker culture and prefers to get around in huge machine walkers. The paths of our two characters cross and they become connected in an unlikely alliance. This is a quick-paced story with lots of action, and if I had one complaint it’s that it ends too soon. It is obviously part of a planned series, but the ending leaves far too many loose threads, and I will likely have to wait nearly a year before the next book in the series is published.

The Wordy Shipmates

Sarah Vowell has a gift for writing about history in an engaging laugh out loud style. Proof of that is that she is able to make even the dull drab Puritans she chronicles in The Wordy Shipmates entertaining and amusing. The book tackles not that first wave of Puritans that arrived on the Mayflower and that American school kids traditionally study right before Thanksgiving, but the next wave that came over on the Arabella and included the very wordy John Winthrop. Vowell describes the early years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony as well as Rhode Island and how the events of those Colonial years helped to shape the present day United States, which bears little resemblance to those early settlements. The sort of history that Vowell writes bears little resemblance to your boring high school history textbook. Vowell breathes new life into these musty old historical figures with her unique view of things and her sarcastic wit.

Stonecutter

I’m familiar with the works of Jon Muth from having read his picture books Zen Shorts and Zen Ties, books that kids will enjoy that also have a positive message. I found Stonecutter shelved in the children’s nonfiction section at my local library. Physically it resembles a small hardcover “chapter book” but inside it looks more like a picture book, with simple black and white illustrations each accompanied with one or two lines of text. The simple fable-like tale, however, is probably more geared towards adults than kids. It’s a beautiful and thought-provoking book that can be appreciated by all ages.

What’s next?

Right now, I am reading Makers by Cory Doctorow and listening on audio to Paper Towns by John Green. I’m not sure what’s on tap after I finish those.

What have you been reading?

The rest of the top books I read this year

Yesterday, I made a list of my top books of 2009, but the problem is that I read a lot of books this year that were really good, but were not actually published this year. So, here’s a list of some of my favorite books I read this year from 2008 or earlier:

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key by Kage  Baker

Startled by His Furry Shorts by Louise Rennison

The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

Dead Meat by Sue Coe

Eifelheim by Michael Flynn

Horses Blow Up Dog City & Other Stories by Richard Butner

Chiggers by Hope Larson

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America by David Hajdu

Candy Girl: A Year in the Life on an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Behind the Curtain by Peter Abrahams

Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand

Sweet and Low: A Family Story by Rich Cohen

Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

Robot Dreams by Sara Varon

Couch by Benjamin Parzybok

Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond

Pig Boy’s Wicked Bird by Doug Crandell

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The January Dancer by Michael Flynn

Storyteller by Kate Wilhelm

Adam’s Curse: A Future Without Men by Bryan Sykes

I guess 2009 was a pretty good reading year for me! May your 2010 be filled with happiness and great books!